I’ve always been very grateful for the work of Eric Kaufmann in helping to quantify ideological trends, understand the impact of immigration, and even tease out the kind of political personality types that stalk the scene.
It’s not a trend until he confirms it. And in the case of the Groypers and other far-right Gen Z influencers, he has produced some data-backed research that, I’ll be honest, fits my intuition on this topic and the anecdotal evidence I’m hearing from conservative parents and their Gen-Z kids. Namely, that yes, a lot of young people are listening to Nick Fuentes but that his views can’t simply be projected onto his audience.
Some of the finding are surprising in themselves. Here are some of the facts Kaufmann finds about Fuentes’s audience, relayed in his piece for Compact:
Only 13 percent say immigration should be cut to zero. Just one in five say you have to have an American accent or be white to be a “true American.” Almost a quarter say that a non-English speaking America would be no less American than the country is today. They rate blacks a relatively positive fifty-seven out of one-hundred on a feelings thermometer. One in three Groypers are minorities and a similar share are women. They are more Kanye West than David Duke.
True, controlling for other factors, Fuentes’s followers are twelve points cooler toward Jews than other Trump supporters their age. Yet Jews still garner a forty-three from Fuentes followers, which, at slightly below neutral, is higher than Groypers’ rating of Palestinians, at thirty-seven.
They are consuming this partly as entertainment, and I would venture further — as titillation. Part of the reason I’ve lingered over a Fuentes clip is simply that it’s hard to resist the immediate morbid curiosity of watching someone who is setting himself on fire. Kaufmann’s work is not entirely reassuring. Some of the trends attributed to the influence of Fuentes turn out to be generational in nature; younger people are cooler toward Israel and more open to conspiratorial thinking about it. But the age-cohort effect seems to be much stronger than the content. What Kaufmann finds striking about the study is not the presence of animus, but the turn toward nihilism and unreason.
Gen Z in particular has a performative streak.
The takeaway from my report is that for many Zoomers, violating taboos is a separate cognitive dimension from holding racist, white nationalist and antisemitic political attitudes. On the Manhattan Institute survey, half of those who openly identified as racists endorsed affirmative action, while among those who said they were antisemites, more said white people are favored in society than said Jews are.
Avowed racists for affirmative action? The kids may not be the haters they claim to be. That doesn’t mean things are alright.