How to Talk to Young Men Who Like Nick Fuentes

First you have to get why

Where to start with this topic! There has been not a little alarm about how to deal with the popularity of Nick Fuentes and the like among young men. I share that alarm. I’m already doing my part to lessen his influence, both online and in person. And I already see there are right ways and wrong ways to go about that. So here are some tips.

Understand Why Many Young Men Like Figures Like Fuentes

Wokal Distance had an excellent post on that yesterday morning. I will quote it at length later, but go read it.

Why Young Men Follow Nick Fuentes

In short, young men, particularly young straight white men, have been treated like crap as they’ve grown up. Under the influence of woke DEI commissars, education, the job market, and society has been rigged against them. That toxicity against white straight males may be in the process of being undone - thank God - but the damage is already done and continues.

The COVID madness was especially awful, robbing many young men of one or two years of the best years of their life and pressuring them to take shots that endanger their health much more than protect it.

I could go on, but you need to understand why young men are so fed up with establishment globalist authorities that giving them the finger by being really transgressive, which young men often enjoy doing anyway, is a natural and expected thing to do. And Fuentes is certainly transgressive.

And you need to show you understand. It would help if you are a bit ticked along with them. It wouldn’t hurt to give the likes of Obama, French, Pence, etc. the equivalent of the finger right along with them.

Oh, did you see how David French just showed off for the world to see his blindness about how he and people like him are how you get Nick Fuentes? Instead he blames Trump and “post-liberals”, of course. Cucks and clowns like French deserve contempt and disrespect. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

When You Can, Be on the Right Side With Them

Young men have been grievously wronged by the globalist establishment in the U. S. and the West. COVID tyranny, the Invasion, both illegal and supposedly legal, taking their jobs and depressing their wages, DEI woke discrimination against white straight men, education that is really indoctrination against them. And more.

We as a society need to acknowledge and remedy these crimes against young men and the West. You need to acknowledge and remedy these crimes against young men and the West. Not only because it is right, but to have any credibility with real men. And, yes, the remedies include justice against the perpetrators.

Seeing and saying such obvious things, even if they are a bit radical and if some might think them inflammatory, helps give the credibility to talk to and be listened to by young men who might like Fuentes.

But if you can’t even acknowledge the above, you might as well not bother. You just don’t have the credibility. Heck, you don’t have much credibility with this slightly older man. And if you quote favorably the likes of David Brooks and other controlled opposition, you will become that much more not credible. Many men will tune you out, and I don’t blame them.

Be respectful, available, open, and specific in your conversation

Recently, I said this in my regular email I send out to a prayer and study group I lead, Henry VI House. The group is mostly twentysomethings.

You may have noticed that Nick Fuentes has been getting some attention lately. I don’t want to give him any more attention than he deserves, but I am concerned about his influence. I will just say, if you are tempted to buy into his act, please talk to me. I promise not to beat you up too badly.

I will say that I understand the attraction of his transgressiveness. You have been lied to. You’ve been cheated, particularly by the COVID fiasco. “Democracy” is producing the likes of Zohran Mamdani and Jay Jones. It’s beginning to feel like Weimar America as Rod Dreher has been writing lately. You have good reason to flip the finger to those who have brought this about. But we do not want to end up with the Nazis and the Commies like Weimar Germany did or with Nick Fuentes.

Again, talk to me if you like.

It turned out the next time we got together, at a relaxed birthday gathering, some of them did talk to me. And I was surprised by who liked Fuentes, to be honest. But our conversation was good, and I think nudged them in a better direction. We have a lot of mutual respect, and did not allow our difference in this area to harm that. And they know they can talk to me about just about anything. And they know that I care about them even if I say something difficult to hear. It takes time to cultivate such mutual trust and respect, of course.

And I was specific and asked questions. I did not ask, “Why are you a Nazi?” or anything silly like that. (More on that in a bit.) I pointed out that Fuentes likes Hitler and Stalin and asked them about that. It is so important to be specific and fact-based in such conversations that I will make another category….

