Rage, by Any Other Name...

Is Still Rage. Or the Groypers.

By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. —Romans 12:2

According to reliable sources, Ta-Nehisi Coates visited Israel and the West Bank in the summer of 2023—months before October 7, the day of the Hamas massacre in Israel. A year later, he released The Message, which, not surprisingly, became a New York Times bestseller.

Around that time, in his review for The Claremont Review of Books of Adam Kirsch’s newly released On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice, [available on Amazon] Daniel J. Mahoney opens with this pointed critique of Coates:

“This fall, celebrity intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates moved on from demanding reparations for America’s racial sins to comparing Israel with the Jim Crow South. ‘I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stronger and more intense than in Israel,’ Coates writes in his new book, The Message. Sloppy and incendiary though this comparison may be, it perfectly captures the logic of today’s radicals, who have translated their hatred of America into hatred of Western nations the world over, and Israel in particular. This new, fashionable antisemitism is not just a passing fancy. It is the fruit of a pathological self-hatred on the part of Europeans, Americans, and Commonwealth citizens who position the Jewish state as a beleaguered representative of Western civilization.”

Not many see Israel as a representative of Western civilization, but it most certainly is. Without Jerusalem and Athens, it’s hard to imagine Western civilization at all.

Meanwhile, other reviewers seemed eager to praise Coates without bothering to engage with the implications of his claims. Booklist, for example, offered this glowing line:

“Coates exhorts readers, including students, parents, educators, and journalists, to challenge conventional narratives that can be used to justify ethnic cleansing or camouflage racist policing. Brilliant and timely.”

What we now know is that, just months after his visit, the long-simmering hostility toward Israel—and, by extension, toward the Jewish people—would boil over globally. Across America, Antifa agitators, university students, and not a few politicians (including sitting members of Congress), amplified by the ever-willing corporate media, began chanting slogans about Israel “colonizing” Gaza and “oppressing” Palestinians. In hindsight, the intensifying rhetoric of the previous decade should have alerted us to the resurgence of this age-old hatred.

Please Support the Virginia Christian Alliance Website and Community Center

We would appreciate your donation.

Any comparisons to the early days of the Nazi movement in Germany are no longer mere rhetorical embellishments. They are too obvious to ignore.

One year later, Charlie Kirk was murdered on the Utah Valley University campus while speaking about his Christian faith and conservative politics. Before his body was even cold, social-media partisans branded him a fascist. Thankfully, his organization, Turning Point USA, has vowed to continue his ministry and carry forward his legacy. Yet predictably, their latest event at UC Berkeley was violently disrupted by the same cast of characters: Antifa activists and their campus recruits—those who champion inclusion, tolerance, and diversity while labeling everyone else “fascists” and inciting violence.

It’s impossible to overstate the irony. The very people who cling to the progressive mantle and preach tolerance and pluralism routinely exclude—and aggressively silence—the individuals who actually embody those virtues.

This is where Western democracy now finds itself: fractured, embittered, and increasingly dominated by a coalition of agitators and professional rage-mongers. And make no mistake—many of them are being paid to turn protests into riots.

But there is another set of actors fueling this rage-bait ecosystem: the online influencers and pseudo-philosophers who inhabit the platforms most heavily used by the most vulnerable targets—impressionable boys and young men, but increasingly young women as well.

If there is any generation uniquely shaped for this resurgence of radicalism, it is Gen Z. They have grown up in a moral vacuum—one created by secularized institutions, hollowed-out families, politicized schools, and a culture that offers identity but no meaning. Into that void step the new ideologues, offering purpose, belonging, and a ready-made villain to blame. It’s no surprise that so many young people now embrace a romanticized socialism and, increasingly, a fashionable hatred of Israel and the West. They don’t have to go looking for radicalism—it is already discipling them.

Back in 2018, a Gallup poll found that among Americans aged 18–29, 51% held a positive view of socialism, while only 45% had a positive view of capitalism. That was the moment the alarm bells should have gone off. Some saw it—Victor Davis Hanson and a handful of conservative commentators spoke plainly about the trend—but the mainstream largely ignored it.

Fast-forward to March 2025: a new Cato Institute survey found 62% of Americans aged 18–29 now view socialism favorably. That is an 11-point increase in just eight years.

It’s troubling enough that socialism is trending upward in a nation that has historically been a bulwark against socialist threats. But now we must add yet another catalyst whipping the crowd into ideological frenzy: the Groypers.

The who?

Nick Fuentes

The Groypers emerged in the late 2010s as a splinter faction of the “alt-right,” crafting a pseudo-religious and rhetorically disciplined version of earlier far-right internet subcultures. Rejecting the shock-tactic theatrics of Neo-Nazis, they adopted instead a subtler strategy of soft radicalization—blending traditionalist Catholic aesthetics, Christian nationalism, and anti-establishment internet humor.

Let’s first be clear about these terms. Alt-Right is short for alternative right—also popularized in the early 2010’s—by blending identity politics, internet meme culture, and radical anti-establishment ideology. It positions itself as the rebel alternative to conservatism and progressive politics. Traditional Catholics are now in the ascendant and that alone makes them a target. Christian nationalism is yet another socialist construct for the purpose of putting Christians who can love their Savior and their country at the same time on the defensive.

By all accounts, the chief Groyper is Nick Fuentes, a disturbing personality whose profane rants, racial slurs, and rage mongering are difficult to handle for anyone with a fragile constitution. He hates Jews, he hates Christians, he hates Catholics, he hates traditional Conservatives, he hates women… and well, I guess we can say he hates. This is what has me concerned: he’s often talked about as the face of the “new” conservatives.

Tucker Carlson interviewed him recently, and as is typical with him and other influencers, he mainstreamed Fuentes with his audience. To get some understanding about this particular dynamic, I recommend that you watch this YouTube video from Ben Shapiro about how this tactic is affecting conservative politics: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaRJlL5mOF8&t=115s] Warning: some graphic language

Rage by any other name is still rage. It has no legitimate place in our national conversation, and Fuentes should have no place in any legitimate political and cultural discourse. The last thing anyone needs to do is muddy up the water of an already fractious Republican party, and opening wider the wedge between conservatives and Christians with everyone else in the marketplace of ideas.

In the future, I will have more to say about Nick Fuentes. And Tucker Carlson.