Yesterday I linked to a Rod Dreher column in which I’d found a paragraph I liked about an epidemic of lying we seem to be living through. Today I went back and read the entire column and I’d like to try to summarize that for you, and recommend you read it, though it is long.
His main concern, it seems to me, is about a group he calls Zoomercons, young conservative white males who are basically nihilists. They want to destroy what is, without any clear idea of what will replace it.
There has been a minor kerfluffle about online chats among young Republicans which have been racist, anti-Semitic, perhaps pro-Nazi, and otherwise gruesome. Dreher attributes their negativity to current societal conditions. Here are few of his conclusions.
- The Groyper thing is real. It is not a fringe movement, in that it really has infiltrated young conservative Washington networks to a significant degree.
- It cannot be negotiated with, because it doesn’t have traditional demands. It wants to burn the whole system down. It really does.
- This malign movement didn’t just appear from nowhere. There are within it legitimate grievances.
- For almost two decades, left-wing radicals have marched through institutions and imposed illiberal, race-based leftist policies that openly intended to discriminate against whites, males, and anybody who dissented. You cannot understand the rise of the Groypers without understanding this first.
- Anti-Semitism is spreading like a virus among religious conservatives of the Zoomer generation.
