Welcome to The Right Struggle. Here, I will discuss arguments within the right, take a side, and, of course, attack the left. The title of the newsletter is multi-entendre. The right refers to both the side of the political spectrum I am on and to truthfulness. It is also similar to a book written by a failed German painter, My Struggle, because too many on the right nowadays seem inspired by that kind of struggle, and I am here to belittle them when the issue at hand permits humor and take them seriously when I must. But my work depends on readers’ support. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber and/or sharing my articles with your friends and on your social media.
The backlash against Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, the groyper in chief, has led to a self-examination among conservatives. In case you have not been following the story, Carlson had a flirtatious interview with Fuentes, an influencer in his 20s, known for hating women and liking Adolf Hitler. As my friend Eli Lake joked, the great thing about America is that its leading Nazi is part Mexican!
Groypers are Fuentes’s supporters, who are small as a percentage of the population but significant among the staffers of right-wing institutions and Congressional offices.
, who flies in those circles, powerfully denounced them in (a must-read publication) but also warned that between 30 and 40 percent of GenZ staffers in D.C. are groypers. This is likely an exaggerated number, but even a third of that is worrying.This month, the Heritage Foundation found itself in hot water after its president published a video defending Carlson against attacks for interviewing Fuentes. He scapegoated his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, who had written the transcript for the video, including the phrase “venomous coalition” referring to Carlson’s critics, many of them Jewish conservatives.
After the backlash, Roberts held an all-hands staff meeting, during which most speakers read him the riot act, except the younger ones. The GenZ staffers who spoke, also citing wide agreement within their ranks, expressed support for Roberts. Neuhaus himself is in that age group.
During this soul searching on the right, “who created groypers” has been a theme.
, whom I have always respected, blamed the post-liberals, the faction on the right that believes that liberalism (that is, the liberalism of the Constituition, not the Democratic Party) has failed:
Others have put forth other explanations, including “the problem of young men,” often talked about in the absence of the young men.
, whom I also respect, cited pornography as a reason. Writing for (a must-subscribe publication), without naming the groypers, blames the internet for the rise of the far-right, which includes the groypers. Others have pointed to the pandemic, isolation, economic difficulties, and so on. These are all very smart people and respectable writers, and I think that they are all partially right but mostly miss the mark, at least when it comes to the groypers.I am 35, but I went to college late, between 2014 and 2018, before going to graduate school and entering the workforce in 2020. So, let me tell you about what I experienced, including second-hand accounts through the stories and complaints my friends have shared with me.
In 2011, Beyoncé released “Who Runs The World?” The answer to which was “Girls!” In 2013, Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In, a bestseller aimed at elevating women in the workplace. These did not initiate a new trend but rather strengthened an existing one.
I entered college in this context. I started college in 2014, and there was a tax for being a guy on campus. From the student government to the classroom, there was a conscious effort by the faculty and administrators to elevate women above men. This culture existed everywhere. I recall that, during my brief stint at the student newspaper, my pitches, usually quite detailed and always about serious issues, would get rejected by the editors, mostly female, once in favor of another writer’s one-line proposal, which was something like I wanna write about how gender breakdown in majors because sexism. If you think that these are petty problems, that is the point. There hardly went an hour by on campus that you were not annoyed by a petty problem, and the bias always cut in one direction.
More seriously, this was in the era of the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter, which, as K.C. Johnson has extensively written about, led to a lot of sanctions by universities against young men on bogus charges and without due process, many of which resulted in lengthy lawsuits, and the universities usually lost them.
But the culture had been set. Hooking up at parties became much less common because guys were scared of sleeping with a stranger. The result was that male students did not enjoy being in the classroom, participating in extracurricular activities, or attending parties.
I also know a couple of guys in other schools who were ostracized from their circles for sexual harassment controversies, even though at least one of them was obviously innocent. They were kept at an arm’s length, even by people who believed their innocence, because it was a bad look to be around them. I remained loosely in touch with the guy who was ostracized for the bogus sexual harassment accusation. The last time I heard from him was a few years ago, and he was working for a very unsavory member of Congress because such members were the only ones who would hire someone like that. The groypers hadn’t become a phenomenon then, but he was floating in the circles that would become groypers because those were the only people who were willing to be associated with him publicly.
I attended an elite graduate program in Washington, D.C., where the groyper movement is at its peak. I will not get into the details because I admire and love my graduate school professors, mentors, and the friends I made there. I will only say that, in so many ways, it was a million times worse.
When I started applying for jobs, all major think tanks had a bias in favor of hiring young women. One of them had eleven junior employees, nine of them women.
Dating has been a problem, too, for both men and women. I have several close female friends who prefer being with someone who earns more than they do, but this preference is becoming less common. I had a conversation with two friends a few years ago, who admitted that 1. they were looking for a man who made more; 2. they had a hard time finding one. Both are still single. One jokes that, after each failed date, he goes home watching porn, and she goes home watching a romcom.
Most young men are not groypers. Most young men either accepted these changes or resisted them while also resisting vulgarity. I am neither a groyper nor have any sympathies for them. I do not want this to appear as an excuse, but an explanation.
Many young men often struggle to find jobs and frequently experience displeasure at work. They are also struggling with dating. And they do not have much hope for the future, not just because of economic struggles, but because they do not fit in the norms of the society simply for being men. They simply have not enjoyed life since leaving home, if not longer.
These young men, especially in elite America, either have to accept that they should hide their manliness, withdraw into isolation, or join abhorrent circles that encourage masculinity. And many who choose isolation eventually are drawn to groyperism.
Whether it is through the creation of a god or the evolution of hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary psychology, men and women are different, and norms have developed accordingly. Indeed, many of these developed norms were indefensible, and good riddance to them. But a radical change in gender norms was always bound to cause serious disruptions.
There are many conclusions to draw from here. One could even be that groypers are a small and manageable problem, and that is worth women’s empowerment. Another one is that we should return to traditionalism and lock women in the kitchen to resolve the problem. I oppose both of these, but what I think should be done is besides the point. I am just trying to explain what happened.
P.S. Tank says groypers are bad.
Please spare me this crap. Take me off any and all lists you control.