I moved to Australia in 2013 when I was nineteen, and stayed for about four years. While I was there, I got involved with the “Alt-Right.”
I use scare quotes because the “Alt-Right” doesn’t exist. It never really did. The media used it as a byword for “racist,” but that was always thin gruel. Our group was mostly High Tories and neoreactionaries, high-church Anglicans and traditionalist Catholics, with a few Guenonians, Evolians, Spenglerians, identitarians, archeofuturists, and reactionary modernists mixed in.
Every once in a while, a neo-Nazi would try to infiltrate our meet-ups, but we always turfed them. We didn’t turn out racists as a rule, though. We tried to convert them. We hoped to show them that, as Christopher Dawson said,
[It is not], as the racialists believe, that culture is the result of predetermined racial inheritance. On the contrary. . . . From the beginning the social way of life which is culture has been deliberately ordered and directed in accordance with the higher laws of life which are religion. As the powers of heaven rule the seasons, so the divine powers rule the life of man and society. . . . [Religion] has been the guardian of tradition, the preserver of the moral law, the educator and the teacher of wisdom.
Anyway, I got to know a guy who was pretty high up in the British alt-right. We’ll call him Bob. And he was definitely a racist.
One day, Bob messaged me on Facebook to announce that he was supporting Ben Carson in the 2016 Republican primary.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” he said, “if anyone ever accuses me of being racist, I can just say, ‘Hey, I supported Ben Carson! Would a racist support a black man for president?’ Pretty smart, huh?”
I thought about it and said, “No.”
There was a pause. “Why not?”
“Because I feel like that’s exactly what folks would expect a racist to do.”
Bob was pretty crestfallen, but he bounced back and endorsed Trump instead.
After that exchange, I realized something: the only thing worse than a racist is a fake racist—someone who’s cruel in the service of a cruel ideology he doesn’t even believe in.
After that, I began to notice this nihilism everywhere in “Alt-Right” circles. Mind you, it wasn’t the Moldbug fanboys or the Evola junkies. It wasn’t just the racists. It wasn’t even mostly the racists. It was the trolls—the legions and legions of trolls.
It’s crowded under that bridge, and yet one troll always stood out: Milo Yiannopoulos. I never understood his appeal, and burned many bridges trying to warn conservatives off of him. Politically, he’s the very worst kind of libertine. I’d assumed any red-blooded heterosexual man (or woman) would find his campiness repulsive. And, of course, he’s a bona fide groomer apologist.
The latter finally got him booted from the public square in 2017. Then, last year, he reappeared—and with a brand-new schtick. Milo told everyone he’d “converted” to Catholicism. He was giving up the gay lifestyle and devoting himself to helping other gay men do the same. Michael Voris even gave him a job at Church Militant.
I strongly suspected he was faking. I still do, for three reasons. (1) Any priest worth his salt would tell Milo to spend the rest of his life in quiet prayer and penance. (2) Sincere converts don’t immediately start trying to make money off their new faith. (3) He’s a sociopath.
That became abundantly clear (again) when Milo announced that he was building a gay conversion therapy center in Florida. “This has been the easiest thing to raise money for that I have ever done,” he told the press. Of course, that money went right into his pocket. If you look at the website for The Milo Center (as he calls it), the whole thing is clearly a joke. But I’m sure he made a small fortune in “donations.”
I tried to raise the alarm. I asked a couple of different magazines if I could do a piece warning Catholics not to buy into his latest con. The editors all turned me down, for the same reason: they didn’t want to give him oxygen.
And I get that. Really, I do. But I also know there are many good, well-intentioned conservatives and Christians who are going to fall for his con. It’s not their fault; Milo is an extremely gifted shyster. Still, that’s all he is. He’s a troll—as grotesque as anything you’ll find in a Swedish fairy-tale.
So is his new pal Nick Fuentes. Mr. Fuentes drives the media nuts because he’s a massive category error. On the one hand, he’s constantly spouting racist nonsense. On the other, he’s half-Mexican and (along with Milo) trying to get Kanye West into the White House.
Would a racist support a black man for president?
As I learned with Bob, the answer is no. The thing is, Fuentes isn’t a racist. He’ll say racist things for the sake of pushing people’s buttons and riling up his base, but he doesn’t believe any of it. He doesn’t believe in anything.
I’ll admit, my opinion of Mr. Fuentes has changed over the years. At first he seemed promising—extremely intelligent, though badly in need of direction. I had hoped he would drop the attention-seeking nonsense and try to become a serious activist before he totally discredited himself.
Then came the whole catboy fiasco. (If you don’t know, don’t ask.) (Seriously, don’t ask.) It was disgusting and degrading—not only for Mr. Fuentes, but for his followers. His America First movement started by shouting “Viva Franco!” and ended with his boyfriend livestreaming gay sex acts.
It was the Milo problem all over again. Young men came for the ultraconservative rhetoric but ended up getting sucked into a vortex of sadistic, degenerate nihilism. It’s bad for the Right, bad for the country, bad for the Church, and bad for their souls.
I don’t think many of my readers are at risk of falling into the #Ye24 scam. But Donald Trump is taking their challenge seriously. And it seems Kanye is working with Karen Giorno, who ran Trump’s campaign in Florida during the 2016 cycle.
Will the legions of trolls be enough to carry Mr. West to the White House? I doubt it. But would Milo and Fuentes be able to con enough conservatives into supporting Kanye that he spoils the election for the GOP nominee? Again, Trump’s not ruling it out.
Maybe my editors were right and I shouldn’t be giving this lot any free publicity. Still, I wouldn’t feel right just keeping quiet. Before anyone falls for their scam, someone should give them a fair warning. And, look, I’m not going to barrage you with politically-correct niceties. All I’m saying is this:
Whatever it is you believe—whether you’re a conservative or a libertarian or a fascist or whatever—Milo and Fuentes do not believe what you believe. They don’t believe in anything. They’re conmen. They’re nihilists. They’re taking you for a ride.
In this case, at least, the cruelty is the point. Whether that cruelty is campy or racist (or both), it doesn’t serve any wider purpose. It’s sadistic nihilism. Please, don’t troll yourselves to death.