The Groyper War against the shills in Conservative Inc. continues to buck the trajectory set by previous internet revolts. Like its predecessors, it started organically as a cri de coeur by frustrated youth who’ve caught on to the fact that organizations which ought to serve their interests are instead treating them like cattle. Unlike Sad Puppies, GamerGate, ComicsGate, etc., the groypers have beaten the odds and landed a knockout punch against their adversaries.
Contra the kept men of mainstream Conservative news, Don Jr. was not the Groypers’ target. Nicholas J. Fuentes, the public face of the movement, repeatedly voiced support for the President’s son. The groypers’ main objective at UCLA–as it has been since the beginning–was establishment gatekeeper Charlie Kirk.
For those who are unaware of Kirk, he’s the big donor errand boy the Conservative end of the Swamp installed to run their campus recruiting scam TPUSA. In that capacity Kirk thumps his chest about supporting Trump, even though as late as 2016 he was saying stuff like this.
The fact that Conservative Inc. thought they could put a dullard like Kirk in charge of their campus outreach and get away with it highlights how out of touch they are. Much of the credit for the groypers’ success is probably due to their opponents’ incompetence.
That’s not to deny the groypers their laurels for choosing their enemies wisely. From the beginning Fuentes urged his followers to focus their fire on Kirk, knowing that he’s the weak link. That strategy has paid off spectacularly, not only humiliating Kirk but setting him up to make a disastrous series of unforced errors.
Kirk actually made the right opening move by initially dismissing Fuentes and the groypers as trolls there to sow mischief at his events. That was the correct response, and we wouldn’t be talking about him now if he’d stuck to his guns.
Instead, Kirk let the groypers’ uncomfortable questions get under his skin. Shouting down clean-cut young go-getters at a free speech event is a bad look any day. Calling Christian Trump supporters names for asking legitimate policy questions of an organization that claims to represent them drew unflattering comparisons between Kirk and the Left.
By silencing kids who came to his Q&A with tough but fair questions respectfully asked, Kirk stepped right into a classic Xanatos Gambit. He’s left himself with only bad choices.
- Continuing to evade groyper questions outs him as a fraud to more and more people.
- Answering those questions blows the lid off Conservative Inc.’s anti-American agenda.
- Rigging the Q&A by profiling attendees and stacking the deck with plants betrays weakness.
- Cancelling the Q&A calls down all of the negative consequences above, in addition to ceding control of his events to the groypers for all the world to see.
There’s no getting around it. Fuentes has confounded the armchair pundits who discounted him as a clout hound and led the groypers to a significant culture war breakthrough. It does appear he’s finally cracked the cipher that’s bedeviled dissident movements these past five years.
And it’s not for lack of fierce opposition. TPUSA, Conservative Inc. mouthpieces, the mainstream media, and even Antifa joined forces to break the groyper offensive.
The groypers found themselves targeted by news blackouts, doxxing attempts, and smear campaigns–any one of which easily could have sent them the way of the Tea Party. Yet the attacks rolled right off them like water off a frog’s back.
Here’s my analysis of how the groypers succeeded where everyone else failed.
- A clearly defined positive ethos: Too many past movements have simply been lists of grievances. The groypers are unambiguously Christian American patriots.
- Strong undisputed leadership: In sharp contrast to the “no leaders” directive that quickly splintered GamerGate into anti-SJW vs. Ethics Only camps, Nick Fuentes has claimed the title of Groyper Supreme Leader. He has a small cadre of generals who advise him on strategy, but ultimately Nick directs the Groyper War through his America First show and social media.
- Real-world impact: This was a major coup for the groypers. Nobody before them figured out how to take their internet mojo into meatspace without the whole affair degenerating into a clown funeral. Their success probably stems from the next point …
- Wise choice of targets: Whereas other dissident groups tried to fight the Left’s fortified positions head on, the groypers chose to attack a softer target–the Left’s housebroken Conservatives.
This last move was brilliant because it takes two to control the Overton Window. For fifty years, the Left’s game has been to keep pushing the allowable limits of public discourse ever leftward while employing Conservative gatekeepers to offer token resistance. The Gunga Din Cons always give in, and the result is a ratchet effect which moves the culture gradually yet inexorably to the Left.
Now the groypers are successfully exposing Conservative Inc.’s scam. TPUSA–a major arm of that scam–was just publicly discredited in front of the President’s son. They’ll almost certainly be replaced with a new “patriotic pro-Trump” campus group, as Kirk’s bumblers replaced YAF, but no matter. Since Kirk plunged Conservative Inc. into Fuentes’ no-win scenario, the groypers need only stay the course to similarly destroy each new bowtie-wearing neck of the hydra.
The endgame would be replacing Conservative Inc. shills with genuine Christian nationalists typified by the groypers.
Imagine if instead of engaging in kabuki theater with retrograde versions of themselves from 2004, the Left had to contend with opponents who unflinchingly demanded an end to immigration, the overturning of Roe v Wade, and the outlawing of no-fault divorce.
We can dare to dream, thanks to a plague of cozy frogs.