Chapo Trap House - Panic World: Who turned Gen Z fascist? (With Felix Biederman)

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Felix appeared on today’s Panic World podcast hosted by past-guest Ryan Broderick of the fantastic Garbage Day newsletter. We’ve agreed to crosspost this ep in our feed. Enjoy! Check out Panic World wherever you get pods, and subscribe to Garbage Day here: https://www.garbageday.email/ Every four years America suffers through a national election, with its own distinct collection of far-right freaks. Yet against the trend, in 2024 many of the youngest voters started finding them appealing. So who or what turned Gen Z fascist? Felix Biederman of Chapo Trap House joins us to discuss the main players in the right-wing (mano)sphere, and whether this ecosystem of new guys will keep our nation’s youth in their thrall. Our guest Felix Biederman co-hosts Chapo Trap House (https://www.chapotraphouse.com), found wherever you get your podcasts. You can purchase the Seeking A Fren for the End of the World series for $5 at: https://www.patreon.com/cw/chapotraphouse/collections Or it, along with all their premium episodes and other acclaimed miniseries like Hell of Presidents and Movie Mindset, are available to all subscribers for just $5 a month at https://www.patreon.com/cw/chapotraphouse

Would you like to hear my favorite right-wing crank? Yeah. I always have had a soft spot for Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, because I interviewed him once several years ago and he tried to hypnotize me over the phone. I love Scott Adams and I feel like Scott Adams was, this is like a truism about lefties that people love

in America, that being on the left is being right too early. Sure. I think that's true a lot of the time. But Scott Adams is sort of the perfect mirror image to that in that he was insane in the wrong way, just a little bit too early. He was just right place, just the wrong time. A couple years later, and he would be in the cabinet.

Oh yeah, but he went like he went like too hard too soon And I also feel like you couldn't shake the Dilbert baggage, you know Like it's hard to take him seriously because he invented Dilbert and he would try to like obscure it in these weird ways Where he'd say I have a you know 200 million dollar business and it's like yeah, that's technically true you do Exactly exactly. It's like yeah, I guess technically true. You do, but it's Gilbert. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's like, yeah, I guess. I mean, literally you do have that.

But... So every four years America suffers through an election So every four years America suffers through an election and it seems like as a side effect, it produces a whole new squad of right-wing goons that try to become like the voice of the new right. Right now they're all kind of camped out on X the everything app. But here's some past examples, right? We've got the earlier figures like Glenn Beck, Talco Carlson, who's obviously made a comeback now with his podcast or whatever it is.

And you got that next generation after that where you have Myleonopoulos, you have Mike Sternovich, you have Donald Trump's possible ex-girlfriend, Laura Loomer, who I believe at one point changed herself to the door of Twitter's office wearing a diaper. There's a lot of diapers in this world, I think. And now you have these newer figures coming out who are sometimes extremely political, or they're completely apolitical, but sort of live

in the soup of the far right. But recently, they've had success doing something liberal elites thought was impossible. They swung the youth vote by over 30%. So who turned Gen Z fascist? And what do they want? I mean, other than I guess like some sort of race war. And most importantly, how long will this last? This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. Joining us is Felix Biedermann

of a little podcast called Chapo Trap House. Welcome to the show, Felix. Hey, thank you for having me. So the inspiration for this episode was your recent show, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. And this is how you put it in the description, which I thought was really nice. How did the Republican Party, once the dominant force in American culture for almost a generation, become a group of bowtied cosplayers and rapist streamers yelling about litter boxes? So to give us a teaser for people who are going to go check out your show, what are some of your main takeaways from from working on this?

Like to try to answer your own question, like what is like the top line of how this did happen? Both media trends and the inevitable like devolution of both these political projects, both movement conservatism and American liberalism, this is the logical endpoint, a very mercenary environment. Where this became much more interesting and much more contested, at least among our listeners, is in the aftermath of Trump winning. We went through a lot of changes because I would say like 80% of this was written before Biden did the switch out.

And it was more addition than subtraction really. And the biggest criticism that I have gotten from my audience has been that it's too dismissive of the prospects of this movement after they've, you know, obviously won so big in such a way. I'm like you, I am equally dismissive of this movement. Like for reasons we're gonna get into this episode, but I do wanna sort of set this up just a little bit

before we go further. And I wanna run through kind of like a gamut of like who we're talking about. Cause like for our audience, I wanna make sure like they can kind of picture these people. So like you started at the top of the show, kind of going all the way back to like the magazine cranks of the sixties, right? But I do think like our current conversation starts in like the Rush Limbaugh and Colter Glenn Beck era. We move into like the Milo,

Unopolis, Diamond and Silk, James Yoke, Project Veritas, Gavin McInnes, Mike Cernovich. And now we're sort of in this like weird, like almost Twilight era, where it feels to me, where there are so many of these people, but none of them are particularly big. Do you have a couple of, let's say the first Trump era that stick out on your mind is like still being important now? Well, actually, and this is a guy that we didn't talk about in the series,

because I don't really feel like he's necessarily a part of movement conservatism. Maybe the most interesting to me out of all the modern guys, and I think has the most longevity going forward, because he's not really a movement conservative, I think is Nick Fuentes. because he's not really a movement conservative, I think is Nick Fuentes. I sort of see your argument here because he might not be the most influential or the most popular of these young fascists,

but he's clearly leading the charge and sort of setting the agenda in a lot of ways. And I think the most important thing about him, which we can talk more about in today's episode, is his real lack of fear with bucking against the conservative establishment and sort of redefining what it means to be far right in the 21st century. And yeah, yeah, like, you know, his use of live streaming in particular, when I first saw it, I thought, okay, like this guy's just doing like an impression of,

he's like teen Alex Jones. But no, he was tapping into something very real and creating not just like the political playbook, but I also think the digital content strategy for much of the new post-Trump right wing. The way that he becomes known to the world after Charlottesville, the posture he takes, is very familiar and kind of like, I would say, set the tone for a lot of guys going forward because he uniquely, do you remember that first interview he did after

