The battle for the hearts and minds of disaffected, lost, and angry young men
Young men – especially young white men, but it’s not completely limited to them – are tired of being demonized as toxic. A great many are depressed, aimless, and searching. And when a great many young men feel on the outside looking in, they’re ripe for the picking by people up to no good, or for being inspired by people who really can help them.
The upshot is that there are many people and groups vying for influence with this cohort, and although some of those people and groups are friendly and benign, some are malevolent exploiters. Among the former are Jordan Peterson, Charlie Kirk (when he was alive) and Turning Point USA; among the latter are Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Mamdani, Antifa, violent trans activists, and various incel “influencers.” I’m sure I left some out, but you get the picture. The competition exists on both right and left, but the struggle on the right is highlighted at the moment.
Charlie Kirk’s accused killer was definitely part of this group that was searching (I’m going to assume that Trump’s would-be killer was, too). Tyler Robinson is a young disaffected white male who spent an inordinate amount of his time gaming, and seems to have immersed himself in the violent trans activist movement as well as using some Antifa memes.
I’ve been thinking about all of this lately, and a few days ago I began wondering whether Jordan Peterson and Charlie Kirk had ever gotten together for a chat, and if so did they ever discuss this sort of topic. Sure enough, I discovered that they had, about six months ago. In the following YouTube interview, it’s also mentioned that Jordan Peterson and Charlie Kirk had met back in 2016 when Kirk was early in his career, and Kirk says he was inspired by Peterson. Not surprising, actually.
The following interview occurred six months ago, as I noted. But since then, Peterson has become gravely ill starting in August, although he’s said to be recovering. And of course Charlie Kirk was assassinated early in September. The whole interview is of interest, but I have cued up a 9-minute clip in which they begin by discussing the phenomenon on the left but Peterson immediately says it’s a growing problem on the right too and he was certainly correct. The phenomenon is the growing popularity of “influencers” with what’s called Cluster B traits and the dark triad or tetrad (see this for an explanation). They also talk about what it means to use the Lord’s name in vain:
Because he appears to be an example of this Cluster B dark triad type, please do not ignore the essentially “performative” and mocking nature of Fuentes. He’s like the Joker. It’s impossible to know what he really believes; perhaps nothing. His goals seem to be destructive and narcissistic: attention and power for himself, but perhaps mostly the power to destroy and to make people angry and uncomfortable, as well as to be admired by other Cluster B dark triad types, or just people who are lost and searching and happen upon him.
Christopher Rufo seems to understand this, too:
Rather than engage in the surface-level debate, conservatives should seek the deeper ground of reality and deconstruct the “metapolitics,” or underlying rules, of this conflict. Conservatives should do this by treating Fuentes as an essentially fraudulent phenomenon. He is a manipulator who pretends to believe in every evil in order to drive clicks, cause chaos, and achieve celebrity, even as a villain.
I think that this is the best way to look at someone like Fuentes that I can find so far, and Fuentes is hardly alone although he’s the flavor du jour.
I also came across this video by Dinesh D’Souza speaking of the same phenomenon; he also discusses the “groypers” and their online activities. The section I’ve cued up is about 7 minutes long; if you’re impatient like me, though, I suggest speeding it up by changing the speed setting:
ADDENDUM: I decided it would be instructive to add this short clip. Kirk detested Fuentes and thought he was dangerous, not only didn’t ally with him but discouraged anyone from platforming him by debating him. Fuentes was extremely harsh in his criticism of Kirk. He also was quite open in his rivalry with Kirk for this group of young men they were both trying to reach:
Nick Fuentes to Charlie Kirk just days before he was murdered:
"I took your baby Turning Point USA, and I f**ked it. I just get a sick sense of satisfaction out of it. Mr. 'Family Man.'" pic.twitter.com/PgtbRR6V7L
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 28, 2025
A long-defunct Italian blogger who called herself Joy of Knitting wrote some really interesting posts. In one of them, she objected to the phrase ‘the feminization of Western culture” and suggested instead “spinsterization.”
