Posted by Geoffrey Clarfield
For those baby boomers who have been over confident that young Conservatives have finally shed the double standard of old conservative anti Semitism, it may be wise to read this most recent report from the front lines. Rod Dreher in his Diary
I don’t know what you did on Friday night, but I spent about 90 minutes in the vice president’s study with him and the men you see above, talking geopolitics, Hungary, and the survival of Christianity in Europe, among other things. Of course I can’t be indiscreet about the discussion, but it was rich and vigorous. I’m really glad that JD got to experience the actual, living Viktor Orban in person, and to see for himself how wrong the propaganda is. They got on very, very well.
I was able to have a few minutes with the vice president before the PM and his team arrived. I shared with him my views about the threat that Nick Fuentes and Groyperism pose to the country, to the GOP, and to him personally. He listened to what I had to say. And that is all I can say about it, out of respect for his privacy.
It was an intense and busy long weekend for me in the capital city. I learned a hell of a lot about the new radicalism racing through the young Right there. What I’m going to say about it is to inform you. Nobody talked to me on the record. What I say is my impression of a number of conversations I had with people (conservatives) who are directly involved in this world. Every one of them is appalled by what’s happening (well, maybe not one of the guys, but he always plays his cards close to his vest), and all have serious doubts about the ability of the institutional Right to deal with it. It’s easier for me simply to do a mash-up of all the things I heard, rather than try to attribute them to people I can’t quote by name anyway. Remember, this is a diary, not a newspaper.
The claim that I first floated in this space last week, quoting a DC insider who said that in his estimation, “between 30 and 40 percent” of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes — that’s true. Was confirmed multiple times by Zoomers who live in that world.
If you think being Christian is some kind of vaccination against anti-Semitism, you’re wrong. Even young Christians — especially trad Catholics, I learned — are neck-deep in anti-Semitism. They even use it as a litmus test of who can and can’t join their informal social groups.
Not every DC Zoomercon who identifies with Fuentes agrees with everything he says, or the way he says it. What they like most of all is his rage, and willingness to violate taboos. I asked one astute Zoomer what the Groypers actually wanted (meaning, what were their demands). He said, “They don’t have any. They just want to tear everything down.”
Then he went on to explain in calm, rational detail why his generation is so utterly screwed. The problems are mostly economic and material, in his view (and this is something echoed by other conversations). They don’t have good career prospects, they’ll probably never be able to buy a home, many are heavily indebted with student loans that they were advised by authorities to take out, and the idea that they are likely to marry and start families seems increasingly remote.
Moreover, they grew up in a country that had lost its common culture. Many of these young men are fatherless. Most of them spent their youths being told that as whites, and especially as white males, they are what’s wrong with the world. Their own speech was policed with Stasi-like ruthlessness for racism and bigotry, while people on the Left routinely slandered whites, males, Christians, and heterosexuals — and were even rewarded for it.
I talked to one MAGA Zoomer, a policy wonk who is a person of color. He is beside himself with frustration over the rise of Groyperism in his circles, and within the party. “These idiots don’t understand that they can’t win an election on a whites-only platform,” he said. “They’re delusional. There are a lot of immigrants and native-born members of ethnic groups who are natural Republicans, and whom Donald Trump won in 2024. Take Indians, for example — if you think they are going to stick with a movement whose leader [Fuentes] denounces Usha Vance as a ‘jeet,’ you’re crazy. But that’s how they think.”
Well, they do want to burn it all down, I was told. And I came away with the feeling that they are only tenuously dedicated to democratic politics. I told one very smart and decent Zoomercon who despises the anti-Semitic turn in his circles that I’ve been hearing that fascism — actual ideological fascism, not the media’s idea of anybody to the Right of Lindsey Graham — is gaining traction among young white British males.
He said, innocently, “So what’s wrong with fascism?” He meant it, not in a challenging way, but in a way that conveyed the sense of we have to think about this now. He talked about how the disintegration of our culture is accelerating, and liberal democracy seems impotent to stop it. He went on to explain that if he had to choose between living under left-wing authoritarianism or the right-wing version, then that wouldn’t be much of a choice. To be clear, he wants neither, but he fears that the disintegration of our culture is going to put us all in the position to have to reconcile ourselves to one or the other.
I tell you, it was dark. But I kept hearing this, over and over, and I concluded that it cannot be dismissed.
The inability of us older people — Boomers, Xers, and older Millennials — to comprehend the world through the eyes of Zoomers is a big, big problem. Another strong theme: while it’s important to take a clear stand against anti-Semitism in the ranks, there is no way to gatekeep our way out of this. 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.
