The Lost Generation of the New Alt-Right, Part One

Victor Davis Hanson

Why suddenly in 2025 has a newer farther right, often overtly anti-Semitic cadre, appeared—as an “alternative,” well beyond the old populist “alternative right” of a past Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, or the Tea Party?

Obvious answer: It did not “suddenly” appear. But more correctly, the “Groyper” movement was growing insidiously for years until it hit critical mass, once it had found sympathetic platforms and voices like those of Tucker Carlson and perhaps Candace Owens to amplify its views—most controversially voiced in the case of firebrand and avowed racist Nick Fuentes.

So, what were the origins of what we might call the Alt-Alt-Right—the new alternative to the alternative Right?

After October 7, the campus-, street-, and Middle-East student Left dropped any vestigial hesitation about the conflation of being anti-Israel with being anti-Jewish.

Recently, if a student at Harvard roughed up a Jew, he still might be given a generous $65,000 fellowship or be named an honorary marshal at a graduation ceremony.

If you harassed Jewish students at Cooper Union, there were zero consequences.

When campus demonstrations turned more violent and spread to the streets, damning Israelis as “settler-colonialists” became indistinguishable from explicit anti-Jewish rhetoric—again with no real consequences. Years of immigration from the Middle East, vast increases in the Muslim student population on American campuses, the Left’s hatred of Israel, and the October 7 massacres all insidiously changed public opinion of Israel in general and gave cover to the new right to manifest their dislike of Israel and all those who support it.

So, the Left seems to welcome anti-Semitism as proof of “Justice for Palestine.” Indeed, when in deep blue cities and on college campuses, authorities became afraid to challenge the overtly anti-Jewish, anti-Israel protests, they rebooted the ancient bias and made the updated anti-Semitism a no-hazard hatred.

Youth on the Right who harbored racial or anti-Semitic anger—and the latest Alt-Alt-Right movement is galvanized by largely young rightist males—became emboldened that it was now more or less socially acceptable.

A second incitement was the new Alt-Right disappointment with the MAGA movement and the Trump administration in particular—as evidenced perhaps by the recent falling out between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump himself. True, Trump has at length addressed many of the young lost generation’s furor at globalization, internationalism, nation-building, open borders, DEI, and crime—but not the Alt-Alt-Right’s key bugaboo of Israel and “the Jews.”

In fact, as Nick Fuentes has made clear, the Trump administration is the most pro-Israel government in recent history. Tucker Carlson earned Trump’s scorn as “kooky” for preposterously predicting a likely World War III aftermath if the U.S. bombed the Iranian nuclear facilities (“Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson…”).

Moreover, Trump has ignored the Nick Fuentes Groypers and appointed Jews to the highest levels of the U.S. government—such as chief advisors like Stephen Miller, special envoys like Jared Kushner and Steven Witkoff, and cabinet-level officers like Howard Lutnick and Lee Zeldin.

To be continued…