(advance apologies to the many fine women who never married and never had children and who don’t fit at all the profile that Joy describes below:
“We’ve often heard about the feminization of Western culture. I would propose instead to talk about the spinsterization (or spinsterification? I do apologise to English speakers everywhere) of Western civilisation. I mean here spinsterhood as a state of the mind, and as such pertaining both to men and women. Forget about the inner child. It’s the inner spinster, the one that lies dormant inside all of us, that has surfaced with a vengeance. The ferocious do-goodery, doing good works all around whether they are required or not. The eternal preaching. There’s a homily for every occasion and an occasion for every homily. The prim, tight-lipped disapproval of about everything (actually, nowadays it’s rather a pout to show off the lips, plus the flaring nostrils). Loving animals and hating people. The moralising fury against small pleasures, like smoking, drinking, red meat, etc.. The constant “now look what you’ve done” look of reproach meant to unleash guilt trips that will last forever, taking as the official excuse concern about the third world or the environment. The tearful sympathy for the oppressed that quickly turns into loving the criminals and despising their victims. The ill concealed resentment against the rest of the world that becomes sympathy for those who want to destroy it. The hatred against men, especially white men, who are always dead and/or stupid. The revenge against Westerners who have a good life, and the attempt to make them wretched and miserable so as to smother them with condescension and good works. Preaching peace while relishing carnage. Seeing opponents as demons from hell. Using one’s own virtue as a battering ram in order to take control. Despite saintly words, absolute power is the spinster’s ultimate target and worthy causes are nothing but means to an end.”
Joy of Knitting is long gone from the Internet, but I’ve collected some of her posts at the following links:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/44763.html
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/44807.html
I believe AWFLs are the greater problem, more so than “disaffected young men.”
Seriously.
I moved this over from the open thread, because I think Kisin of Triggernometry builds on what Peterson and D’Sousa are describing about the followers of people like Fuentes.
Interesting take on why there is such a large pool of white/underperforming young males that would be attracted to the vile rhetoric of someone like Nick Fuentes. This really isn’t any different than the vile rhetoric of a lot of rap music.
Kisin is on to some of the pathologies that have created this dynamic. It’s been an observation for some time, that this generation are remaining perpetual boys, hooked on video games while hiding in their parents basements.
Since it’s the woke left that put them there (in some sense), it’s understandable they would be attracted to what appears to be the antithesis– not political but cultural forces.
What is Happening on the Right. And Why – Konstantin Kisin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_Ww2XdllI
Gosh, never knew knitting could be so…um, evocative…
It’s very tempting to dismiss Fuentes because he seems so obviously ignorant. But I think that would be a mistake. I think Dinesh D’Souza makes a very good point when he says that people like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon want to use the anger of the young men attracted to Fuentes as a battering ram against the Republican establishment.
I think their current mission is to derail the chances of JD Vance (or Marco Rubio or Ron Desantis) from being the Republican nominee in 2028. Bannon has been making a lot of noise about supporting a third term for Trump. I think he knows this will never happen but he wants to use this ruse as a tool to prevent people from supporting Vance (who he believes is too connected with the tech bros).
I agree with D’Souza that Fuentes isn’t an actual Nazi but he gets a thrill out of the effect saying outrageous things has on the establishment. He is overjoyed by the bumbling Kevin Roberts and the chaos his Tucker appearance has had on the Heritage Foundation.
I think there is something similar happening at TPUSA who continue to invite Tucker to events even as he is undermines the organization. They don’t know how to react to someone like Fuentes who lives to make Conservative institutions squirm.
JD Vance is going to have to address this issue more coherently than he has done so far or it will be a real problem for his presidential ambitions.
