During the post–George Floyd national conversations, a group on the young right saw older conservatives as overly accommodating to the left-wing worldview.

Leaked private text messages sent by leaders of different chapters of Young Republicans have been generating an uproar since being published by Politico this week. Given some of what I’ve seen said publicly on social media over the past few years from a subset of the young right, I can’t say it was entirely shocking. 

From what I can tell, what we’re witnessing is part of a generational cycle. For a period of time — let’s say roughly encompassing Generation X and early Millennials — there was a concerted effort among many younger conservatives to disassociate themselves from the racial attitudes of an earlier generation of conservative figures. They were frustrated by being told, every time they spoke about federalism, that arguments about state sovereignty were used to defend Jim Crow laws; or of having a 1981 Lee Atwater interview thrown in their faces during every debate over tax cuts. They were eager to make arguments for limited government that were free of the taint of any sort of prejudice. Many of them had time for critiques of the criminal justice system or, to take another cultural flash point, came around on gay marriage. I think that there is an element of the young right (say roughly Generation Z and later) that is rebelling against these sorts of attitudes in the same way that Gen X/Millennials rejected some of the cultural attitudes of older generations of conservatives. 

During the post–Ferguson/George Floyd national conversations, this group on the young right saw older conservatives as overly accommodating to the left-wing worldview and too timid in talking about race. Simultaneously, there was a debate over the excesses of cancel culture. For many conservatives, it was important to defend the principle of allowing a wide range of views to be expressed in the public sphere, even if we didn’t necessarily agree with everything being said. But clearly to a portion of the young right, the actual substance of what provocateurs have been saying has been worth celebrating — not just their right to say it. In an environment in which discussions about race are heavily policed, the ultimate act of rebellion is to say the most blatantly racist things possible. It seems that these group chats were ironically a sort of safe space where these individuals had fun by trying to one-up each other by being more offensive to blacks, Jews, or women than the next guy. And nobody wanted to be the one to push back and sound like an older conservative who is criticizing displays of the Confederate flag. 

I am not sure how pervasive this current trend is among the young right, or how much it could grow. If you followed his feud with Nick Fuentes, it’s clear that before his assassination, Charlie Kirk — who interacted with this generation as much as anybody — was concerned about the festering of these attitudes. He was trying to offer younger men a path to be pugilistic and unapologetically conservative without becoming consumed by hatred.

I don’t think it would be fair to say that these private messages are reflective of all or even most young conservatives, but it would also be naïve to dismiss the attitudes displayed here as totally contained to an insignificant fringe.