Charlottesville? Vaguely, but for the audience to describe it if you can, yeah. Charlottesville was so significant to me because it was like, there was this constant fever pitch during both the election and the presidency of Trump up to that point. And you could always get him to like promise or even try something very dramatic or daring, but he would always like walk back and the move always was, oh, you thought that was gonna happen? You're a fucking idiot. You're hysterical, you're crazy

for thinking that's happening. And there were just, that was the constant like storm and drain of it all. But Charlottesville was the first time where he was really like, you know, kind of like on his hands and knees, like please let me keep having Twitter. And it's obviously like January 6th

was a way bigger example of that. And he like really threw everyone under the bus. And even that's been memory hole more now, but it was a significant turning point because it showed the futility in Trump won. Like how limited all of this was and how disgusted most Americans were with like far right stuff

when it was presented to them this way. But then, and everyone did kind of like do the same thing Trump did. All these people who were like there, like even like Jason Kessler who organized it was like, I'm sorry, I'm not racist. It's so weird. But then Fuentes doesn't do any of that. And he's on like, he's on national news. And he's, you know, completely like unapologetic and like firm in this way that like none of the like Trump affiliated people were really being and while all the other people in the more like explicitly, you know, white nationalist movement were sort of like scatterbrained and like turning on each other and like informing on one another.

It really was like a marker of things to come. Before January 6th, I remember him as like the kid on the live streams that would deny the Holocaust. That was like his main role. But after Charlottesville, he starts building like what he calls like the Gruyper Army, the sort of Gen Z wing of like this far right movement. And the moment that I sort of just started treating him differently in my mind

was when he crashed CPAC basically right after January 6th, like that summer, and they all get thrown out. And I remember thinking like, oh, that's really interesting that he's effectively playing the same game as his contemporaries. But as you said, he's not backing down. And I think there was a moment where I was like, oh, I think the Gropier thing is gonna get shut out. Like these are like weird, trad cath, isolationist freaks. And I think Republicans won't ever embrace them. But looking back on it, it was clearly the C-shift that has led us to where we are now.

Like he called it right as far as the movement goes. And all the people on the more like, I guess like you could say like presentable or like normal side of that, people who still want to be like in electoral politics, they still feel like they have to like impress him in a way. Like you remember, like JD Vance was talking about how he got banned and was like on the no fly list. And he said, I've gotten a lot of criticism from Fuentes,

a lot of unfairly, I think, which is so interesting to me. When you compare it to what Trump going, we're not racist, we're against white nationalism, all these things that he got yelled at. I think the most telling thing about a modern media figure is the way and manner in which they are able to weather storms. And so many things that would have been like the end

of people in previous eras, he's just completely withstood, partly because of changing media environments, but partly because he is sort of like a product of his time. I think of him like Eli in Metal Gear Solid V. I'm playing that game right now, it rips. I think you're right that he sort of shifted the way that these people deal with blowback to the point now where like, I don't think any of them really care what like the quote unquote establishment cares about. But I also think he opened the door to sort of a flattening of all of this stuff. His big ideological goal, as dark and awful as it is to say, is mainstreaming Holocaust denial.

It is something now that you see every single time you open up X. He has figured out a way to make previously unquestionable topics around race and religion and gender. Totally fair game, even within the mainstream conservative movement. The most interesting thing that everyone is sort of using his playbook now, and we're all kind of like living in his world, but he has definitively like split with Trump in advance. He did it a while ago and he thought they would lose, but he's, even though they won and like won the popular vote, the first to do that since some would say 2004,

some would say before that, it depends on what you think happened in Ohio. But he's very committed to this idea that this is like a hollow Peter Thiel funded project. And I think more than that, He's very committed to this idea that this is like a hollow Peter Thiel funded project. And I think more than that, he foresees the logical conclusion of austerity politics. He thinks things may look great now, but just fucking wait. You will not want to be holding this bag.

I kind of put him in the same category as Steve Bannon, where he has effectively seen the way things are going very clearly. He's obviously evil, but he is oftentimes the only one that is correctly understanding the situation, which obviously makes him even more evil. So I'm really glad you brought him up, because I do think he's shaping the culture,

even if he's not, you know, winning over new voters. But I do want to switch gears slightly to look at the influencers who are actively succeeding into turning Gen Z into little Hitler youth and also making a lot of money and getting a lot of views because of it. So let's start with a group that I think is the most influential, but probably the least ideological, which, you know, let's call it like the bro sphere, the manosphere.

And at the top of that are the Nelk Boys. Do you know the Nelk Boys? Oh, yeah, they're, yeah, their whole thing is really funny to me. That Steve Will Do It guy is hilarious. He used to be like, he was basically like a carnival sideshow Victorian freak for Faze Banks. Yes, yes he was. He would be in all these like banks and Faze vlogs where banks would be like, you know, drink this terrible fucking vodka I got from a grocery store, drink this handle in three seconds and he would do it.

He was just this sort of idiot farmhand he would torture. Yeah, they are there. And he didn't get, you know, Steve will do it, did not get any more charismatic or interesting or better at any of this. The standard just got lower. So he gets to be in phase banks, he gets to be the star. Yeah.