Avoid the Usual Smear Words

Anti-semitism is real and is a problem as is racism. But those words have been so abused they now shut down discussion rather than facilitate it. Those who question the policies of the government of Israel have been smeared as anti-semites as have those who think our government should crack down on the Soros and the Pritzkers. (By the way I knew those two crime families were bad news long before I found out they were Jewish. Does that make me an anti-semite?) Those who notice that mass numbers of imported Muslims are not compatible with Western civilization are smeared as racist. Never mind that Islam and Islamism are not races.

Those and other words have been so overused and abused, young men mock them. I do, too. So instead deal in specifics, facts and truth instead of smear labels. Related . . .

Know Your History

Young men respect facts and history. The stereotype of men being fascinated with the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages and World War II is true. Some of the most popular video games are based on history or even create a future history.

So instead of freaking out when you hear, say, some holocaust skepticism along the lines of Fuentes’ cookies in the oven analogy, keep calm (Yes, that can be very hard to do about that awful subject.) and point out some facts. Point out that the Nazis saw the difficulty of killing massive numbers also. There were the ghoulish logistics of that task. There was the trauma of soldiers involved in it. So they tried various methods — rifles and trenches, gas vans and more until they came to the industrial killing of the death camps. Once begun, the Nazis did that for three years at several camps, and the death toll went up and up.

Young male listeners may not immediately give up their holocaust skepticism, but they will probably respect that you know some history and will listen.

By the way, a big reason behind both holocaust skepticism and some other Gen Zers’ love affair with Communism is woefully inadequate education in the crimes of 20th century totalitarianism. The crimes of Communism have been especially ignored for ideological reasons. This has been a serious problem for decades, long before Gen Z was born. Now the cost of that neglect is coming due.

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And the cost of treating boys and young men, particularly straight white boys and young men, like shit is coming due. Did you think the eventual backlash would be conventional normie politics?

Wokal Distance merits quoting at length here:

And the worst part is, if young men point any of this out, the very people who are doing it will look them in the eye with a straight face and deny that any of this ever happened. Making matters worse these men begin to figure out that the institutions have been used to advance a leftist political agenda that scapegoated their group (young white men), and when they point this out everyone in authority calls them evil bigots.

And all this happens during their formative years.

Now, Imagine you are a young white male.

You graduate from the school system and are released into the world only to find that the feminine modes of socialization pushed on you are entirely unfit for purpose. That the social skills you were taught fail utterly in both the job markets young men tend towards (construction, engineering, building, landscaping, etc) and have no purchase in the dating market where highly agentic, masculine, wealthy men have a huge advantage over the passive, docile “nice boy.” On top of that, imagine that a great deal of the job listings that you peruse make it clear that preference will be given to women and “diverse” candidates, and that the job interview itself is full of shibboleths, coded statements, and trap questions meant to elicit responses that allow the hiring party to exclude anyone who isn’t sufficiently versed in and aligned with the priorities of the DEI/Woke/Social Justice paradigm.

On top of that, that if a you do get a job you will exposed to various sensitivity trainings, DEI trainings, and intersectionality workshops in which your group (straight white men) are repeatedly scapegoated as the source of all the worlds pathologies. Laid at your feet are patriarchy, colonialism, racism, sexism and a great number of other social evils for which you are taken to be complicit in and have a responsibility for fixing in virtue of being a white male.

While all this is going on a series of scandals (COVID, Men in womens’ sports, trans kids, etc) reveal to you the degree to which the institutions that make up the society you live in have adopted an ideology that is actively hostile to you because you are a straight white male, and have been denying you opportunity while scapegoating you for all societies problems and treating you like you are a defective girl.

Once you understand this, the real question is not “why are some young men radicalizing?” the real question is “why are there any young men at all who have not been radicalized?”

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Getting this is the first and necessary step in having credibility with young men and countering the appeal of Nick Fuentes and the like.

If you don’t get this . . . well, you should probably stay out of this fight.