Source: The Mormon Manosphere Is Worse Than You Think Channel: Alyssa Grenfell Published: May 22, 2026 | Archived: May 24, 2026

Video: The Mormon Manosphere Is Worse Than You Think
Channel: Alyssa Grenfell
Published: May 22, 2026
Duration: 1:11:52
Views: 121,285
Category: People & Blogs
Video ID: I9u60hyhZvw

Description

Some of the most visible far-right influencers online share a similar background: they were raised in a system built around missionary confidence, patriarchal authority, American exceptionalism, and religious certainty. Mormon culture keeps producing a recognizable archetype of a clean-cut, conservative, moral-panic-driven male influencer. From Glenn Beck to the Bundys to newer figures like Nick Shirley and Kai Schwemmer, the pattern is worth examining instead of pretending these are isolated coincidences. Mormonism did not invent the far-right influencer, but it gave these men an unusually useful starter kit: persuasion training, persecution narratives, distrustful patriotism, gender hierarchy, and the unwavering belief that God is on their side.

~~~~~~~~ A few resources I mention in the video: *My Patreon video about Charlie Kirk: https://www.patreon.com/posts/charlie-kirk-and-158914502?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link *Right vs Left political split in Mormon church: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/04/01/commentary-why-lds-church-cant/ *Nick Shirley pays men to hold Biden signs: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pro-trump-influencers-fire-up-fears-migrant-invasion-ahead-us-election-2024-06-13/ *Deseret News features Nick Shirley story: https://www.deseret.com/politics/2025/12/30/who-is-nick-shirley-minnesota-fraud-utah-native/ *Charlie Kirk tells Mormons to get their mojo back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wwrcYUv7GA *Glenn Beck no longer on Fox: https://www.npr.org/2011/04/06/135181398/glenn-beck-to-leave-daily-fox-news-show *Kai Schwemmer profile: https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2026/03/27/who-is-kai-schwemmer-lds-byu/ *Facebook post from Mormon church about a man supporting his wife’s career: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1509744907179385&id=100044316705439&mibextid=wwXIfr&rdid=q511m6kl1zoBDigg *Explaining why Mormons often become preppers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzokEuGwfuo *Mormons church does not like Mike Lee? Article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/11/mike-lee-utah-mormon-church-profile-00437296 *My video explaining patriarchal blessings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnOm2e4HXjk&t=2426s *My experience being a 9th grade teacher in Utah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ck3Z9xzaQI *The racist history of the Mormon church: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lhi_UaAMvM&t=1042s *Why Tonga is 60% Mormon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4_n0FqXTD0 *YouGov data about Mormons moving left: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54389-two-decades-of-partisanship-in-the-cooperative-election-study *Cliven and Ammon Bundy coverage: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/why-the-bundy-militia-mixes-mormon-symbolism-with-anti-government-sentiment *Mormon church involved in Prop 8 in California: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/editorial-mormon-church-should-lose-tax-exempt-status-over-prop-8-support/ *Kai Schwemmer on the Daily Wire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7GeMfOEqeQ&t=2603s *DezNat coverage by Deseret News: https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2021/7/21/22587664/alaska-assistant-attorney-general-under-investigation-for-deznat-twitter-account-jreubenclark/ *Constitution will hang by a thread prophesy: https://josephsmithfoundation.org/faqs/government/31-hang-by-a-thread/

~~~~~~~~~~ Where to find me: *Patreon (ad free & bonus content): https://patreon.com/alyssadgrenfell?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink *Read my book, How to Leave the Mormon Church: https://amzn.to/4na4rpo *TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alyssadgrenfell?lang=en *Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alyssadgrenfell/?hl=en *Email me: alyssadgrenfell@gmail.com

~~~~~~~~~~ Support my channel: *Patreon (ad free & bonus content): https://patreon.com/alyssadgrenfell?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)

0:00 Some of the most famous far-right Mormon influencers are, you guessed it, Mormon men. I have a few examples from the headlines for you and then my own explanation because in my opinion, these people represent a very alarming convergence of gender, religion, and politics. One of the most recent examples of this is a man named Nick Shirley, who has been going viral for his reporting and investigative journalism. In one of his most famous videos, he shakes the doors of a daycare while being filmed, while being surrounded by multiple men. And then when they do not let the strange men into the daycare, he declares that that is proof that there’s fraud. You may remember that I was a public school teacher for about 8 years. And so I can definitively say that if a group of four men with cameras and some of them with face coverings approached a school, it would absolutely trigger a lockdown.

0:58 Nick Shirley is a lifelong Mormon who recently went on a Mormon mission to Santiago, Chile. His videos have been shared by Elon Musk and JD Vance, and there will be more on him in a bit. Nick Shirley is definitely not some random anomaly. I’m going to be sharing a lot of names and examples of what I’m talking about within today’s video. Nick, I think, is a relatively new name on this list of Mormon male political influencers. If we want to go a little bit further back in history, we can point to Glenn Beck. I literally grew up listening to Glenn Beck within my own devout Mormon household. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I grew up listening to my parents listening to Glenn Beck. He is a political commentator on the right and he has been for over 20 years and he also owns his own media company. Glenn Beck converted to the Mormon church in 1999 and he apparently left Fox News for being too controversial. To quote from this article, it says, “At long last, we have

1:59 an answer to the enduring question. Is it possible for someone to be too incendiary even for the Fox News Channel? The answer is yes.“ Like I said, there are many names I could list here and that I will be listing within this video. Another one is Kai Schwemer, who I recently saw profiled in the Salt Lake Tribune. This is another devout Mormon man who recently returned from his mission in Argentina. He has been seen ping around with the likes of Nick Fuentes and also apparently recently accepted in a live stream the title of a Mormon Nick Fuentes. Kai was recently appointed to be the new political director of the College Republicans of America. The appointment to this position was criticized by other Republicans. So even within the Republican party, someone like Kai is considered too extreme to be in this type of a position. And he was appointed to this position despite the many different racist and sexist tweets and posts he’s made in his short 23 years of life. I’ll put some examples of those

3:03 posts from Kai off to the side here. But obviously, these posts were not enough to disqualify from being appointed to this position. This type of rhetoric also wasn’t enough to disqualify him from appearing in pro Mormon content, as you can see from this recent collaboration. Unsurprisingly, the circle with which these people move in is relatively small. And so, here is a photo of Nick Shirley and Kai Schwemer at an event. As an ex- Mormon myself, I can pretty definitively say that these men are not random irregularities.

3:36 Mormon doctrine and culture didn’t just like randomly pop out faright or Republican or right-leaning influencers and commentators. I think what I see in these men along with all the other examples I’m going to share today is the product of a system. And for me, I will always be more interested in the system that created these types of people rather than being super invested in the individual themselves merely because I think it almost gives them too much individual credit. I think more scrutiny needs to be placed at the feet of the culture and specifically at the the heart of the system that created them.