He gets to be in phase banks because of the lowering standard of what it takes to be, I guess, a financial magnate, a financial professional. Now he gets to become that. Everyone moves up. They have not changed. The world has changed around them. And for people who are listening who have not heard of these guys, this is how a friend of the show, Taylor Lorenz, described their whole channel back in 2021. She wrote that their channel produces new revenue as neither a fluke nor an accident. Their videos revolve around frat like parties

and elaborate pranks that sometimes promote illegal activities. They drink and curse and make crude jokes on camera and the police show up a lot. And their stunts include stealing a segue and pretending to be a mall cop, changing restaurant menu QR codes. They threw a huge COVID party.

That's such a shitty prank. Yeah, that one's shitty. No, the QR codes don't work. That one's shitty. Like, he do half the time. Like, it's already so much of an indignity to scan a QR code at a restaurant, then to find that it doesn't work, brutal.

But the thing about them is that they are a brand the way Mr. Beast is a brand, just for like a slightly older, horrible boy. And it seems like everything they do is not a political project, but ultimately a means for making a lot of money. And they're oh my God. They were estimated to be making around 70 million dollars through merch and hard seltzer sales. They're giant.

They're giant. And like, I'm not an expert on them. I know that most, but Steve will do it. million dollars through merch and hard seltzer sales. They're giant. They're giant. And like, I'm not an expert on them. I know that most, but Steve will do it. But there are two other ones or three other ones. I know- The main guy is Kyle. Kyle four geared.

Yeah. Yeah. And he's like the, I guess like the leader, but then there was Stiney who I think this is fascinating. Like Aiden Ross, Jewish. I didn't know Aiden Ross was Jewish, that's interesting. That was important, like you couldn't be a fucking Aiden Ross if you were Jewish in like 1925.

No. That's amazing, that's amazing. That's amazing, that's like, I think as significant an achievement as Obama becoming president, just like in the other direction. You know, instead of being like a boxer or a hitman or later a lawyer or a doctor or a fucking,

a guy who makes a web series, you could be Aiden Ross or a Nelk boy. True. That's amazing. You could do anything in America. Interestingly enough, they started out like, not liberal, but like at least they, like one of their early videos in 2020, like they're making fun of Trump supporters.

But then two months later, they meet with Trump on Air Force One. Do you know how they connected with Trump? Have you heard how they did this? What was this a barren thing? It was Dana White, the president of UFC. Oh yeah. I don't know how I didn't know that.

They- I know Dana is a big fan of them despite being in his sixties. Yeah. They went to UFC fights in Abu Dhabi with him during the pandemic. Yeah, no, during the Fight Island era. Yeah, then they launched a podcast in 2021.

Trump was like one of their earliest guests, which is incredible. And then the video got pulled down because Trump spent most of it yelling about election interference. Yeah, that was yeah. Back when you would still get pulled off the air for that. Right. They like Logan Paul, like everyone

was like very passively liberal. Yes. Like much more liberal than their equivalents in traditional media would have been 15 years prior. And I think the Nelk Boys are really important node in a lot of the media ecosystem that helped Trump win this time, because through them, you know, this is how Trump like connects with like Kill Tony

and Mr. Ballin and Jake Paul and sort of like this like new wave of shitty man podcasts that, you know, are pulling in millions of views and multi millions of dollars. And I'm curious, like your thoughts on the rise of these spaces, because like I remember in the 2010s, like a lot of these shows did kind of exist, but they weren't nearly as, as you said, kind of aligned with the right. They were sort of by default liberal or at least like, you know, keeping up appearances of being mainstream acceptable. Yeah, they were as liberal as like the background radiation of the rest of media was.

Exactly, and then something happens where they just shift. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot of things. Early COVID did kind of like greatly affect people in ways that we are still comprehending. And I also think that all modern politics, which is all politics since the election of Joe Biden, is a reaction and counter reaction to everything that happened in 2020, which is not just COVID and not just being alone with your own thoughts for too long. But specifically, it is a type of person who were as liberal as the background radiation

dictated they should be. And in 2020, that obligated you to a lot more than previously. Sure. Some would say would even obligate you into saying things that seem utterly ridiculous in a very short time. Like the example I always use is Gushers going, Gushers recognizes that black Americans are their experiences, part, you know Yeah, even though even even though like the origin point for all of this was like a

Legitimate thing sure. No, I I was there. I remember it says with legitimate popular support But wait, wait, hold on. You don't think the Pabstool ribbon Twitter account should tell me to eat ass for dry January Yeah, you don't think you don't think that I should celebrate dry January by eating ass. It's this weird thing where they're saying these insane things, but in an incredibly like anodyne, passionless, bloodless way. Sure. It is so fucking alien to be like faze banks, to be like a buffoon wrangler and a buffoon yourself and be like slavery was fucked up.

I just, I wanted to say that. You know? Like, could be- I personally think the Rand Corporation should be doing land acknowledgements, Felix. I actually think that that's good for capitalism and the world. But like, there is a specific type of person that like, went along with all of that.

