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Ganz has a long history of these articles. That said, I don’t think any of this is as new a development as he suggests, it’s just people like him are more dedicated to noticing it now.
Ganz’ evidence for some alleged ‘groyper’ takeover of the junior ranks of Republican DC staffers is that Nathan Hochman said that many Trump staffers read BAP. I always think this is funny because BAP himself is in many ways a ‘moderate’, at least in terms of a political program and by the standard of the online far right (see regular ‘psy op’ complaints and various dissident right figures complaining he isn’t antisemitic or homophobic enough). His value is more as a shaman, a spiritual guide. He tells young, conservative men in ooga-booga language not what to do, but that their quest is noble and brave and honorable and above all pure. He’s a motivational speaker more than he is a political thinker.
Look no further than Peter Thiel, arch BAP fan and likely financier, who was most recently in the press because one of his many kept boyfriends committed suicide after spending three years as the host of Pete’s Los Angeles gay orgies with endless numbers of muscular young men whom he pays for company (you have to assume, after seeing this, that he’s a bottom, so the entire dissident right is now funded by a man whose hobby is getting sodomized by ever increasing numbers of muscle hunks). Sure, the SA were a little gay, but this doesn’t really feel like the kind of man who’s scared of a turn toward conservative sexual morality any time soon, which Fuentes and others preach forcefully.
Psychologizing mass movements can be interesting, but part of the reason for the supposed diffusion of rightist ideas is that the only people desperate to work in the modern right, given how low status it is, are these kinds of people. Consider that Nathan Hochman (as far as I can tell, there might be another one), who is probably Jewish himself of course and so probably not a Nazi, graduated from ‘Colorado College’ with a degree in journalism in 2021. Maybe antisemitic affirmative action kept him out of Harvard, but I’d say the young right isn’t sending their best, especially when you consider that his boss is impressively qualified. You work on Tucker, you won’t work in TV again, as shown by the fact that Fox fired rather than reassigned the majority of his writers.
What a radical takeover requires, and Ganz knows this, is an establishment that has utterly given up. That shrugs. That in many cases is happy to welcome in the replacement for the sake of stability and continuity. That in many cases is terrified of the far left. None of these things describe the majority of modern America’s establishment, whether in finance or politics or media or academia. When Bob Iger is so scared of AOC leading the mob to seize Disney headquarters for the revolution that he donates to DeSantis and tells him to do whatever he must to seize power, then the US might be on the verge. But I don’t think we’re all that close.
The fringes of theoretical junior staffing in a hypothetical Trump second administration that will almost certainly never come to pass do not herald a radical transformation of America or its politics. At least not for now. And this is only one of the dissident right’s big problems (the other being that they have no consistent policy program whatsoever).
I agree with this, which is why Gaz just comes across as hysterical. He seems far more convinced of imminent victory of Techno-Imperivm Evropa than anybody in the DR- they should read his blog if they want some white-pills. But you are right that just because there is some influence in memes and slogans and talking points does not at all mean the radicals are getting close to the levers of power. It more likely means the mainstream is trying to integrate elements of the radical right in order to provide an outlet for perspectives that are currently a pipeline to radical thought.
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BAP himself strikes me as either having some homosexual inclinations or as enjoying trolling people into thinking that he does.
I mean, he calls himself "Aspiring Nudist Bodybuilder. Free speech and anti-xenoestrogen activist.", his Twitter profile features a buff shirtless guy (perhaps himself) and some kind of ancient Greek/Roman statue, and one of his recent posts reads:
"Squadrons of handsome soldiers are forming a secret society within the Brazilian military. They recognize each other by my book. The days of the democracy and popular government are soon to be over ... replaced by rule of the contest".
Not saying that it means he is into guys but if he isn't, he at least seems to be more comfortable with the idea than probably many of his followers.
It is perhaps inevitable that the actual intelligentsia of the alt-right will tend to have a disproportionate representation of intellectual Jews like Moldbug and of people with unorthodox sexualities, given the disproportionate representation of such people in the ranks of creatives and intellectuals in general. It will not be made up entirely or perhaps even predominantly of the "pure Aryan with five white children" types that /pol/ far-righters dream about.
BAP is almost certainly attracted to men.
There's no alt-right worthy of thinking or worrying about.
You should instead be worrying about the 'sensible center'.
There's no "center" at all and anyone calling themselves the "sensible center" is almost certainly in lockstep with the media (probably NPR in particular).
It was a name very successfully used by Blair in his radical remaking of British legislation and thus culture, and it's being enthusiastically advocated by world's no.1 Blair fan, Neema Parvini.
Like with everything else in politics, it doesn't mean what people think it means, and that's by design.
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