Table of Contents
Groyperism is an extremist internet ideology that centers around antisemitism, an implacable desire to burn the system, and unintellectual, soundbite discourse. As horseshoe theory predicts, it’s a bipartisan problem. Boundaries between leftist and rightist groypers are permeable; fascist Fuentes, for instance, endorses Democrat Newsom for president.
What’s crazy is that groyperism, of a sort, is on the rise among young Americans on both the right (a la Nick Fuentes) and the left (a la Zohran Mamdani).
On Monday, columnist Rod Dreher wrote that “groyperism’s spread among Generation Z conservative apparatchiks is real,” estimating “30-40 percent” of young conservative staffers are fans of Nick Fuentes. Dreher has impeccable credentials as a conservative visionary; he is someone to take seriously when he writes that “the intra-conservative fight is here, and we can’t avoid it.”
I could not agree more with Dreher’s analysis. Worse still, it’s not just Washington. At Stanford, the groypers are at the gates.
On Fizz, a Stanford-only anonymous social media app, antisemitism now regularly creeps into completely unrelated discussions. At least 390 students—6% of all undergrads—upvoted this weakly-cloaked antisemitism:
Comments criticizing the antisemitic portion—even those agreeing with the original post’s economic ideology—gained more downvotes than upvotes:
All this is explosively, alarmingly new. I could not imagine such a post on Fizz two years ago: no student would’ve posted it; no four hundred students would’ve upvoted it; and no Fizz moderator would’ve let such content stay up.
Anecdotally, of the ~30 freshmen I’ve met this year, something like one in four express groyper-adjacent views—criticism of Israel sliding into criticism of The Jews, admiration for Fuentes, views of racial inferiority and superiority (in either direction). Far, far fewer juniors and seniors are groyperish; those few who are seem to have radicalized this year.
I look around in confusion at this mind virus that suddenly sprang essentially from nowhere, and I see a corrupting information ecosystem finally erupting. Social media algorithms, favoring their easily quotable, energetic oratory, deliver groyper agitators’ discourse to millions of young, vulnerable minds.
Indeed, these freshmen are generally not bad people: they have Jewish friends even as they criticize The Jews; they have international friends even as they decry legal immigrants as a plague. Instead, formable and too online, they are led astray by the snake-charming, compelling, insidious rhetoric of Fuentes’ ilk.
Worryingly, groyperism is even more rampant at other universities. The Harvard Salient, Harvard’s once-conservative publication, was shut down by its Board of Directors after the editorial staff quoted Hitler in their content. Two weeks ago, the Salient’s Board of Directors also announced that they had issued a cease-and-desist order to all who attempt to publish under the Salient banner.
Importantly, as Dreher writes, “you cannot simply point at the Zoomers and say, ‘Thou shalt not,’ and expect it to work. The problems are too deep and complex, and anyway, they have learned to have no respect for authority [that] lied and lied and lied.” After all, during COVID, today’s freshmen—locked down, socially isolated, and glued to screens—saw The Establishment steal their formative middle school years. Those years have predisposed many young Americans to both rely heavily on social media and deeply distrust establishment institutions.
The rank-and-file groyperish youth cannot be gatekept, censored, or demonized—though groyper leaders, and the ideology of groyperism, must be. After all, we know how poorly pure censorship works; just ask Democrats about their many attempts to censor Trump.
So what should conservatives do to deal with the Groyper problem’s rightwing half? The strategy requires simultaneous action on four fronts:
First, starve groyper leaders of oxygen. Don’t platform them. Don’t give them attention. Don’t negotiate with them. Debate them only when well-prepared enough to wipe the floor. As Victor Davis Hanson—another conservative with impeccable credentials who is deeply concerned about groyperism—has pointed out, Fuentes’ sort excel at soundbite rhetoric and at concealing their most unreasonable views, making them tough to debate. Even skilled moderates like William F. Buckley struggled in challenging radical extremists; it’s not easy to win over those on the fence of radicalization.
Second, build robust conservative intellectual spaces (like the Stanford Review) that reward rigorous thinking over soundbite logic. This also means engaging these misled freshmen in personal, heart-to-heart conversations where deliberative thought flourishes, groyperish rapid-fire dissimulation can’t dominate, and patient persuasion has room to work.
Third, shut committed groypers out of the institutions of power. Fuentes wants to build a groyper vanguard, telling his ardent supporters to infiltrate institutions like Stanford and climb the ranks of power. Vanguards are dangerous; they inflicted communism on vast, unwilling countries like Russia; they could do so here, too.
Fourth, and most importantly, we must address the fundamental forces driving groyperism: young Americans’ bleak economic outlook. Their career prospects were precarious, even before AI’s rise; young Americans carry $1.8 trillion in student debt, $42,000 per person; even for many high-income youth, housing is an unaffordable dream; families are stunningly out of reach for them, with only 12% of 30-year-olds both married and homeowning, down from 45% in 1990.
These are the forces that created Mayor Mamdani; these are the forces that, if unchecked, will create a President Fuentes.
Conservatives face a stark historical choice. We can try to accommodate groyper activists, as some have, pursuing the disastrous strategy of “no enemies to the right” that created fascist Spain and Nazi Germany. Or we can follow the successful approach of “no one to the right”: addressing the root concerns of rank-and-file young Americans while completely freezing out extremist agitators.
The stakes are high. Fuentes adores both Hitler and Stalin, who killed a hundred million souls. He is an explicit racist and authoritarian. If we fail to address the grievances driving young people towards groyperism while firmly rejecting its leaders and ideology, we risk not just conservatism’s electoral future, but the liberty and prosperity my generation deserves to inherit.
