"The day Charlie Kirk died, Taylor was at work when her brother Jake called her, laughing. He'd heard the news, and he was delighted. Not only did Jake revile Kirk, Jake viewed the killing as validation of his deeply antisemitic understanding of how the world worked. "The Jews," Jake believed, had almost certainly had Kirk murdered because he had raised alarm about " Jewish dollars " reshaping American culture."
"Jake, now 25, was once a standard build-the-wall Trump supporter, but during the pandemic, his politics shifted. He began sending Taylor Instagram memes with medieval Crusader imagery: Reject modernity, embrace tradition. It confused Taylor, given that the two had been raised as nondenominational Protestants in the kind of church where the pastor wore jeans and talked about the Dallas Cowboys."
Taylor’s brother Jake celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death and interpreted it as confirmation of a conspiratorial antisemitic worldview that blamed 'Jewish dollars' for reshaping American culture. Jake’s politics shifted during the pandemic from mainstream Trump support to an embrace of groyper ideology, sharing medieval Crusader imagery and increasingly racist memes. Groypers are young, predominantly male, misogynistic followers of Nick Fuentes who normalize extreme antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and admiration for Hitler. They reject mainstream MAGA figures as insufficiently loyal to white male interests and accuse Republicans of being controlled by the Israel lobby. The subculture amplifies radicalization through online memes and sibling networks.
Read at Slate Magazine
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