The Forest Fire
A live talk about what's happening to young men online and what it actually takes to reach one. Thursday, July 9, on Zoom.
A few years ago, Charles (not his real name) asked me to be the godfather to his daughter. Without hesitating, I said yes. He and I were close. We had started a group chat together in 2021, just a bunch of guys trying to live the way men are supposed to during a crazy time.
Then one day Charles left the group. He gave no warning. Half the men went with him. These were men I trusted and had met in person.
Then his wife cancelled a trip we’d planned. Her dance company had bought me a plane ticket so I could come film their recital, and the plane ticket got cancelled too. Then they blocked me on Instagram, both of them.
I had no idea what had happened until somebody sent me a screen recording a couple weeks later. There was my friend, alone in his shed, with dark circles under his eyes, ranting on a livestream about the Jews.
I’ve watched it happen to men I love more than once now. A guy’s fine. Then he’s a little off. Then he’s gone, and he’s angry. And the anger has found something to latch onto to that’s two thousand years old.
The Fire
I started studying this subject because I had no choice.
Think about how a forest fire works. It doesn’t start with the fire. It starts with kindling that builds up over years. Then there’s a spark, and it spreads, and past a certain point you can’t put it out anymore. It’ll burn until there’s nothing left to burn, or until God sends rain.
That’s where we’re at today. I’m not talking about something far off. It’s in feeds you scroll. It’s in families I know. It might even be in yours: in a son, a nephew, or a grandson. The fire isn't a metaphor anymore.
I can’t put out the fire. At this point, I don’t think anyone can can.
But I believe we can pull men out of it, one at a time. That’s the only thing that’s ever worked.
The Talk
So I built a talk about it called The Forest Fire. It’s about seventy-five minutes long. I put it together for the men of my church to help inform them of this present and growing threat, and now I’d like to offer it to you.
It walks through how a young man goes from shame and a stalled life to blaming the Jews for everything wrong with the world.
It’s a pipeline with nine steps. The pipeline begins with fathers who weren’t there and a church that stopped doing discipline. Then it moves through pornography and the Manosphere, before reaching a down-ladder of blame that ends—inevitably, tragically—at the same place it’s ended for millennia.
Then I walk through the why. Why is it always the Jews? I explain how this pattern scaled from village to nation to planet. At the center of it, there’s a forged document from the early 1900s called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Up until recently, very few men had heard of it by name. But now it’s the operating system running most of what young men believe, and what their influencers talk about.
I’ve put this talk together from a thousand pages of reading, and counting. I’ve spent hours on the phone with mothers, fathers, and pastors wondering what is happening to their sons, brothers and church members, and what they can do about it.
I’ve also done my fair share of arguing with young men who are already gone, or on the way.
I haven’t found anyone else laying the whole thing out in one place, start to finish. That’s why I’m doing this.
Why Live
This talk will be live, not pre-recorded. Then I’ll open it up for questions. The Q&A will run as long as the discussion stays on track.
If you ask me, the questions are the best reason to attend live. I’ve given this talk twice now, and the discussion is where the sharpest thinking happens, because men bring the situation they’re actually in.
“My son stopped talking to me.”
”My brother-in-law sent me a meme.”
”A man in my congregation keeps asking me about Israel.”
I did a similar event in 2023, with a talk called Exiting the New Age. The Q&A afterward was almost as long as the talk itself.
I’m anticipating something similar here.
Details
Thursday, July 9
7pm Eastern / 4pm Pacific.
Zoom
Plan on about seventy-five minutes for the talk, then Q&A for as long as it takes. I’m expecting the entire event to be around two hours, but we could go longer.
$40 if you purchase a ticket in the first 72 hours after this post goes live. $65 after that.
Attendees will receive a detailed outline and a bibliography for further reading, so you can check my work. Many of these are books I’ve read, are still reading, or will be reading soon.
You’ll also get a private replay link, good for 14 days, in case you want to come back and watch again.
Tickets here: https://willspencer.co/fire
One More Story
After the 2024 election, I figured my friend Kevin (not his real name) would be relieved. Our side won! Instead, a couple days later we were at his dinner table together, and he was red in the face, furious. “What about the evil?!” he said, shaking his hands.
He wasn’t upset over anything the other side had done. He was angry at our pastor—one of the godliest men I’ve ever met—for not naming “the enemy” from the pulpit the Sunday before the election.
Kevin and his wife left the church a couple weeks later. I found out later he’d been quietly listening to Stone Choir the entire time.
This is what people miss: winning a crucial election doesn’t satisfy the rage, because the rage wants a target. It’ll even go looking for one in the pulpit in front of you, or the pew next to you.
I can’t save every man who ends up like that, and neither can you. But I believe that we can reach some of them.
One at a time. It’s slow. But it’s the only thing I’ve found that works.
Come on the 9th. Bring your stories. Bring your questions.
If this is your first time here.
I write about Reformed Christianity, men, and the cultural currents pulling young men toward extremism. New essays land in your inbox a few times a month.
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