4:16 It’s pretty obvious that the Mormon church did not invent the far-right influencer, but I do think that it gives young Mormon men a particularly useful starter pack for going down this particular path. To name some of the things I’m going to get into today, this includes things like missionary confidence, a deep trust in patriarchal authority, the idea that God’s side is your side. This also includes the narrative of persecution, the idea of American exceptionalism, and at its heart, just what masculinity is supposed to be. If you followed my videos for a while, you know that I’ve talked a lot about trades. I’ve talked about my experience in the church growing up as a girl and a woman. I’ve talked about secret lives of Mormon wives. Uh, but this this is the other side of the coin, right? This is the male side of what it means to grow up Mormon. And obviously we are all products of our upbringing, how our parents raised us, the culture

5:16 we lived in. It’s why I think analyzing the system is so important because at the end of the day, the system that Mormon men are raised in is shockingly different than the system that Mormon women are raised in. My system as a woman growing up in this religion was all about motherhood, submission, the idea that only men could hold God’s power, that I should covenant before God to obey my husband, that my primary role in life and really my greatest role would be to be a wife and a mother.

5:48 However, that track that I was placed on, the system I was raised in is so different than what Mormon boys and men grow up with that I actually decided to interview lots of different ex- Mormon men for this video just so that I felt like I could get a better grasp on what it meant to be raised in this religion as a boy. I’m going to be including a lot of what they shared within this video. One, for example, said that every single Sunday uh that when they would have Sunday school, that their entire lesson in Sunday school was uh basically dissecting a recent Glenn Beck episode.

6:24 He said it was every lesson for the entire lesson. And I can easily say that as a Mormon girl, I never heard like political talk at church. I’ll say that some of these ex Mormon men said, “You can use my name.” Some said, “Please just keep it anonymous.” One person I know, his name is Tony. He wrote up a response to some of my questions. So, I’m going to read a portion of what Tony wrote. I’ll say that from everything Tony told me, I think he grew up in a very devout Mormon household. He said, “Growing up, I always knew we were Republican and conservative. This was made clear to me in many ways, and my dad was proud to proclaim it. I was raised to believe that our way of life was the only right way. For example, it was made clear to me that anyone who wasn’t Mormon, straight, white, and in a two parent household was problematic, or at least deserving of pity. I’ll be layering in more of their perspectives and stories within this video. But I think the most interesting throughine of

7:23 all of the conversations I had was that for them growing up in the church, that Republicanism was completely intertwined with God. I think the other reason I wanted to conduct these interviews is that I just don’t organically get this content and I never really have in my whole life. I wasn’t raised as a Mormon male and so I didn’t get it in childhood and then I left the church so I’m not getting it as an adult either. I think I am in many ways the exact polar opposite of the target audience of this type of content. I’m a woman. I’m an atheist.

7:56 I’m politically on the left. And so I feel like I wanted to interview some people who maybe have a little bit more familiarity with this so that they can give me more perspective. That being said, after researching for this video and looking into these people’s lives, I I fear my algorithm is ruined forever. So I think I really took one for the team here. Now, before I fully dissect this system I’ve been talking about, don’t forget to like this video, subscribe to my channel, drop a comment if you’ve seen any of this type of media across your feed. I think it’s very interesting to learn about people not just who left religion, but maybe also who changed political views as they became an adult because obviously we were all raised in the culture we were raised in. We we all are susceptible to the the messages we receive as kids from our parents, from school, from media.

8:48 But then I think that in adulthood, it seems like there’s this diverging path where some people double down and become even more dogmatic than maybe even how they were raised. And then there’s another path where people deconstruct and question and critically think and and have a different conclusion. And so if you’re somebody who either left religion or left your political persuasion of origin, drop a comment because I do think these stories are pretty fascinating. I’ll also say that what I’m sharing today is as per usual my perspective. So I do have data I’ll point to, Reddit threads I’ll point to, but at the end of the day I am giving commentary on culture. I’m not out here calling myself a reporter or an investigative journalist. These observations are my opinions and when I have data or facts, I will cite them and I’ll also link them below so that you can go read through and uh find out for yourself. And I do think that that is the intellectually honest thing for me

9:53 to do. I don’t think that having an opinion is wrong. I think that it’s when you present that opinion as fact that it becomes very morally dubious. And that’s why I feel like I have take a lot of issue with Nick Shirley using a word like investigative journalist. Nick Shirley has done social media stunts where he, for example, paid uh Hispanic men $20 to hold proiden signs outside of the White House in an obvious ploy to support Trump. to read from this article. It says, “One late afternoon in miday, half a dozen Hispanic day laborers were paid $20 each to parade in front of the White House on camera holding signs with slogans like I love Biden and I need work permit for my family.” I feel like I shouldn’t even have to name this, but paying people to do something and then calling it organic news uh is dishonest. Nick also recently posted this quote. It says, “The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie.” Which is honestly pretty hilarious for a Mormon to post.

11:02 That’s a a Mark Twain quote, uh, which is also hilarious because Mark Twain famously had a lot to say about Mormons. Nick’s crusade against finding financial fraud also seems a bit hypocritical considering the fact that the Mormon church, a church that he belongs to, was actually fined for concealing their finances. I think having this like crusade against fraud, but then only investigating the fraud in Democrat-led states, but not, for example, the fraud in in his own religion, feels like a little convenient to me. And I did find it notable, if not unsurprising, that the Desireette News did a whole article about Nick Shirley and it’s a very positively written piece. And I think whether it’s the Desireette News writing about Nick or both of them appearing on pro Mormon content, it’s pretty clear that what these two people are, whether it’s Kai Schwemer or Nick Shirley, that they are basically getting the Mormon

12:02 stamp of approval. even though I find a lot of their tactics to just be like pure propaganda, sexist, racist, hateful bigotry. Um, but they still got that Mormon stamp of approval. I think what’s also interesting about the rise of someone like a Nick Shirley is that within the Mormon church, there is a kind of culture war that’s being played out right now. Historically, the Mormon church has had some of the most conservative members of any religion in America. But within the Mormon church, there is a faction that is moving left, especially within the last 10 to 20 years. To read from this article, it says Republicans and Republican leaning individuals represent about 73% of Mormons. Uh so 73% are Republican or Republican leaning and then 23% of the church uh is Democrat or Democratleaning members. It does note, and this is the part that I find interesting, that these overall numbers can hide significant generational shifts. And this is where I think the gender element of this story

13:07 is so interesting because we have people who are obviously leaving the church. So that’s one group of people, people who leave the church and then we have people who stay in the church but still are politically left, which is like the minority, right? So you may be wondering which demographic is more likely to either leave the church or to stay in the church but be on the political left.