Yes. They have like a real like spite and bitterness towards that. I think that was totally in the air. And part of the reason why Nelk as a, oh God, I hate saying Nelk, why Nelk as a brand and Nelk Nelk as political agents were so successful. And I think they just represent like a big part of our politics now,

which is just shameless opportunism. Like these guys threw a huge party on the beach during COVID, not as a political statement, statement because it would get clicks. I think when you look at these guys buddying up with Trump, to them, it's probably just good business. Also, Trump's probably fun to hang out with, unfortunately. I think that's evident in how they've become more political. They're still doing pranks, but they have also launched this podcast, Full Send, and they have guests on there like JD Vance, Jordan Peterson, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, RFK Jr. They're not like ruining their fun brand, but they've realized that like this is a totally

different revenue stream that they can tap into. And exposing their audience to like Trump's various goons and cronies. I hate to say it, but it moves the over to the window. Yeah. And it triggers the YouTube algorithm to send more videos like that to people who are watching their stuff in front of creators that do have a real ideology. And we're going to get into that right after our break. Today's sponsor is I I hope it's Feastables.

I wanna wash down some Feastables with some Prime Energy Drink. Okay, Felix, are you familiar with the Dark Enlightenment? Of course, of course. I was on the early to middle period Obama internet. I was there when they came up with the moniker EmoProg, I was called that. And so I was there.

What does that mean? EmoProg meant someone who like supported Obama in 2008, but like took exception with his expansion of the drone war and sort of his- Okay, I thought I meant you were into emotional hardcore and progressive metal. Well, it's a very stupid moniker, but it was widely used around this time. So I got to see the dawn of the dark enlightenment or at least it's public debut. On the first podcast I was ever a part of, we did sort of like a gag interview with Justine Tunney where we like, do you know that name?

I don't, no, no, I don't. Justine Tunney is, I don't know if she still works at Google but she at least at some time like worked for Google after being part of the Occupy movement and became, had this like, you know, in cranking where she becomes like a, you know, in cranking. Yeah. Where she becomes like a, you know, crazy techno fucking monarchist.

All these proto figures that sort of like were showing up around the same time as Curtis Yarvin, but never reached his profile. So that's who we're gonna be talking about right now. So just before we go further in, I wanna kind of give a very broad strokes definition what we're talking about here. And you can tell me if I get this wrong, but basically, if for listeners, if you hear the term dark enlightenment or sometimes neo reactionary ism, there are different strands of this stuff, but it largely is about the idea of a technologically

optimized city state with some sort of like CEO monarch figure at the top. This kind of like futuristic version of monarchy. And Steve Bannon is a proponent of this stuff. But I think the big name du jour, he's back is Curtis Yarvin, who he's a blogger crank from who's been doing this for about 30 years, and he's caught the ear of a lot of people, namely JD Vance, I would say, in terms of in the administration. I mean, like the Dark Enlightenment,

as we knew it 10 years ago, or even to five years ago, is kind of, it didn't go away, but people just either, they became fully invested in the Teal program. It's the sort of thing you'd think would never catch on widely or have cultural cache, but billionaire money can go a long way. Yeah, yeah. He sort of like, he stripped it for parts

and made it more salable. So what kind of parts would you say he stripped away? Like how would you say it differs, you know, between then and now? I don't think Peter Teal in the next 10 years is going to try to establish an American royal family. No, I don't think Peter Thiel in the next 10 years is going to try to establish an American royal family. No, I don't think so either. I don't think it's because he's too invested

in the constitution. I just think he sees that sort of thing as like too weird and too much of a waste of time. I also think it's absorbed a lot of very like quintessential American libertarianism. Like the idea of like the Silicon Valley city state, this sort of like a snow crash, like from the novel, the idea of like the Silicon Valley guys like Peter Thiel

see the dark enlightenment as a path towards, I am the CEO of this city state that's networked with this other city state and we don't have a federal government. Like it's, I think it's become more American over time as it's become more popular here. Yeah, what it ended up becoming, I would say, is like it's Peter Thiel looking at the type

of individual city state that a person like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos is and going, no, I would rather be, I would rather be like a Medici. Right, yes, that's exactly it. I don't wanna be an NGO in a person. I want to be an individual sovereign. I think that would be the big sort of difference is that I think the original stuff

from the Dark Enlightenment or Neo-Reactionism that I read was very much based on sort of centralizing power, whereas the newer stuff I'm reading is not that. It's actually quite, it's almost the opposite in some instances It is interesting though like how? both Irrelevant the original definition is wall at the same time. It's

Probably like way more articulated than Trumpism is as a concept. Oh sure. I mean Trumpism is not really an ideology I would argue. Yeah, and likely the next, at least the next presidential candidate that we can say with like 90% sureness, JD Vance, is a member of that. He's basically a member of this.

Yes, I would agree. I also think the trickle down sort of effects of dark enlightenment, the sort of like, hipsterfication of it, it's not surprising to me that former Occupy Wall Street, like, Google employees would love this. You know, like, debate club dorks like JD Vance would love it, but that it could be hip to young people

just feels so absurd to me. Are you familiar with the Hegelian E-Girl drama? Oh God. You know what really fucking astounded me was I saw this stuff is going on in Chicago. I couldn't believe that. I grew up in Chicago. I was so appalled.

You know, young people in Chicago aren't supposed to know about any of this. They're supposed to go to piano bars. They're supposed to go to River North and drink shitty Sky Vodka cocktails. They're supposed to be drinking cardamom lattes in the park at a farmer's market.

That's what they should be doing in Chicago. Buy like a $300,000, $1,700 square foot condo in Wicker Park, but still somehow overpriced despite being like one-tenth the price of its equivalent in New York. You fill it with like a sort of like pan-African art, even though you've never displayed an interest in that before.

