The Young Republicans racists aren’t ‘kids,’ but they sure aren’t manly

Vice President JD Vance recently tried to minimize the fallout of a Young Republican chat group whose wildly inappropriate messages had been leaked. Vance dismissed their vile and racist language as kids doing stupid things. Of course, anyone with a brain would have pushed back already that these were grown men (and a few women) and not “kids” at all. Some of the individuals even had prominent positions, including a state senator.

While many on both the right and left rolled their eyes at Vance, I sort of agreed with him. Growing up, I dealt with a lot of racism in New Jersey. The same stuff you read in the chat, I was told to my face by classmates. It was definitely a different time. If you went to teachers, principals, friends or anyone else, they would tell you just to suck it up. Of course, being a kid, I would do the opposite. I would fight, hurl back insults, and fight some more. But in my junior year of high school, I had two epiphanies about racists that have stayed with me until today.

The first was that racists weren’t as smart as I was. The second was that they were mentally weak — not mentally ill or mentally disabled (which are medical terms), but rather weaklings who could not help but hate. As I left New Jersey for college in Ohio, I met college kids who were also racist weaklings.

When I joined the Marines, it was interesting. Marines are very mean to each other, for a reason. We like to say the worst things to each other. It’s partly because we need to toughen each other up. If words hurt you, then you are a weakling and the Marines have no place for weakness. But there were also those in the Corps that could not let go of their real prejudices. Even as they joined with people of all races and backgrounds and went to war with them, these ones held onto racist views. Why? Because despite being Marines, they had a weakness of the mind.

That brings us to the Young Republican chat. We live in a wonderful part of human history. We are connected to every culture and race around the world. We no longer have to live in ignorance about others, because you can literally use your phone, computer or TV to go anywhere in the world. But despite this, some of us still default to fear.

These Young Republicans aren’t alone in their views. There are plenty of men who have grown increasingly angry with this country and decided not to listen to their parents, teachers, friends, priests or pastors, and others and have embraced a vitriol that can’t be excused by ignorance or lack of knowledge anymore. A lot of men feel as if they can’t be men in this country. But defaulting to fear, isn’t exactly manly.

No one is saying you have to be a bleeding-heart liberal. But in this age of manfluencers, podcast bros and “edgelords,” it pays to sell fear, as a lot of men especially buy into it. The thing about the Young Republican chat was they weren’t talking down to each other to toughen themselves up or give each other a hard time. They were talking about people not in the chat because their insecurities about themselves and fear of others have led them to embrace weakness.

The manliest thing that a man can do is go out into the world, find people different from him, and find commonalities with them. Why? Because this brings peace and stability to you, your family and your community. This is why the diplomat is always ranked higher than the warrior. There is a reason our secretary of State is higher in the order of presidential succession than the secretary of Defense.

When you go out and find these commonalities, you also discover something important about the world. People in general, around the world, are exactly the same. They all want to have stability and security for their families and have more in common with you than you think. There is a trope in war where you hear adversaries say, “in another life, we could have been friends.” It’s a shame we sometimes only discover about someone after we learn to hate them first.

We need to start teaching our young men that in order to be men, they need to learn not to fear other groups, but to identify the bad apples in any group. This is paramount to overcoming any type of prejudice. This doesn’t mean all wars will end — that we will all be sitting around singing “Kumbaya” and turn into hippies. It means that, as men, we can learn to truly create an enduring peace in which our families, friends and communities flourish.

These Young Republicans, like many men who have submitted to anger, don’t represent Republican men, American men or men in general. They showed their weaknesses by giving in to fear. And yes, Democrats, you too have people in your ranks that give in to fear as well.

So maybe, the manfluencers, podcast bros and politicians can start telling men to be men by not being so scared of everyone else and defaulting to racism, bigotry and prejudice. It would do wonders for the psyche of men in this country if we started telling them to be men by not living their lives in fear, like the “kids” in that group chat.

Jos Joseph is winner of the 2025 Military Reporters and Editors Award for Best Commentary-Opinion. He is a graduate of the Harvard Extension School and Ohio State University. He is also a Marine veteran who served in Iraq. He currently lives in Anaheim, Calif.