Nick Fuentes is a problem. His influence is growing, fueled by his deft channeling of valid grievances. He has been further buoyed by neoconservatives and the progressive Left, both of which are desperate for “Nazi” bogeymen to validate their anti-MAGA hysterics. However, their ritual denunciations of Fuentes and his groyper legions are worse than useless. They merely encourage groyperism by providing a bigger kick of frisson due to breaking social taboos.

Chris Rufo argues that Fuentes’s critics misapprehend the groyper phenomenon by taking it in earnest instead of recognizing the “hyperreal” run amok. The French sociologist Jean Baudrillard used the term to denote the condition of postmodernity wherein our representations of reality become more phenomenologically real to us than reality itself, until they detach from reality entirely. “Emptied out, [signs] then circulate through digital media,” writes Rufo, “where they drive the discourse and, while purely derivative, still spark real emotional involvement.”

Immersion in the hyperreal explains why Fuentes’s worldview is so liquid and incoherent. He was able to transition smoothly from being an early MAGA adopter in 2015 to going to war against Trump in 2024. He operates with a double script, inhabiting a version of himself on his livestream that is antithetical to the one he presents to mainstream podcasters. It’s why he can diagnose the deformities of the sexual revolution in a manner consonant with Catholic teaching one day, and the next celebrate the arrival of sex robots as “the best thing man has ever created,” because “women are going to be f***ed!”

There’s no meaningful distinction between sincerity and flippancy when the exigencies of the digital market have detached both from reality. In hyperreality, one can be a white nationalist without being white, and with little cognitive dissonance.

Although operating in hyperreality, some of the emotions Fuentes has tapped into are nonetheless rooted in quite valid grievances. Young white men have been subjected to relentless feminization and other demoralizing programs like DEI, beginning in kindergarten and lasting well beyond college. They are scapegoated as privileged oppressors even though their economic prospects and social capital have comprehensively diminished. They are conditioned into passivity by a system that promises rewards for compliance, only to be confronted by the harsh reality that success in vocation, dating, and social life has never required more agency and self-assertion. And when the majority of them inevitably fail, they are blamed for inadequacies that have been hammered into them from a young age. The disconnect between woke propaganda and their experience entrenches them in the hyperreal as much as it stokes ressentiment.

Fuentes is an authentic avatar of young men abused by the system progressives built. This is what prompted Tucker to invite him onto his show.

For Gen Z men, woke impositions compound the deformations of hyperreality, which is itself intrinsically feminizing. Digitally mediated communication promotes relational fluidity by concealing and flattening distinctions in social hierarchy. It privileges emotional expressivity and performative empathy, and edges out unmediated real-world relationships by offering an overabundance of simulated social bonding. It homogenizes viewpoints by rewarding consensus within one’s group while penalizing direct confrontation and logical, linear argument. And it encourages self-construction on the basis of signals of emotional affirmation such as engagement stats.

The upshot is an entire generation disciplined in the worst kinds of feminine behaviors by the very medium through which they communicate. For men especially, this translates to a radical loss of agency. The problem is not feminine modes of being themselves, but that men are taught that these modes—at their most degraded and malformed—are the only civilized way to act.

Fuentes and the guys he speaks for were robbed of a masculine patrimony by our anti-culture. But he offers little more than validation for ressentiment, which turns our gaze inward, encouraging hypersensitivity, self-pity, and the festering of personal grudges. It operates through indirect and anonymous collective action—the henpecking of the groyper swarm. By undermining individual agency, it only deepens the loss of masculinity.

But therein lies a potential solution: however strong ressentiment may be for young men, the offer of genuine masculinity is more powerful. If young men are permitted to fulfill their telos as men, the problem will largely vanish.

The “serious” Right’s performative denunciation and deplatforming of Fuentes and his interlocutors has predictably backfired, because it neither takes their grievances seriously nor offers an authentically masculine alternative. A lasting solution will recognize Fuentes as a symptom, not the problem itself. It must also take into account the hyperreal nature of digital discourse by emphasizing the world outside the screen, which is the only way to reestablish common referents in the real.

I have several suggestions toward that end:

• Comprehensively destroy the power structures that police masculinity, privilege only feminine modes of conflict, and pathologize “whiteness” and heterosexuality. The Trump Administration’s war on DEI is a good start, but it must be extended. DEI is only the latest manifestation of the cancer that blossomed from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. More will grow unless we reform the source. We need to dream of a world without HR.

• Create opportunities for gainful employment for young men that demand their agency. The re-shoring of manufacturing is a partial solution, as is restricting immigration. AI and automation will consume many low-skill jobs, which are minimally agentic to begin with. Most young men should be redirected from college to trade schools and apprenticeships. We must rediscover the dignity of work, especially skilled work.

• At the same time, we must reopen pathways to prestige careers, especially in cultural production. As Jacob Savage demonstrates in his viral article “The Lost Generation,” young white men have been shut out of the institutions most responsible for shaping our national narrative. Their voices and talents—and their stories—are needed if America is ever to rediscover its founding values and identity.

• At the local level, if you are a forthrightly masculine man, take younger men under your wing—be a mentor. This includes, among myriad other things, helping them find meaningful vocations, inviting them into a culture of mutual accountability, and pursuing shared projects that benefit real-life communities, proving that they can actually change their immediate conditions.

• At the national level, elevate Gen Z men who exhibit healthy, attractive masculinity. Older men aren’t as effective as mimetic models at this scale, because we were much less emasculated as kids; the Longhouse had more windows then, and we could breathe easier. Gen Z men need to see that unalloyed masculinity is still possible for them.

• Stop enforcing taboos through denunciation. At the end of the day, woke scolds and the anti-Semitism police cannot help but be seen as agents of the hyperreal Longhouse. Proscribing wrongthink about “international Jewry” makes the various conspiracy theories appear more plausible. Consistent, confident assertion of truths and realities is more effective.

The way to beat Nick Fuentes and what he represents is to give guys like him the opportunity to win as men: dismantle the systems that generate their ressentiment, and offer a vision of life more robust than groyperism. The hyperreal irony is that Fuentes may actually agree.