In the journalism business, you’re not supposed to bury the lede. Unless it makes for better or less politically incorrect clickbait.
Polls pushing the idea that 18-24-year-olds uniquely support Hamas or Al Qaeda are sexy. Breaking down the numbers though reveals what’s going on.
Why is the 18-24 year old generation seemingly so bad? Sure, young people tend to extremism and, as I’ve pointed out before, the majority of 18-24-year-olds are not registered voters, so when you poll only those who are, you get very political people. And with that age demo, political tends to be extreme. The other missing piece of the puzzle is that this is a very diverse generation.
The most diverse generation ever.
The Daily Mail hypes its poll as about 18-24-year-olds.
“One in five young Americans has a positive view of 9/11 mastermind and Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden, according to disturbing results of a DailyMail.com poll.
The alarming survey also found three in 10 Gen Z voters believe the views of the anti-Semitic terrorist leader who slaughtered thousands of innocent people were a ‘force for good’.
Family members of 9/11 victims said the findings are ‘horrifying’ and proof of a startling trend suggesting some in the younger generation are growing sympathetic to terrorists.”
The Daily Mail’s own breakdown shows that only 3% of white people have a completely positive view of Bin Laden, 4% have a somewhat positive one, and 84% have a completely negative one.
7% of black people have a completely positive view of Osama, 11% have a somewhat positive one, 15% have mixed feelings, 9% don’t know, 7% are somewhat negative and only 50% have a completely negative view of the terror leader who killed thousands: including plenty of black people.
Among Hispanics, 9% have a completely positive view of Osama, 6% have a somewhat positive view, 11% are mixed, 15% don’t know, 7% have a somewhat negative view and only 51% are completely negative.
This isn’t a generational issue, it’s a racial one. It does get worse generationally among white people and minorities, but a major reason it gets worse generationally is added diversity.
These are simply the facts. It gives me no pleasure to report them.
I can throw in caveats. J.L. Partners, the pollster, is a British Tory pollster and much of its previous polling seems to have been UK based. The Daily Mail isn’t too credible and the questions would have been pushed to produce a particular response. I don’t have access to the poll itself, so who knows how bad it was. But at the same time these results probably do reflect a reality, even if not within these exact percentages, that we should be coming to grips with if we want to think about where America is going.