13:30 And the answer to that question is women on both counts. Women at this point are more likely to leave the church. And even for the women who stay in the church, they are more likely to be on the political left. To go back to the article, it says, “This generation gap is exacerbated by a gender gap with younger Latter-day Saint women far less likely to identify with conservative politics. For the first time in history, we have also crossed a threshold with more Latter-day Saint women leaving the faith than men.” And so when I’m kind of observing this cultural shift within the church, I do think seeing this emergence of more far-right men online, far-right Mormon men online, I do think it represents a kind of hardening that is happening within that demographic in the church. Like I said, no matter how you were raised, you can either double down or you can question. It’s not like those are the only options, but those are the

14:27 buckets I’m naming here. And I think when you look at the Mormon church and ask yourself who does this benefit more, men or women? Uh who does this work work for more? Men or women? In my opinion, I think that men are staying and men are doubling down because this religion is built for them. This is a recent post from the official LDS church account and it’s basically highlighting a man who’s talking about how his wife is going to become a doctor and he’s still basically like finding his path and viewing his current role to be supporting his wife in her career. Oh my god. You wouldn’t think that that would have caused like a firestorm on the Mormon internet. But I do think that because the official church account is posting and highlighting and elevating a story like this, people had a lot to say about it.

15:19 Here’s one example of a comment on this page. It says, “If there’s no right way to build a family, then there’s no wrong way either.” This message directly contradicts the family proclamation and highlights the growing need for the First Presidency to clean house in the marketing department. I don’t blame the leaders. I blame whatever 20-year-old woke intern posted this. Tell us how you really feel. And honestly, I’m not surprised that this type of rhetoric or idea coming from the church has caused a lot of strong feelings because a lot of women had career aspirations, but growing up in the Mormon church were messaged that the best and really only thing they should do with their life is to become a wife and a mother. And I’ll put more comments off to the side here, but it definitely I think can feel like whiplash to grow up in one version of the church, which is a more conservative version of the church, and then to see

16:16 the church, I mean, some Mormon leaders have said like, “Hey, if there’s if you have your wife working outside of the home, I’m paraphrasing her, but I’ll put the real quote here. If your wife is working out of outside of the home, you should do whatever it takes, whatever it takes for her to be able to quit her job and be a stay-at-home mom with the kids. This person quotes Ever Ezra Taffft Benson from 1981, previously more conservative version of the church. The seeds of divorce are often sewn and the problems of children begin when mother works outside the home. So yeah, I can understand feeling like a large amount of dissonance growing up with leaders saying things like this and then suddenly we have this like happy golucky post from the church where the woman gets to be gets to be and is it’s like wow look she’s being a pediatric doctor. Like that’s so amazing. and to see a woman’s career be celebrated seemingly almost like suddenly overnight where this has just

17:17 not been the history or the the type of ideology that the church has shared for most of its history. I’ll link that original post from Facebook down below, but if you noticed in that first comment I read, it’s referencing the family proclamation. That’s a document I grew up with. We had it on our wall. We would read it in young women’s. A lot of the tasks that you can find in personal progress revolve around highlighting a woman’s role in uh the family proclamation to the world. Here’s the quote from the proclamation, but it essentially says that men should be the providers, the financial provider. They should bring home the bacon and the women are primarily responsible for the nurturing care of the children. This is such a common document that I literally I didn’t even plan for this. Um, I just have this I had this down in my bookcase, but this is the proclamation.

18:08 I mean, we had it printed so that it would be a good size that I would be able to put it in my scriptures so that I could reference it regularly. Some people would even memorize this to grow up having this like really hit home constantly for both men and women that you have gender roles are real and they are ordained by God. to suddenly have the church kind of seeming to like switch it up. I do think that’s good for progress, but I do think it’s going to create some backlash by the people who were raised to believe that these gender roles were basically doctrine ordained of God. Now, a final piece of data for you to consider as we are thinking through this culture war that is both like a generational culture war, but also a gender culture war. This is some data compiled by Yuggov and I’m gonna focus on this chart and basically as you can see that basically Mormons are the second most conservative religious group in the country. But even though they are

19:08 super conservative of all of those religious groups, they moved the furthest to the left politically in the last 20 years. This is like a ripping apart, right? because we have like very conservative but then there’s this faction within this conservative religion that is pulling it the most to the left. In fact, if you look at this graph, you can see all these other religions represented, whether it’s they have black Protestant, Jewish, white Catholic, white evangelical, all of the ones I just named, those religious groups have just become more and more Republican over time. And really only Mormons and atheists of all of the things on that list have become more democratic over time. This graph to me is the Mormon culture war in a nutshell.

19:58 This graph is proof that the church is struggling to know where to go. It’s proof that the Mormon leadership is not inspired by God. Uh they’re not it’s like they’re being uh cast about on the wind. of all the people I interviewed, only one of them was a Democrat when they were Mormon. And he basically said that uh he felt like when he learned about a man named Harry Reid, who was a Mormon that was a Democrat, that finally he felt like he had permission to be a Democrat while still being an active member of the Mormon church. And I think this graph represents too that it’s not like every single Mormon man is a faright Republican is like a political extremist. I think it actually shows that there is a lot of tension even within this larger group. I think that even though there is this kind of dissonance within the Mormon religion, I do think though that there’s enough of a throughine of far-right political

21:00 thinkers and commentators and now influencers that it has basically become an archetype of of a type of person who gets popped out by this religion. When uh similar patterns emerge again and again, it’s worth asking why why is this pattern happening over and over again? but also what types of thinking is this system rewarding? And so as we progress, just keep in mind, just like you can see on the graph, like the the far-right movement within Mormonism is criticized often by Mormons themselves. Similarly to how even Republicans didn’t like that Kai Schwemer was appointed to this position, I think it just shows that even within a larger social group, there there are people who are saying like, well, I I think yes, maybe we agree on all these things, but I don’t like the the way you’re going about it. And even though the the Mormon church through the Desireette News put their little stamp of approval on Nick Shirley, I’ll also highlight in this video other instances where there was somebody saying as a

22:07 Mormon man, I believe this that or the other and the the church came out and made a statement against them. So it is a little bit of a complicated uh conversation because we have the organization versus the culture, we have gender, we have politics, we have religion, we have God. So I do feel like there are so many waring identities here that this is kind of like a bird’s eye view of this and there’s a lot of like breakoff groups within these different identities that aren’t perfectly encapsulated in what I’m talking about.

22:41 And I think because the Mormon church is is ultimately just truly doesn’t have any strong leadership. They’re all just like old men in their 90s. It does mean that the war for the soul of these young Mormon men often does come down to social media influencers. I mean, a lot of the men I interviewed for this this video, they talked about listening to Jordan Peterson. They talked about Joe Rogan, the kind of larger manosphere, and like looking to those voices to figure out like what is what is it to be a man? What what is masculinity? I’ve seen Reddit threads on the faithful LDS subreddit of people of like Mormon leaders finding out that the young Mormon men are listening to Andrew Tate, for example. And you have like these faithful Mormon leaders like at the the congregational level who are like, “Wow, these these young men in my congregation really like Andrew Tate and I don’t know what to do about it.” You can obviously find a lot of conversation online, not just that’s Mormon related, that’s like about about the manosphere, about red

23:46 pill content and kind of like the male loneliness epidemic and all of these things. And I think that just like that conversation is kind of overtaking young men across America, I think that is even more strongly distilled in Mormon young men specifically. And this is probably made even worse by the fact that young Mormon women are even more feminist than probably has ever existed in the Mormon church. And so it’s like the gender war uh compiles with the political war compiles on top of the religious war.