No one in the Buffalo Wild Wings in Chicago should know about Hegel. That's not how it's supposed to work. No one in the Buffalo Wild Wings in Chicago should know about Hegel. That's not how it's supposed to work. It made me realize what like, you know, the guys in the movie, the Battle of all Cheers did. That's how I felt. You know, I wanted to start, I wanted to like go back there and like, you know, snatch books

out of people's hands. Somehow this world is appealing to young people that want to be smart and edgy and, you know, at least hold books, you know, walk around with them. Yeah. And so, like, if, you know, if we're talking in the first section about, like, kind of like the far right infiltration of bro culture, I think the other side of that coin is the far right infiltration of hipster culture. Hold on. Let me just summarize this real quick because it's so goddamn stupid. So the Hegelian E-girl clique were three people, Anna, Nikki and Sanjay, and they believed in a sort of one interpretation of the philosophy of Hegel

and they wanted to discuss his philosophy. But rather than subject you to that, here, you can listen to them provide their philosophical insights to our modern world on, of course, it's called the Horseshoe Podcast. You guys like clout unapologetically. Everyone actually wants power, and this is why anarchists are unconsciously fascist.

Oh, okay. This is our hot take. Controversial take. I want to talk about this in a video with Gen Z being the most social Darwinist generation. Where all of the Gen Z slang revolves around aura, riz, folding. It's all about power. Everyone before was coping because a lot of people...

Because basically Gen Z is also the most critical of liberalism. Gen Z is more actually conscious of these power games. And instead of repressing them, they actually just bring them out and it makes it better. And that's why actually we can talk about your cancellation. Oh my god. Passing through racism non-racist league. The millennials were the ones who actually got mad at that because you're not supposed to say that. Yeah. But then, but Gen Z people understand that because if you actually repress racism and you press the idea of racism, you actually become a cop and you actually become in a

way more racist. You invest more in racism. You end up getting a jouissance from being anti-racist. That is ultimately kind of the same as the jouissance you get from being racist. Right, right. Although you got canceled because you said anti-racism is racism. Yes. All right. I saw it. On some, well, okay. I didn't say it quite like that. It's so fucking long. It's so long.

It says so little. There are people who are grasping at obscure and arcane philosophies and using them to be mean to each other on the internet as part of a larger fascination with Yarvanistic politics. This idea of we're gonna use the internet to do this weird, fucked up, spooky politics thing

and be mean to each other on Twitter. And that's sort of it. It's like very cargo cultish. It's like the boxer rebellion. Like they find a pamphlet on the ground, they turn it into an entire religion. No, I think that's exactly right. I don't have the academic background

to like interrogate Hegel or how correctly or incorrectly they're into any of his ideas. I have no reason to doubt them, but just it seems like they're just like aping previous trends and micro trends that they've seen before. They don't even know why they're doing any of this. It is the most like joyless pantomime of like a shitty subculture that I've ever seen.

And it all blows up for them in July of last year when they try to throw a Hegelian E-girl party in New York. They pass her on to Flyer, they get roasted on the internet, the group splits up, and then this is what one of the members, Sanjay, said after the breakup. She voiced a few objections. In particular, she felt like Anna's good standing largely stemmed from her incomprehensibility because people don't have a clue what this is actually about. Possibly Anna doesn't either. Sanji self identifies as a centrist but was uncomfortable

with how it seemed like the e-girls directed most of their ire against the left while remaining more or less silent about the right. I mean, it's literally I think it is sort of a great microcosm of a lot of the sort of infighting in the kind of like post dark enlightenment world where like it's all of these kind of hipsters who don't wanna say what they're saying and fighting about it and stuff.

More than anything, it's a waste of youth. That's a beautiful point actually. Like, I just doing this in your fucking mid twenties, why? You have the rest of your life to do this. You have the rest of your life to be in a. Your mid 20s are for, you should be like, wake up a 10 year relationship.

Move somewhere where you don't fucking know anyone. I just joined a book club at 35. Have said like, fuck 50 people on a floor mattress. So this is, we are essentially talking about a book club. That's what this is. It's like a mean book club, which people in their 20s don't, you shouldn't be in book clubs.

You should be in clubs is what you should be. You should be in nightclubs. To call this a book club is kind of like an insult to the concept. Yeah. No one is reading the book. It's just all the gossip. All right. So to sum up, you have Nick Fuentes, who isn't winning over Gen Z directly,

but like, I mean, thankfully, but he is sort of at the top of this ecosystem, shaping the way young people talk about politics, at least atmospherically. And then in terms of who is actually doing the work to redefine the way politics feels culturally to young people, on one side you have bro culture being infiltrated by literal members of the Trump administration through podcasts, which is just an outrageous sentence. And then on the other side, you have what would have been the cool counter-cultural hipster sphere that would be usually opposed to these ideas

being infiltrated by dark enlightenment dorks and Peter Thiel money and like turning into like not little Nazi book clubs there's like nowhere for young people to go to identify themselves that isn't sort of attached to these ideas and Making that even harder for a young person is that you have organizations like Talking Points USA Of course, they're like not only infiltrating college campuses physically and like setting up little, you know, fucking Hitler youth chapters there,

but then they're using those chapters to completely flood TikTok with right wing and conservative content. So they've effectively snuck into any sphere of young people's lives in America over the last decade. And this is Charlie Kirk's wet dream since he was 18. His massive forehead and small teeth have been trying to reach young people. And as of February, 2025, according to the New York Times, his Hitler Youth Outreach Group, Talking Points USA, has been able to set up 850 chapters at colleges across the country,

which is truly one of the more pathetic things I've ever heard of. Imagine being, imagine like that's how you spent your early 20s. My God. Do you feel like this was maybe better for reaching young people than Hegelian e-girl drama? Yeah, sure. I think anything with demonstrable results. Other than ruining a rave. Yeah.