Gregory Harper:
Kirk detested Fuentes and thought he was dangerous, not only didn’t ally with him but discouraged anyone from platforming him by debating him. Fuentes was extremely harsh in his criticism of Kirk. He also was quite open in his rivalry with Kirk for this group of young men they were both trying to reach. I probably should have added this to my post, because it says a lot. Maybe I’ll add it now:
Neo:
I know Kirk hated Fuentes and didn’t even like to mention his name. He chastised D’Douza for even debating him. But with Kirk gone I think TPUSA is a little lost on how to react. Kirk was still close to Tucker and invited him to speak at AMFEST. I wonder how he would have reacted to Tucker’s softball Fuentes interview.
IrishOtter49:
I’m certainly not saying that AWFLs are not a problem. This post is not about all the political problems in the US. It’s about this particular segment.
Thing is, the AWFLs are a problem emanating from the left. The groypers are a problem emanating from the far right. They have certain things in common, of course. I believe there are far far more AWFLs than groypers right now. But both are problems, and it’s possible that the latter group will grow significantly.
https://x.com/infolibnews/status/1986322176425787650
To which Bonchieredstate replies:
https://x.com/bonchieredstate/status/1986477167237111850
Gregory Harper:
Right now I see TPUSA as very lost, not just a little lost. They had a chance to disavow Tucker’s “hummus-eating in Jerusalem” remarks made at Kirk’s memorial, where he likened Kirk’s assassination to the Jews killing Christ (hint hint wink wink for the association, made in a very sly way by Carlson). They said nothing.
Kirk made it clear to D’Souza, when D’Souza debated Fuentes and challenged Fuentes’ ideas, that Kirk thought it was a bad idea to give Fuentes any platform at all even by debating and challenging him. He said this to D’Souza privately, though. But I imagine Kirk would have been that much angrier at Carlson for not only platforming Fuentes but hardly challenging him and allowing him to present himself as far more moderate than he is.
sd ferr:
That sort of thing isn’t new.
Didn’t say it is. But it’s a serious problem for that lot to navigate, I believe.
Gregory Harper, whom do you think Carlson, Bannon, etc., want for 2028, if they want to torpedo Vance, Rubio, and De Santis? Or are they just destructive, with no end game in mind?
Kate:
A while back, I remember rumors that Carlson had presidential aspirations. Perhaps he still does. Or perhaps he supports Vance. Vance has been very careful to position himself as not especially pro-Israel. Also, Carlson’s son is Vance’s deputy press secretary.
Interesting, Neo. With the Islamist/socialist coalition rising on the left, if Republicans nominate Carlson, the country is totally cooked. Carlson, apart from his now more apparent Jew-hating, appears to me to have no principles at all.
Kate:
I’m not sure, but it is clear to me that they don’t trust Vance and think he is too connected to big tech. I also think both Bannon and Carlson are deeply disappointed with Trump’s foreign policy, particularly with his decision to bomb Iran and want someone who is more of an isolationist.
I think Bannon and Carlson are fighting to have the Republican party completely remade as a populist nationalist party. I think they would actually prefer to create a new party but realize that has little chance of succeeding. I think they would rather lose the 2028 election and blame it on more traditional conservatives than lose their influence over the party.
Marjorie Taylor Green comes closest to their vision of a populist candidate but I don’t think she would have a chance. It could be someone that is not on anybody’s radar right now.
Thanks, Gregory Harper. The flaw in that plan is that Trump has already remade the Republican party.
Bannon and Carlson are grifters IMO. One is wealthy, the other a felon. Not all felons are innocent
even if they are nominally “conservative.”
MTG seems a bit of an attention whore.
I had very little male input after my mother divorced my father when I was 7. It was just my mother who was clinically crazy. My grandmother who was less crazy in a different way. And then the nuns in parochial school who had their own cray-cray.
I had to fight through a lot of stuff.
As the legendary Sam Kinison said, “I’M LUCKY TO BE ALIVE!” 🙂
IrishOtter49 is right. AWFLs vote. The boys in the basement don’t.
