Advice to the next generation
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Asked in May 2026 by a Gen Z viewer who said he felt helpless about the state of the world, John Kiriakou answered first with history and then with instructions.

'We've been through this before'

He begins with his own earliest memories, which are of 1968. Among them is sitting on his father's lap watching the news and asking why all these buildings were on fire; his father told him that a very bad man had killed Martin Luther King and that people were very angry. A couple of months later his mother was crying, and told him that Robert Kennedy had been killed, "that a bad man shot Robert Kennedy."

"1968 was nightmarish. It got worse in '69 with the Kent State shootings. So we've been through periods of helplessness before. World War II had to be just one nightmare year after another. I can only imagine what 1861 to 1865 was like."

He does not exempt himself from the feeling: "Some days I wake up and I read the headlines and I feel helpless, too. But we're not helpless."

Run for something

The cliché that the young are the next generation of leaders he defends on the ground that "clichés are clichés because they're true." His instruction is to start at the bottom and mean it: "Run for office. Any office. Run for the local water board, because then that's going to get you elected next time to city council, and then to state legislature, and then to Congress. I mean, how do you think these people started? They started at the bottom."

Demonstrate

His example of what demonstration can still do is a colleague. Brian Becker, founder of the ANSWER Coalition, is someone Kiriakou describes as having "never cared about money. He only cares about truth and activism and equality."

After the 7 October attacks, when the Israelis began "pounding Palestinian civilians," Becker organised a demonstration in Washington. His permit application to the Department of the Interior estimated twenty-five to thirty thousand people. Kiriakou attended. "300,000 people turned up, and the line stretched from the White House to the Capitol Building. Now, that's a demonstration. We've got to take to the streets."

Ride your representatives

The third instruction is about employment. "We also have to ride our elected officials. And if they don't do what we tell them to do, remember, they work for us. If they don't do what we tell them to do, then they have to go, and we have to vote them out and bring somebody new in."

Write

The fourth is publication, and he treats access as no excuse: "you have to write, write, write. Place op-eds and articles everywhere, whether it's in the big mainstream papers if you have access to them, or online publications." The outlets he names repeatedly are Consortium News, Covert Action Magazine, Reader Supported News, Dropsite News, antiwar.com and the American Conservative. "There are a million outlets. Get your ideas out there and help to mold minds."

His closing instruction is to stay as well informed as possible, "the future really is yours. And like I say, grab it by the horns."

See also

- John Kiriakou
- The death of investigative journalism
- Kent State