24:20 And it means I mean that’s why I say it feels like the church is kind of being ripped apart at the seams because there’s not enough cohesion for this to be like a a strong a strongly united group. I’m about to get into that list of things, but as a final tie-in to this conversation about the culture war, I do think something that actually Charlie Kirk said, uh, he said this, uh, just, you know, in the minutes before he was killed in Utah by a young man with a history in the Mormon church, he actually spoke to Charlie Kirk actually gave a quote speaking to the culture war in the church, which I thought was interesting because like it’s not like Charlie Kirk is Mormon. I think his commentary about the soul of the church, my words, not his. I’ll read the quote in a second. I do think that show gives some some more proof and evidence to what I’m talking about that even this outsider can see that the church is at

25:16 war with itself and is like chastising the members of the church for becoming too soft or too on the left. I did have a lot of people at the time ask me to make a video about Charlie Kirk Utah. I mean, I’ve been to Utah Valley University many times in my life. Um, and so even seeing this crazy event happen in a place that I’ve spent time was wild. But I did make a separate Patreon video fully reacting to that.

25:48 this video was already too long and too I feel like I had too much to cover and uh it’s it’s difficult when I’m researching for these things not to go too far off the beaten path um and meander a bit. And so if you want to see my separate video talking about Charlie Kirk and the Utah connection that is already posted on Patreon uh and linked below. But anyways, as Charlie Kirk was speaking before he was killed, he like I said did speak to the culture war happening in the Mormon church. So here is that clip. I think it’s time for Mormons. You got to get your mojo back.

26:19 No more of this LGBT stuff. We need the strong Mormon church back in this country. We have the white shirt and tie crowd right there. I’m going to read the line again from the transcript. I think it’s time for Mormons. You got to get your mojo back. No more of this LGBT stuff. obviously met with a lot of applause which so I mean even that is kind of crazy because I think from the outside and from my perspective the church is still very homophobic and so you might hear that and be like what is he even talking about because the church is has a lot of pretty homophobic policies however I think if to you know if I’m interpreting what he’s saying here for example the Mormon church in recent years has said things like well being gay is not a sin Acting on being gay is the sin. Which considering that there used to be like complete witch hunts in the Mormon church at BYU, for example, the person who led those witch hunt gay witch hunts is now the leader of the Mormon church, President Oaks, where they would do

27:25 things like go to a gay bar and then with a police scanner, they would scan the plates of all of the cars to see if any of them were BYU students, which is the Mormon University, so that they could get them in trouble for being at a gay bar. They also used to do things like electroshock experiments where they would try to see if they could turn people straight. There’s an article I’ll link below as well about that. But obviously at this point the Mormon church is no longer doing things like that to be homophobic to try to root out or scare away gay members of the church.

27:59 Another thing I think you could point to of the Mormon church losing its mojo is now they say like, well, if you get extra piercings or tattoos, you still probably shouldn’t, but it’s no longer like completely prohibited. They also changed the garments to be more immodest. Now you can wear a thicker strapped tank top with the the new Mormon garments, whereas previously Mormon leaders and if you go read through the the old handbooks, it says like do not ever show your shoulders.

28:30 The Mormon church’s position on abortion is also that there should be exceptions made in the case of rape and incest. And wow, shockingly liberal. I guess the church has lost its mojo by having that be an exception for where abortion is allowed. And so for a lot of people on the outside of the Mormon church, the church still looks very oppressive to women. This all male leadership chart would lead you to believe it’s a very conservative religion. And for me, I look at the church and say, “Wow, there’s still a lot of harm and damage being done by this organization.” I think someone like a Charlie Kirk is saying, “Oh, like look how wokey.” It’s almost like that same comment that was like, “I blame whatever 20-year-old woke intern posted this.” Uh, it’s clear that the more traditional uh guard, the more traditional version of Mormons are looking at some of these changes. And while on the outside for some of us we’re like wow at least they allow

29:31 abortion in the case of in apparently that is just beyond the pale because all abortion should be murder and you should be penalized by the church or you know whatever they might say in that circumstance. Now I wanted to get into the system that I think that the Mormon church has created for so many Mormon men. Here is the list I compiled. I’m going to read through them and then give basically an explanation and then examples for each item on this list. We have uh missionary work, distrustful patriotism, deep conservative values, masculinity and patriarchy, and of course, the justification of God. So, let’s start with missionary work because I think that that’s one of the most clear connections to creating content online.

30:23 Mormon men are raised to do missionary work, even more so than women. Historically, it’s been the viewpoint that it’s the duty of a Mormon man to serve a mission. For women, it’s like, you know, if you’re not married yet, uh if you really really want to, you can, but it’s not a priesthood duty to go out and go on a mission. As a Mormon missionary, you are working on conversions. You’re trying to get people to convert to the Mormon church. This obviously means you talk to everybody, you talk to strangers, you knock on doors, you get really good at like a 90-second elevator pitch. This also includes emotional persuasion, memorized talking points, using like your personal testimony to try to convince people of fact. I think all of these skills make it pretty much like a plug plugandplay to become a far-right influencer to even some of the street interviews conducted by Nick Shirley. Uh he goes to the

31:23 border and how does he know perfect Spanish? It’s because of his Mormon mission. Uh this the same thing goes for Kai Schwemer. I do think the the fact that both of them went to South America to save people’s souls and to baptize them into the Mormon church and then they come back and they use the Spanish that they learned to alienate these populations and dehumanize them now that they’re back in the United States to speak out against immigration.