The problem with the dipshit isolationists is always the question of:
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Like it or not, at the current time, we are the “chosen ones”. That’s our burden. That is not necessarily something to be happy about, but it is what it is.
“Swing Kids,” the underrated film about the jazz and swing dancing scene in 30s Germany, has a marvelous scene in which Kenneth Branagh, a mature fatherly figure who has become an SS-Sturmbannführer, is counseling Robert Sean Leonard, a teen who has lost his father to the Nazis, about Branagh’s conversion to Nazism.
It’s quite touching … and brilliant if I may say. The film isn’t morally ambiguous, but does render the appeal of Nazism to lost males in an empathetic manner.
Branagh also played Reinhold Heydrich, one of the most ghastly Nazi leaders, in the film “Conspiracy” (2001), about the Wannsee Conference in which the Final Solution to exterminate the Jews was officially finalized.
Branagh plays an amazing Nazi.
I liked “Conspiracy”, but Branagh was too much the baby-faced Irish boy to play Heydrich convincingly. Heydrich had the long horse-face aristocratic features one associates with the inbred progency of the Prussian Junkers class — he was in appearance and demeanor the archetypal Nazi killer, a man who fairly radiated evil in his every aspect. Think of Conrad Veidt as Major Strasser in “Casablanca,” but with blond hair and no moustache. The actor who played Heydrich in “Wansee”, a German-made film on the same subject, and which was in my opinion, superior to “Conspiracy”, actually looked like Heydrich. Chilling.
“Wansee” is available free on YouTube, with English subtitles. Like “Conspiracy” it closely follows the transcript of the Wansee Conference, made by a female Nazi court stenographer who sat in on the entirety of the proceedings and recorded the discussions word for word. Highly recommended.
Anyway. I was a bright, angry, alienated young man. Society is lucky the hippies came along and domesticated me. No thanks to most of the adults who were supposed to be looking out for me.
Fortunately the male instinct is to harness aggression in order to protect. Sheep, wolves and sheepdogs, as Bill Whittle has explained.
I say this so bluntly because lost angry young men are a real problem. IMO society has gotten off lightly … so far.
Molly Brown:
As I said, it’s not either/or. It’s both/and. Two different phenomena. Plus, the basement boys vote when motivated enough. A lot of them voted for Trump. Now they may be moving on to different things.
Re: Branagh as Heydrich
IrishOtter49:
You’ve got a point. Heydrich was a true Nazi monster and Branagh underplayed that.
@neo: …the basement boys….
I'm sure neo didn't mean to be so flippant. Nonetheless, I guarantee that there are real live humans underneath that. Many have been neglected, betrayed and abused. They are trying to make sense out of their lives and act effectively.
Not just boys.
My niece grew up poor just outside Boston. She went to majority-black schools. Her family was all drunks, gamblers and addicts. She turned early to Charlie Kirk and Jordan Peterson. Also to racists — I've tried to discourage her.
She called me the day after Charlie Kirk was shot.
___________________________
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations.
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.
–David Bowie, “Changes”
huxley:
I was addressing Molly Brown, who used the phrase here.
My first thought as I read Neo’s post was, “Who is responsible for creating this listless, aimless group of adolescent males called groypers?” I immediately anwered myself (is that something I should be concerned about?), “Dad.” Or more accurately, “absence of Dad.” When I got down to the comment by huxley, I received confirmation by his personal anecdote. Think about gangs: why do they exist? It is almost always the case that young men and boys join gangs because they lack a proper father in their home. Boys, upon attaining adolescence are inflamed by a desire to become men. If they lack a proper role model, they will seek out another one. Men are biologically impelled to become the provider for and protecter of a family, thus requiring a suitable woman with whom to form that family, thus leading me to the subsidiary answer to the inquiry, viz., “Woman.” Today’s “liberated woman,” having been the subject of the bait-and-switch game played on them by the forces of the left reject the man’s advances (“a woman needs a man like a fish neds a bicycle”) because the government has been substituted as their provider and protecter, thereby hammering the man with the second, usually fatal blow to his biological imperative. (If you look through the internet, you will find many astute observers who feel that the overwhelming young female support for Mamdani is explained precisely by this phenomenon.) So, the process simply repeats and recreates itself generation after generation. God’s proper roles for man and woman are rejected, but satan is always ready and able to supply his substitutes, the better to destroy the objects of God’s love and affection, His human children. We can seek cures everywhere, but until the one and only cure is found, by reliance on God’s Biblical instruction manual, there is no hope for the future.
