How Colleges Became Recruitment Hubs for the Gen-Z Right | The Nation

“An anonymous post appeared in late September on Reddit’s ​“QAnonCasualties” forum, an online space designed to support those desperate to extricate loved ones from the all-consuming grip of conspiracy theories. ​“I think my brother is a white supremacist and I don’t know what to do,” a 17-year-old posted. She went on that she became concerned after her 13-year old brother started saying things like ​“gay people are disgusting.” 

She’d done some digging and discovered her younger brother’s anonymous account on the alternative social media platform Telegram — complete with a username boasting support for white Christian nationalist Nick Fuentes and an avatar featuring the alt-right icon Pepe the Frog framed by an America First flag. Her brother, she soon discovered, had become a devoted follower of Fuentes. 

Fuentes — who recently referred to Hitler as ​“really fucking cool” and announced ​“we need to eradicate the Jewish stranglehold over The United States of America” — leads the America First/“Groyper” movement, a network of disaffected, terminally online Gen Z men animated by a toxic brew of misogyny, antisemitism and white rage. (Groyper is a variation of the Pepe meme in far-right online spaces.) ​“This [is] really hard,” the sister acknowledged to those offering support. ​“I love my family so much and [it] hurts to see him turn into this.” 

While Fuentes’ unabashed Hitlerism has rendered him untouchable for most conservative leaders, he can hardly be called fringe. Within the past two years, Fuentes has featured leading MAGA politicians Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) at his Groyper conferences and intimately dined with former President Donald Trump as a surprise guest at Mar-a-Lago. Most of the once-fringe positions Fuentes championed for years — such as the ​“great replacement” conspiracy theory, Christian nationalism and hardline homophobia — are now standard conservative fare. And all that’s by design.

On high school and college campuses across the country, many young right-wingers are outflanking their MAGA elders in enthusiastic embrace of radically anti-democratic, exclusionary and bigoted politics. To be sure, most of Gen Z leans liberal. But those who buck the trend cling proudly to their ​“dissident” status, doubling down in uncompromising reassertion of the race, gender and other hierarchies their peers are set on dismantling.”

Read more at In These Times.