31:53 I I think that that’s pretty horrific. Also keep in mind that Mormon leaders have literally told the the followers that they should be posting online. That it’s not just that the mission field is your neighbors or your co-workers. It’s also that you should be putting your faith online and holding that up as an example to the rest of the people who follow you. And I think coming from Mormon leaders, it does end up feeling like a commandment. I’ll put some quotes to the side here for members to post their faith online. Um, when I was Mormon, we’d have like different things we were told to post like post this thing for Christmas or use this particular hashtag. It’s a very orchestrated social media effort. It’s not just like, oh, like here’s me at church. Uh, some leaders have been as specific as to say like what types of things you should be posting. I do think that Mormon men being raised to have

32:50 this like missionary work mind mindset but then also having this like political ideology it means that the new mission field is just politics uh rather than preaching about the Book of Mormon. We’re now preaching about Donald Trump or we’re preaching about any other far-right talking points and it’s pretty plugandplay. My next point was distrustful patriotism, which I do feel like probably needs to be explained a little bit. Mormons have such an interesting combination of being very patriotic to the country, the United States, but also being very distrustful of government. A common Mormon joke is that like Mormonism is the most American religion. Uh because the church was founded by Joseph Smith. here in America, we’d even be like, well, you know, Catholics, that that’s all that’s over there in Europe, that’s like a European uh religion, which makes it less worthy of our trust and and adoration. I mean, I also grew up thinking that the Catholic Church was

33:52 the great and abominable church mentioned in the Book of Mormon. I think manifest destiny is also a good word for it because they view America as like singularly like God’s favorite country. I mean, even the idea that Jesus Christ visited the Americas is like a very American exceptionalism version of Jesus Christ himself where he needed to come to the Americas because America specifically is part of God’s plan. One of the people I interviewed, his name is Justin, he grew up believing that being a Democrat was morally wrong. So, it’s not just that like, oh, they think differently than us. Oh, you know, everybody has different beliefs and blah blah blah. It’s that being a Democrat was evil essentially that Republicans were the party of God and Democrats were the party of Satan. He also said that viewing the Constitution as divinely inspired that that this was like almost like almost like if I’m putting it in my own words a little bit, but like the Constitution is from God like this is scripture essentially. And and I think

35:00 maybe in this viewpoint because the Constitution is divinely inspired, it’s not meant to be. There’s there shouldn’t be amendments, which if you’re not familiar, some of the amendments to the Constitution have outlawed slavery and given women the right to vote. One thing that Justin said that stood out to me is uh that he very much took Republican talking points at face value, almost similarly to taking Mormon church talking points at face value. Because once you believe that something is ordained by God, uh whether it’s Mormonism or Republicanism, if that’s God’s party, if that’s God’s religion, you’re not really allowed to question or think outside of the box in any of those things because you should not question God. That’s pretty fundamental to most people’s conception of God. Justin told this interesting story about when he moved to Seattle that he met a friend in his ward and the friend talked about how

35:55 the friend’s parents had voted for Obama and that basically Justin was like I thought like I thought you were Mormon though like almost thinking that you could not like it was not even like physically possible in the realm of this reality for a Mormon an active Mormon to be a Democrat or to vote for Obama. Now, I’ve established how Mormons believe the America is a godly nation. Mormonism is the most American church. Joseph Smith founded Mormonism here for a reason. And I think what’s interesting, this is now we’re going to get into the distrustful part of patriotism because as much as Mormons love America, they also have this underlying history where the feds are out to get them. One of the original Mormon foes was the government. Uh in Missouri, there was an extermination order given by the governor back when Joseph Smith was still alive. And even when the the people in Utah, the Mormons in Utah wanted to join the states, join

36:58 the United States, the federal government essentially said that no, you can’t join until you say you’re willing to give up polygamy. And so within this patriotism is also this long-standing history of being persecuted and oppressed by the government. And so it creates this strange sense that America is this divine land of God, but can often be ruled by wicked and horrible people. I do think that this ends up aligning very well with far-right politics because the whole like drain the swamp conversation and KQAnon and a lot of these other conspiracy theories that say that there’s this deep state or there’s there’s fraud like Nick Shirley investigating fraud. This can also extend to this idea that all white males in America are under attack, that like Christianity is under attack, that basically there’s all of these structures and institutions and organizations across the country that are run by Satan essentially and are

38:01 trying to uh figure out how to destroy real America, which is kind of the ethos behind make America great again. I grew up hearing all these stories about how the government I mean it would be like in our in our religious like Sunday school books we’d learn about persecution from the government Hans Mill and things like that and so I think Mormonism gives you a persecution story even before it gives you a political origin and then faright politics gives you an easy villain to plug into that persecution complex. This can also feed into this end times thinking where the good America is under attack, where uh God’s America is under attack. I mean, I have this is a video I did about why so many Mormons become preers. One political example of this is Ezra Tapbenson, which I already read the quote from him saying that women working outside of the home is like the beginnings of divorce and children

38:59 having problems. I do secretly think that Benson Boon is named after Ezra Tapbenson, but I’ve never been able to confirm that suspicion. Ezra Tapbenson was once the US Secretary of Agriculture and then later in life was the one of the prophets of the Mormon church. Ezra Tapbenson in his time was considered very uh controversial. Here’s a a quote I found. The internal threat to the American way of life is in the secret alliance which exists between the more advanced social democrats and the hardcore communist conspiracy. And so whether it’s like Nick Shirley or Glenn Beck or Ezra Taff Benson, there’s this same throughine of this conspiracy of something roing beneath the deep that we have to figure out and find because there’s evil lurking in our country. And there’s secret societies that need to be brought down, which honestly I find hilarious and very ironic because the Mormon church is a secret society. You have to have a special card that allows

40:01 you to get into a special building where you will learn special handshakes that will allow you to get into heaven. Ezra Tapbenson also had some kind of crazy uh prophecies about the apocalypse and about end times. This is a quote from him. And yet you will face challenges and circumstances the severity of which has been unparalleled in generations past. So he’s speaking to Mormon youth and and Mormon people and saying that these there’s about to be like incredibly severe circumstances. He says, “Today I speak to you about the times in which you live and the quality of faith you will need to survive some of the difficulties yet to be experienced.” And in my video last week, I actually talked about in my patriarchal blessing, it said that I would struggle to get the necessities I needed um in order to like I mean, when you think of necessities, that’s like food, water, and shelter. Um but if I was faithful, I would always be able to get the necessities I needed to survive.