Charlie Kirk, one of many secret Illinoisans. Based on his face. You could tell. Yeah, one way or another, there's something wrong with our natural orca Dante or the ratio of our teeth to the size of our mouth or too much gums, not enough gums. He's a lot of gum.

He's a lot of gum. And our, it's that and our anti-charisma, which Charlie Kirk has in spades, a true man of Illinois. His origin story supposedly, like according to him, so take it with a grain of salt, is that he was going to get into West Point, but they gave his slot to like a black guy or something. I think I've heard a version of this. Yeah. Very, very funny because it's like, well, it's not like it's hard to become an officer. You could have just gone to like University of Illinois, you know, join, done fucking anything. You don't have to go to West Point. Wait, remind me, I want to make sure I get this correct,

because I sometimes get him confused with Steven Crowder, the former Arthur voice actor, but Charlie Kirk did put on the diaper, right? He sat in the crib wearing a diaper. That was not Charlie Kirk. It was someone working on a branch of Talking Boys USA, yes. Yeah, yeah, it was someone who like worked at a branch. Yeah. One of the diaper boys and one of the far flung branches.

But what I think is really interesting and kind of ties to what you've been talking about today with regards to like the pandemic and changing these people's belief systems and sort of like giving them time to like actually figure out how to shake off the what you call the background radiation of liberalism. Charlie Kirk actually describes this exact process. I'll read it to you. He says, I did a lot of reading on postmodernism. Sure, man.

I'm sure this is this was during the pandemic. He said, and I started realizing that what was happening was a slow motion cultural revolution fulfilling the hopes and ambitions of Angela Davis, Jacques Derrida and Michelle Foucault. This was their contention that in order to usher in something new, this culture must be incinerated. That, I think, is a very objective reading of it. What they were saying was actually the same thing a religious person would say, that everyone lives by some agreed-upon code of conduct. The question is, what code? I take that Caldwellian view from his book, The Age of Entitlement that we went through a new founding in the 60s and that the Civil Rights Act has actually superseded the US Constitution as its reference point.

In fact, I bet if you pulled Americans, most of them would have more reverence for the Civil Rights Act and the Constitution. I could be wrong, but I think I'm right. And then he goes on to say basically that like COVID convinced him that civilization is collapsing. Yeah, no, if you told me that that guy never left Libertyville. I'm just imagining his massive skull poking up from behind a book about postmodernism that he's reading. I obviously think he's a clown, but I do think that his experience is very, very typical for a lot of these guys,

which is that they were more or less like internet slurries pre-COVID, and then they emerged post-COVID much more sharpened. Charlie Kirk is like the typical type of like remora to the larger swamp creatures we're familiar with from the McConnell-Bush ecosystem. There have always been guys like this in movement conservatism who run some type of youth wing that acts more as a feeder org for future administrations than it does as, you know, an actually probably effective

get out the vote operation for young voters. Yeah. But the experience with the background radiation of liberalism we just talked about and the everything being a reaction and counter reaction to 2020, when everyone went outside again, when he emerged, he was no longer the swamp creature, the sheepdog, the false tribune, he was speaking for people who had, he finally did have like the consent of the rule. Yeah. Yeah. A significant amount of like young professionals, either in liberal centers or like urban centers

within purple or light red states, who felt this immense abrasion after 2020, he did begin to speak for them. There's this thing that I continually kick myself about. I regret it deeply in the 2010s. And as a reporter interviewing a lot of these people, like this is when I'm like, you know, I'm regularly talking to, like, I'm, you know, I'm covering like Milo rallies, or like I did an interview with like Richard Spencer'm, you know, I'm covering like Milo rallies or like I,

I did an interview with like Richard Spencer who was super fucking boring and spent the whole time time at Depeche mode and like all these freaks, right? And I'm like very dismissive about them. And I was very dismissive about Charlie Kirk, the sort of right wing invasion of both YouTube, but also college campuses. And I just remember thinking like, that's so fucking lame. Everyone knows how fucking lame this is. It's not going to work. And I feel like, I think I was being very myopic. I think I was like not really seeing the full picture

of what these guys were doing and how intensely they would go about it. They really invaded youth spaces and played the long game in a way that I think was very easy to laugh at until it just wasn't anymore. Yeah. I don't think you should kick yourself too hard because, you know, for one, it really did appear to most people that they were failing utterly. Completely idiotic. Until they weren't. Exactly. But I think you're missing another key element of this, and another key element of this whole story. You have this irritation to background radiation. It existed in 2021. It existed in 2020. It existed in 2022. It existed in 2023. Why is 2024 and 2025 so different? It's because liberalism and the guardrails of the deep state

spent their last bits of energy on shitty, stupid Joe Biden and his crackhead fucking son. And- Hey, hold on, hold on. This show, we think Hunter is America's boyfriend. I love Hunter. I started this whole fucking Hunter thing in 2017. He's the best.

I was the first guy who talked about Hunter in 2017. I want to smoke crack and listen to Fleet Foxes with Hunter Biden really badly, actually. No, no. I'm putting an end to this. I started this whole fucking thing in 2017 because I read an article where a Chinese guy paid Hunter Biden with a diamond, and I thought it was so funny. And I thought his life where he's having all these paternity suits was so hilarious

and so much like the show fucking Ozarks. And I thought, you know, and I said, he's more qualified than Joe. He should be president. He should be, I agree. And everyone, you know, I'm like the boss in Metal Gear Solid 3. No one understood what I meant. Like Hunter, I also get deeply emotional in strip clubs, so I feel like very akin to him.