Why should they? The institutions of our society, as they see it, have lied and lied and lied, and still lie. They still lie in many ways about race (e.g., refusing to be honest about black crime), they lied about Covid, they lied about males and females, and they forced the insanity of gender ideology on us all. The military lied about Iraq. The universities embraced and enforced ideologies of lies. The Catholic Church lied about sexual abuse, and the connection to the prevalence of sexually active gay priests honeycombing the institution. They lied about the benefits of mass migration and diversity. They lied about Trump and Russia. The political parties and their corporate allies lied about what globalism would mean for ordinary people.
What about the Jews? This, to me, remains the most puzzling and sinister thing. Douglas Murray gave a talk over the weekend at a Prager U event, in which he reflected on the fact that lots of young conservatives notice that liberal secular Jews are disproportionately involved in organizations pushing mass migration, and draw anti-Semitic conclusions. Murray pointed out accurately that in Europe, by far the most prominent and influential advocates for open borders are the current pope and the previous one — yet few people blame Catholics for the problem. Why, then, do they all blame Jews?
If you know anything about history, you know that whenever a small minority has been successful out of proportion to their numbers within a society, the mob may turn on them. The Chinese minority in Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, have repeatedly suffered discrimination and hatred from the majority native population. Why? For one, the European colonizers made them into the tax collectors and moneymen — a caste that will never be beloved. For another, they historically enjoyed success, being good at running businesses. The Chinese are not Jewish, but they were hated by Malays and Indonesians as if they were, because they were successful — and were not allowed by the majority culture to assimilate.
Why are Jews so dominant in finance? They have been for centuries, because in Catholic Europe, Jews were not subject to the anti-usury restrictions on Catholics. So they became bankers because that profession was open to them as it largely wasn’t to Christians. And they got good at it. Why should they be ashamed of it? Jews traditionally excelled as classical musicians and scholars because their culture valued classical music and scholarship. Why should they be ashamed of their success? I don’t get it.
Black folks overwhelmingly dominate US football and basketball. So what? They’re disproportionately good at what they do. Same with jazz, back in the day. Why should we care?
Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that it wasn’t “the Jews” who created affirmative action, DEI, and all the other programs that systematically excluded whites, especially white men. Some Jews did, for sure, but most of those architects of injustice and enforcers of same were white liberal Gentiles. And on the conservative side, some of the most intellectually powerful and articulate critics of this were neoconservative Jewish intellectuals.
The world is a lot more complicated than haters would like to believe. It is our moral responsibility to resist the easy answers.
Here in Europe, it’s not Jews that make public life in so many European big cities unbearable. In fact, they were the first ones to experience the special pleasure of Islamic harassment and persecution — an experience that is now far more general. They were the canaries in the coal mine. They so often are. Now some European towns are having to cancel their traditional Christmas markets, because the cost of providing security to stop Muslims from attacking them violently is too great. Check this video out — a Muslim mob marches through a Christmas market in a show of cultural strength. No European Jew ever attacked a Christmas market, or tried to ruin it for others.
Last week, French police arrested three young Muslim women who were allegedly planning a terror attack on the anniversary of the jihadi Bataclan massacre. But please, let’s talk about the Jews instead.
OK, enough about The Jews here. I’m running out of space, and I’m very tired from the traveling and the meetings. . .
Dark days ahead for all of us, I’m afraid.
How strange it was to be in Washington, a city I loved when I lived there from 1992-95, but that now feels like a charmless hive of scum and villainy.
Still, this was fun, and I’m glad the VP invited me over. Usha, by the way, just glows with grace and interior light. When I was escorted in at the residence on the Naval Observatory grounds, the Vance family was finishing dinner at their big table. The kids were running around, and JD’s cousins from Texas were at the table, dressed like normal working-class folks. Our veep has not lost touch with where he comes from. I like that. I like that a lot.
The above are some selected paragraphs – the whole article is here.
One Response
There is another reason why the Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia are hated – and why they have been murderously attacked, in the past. They are **not Muslim**. They are infidels, whether they practise traditional Chinese beliefs, or Buddhism, or Christianity (a significant number of ethnic Chinese in Malaysia are Christians). This means that even if the Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia *weren’t* economically successful.. in fact, even if they were poor-as-dirt street-cleaners, housemaids etc, as are most Christians and Hindus in Pakistan… they would STILL be hated and attacked by the Malay Muslim majority.