41:03 One more modern example of this like end times thinking is two brothers named Cliven and Ammon Bundy. I think this article is a good deep dive into their story. It’s titled Why the Bundy Militia mixes Mormon symbolism with anti-government sentiment. These two became famous because they had basically a standoff with federal agents and they had have this long history of anti-government rhetoric and a long history of using the Book of Mormon and religion in general to justify their their stances. And I’ll say this is an example of a time when there was someone on the very far right that the Mormon church did come out against and didn’t celebrate. So you can find statements from the church basically saying no this is not condoned by the Mormon church and we would like to condemn this uh and say that this does not represent our religion. And so even though Nick Shirley gets the stamp of approval, there are examples of these types of

42:06 movements that the church says we don’t want to be associated with that. If you’ve seen Under the Banner of heaven, it covers two brothers, Ron and Dan Laferdy, who I mean it’s a horrific story, but similarly so they were devout Mormons. they were mainstream Mormons. And then they kind of combined this same level of anti-government persuasion, end times thinking, and religious justification to carry out some really horrible crimes. The next piece of my system that Mormon boys and men grow up in that I was going to point to is conservative values. As I already illustrated with the graph uh the data about political leanings, Mormons have always been one of the most conservative religious groups in America. This means they have an incredibly strong belief in traditional values in keeping things the way they’ve been. And Utah, which is the home base of the Mormon church, is reliably Republican in every single modern-day election. I’ll say though that this idea of Mormons being very

43:11 Republican and very conservative can sometimes feed back into this distrust, this like idea of persecution because even though Mormons have always been on the right politically, much of the rest of Republicans don’t really like Mormons, evangelicals especially really dislike Mormons. They they like to talk about how Mormons aren’t Christian and they don’t they’re they don’t believe in the Trinity and things like that. And so it’s almost like even though Mormons are more conservative, they’re a little bit orphaned on that side because they’re not fully accepted into the larger religious republicanism that exists in the country. So, this is fueling that same sense of belonging while also being otherred or being kept outside of the inner circle. There are a ton of uh examples of conservative traditional values that I’ve talked about in my ch in all the videos I have ever made. I’ve already talked about the proclamation to the family and standing up for very

44:15 strict gender roles. A more political example of this is Prop 8 in California. This happened in 2008 and essentially the Mormon church was trying to keep gay marriage from being legalized. Uh to read from this article, it says Jeff Flint uh estimates that Mormons made up at least 80% of the early volunteers who went doortodoor. According to the New York Times, there’s that uh door-to-door action coming in once again where we see this talent or this skill uh that Mormons learn from doing missionary work, going doortodoor, trying to convince people, trying to convert people, taking that skill that they’ve learned in the religion, and then applying that in a political realm. A lot of the political donations that went toward trying to keep um gay marriage from being legalized in California, a lot of those donations were from Mormons. Another political example of these Mormon conservative values is Mike

45:14 Lee. Uh he is, I think, sometimes more conservative than even the mainstream Mormon church. There’s this article which basically shows like Mike Lee is is too too far right for where the Mormon church has landed currently. He probably represents the type of Mormonism I was raised with and the type of Mormonism that Charlie Kirk is talking about when he says you need to get your mojo back. Mike Lee has championed anti-abortion legislation, anti-LGBT legislation, gun deregulation, religious liberty bills. I mean, he’s been in office for a long time, and so he has a very long track record of conservative uh values. I’m going to show this clip. This is from the Daily Wire, and they actually had Kai Schwemer on the Daily Wire and it seems like this is like an event where there’s kind of a Q&A. And in it, somebody asks if we should bring back anti-sodomy laws, which is basically saying it’s gay sex is illegal. So, that’s where we’re jumping into the clip. And here’s Kai Schwmer’s response.

46:21 My grandparents grew up in a time where there were laws against sodomy. There were laws against crossdressing. Would our be would our country be better off if we had laws against sodomy and laws against crossdressing today in 2025? Should Christians and conservatives pursue laws against sodomy and crossdressing? I just want to jump in real quick because not a lot of people know this.

46:41 It was only less than a decade ago that uh the state of Utah, the great state of Utah, um unfortunately and made it made it made itself less great by doing so repealed an existing law which had banned premarital sex. I am not aware of of another state that had law. But people forget by the way that I believe I respect the Mormon who says I will be more puritanical than you. I respect that headline of that. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

47:06 And so if you didn’t catch that, he’s basically saying that it should be illegal to have premarital sex, that it should be against the law to have sex outside of marriage. Now, I want to compare and contrast that with this quote, which is also from Kai Schwmer. Same thing. This is that profile I mentioned earlier in the the Salt Lake Tribune. In this profile, it says he stated his opposition to the Islamification of America. I don’t want my country to start building billions of mosques. Uh he goes on to say, I don’t want to start seeing hijabs everywhere I walk in the street. Now, why highlight these two quotes? Because on the one hand, he’s saying he’s against the Islamification of America. And then on the other hand, he’s saying he does want the what I think of as the Mormification of America, which is saying like that we should have a law against premarital sex. I think once again to use the word

48:01 hypocritical um the idea that he doesn’t want other people’s religious extremism but he’s very comfortable with his own religious extremism overcoming America is very telling. What does it tell Alyssa? I think it shows this deep-seated desire to make conservative values the law of the land and not just anti-sodomy laws. I mean, if you heard in the quote too, the the person asking the question is basically appealing to the idea that our ancestors were great.

48:33 Our ancestors were doing things the right way. Our grandparents because they had all these laws that kept people from being evil or morally bankrupt, um, like being gay or having sex outside of marriage. And they’re saying like, let’s legislate that our religion and our religious values become the law of the land. I actually do think that that is a form of religious extremism that is a extreme amount of government overreach.

48:59 These are also the my body my choice people who didn’t want to wear masks and didn’t want to have to carry around vaccine cards. And so it’s not really about freedom per se. It’s about saying well I want my my thing to be the thing everybody has to abide by. That brings us to our next topic, our next point, which is masculinity and patriarchy. To me, Mormon men are taught a very specific style of masculinity. I think this is a a toxic masculinity. I think that if your masculinity says that to be a man, you have to have power over someone else, whether it’s your wife, whether it’s a leadership position, if masculinity only exists if it’s dominating something else, then ma that that form of masculinity is a threat to equality. This is the belief that men are superior to women in the Mormon church that only men can hold the priesthood. that because they hold the priesthood, they are only men can be in most of the leadership positions. In

50:04 this version of masculinity, uh men should be the decision makers both in the home and politically and religiously. At every level, a man is the one that should be making decisions. Obviously, you can just look at the top leaders of the Mormon church, which I often show this this picture because it’s very telling who gets to have power in this religion. And truly, I I feel like I’ve already told so many stories about men dominating women in my experience growing up in the church. Uh we’ve seen it in Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. We saw it in the Ballerina Farms profile. Here’s a tweet from Kai Schwmer. Women generally do not have what it takes to endure the pressures of public office. And this is a perfect example. He’s basically mocking, in my words, mocking Marjorie Taylor Green for being upset that she’s getting death threats. Uh, you’re not a special case.

50:57 Um, I know Nick Shirley recently made a video about getting death threats for being online, and I didn’t see Kai Schwmer chiming in to be like, why are you being so emotional about this? But I think this this type of masculinity, it is ideological and I also think it manifests physically like in how Mormon men usually look. This means no tattoos, usually rather thin, very cleancut. If you go to the Mormon church’s website and look at expectations for how Mormon missionaries, like men, should dress, that is basically how all almost all Mormon male political figures end up looking. It’s like they are still following that same Mormon missionary lookbook. I think this is also what makes Mormon men great uh political and conservative influencers like online because I do think they just look the part physically. They just look like Republican men. And so that also plays into this same idea that we have the aesthetic match to the ideology. I think

52:01 there’s also a a extreme amount of homophobia in this. Justin, when I interviewed him, he told me that he was friends with girls growing up and that he would be called gay for that. I feel like the idea that being nice to women or being friends with women automatically means you’re gay, that’s super Mormon to me. In this video, I talked about what it was like to be a teacher in 9th grade in Utah, and I heard homophobic slurs constantly.

52:29 In other videos, I’ve talked about how doing things like even using lotion is seen as like being gay. Any form of self-care is something only women do. And really, any form of taking care of yourself, whether it’s wearing sunscreen or going to your regular doctor’s appointments, can seem somehow like that’s like something that’s gay or not masculine. because worrying too much about like eating eating a cheeseburger is something only women do apparently. I also think part of this masculinity is very much like self-reliance.