But I, okay, wait, to get back on track, I think you're right that it's hard to deny how little this sort of like status quo could accomplish, you know, with all the chips pushed up. Like they still couldn't do it. And I feel like now it's over. And that's why this fucking narrative that like, you know, this explicit brand of like JD Vance, Peter Thiel stretching out 19 year olds on a casting couch

and setting them on the worst course of austerity in America since Herbert fucking Hoover is super popular after a one by 1.5 fucking point in a national cost of living crisis that is inevitable is so like flattering to Democrats and and to this fucking movement that also has no future. The immediate future until something breaks, until we get to the next thing of American politics is who was holding the bag last.

I wanna talk about the future, about where we're headed with all this, but we'll talk about it after the break. We're gonna talk about what is next for this horrible little world of right-wing influencers and what they're doing to young people's politics. And I'm gonna drop my personal theory about what's about to happen.

And we're gonna talk about that right after an ad from our sponsors, which are probably gonna be a mix of like meme coins and like ways you can buy gold. I want to throw my thesis at you and I want you to tear it apart if you disagree. I feel like the age of the right-wing influencer is over in the sense that like there will never be one big one anymore, but there will be thousands of very small ones for every weird thing you believe.

Does that sort of clock with the research you've done? Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I even think that we're kind of living in that world now. Me too. Yeah, it's the war economy. It's a highly mercenary environment where no one man, one show, even one media concern, will control a majority in that world.

Or even a sizable plurality that's much larger than the next. I think comparing it to larger media is smart, where like, because the right is so aggressive about using the internet to organize and operate, they are the most at risk of being guided by its forces. So as the internet has splintered, so have they, which I do think is a problem

that they will eventually have to reckon with. And it goes back to who's the guy they're all trying to impress still. We talked about it at the beginning. They're all trying to impress Nick Fuentes. Justin, the same way. Do you think so? Do you think so? I don't think that they're literally trying to win the personal favor of Nick Fuentes, trying to win the personal favor of Nick Fuentes, but I think that generally they do want to be seen as ideologically coherent and at least honest by like his listeners, by that type of person. Because of this specific mercenary environment where no one audience is big enough, they are ruled similar to what dictated the background radiation liberalism that came

before, who has like the most cultural cash. And right now it's him. I think he, he made the right bet on the generational shift that he, I mean, he's young. I mean, he's, I don't think he's older than 26 or 27 at this point still. He clearly saw the way the wind was blowing for people his age. And I think, Charlie Kirk, I don't want to say like, you got to give him credit, but he clearly smartly understood how large parts of America would start to interface with mainstream conservatism. But Nick Fuentes truly did understand and was able to articulate first a very gen Z reactionary politics

that like no one else has even come close, I think to sort of capturing the way he has. Yeah, and he was in a sense sort of like the monster built by his millennial predecessor. Yes, yes. Their mirror image, he is formed by the negative image of the millennial media that came before him. He was formed in that crucible as someone who will never leave,

will never be forced out. Depending on how things shake out, I do think he's gonna be one of these guys that either continues to accurately predict the future of the movement, but is so intense and insane that every time the status quo reconfigures, they leave him out of it,

but everyone's still talking to him, or he does find a way to soften it without feeling like he's sold out and takes a position as head of Department of Education or something. Yeah, maybe, maybe, I don't know. I almost, you remember how like the beginning of Biden was sort of the end for like squishy monetizable

left liberal identity politics, or like amenable to like a Liz Warren style of a program of politics. Are you talking about about Instagram infographics? Instagram infographics, the concept of paying $300 to go to a live podcast taping with DeRay. Like, shit like that, right? That was the end of shit like that.

Biden was the end of shit like that. Yes, I actually didn't really clock that, that all that shit dies out the minute he wins. And yeah, I feel like he won and a whole bunch of people who were secretly Canadian stopped talking about American politics on Twitter. Yes, yes. Like a whole bunch of like people wearing

no prescription glasses who are secretly Canadian, like making like infographics like on Instagram, all that shit disappeared. The conservative environment is different, but I do wonder, you know, will we see similar thing? Can I throw a question at you that is like tangentially related to this, but it was something that my producer Grant

and I were debating earlier today. And it's one of these like sliding door movements that you're talking about where, what if this happened versus that? And I do wonder if this is a missing piece of this conversation we've been having, which is the thing that I think about a lot is the banning of Trump from mainstream social media

forced him to change his behavior online in a way that inadvertently made him more prepared for the future we were all heading towards. And I think helped right-wing media see a path forward in the sense that like we exiled him from the city without to the woods, without realizing the city was burning down behind us and we'd eventually be out in the woods too. That's incredibly interesting. I think yeah I think I I kind of

yeah I think you're right because what did he do right after January 6th? Oh my god I'm so fucking sorry all these people broke the law please let me have Facebook please let me have Twitter. It was like the most disgusted supporters ever were with him. Oh yeah. And then you make it so you banish him from like the liberal realm. And yeah, like there are problems there where you like, you can be in a self curated bubble.

But the space he was just banished from was also a self curated bubble. Which was being destroyed like literally at that moment. Like it was all ending and no one really knew. And now you look around and you look at the people we've talked about today. Like you look at the Mano sphere that is just everywhere and everything. Yeah. You look at the sort of like weird, arcane youth movements that are like fasci without being fasci and like the like normie college students that are like at like

talking points, USA mixers. And you think about like all the random ass TikTok influencers that are just like feeding you like AI generated like Hitler quotes. And it's just like everything broke. And we back in the bubble were like he's defeated, but we're now with him outside. In 2019, you can make someone who is like on an HBO show Back in the in the bubble were like he's defeated, but we were now with him outside in 2019 You can make someone who is like on an HBO show

Apologize because like their uncle voted for Trump. Yes That's really you're saying a real thing that happened yes, that's how strong articles were and then they banish him from article zone, and suddenly no one gives a fuck about articles. Even when the articles now are like, they're doing fucking austerity, the most, you know, traditionally the most unpopular thing ever, planes are falling out of the sky. Everything is so meaningless and borderless and degenerated.