Pingback:Fuentes Furioso – Chicago Boyz
It all depends Doesn’t everything. I grew up, as I’ve said before, in a post-war subdivision in a post-war suburb. Most adult men in our world were veterans. The women were wives and brothers of veterans. The few older folks were parents of veterans.
I have no memory of this. But I have a picture. A bunch of us sixth-grade boys were standing around discussing what to do if bad guys attacked the kindergarten.
I can say nothing about the reality or whether it’s nonsense. But if somebody had the receipts, the real deal and could prove it one way or another, I wouldn’t put money on “didn’t happen”.
Manchester, in his book on Marines fighting in the Pacific, referred to the propensity of young men to bond into small groups no matter how randomly thrown together. He felt unfair advantage was taken of the young men in question by the military.
Got to Basic and saw it.
Could be a problem in other circumstances. Because you never forget it. It’s that powerful and you don’t even notice until something happens.
Not being of, nor my son and his friends, the generation spoken of, I have no knowledge direct or once-removed of the guys in question. I used to hang out on feminist blogs on the presumption they might be logical. Yeah, men were despised and rotten, but I couldn’t decide, from my position what on Earth would be convincing for young men. Who would take them seriously? By the time a guy’s eighteen, guarantee he’s helped a woman (maybe several different cases) in difficulties a woman would not be able to manage. Flat tire, jerks threatening, lifting something heavy with a kind of need to get it done fast. How can one feel despised and useless when one thinks….”You really want to do without me [male] forever? You’ll call when you need me.” You can think such people are idiots for scorning your help in real trouble (or loudly pretending to), but you’re not going to feel less. For young men, feminists are the furthest thing imaginable from authority figures.
As has been said earlier, goals and fathers (or father figures) are necessary.
Kirk may have been a father figure; tall, as far as I can tell, authoritative in his discussions–because he was equipped with facts and experience–and didn’t take any crap. And was confident enough not to be flustered.
It’s the Cluster B Clusterfuck!
Related post by my Chicago Boyz colleague Sgt Mom, with extensive discussion:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/75379.html
White men are not just demonized for being toxic. They are the primary target for all the evils the left rails against.
This blog is at a distinct disadvantage because no one is young enough to see the ravages of the 50+ affirmative action regime, the destruction of US manufacturing jobs, the mass importation of millions and millions of foreigners.
Who is talking to these young men?Who will listen to them? Who will allow them to be non-polite when speaking of their pain?
Frank B:
A person doesn’t have to be under fifty to observe what’s happening – plus, old though many of us may be, we have children and grandchildren, and nieces and nephews, in that demographic.
I don’t think there’s anyone here who won’t “allow them to be non-polite when speaking of their pain.” But “kill the nefarious Jews!” and “hooray Hamas!” as well as “capitalism sucks and socialism will give us free stuff” is a lot worse than impoliteness.
Neo,
I have yet to see any non-left personalities call for violence against anyone. I think these young men have been targeted by a moral panic that divides the generations even more.
This panic has been worked on for months if not years. We had the panic over “Christian Nationalists”?then the “woke right” and now it’s the “groypers”.
Each one tells the bs story that the nonleft are horrible people. I don’t believe that. Younger men haven’t changed their positions dramatically (younger women have).
If you want to detooth a movement, listen and address the real issues they have.
I can link YouTube videos from younger men or from other thought leaders being listened to bring their voice if requested.