53:04 The idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Uh you shouldn’t take any hand handouts. You should be like ruggedly independent. This is also why I think the idea that the government shouldn’t help anyone is very appealing to a lot of Mormon men because it’s like getting help with something is counter to masculinity. I think that within this masculinity is very much like I did it for myself so why can’t they which considering the fact that most Mormons are just middle class. I mean even within the Mormon church it’s it can often be very difficult for even members of the congregation to get help from the church. And when I was a missionary, if someone wanted help from the church, they usually had to be a member. They had to be showing up to church. They had to be paying a 10% tithe. So like to get help from the church, you have to show that you’re giving money to the church, which is very counterintuitive. Even the idea that kids shouldn’t get free school

53:58 lunches, like that they shouldn’t have had like loser parents to begin with, I guess, is the the core of that argument. that essentially I think at the root of this is the idea that no one should get a free handout, no one should get a free lunch, no one should just get help. Uh, everyone should have to work for anything they might ever get from anyone. I do also think with this like Mormon man lookbook and masculinity, uh, being white, having white skin is a huge part of this. It is no surprise that all of the men I’ve been highlighting are white. I’ve talked about in this video, there’s a very long history of racism against black people and really against anyone who’s not white within the Mormon church. The Book of Mormon literally still to this day has verses that say that dark skin is a curse. Early leaders said that interracial marriage should be punished by death. And there was a ban on black members getting the priesthood or or going and getting all of the temple privileges until the late ’7s.

54:55 And so I do think that part of the Mormon male Republican look is whiteness. I do think a lot of the church’s history and doctrine has been rooted in white supremacy. My friend Tony, who I mentioned at the beginning, he is part Polynesian, which is also part of the Mormon church’s conquest. I have a video about that, too. Why the Mormon church has this history of converting Polynesians specifically. But to read from Tony’s essay, he said, “I remember every race except white being the target of sharp criticism. We were warned against dating just about every other race, even though we’re Polynesian, have a black uncle, and a Hispanic aunt. And yes, we were frequently warned against dating other Polynesian people without the irony ever being acknowledged. And I’ll say for Tony, uh, his mom’s side was Polynesian and his dad’s side was white. So I think the dad being the patriarch, the decision maker of the family also probably was playing a part in how he was raised. And along the same lines

55:59 talking about how whiteness is next to religious purity and righteousness, I’ve flashed this picture on the screen several times. The Mormon church leadership top Mormon leadership is currently almost entirely white. Historically, it’s been only white. as far as Mormon prophets go, that the Mormon prophet is the top of the organization that’s the top leader of the church, and there’s only ever been white men in that position. I think that really so many of the Mormon leaders over time that you could point to fit this aesthetic. Even Mitt Romney, I feel like when he was running for president, so many so much of the commentary about him was talking about his like cleancut Mormon look. Uh, I also thought it was hilarious that Kai Schwmer, um, I saw that he follows clavvicular. And I do think that part of masculinity, similar to women and looking beautiful, there is a mirror to that. Uh, and there’s a way for men to achieve the way men are supposed to look, similarly to how women

57:00 have to go to great lengths to achieve how a woman is supposed to look. I don’t think men usually go under the knife and have surgery and Botox, per se, but I do think even going through Kai’s Instagram, you can see that he’s posting like Jim Bro pics next to his political statements and political ideology on the subject of whiteness specifically. We have this tweet from Kai. It says, “It’s not a secret plot. It’s clear to see that intended or not, the white population is globally declining and we are being terribly treated by the incoming populations. The acceleration of mass immigration is one major part of this. And honestly, I couldn’t pick a better tweet to kind of wrap up all of these things I’m talking about where there’s like this end times, we’re persecuted, we’re under attack, there’s this idea of like whiteness is being threatened and that the reason it’s bad it’s being threatened is I think if I’m

57:58 reading into this, like the idea that we should have white people being in leadership, they should be on top. the fear about immigration, the fear about non-white people, brown people. That tweet from Kai is in response to a tweet by Tucker Carlson where he says, “Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party’s political ambitions.” And to me, this all just reeks of this like conspiracy theory against men, against straight white men. It’s all wrapped up in the same idea that like masculinity is under attack. And like I said at the top of explaining this topic, that’s why mas this type of masculinity I think is is actually very toxic because it seems like it can only exist. Masculinity can only exist if it is dominating something else. It’s why I feel like seeing pictures of Mormon leaders with their wives can feel so chilling because part of the masculine aesthetic is having the smiling wife with the smiling children and the father

59:02 standing over them and that to be truly masculine is to have the wife and the children falling in line underneath your power. I think another example of this is a Mormon nationalist movement called Desnat. To read from this article in the Guardian, it says, “Some who identify as Desnats, which is a ridiculous name, I have to say, uh, take extreme right positions on gender, sexuality, and race. Others describing themselves as desireette nationalists have advocated for a Mormon ruled separatist white ethnostate located in the Great Basin area uh briefly claimed by the LDS church in the mid- 19th century. And I’ll say here that the Desireette News has a series of articles seemingly coming out against the Desireette nationalist movement. I think that Desnat is more extreme than even uh Nick Shirley or probably even than Kai Schwemer. So for him, I feel like he’s tweeted some crazy things. So maybe he would still fall in line with that. It’s hard to say exactly. One interesting thing about DesNAT is that they actually

1:00:06 harass other Mormons. And so it’s not even just that they are saying it’s Mormons against the world. It’s this this ideology, the Desnette ideology, I can hardly say that with a straight face coming out against other Mormons to say, “Hey, you are not conservative or traditional enough.” Now, the final thing on my list was the justification of God. Because not only do we have everything I just listed about conservatism, missionary-mindedness, uh, masculinity, patriarchy, we additionally have the idea that all of the things on the list are ordained and justified by God. The religious basis of all of this is the idea that God is behind them, which means that their work and their movement is unquestionable and unstoppable. Mormons believe that their church is the true church and that all other churches are false. And we when I was growing up, we would quote that uh they draw near to me with their lips,

1:01:10 but their hearts are far from me. And I know that it’s part of every religion that like, oh, we are right. But I think the level to which Mormons go to say that we are truly Jesus Christ church and the pride that comes from that and the drive that comes from that is pretty singular. What’s more is that Mormon youth grow up being told that they have been saved in the pre-earth life to come down in this specific time, in this specific generation to make a difference and to save the world. And I think this is maybe the most terrifying point of them all because it really says that not only are all of these things good, not only are all of these things like worthwhile, everything I’ve discussed in this video, it’s it is that they are ordained of God. I think the belief that you’re being led by the hand of God means that you’re not really going to question or think through the things you’re choosing to do. Whether you are a Glenn Beck, a Nick Shirley, a Ezra

1:02:14 Tapbenson, whoever, if you truly think that you are being led by God, it means you’re going to, I think, be more extreme. I think it means you’re going to be more sure of yourself, less likely to hear criticism. You’re, you know, you probably hear criticism as, oh, they don’t like what I’m doing because they’re evil, not because maybe they’re right. I’ll put to the side here, these are different quotes from different Mormon leaders. We have Nelson, Monson, Hinckley, uh, Elder Madson quoting Joseph F. Smith and Spencer W. Kimell, I will just read one of these quotes, but they all say basically the same thing.