Those are culturally the same articles as Sidney Sweeney's uncle voted for Trump. You know, you're like a 19 year old like camp counselor has your Social Security number and articles own is so mad about it and no one gives a fuck anymore because like the like the whole the whole thing changed, the whole everything shifted. Yeah. And they didn't realize it was happening because I mean, in some ways, 2022 was like humiliating for Republicans and really bad for them.

It was also really bad for Democrats because they thought everyone fucking loves this. Yeah. Everyone loves this shit. Everyone loves this. Yeah. Everyone loves this shit. Everyone loves this fucking economy. Everyone wants Ukraine to be at war forever. Everyone loves the state of the world. Everyone loves what Tony Blinken is doing, whether it is him setting the world aflame for Israel or his horrific jazz performances.

Yeah. 2022, it all falls apart. It was falling apart up until that point, but it is the threshold. Now this shit is everywhere and in everything. The background radiation is no longer in the background and it's no longer liberal. And I guess I wanna end with like a very simple question,

which is, how can we fix all of this? One or two sentences, what do you think? How do we fix all of it? is how can we fix all of this? One or two sentences, what do you think? How do we fix all of it? God, since 2020, me and Matt Krisman have agreed a few military officers with a few good ideas to change a whole lot.

Yeah, cool. Yeah, no, I think that has gone well in most countries that it's happened to. I think you're right. I think we just need a charismatic general. Went well until a certain secretary of state intervened in Libya. I think we need a charismatic general and a bunch of helicopters over the ocean, right? No, no, no.

That's how this works. I do think that one of the last institutions that people have any faith and any genuine positive feelings towards that could actually survive interrogation is the U.S. military. I think one way or the other, the military is going to feel like its hand is forced and they have to take over administration of politics either directly or indirectly. Maybe there's a good world where we get American AMLO, an American Shine Bomb, and maybe there's a second best world where those military officers that take over in a few years, they read a little green book.

Just for clarity for our listeners, you're referencing the current and the previous president of Mexico. That's what you're, Shine Bomb AMLO. Yeah, I just, for anyone listening to this, that finds themselves leading the American junta in five to 10 years, if you want state-run media organs, happy to help, don't wanna be imprisoned for that.

So let me know. You know who emailed our show? A fucking F-22 pilot. Really? What did they say? Yeah. They've been listening for a while. Maybe, what I'm saying is like,

maybe these guys are out there. I'm saying maybe this isn't such a long shot. Hey, you know, anything to make it so I never have to hear about Elon Musk ever again. That's really, if Adjunta is what that is required, fine. Felix, I want to thank you for coming on the show. This was infinitely fascinating and super fun. As fun as a conversation about various fascists

and reactionaries can be. I feel like this is such a silly question, but I ask it to all our guests. If people want to follow you on the internet, where can they do that? Oh yeah, what's your truth social account? Like how active are you on x.com? My Twitter is by your logic.

You can also listen to my podcast, Choppa Trap House. Wait, you're that Felix? Yeah. Oh shit, okay. Are you on Blue Sky? Have you made the jump to Blue Sky? I do have a Blue Sky account, but I really just, the first day I was there,

I saw that there was a posting strike or no one stopped posting. And we're just yelling at each other for breaking the posting strike. And I was like, you know what? I'd rather go down with the ship. I feel like I, everything in my life that I have now, I have because of Twitter.

And yeah, no, no matter how bad it gets, I'll sync with that fucking ship. Every minute I spend on Blue Sky, I become more conservative. I'm like, actually I think Trump rocks and I hate all of you fucking assholes so much. I know bullshit. The first thing I saw was like,

people are, there's an exemption for sex workers to break the posting strike on Blue Sky. And I could not figure out what the posting strike was about until weeks later. And so it was like the perfect like incomprehensible intro left bullshit. I think it's like banning Trump.

I think it's good. Fucking keep those people. Quarantinedning Trump. I think it's good. Fucking keep those people's quarantine. Yeah, no, I had someone today message me in a reply and be like, I don't understand what this means and I hate it and I'm mad about it. And I was like, yeah, that's it. That's that's the discourse on blue sky. No one understands what anyone's talking about. And they're furious about it. Blue sky is like the world's greatest repository of people who like

at like age 45 or like, you know what? I'm meant to it. Blue sky is like the world's greatest repository of people who like at like age 45 are like, you know what I'm meant to be a game dev. I don't know how to code. I don't know any of this shit. I don't know how to build a game. I don't know what a level looks like, but I have great ideas. Yeah, I'm really glad the division of the CIA

that invented Steven Universe got another whack and created blue sky. Thank you so much for coming. Steven Universe got another whack and created a blue sky. Thank you so much for coming. My absolute pleasure. You can check out a longer version of today's episode on our Patreon, which is patreon.com slash panic world. It's good. It's great. You should go pay money to hear that. Thank you, I love you. Panic World is a Garbage Day production.

Subscribe to the newsletter at garbageday.email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumas. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our deranged logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com slash panic world. Please give us products to sell by contacting Multitude at multitude.production slash ads.

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