1:02:50 He says, “I make a plea and offer a challenge. Ye are a chosen generation.” How very true that is. Notwithstanding all the problems that we have, this, I believe, is the greatest age in the history of the world. And you, young people of this generation are part of it. You are the beneficiaries of it. Its fruits are here to bless your lives if you will grasp them and live worthy of them. And I remember when I was a Mormon teenager, I remember I got a little handout that had one of these types of quotes. Like I said, there are a lot of them throughout many generations, which is why it’s so funny. And I remember on my quote, it was like, “You are the greatest generation.” Something similar to this. But mine had and I remember thinking like, “Wow, I can’t I’m taking this literally, right? Like God literally saved me in the pre-earth life as a spirit and he sent my soul to this body right now because God needs me in his army to accomplish his great work.

1:03:50 And I remember being very like, “Wow, I must be really special.” And then I looked and it had like the the person’s name and then I saw that the quote was from 1970. And I remember thinking like, well, when he said this, he wasn’t speaking to my generation. He was speaking to people born in the 70s, people who were teenagers in the 70s. And I remember suddenly kind of feeling like, well, if this wasn’t meant for me, maybe I’m not chosen, and maybe I’m not that special. Okay, I think I found it.

1:04:24 So, uh, it is the Joseph F. Smith quote. This is from 1970. He says, “Our young people are the nobility of heaven.” Imagine reading reading this as like a 15-year-old and you’re like, “I’m nobility. A choice and chosen generation who have a divine destiny. Their spirits have been reserved to come forth in this day when the gospel is on the earth and when the Lord needs valiant servants to carry on in his great latter-day work.”

1:04:51 And so, imagine you are a young Mormon man believing that you are nobility. uh that your spirit has been reserved, that the Constitution is divinely appointed, that you’re in God’s true most American religion, and that you’ve been called forward to protect America from falling into moral decline. I mean, even in this chosen generation talk from President Hinckley, he gives all these stats about the moral decline of of this generation.

1:05:23 For example, he talks about teen pregnancy. Teen pregnancy has written 621% since 1940. Uh, more than a million teenage girls get pregnant each year. He highlights, “Every year substance abuse claims younger victims with harder drugs. A third of high school seniors get drunk once a week.” He goes on to quote, I guess he’s quoting this study, that the health and well-being of America’s youth are not primarily rooted in illness or economics. Unlike the past, the problem is not childhood disease or unsanitary slums. The basic cause of suffering is profoundly self-destructive behavior, drinking, drugs, violence, promiscuity, a crisis of behavior and belief, a crisis of character. And so I feel like this idea of American Mormon youth having this idea that they live higher standards, that they don’t suffer from a crisis of character. Though honestly, looking at a lot of the statements from these far-right Mormon influencers, I would argue they are definitely suffering from a crisis of character. I think that this

1:06:30 just illustrates this idea that it is American exceptionalism. It is this idea that we are better than you. We have better scripture. We have better morals. We have higher standards. And all of this means that you all should start acting like us. We need to make it illegal to have premarital because if we don’t have that, we are no longer a great nation. We are no longer the great state of Utah. We’ve lost our mojo. Meanwhile, we have uh Nick Shirley trying to bust open the doors of a daycare. And we have Mormon members on Facebook getting upset that there’s even a single person highlighted where the woman is the bread winner. I do think in all of this one of the scariest elements is the idea like I said the justification of God that the indignation is righteous indignation that the morals are not just opinions but facts. I mean all of this is converging to create this product. You know this is the system and we have this product of the faright Mormon male influencer who is getting retweeted by

1:07:46 the vice president of the United States and even specifically that the moral degradation of America which is kind of fabricated here that the moral degradation of America is meant to be specifically solved by Mormonism. There’s this early quote. This is actually a quote from Joseph Smith himself uh where he said that the constitution at some point would hang by a thread that basically it would be the Mormon church, the members of the Mormon church who would save the country when the constitution hangs by a thread. And it’s not even just Joseph Smith that said it. Uh we also have quotes from this this article is very interesting.

1:08:20 It kind of combines all of the different statements. Uh Brigham Young said the constit constitution will hang upon a single thread. Then they will have to call for the Mormon elders to save it from utter destruction and they will step forth and do it. We also have similar quotes from John Taylor, Joseph Fielding Smith of course as Ezra Tap Benson, Harold Bele Lee. And so because Joseph Smith, I assume because he taught that about Mormons saving the entire country, then we have all these other Mormon leaders coming along to say like, “Yes, there will come a time prophesied that the this the Constitution will hang by a thread. The country will will be about to fall into ruin and they will need those high standards squeaky white Mormon boys to uh come along and save us all.” It honestly feels like a Mormon version of National Treasure when he’s like, I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence. And I did honestly grow up watching that movie like constantly.

1:09:18 My family loved that movie. So, I think that this it’s all it’s all within the same general idea, which is like America is under threat and only the Mormons can save it. You take all of these things and honestly feel free to comment and add to the list because this is just what I came up with as the kind of highlevel overview of points. You take all of these things which are all the parts of the system and then when you send a young man through that system he he pops out as the product which we see in any number of these men that I’ve been highlighting. all of these right-leaning Mormon commentators and influencers and authors who really have just taken religion and put it into the field of politics. I am very interested to see what happens as time progresses as men and women become more separate by ideology and by politics. And I’ll say I also think that each side of the coin, whether it’s like the conservative Mormon man influencer and the

1:10:24 conservative Mormon woman influencer, one of which is like Ballerina Farm baking sourdough, having a bunch of children, the other side of that coin, which is like going and knocking down doors and investigating fraud and uh getting appointed to X, Y, and Z position. I think that seeing these two paths that men and women take in the internet is both scary and fascinating to observe all at the same time. Thank you so much for watching today’s video.

1:10:55 I hope you appreciated my analysis or found it insightful. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to like this video, subscribe to my channel. I’ll also link a ton of stuff below if you want to keep doing more research into some of the articles or data or different figures that I highlighted. I do have a separate Patreon video where I went into uh when Charlie Kirk was shot and my reaction to it. It’s already posted on Patreon if you want to check that out. Also, as I said, I do it is always really interesting for me to hear stories of people being raised in one system and then jumping ship into a a new system or a new way of thinking.

1:11:34 Whether it’s political from one group to another, whether it’s religious from one group to to leaving that group or even joining another group, I just find these like moments of transformation very interesting. So if you have a story like that, feel free to comment below. Thank you all so much for watching and as always, I will see you all next week.