Conservative Infighting, Cognitive Empathy, and How We Move Forward

 

By Frank Filocomo

It seems like there's just too much going on in the world right now. It's head-spinning, really: The Brown University Shooting, the Bondi Beach shooting, the internecine Civil War brewing in the American conservative movement, and the emergence of nasty online personalities and podcasters accruing unprecedented followings. 

With all of these events still unfolding, it's hard to find one thing to zero in on. Thus, the following are some thoughts I've had bouncing around the ole noggin concerning two matters in particular: Infighting in the conservative movement and how we ought to think about bigotry. 

The Turning Point USA Debacle:

If AmFest 2025 was supposed to be a look inside the future of the modern conservative movement, color me pessimistic. Instead of a continuation of America's rich conservative tradition (I'm thinking of figures such as Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., Pat Buchanan, and others), what we got was - barring some notable exceptions - a collection of crackpot internet personalities with, I would wager, little to no comprehension of conservatism properly understood. 

Tucker Carlson emitted platitudinous slush about why dialogue is important and proceeded to utter his unsettling, cartoonish cackle; intellectual firebrand and rapper Nicki Minaj read off her sardonic Tweets about Governor Newsom and glazed Trump; and one Groyper questioner grilled Ben Shapiro on the topic of the USS Liberty attack, a common talking point of Israeli-skeptics and Fuentesian trolls. 

The elephant in the room: Jews. These folks can talk about how their gripe is with Israel and "forever wars" all they want, but I'm not sure I buy it. The irritation seems to be with American Jews, whom Fuentes and his supporters despise. To Fuentes' credit, at least he doesn't beat around the bush in the way that Tucker does. 

To be sure, Buchanan and others in the conservative movement had intelligent reasons for not supporting Israel. His books are well worth a read. The Groypers, however, just don't care much for Jews. This isn't hard!

Navigating the GOP's Fuentesian Takeover:

According to former senior editor of The American Conservative, Rob Dreher, "between 30 and 40 percent of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes."

Make of those numbers what you will, but the fact of the matter is that far-Right Groyperism is ascendent, at least among disaffected young men in Republican circles. 

I recall, back in 2017 or thereabouts, strongly disliking Fuentes and his ilk, for, in my opinion, the little video-gaming troll was taking a salient message - the paleoconservatism of Pat Buchanan - and de-intellectualizing it and turning it into a low-IQ meme. See, Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, and others, had good points to make regarding the perils of trade liberalization, globalization, unfettered immigration, and myriad social issues. The not-so-thoughtful Groypers, however, co-opted paleoconservative messaging - which, again, had its merits - and turned it into something fundamentally unserious. 

I fully expected this cheapened version of Buchanan's message to die on the vine, but alas, here we are nearly a decade later. 

The reality: Fuentes and his followers aren't going anywhere. This is a fact that GOP-insiders will have to shake hands with. 

The answer to the Fuentes question, though, should not be censorship, debanking, or deplatforming of any kind; that's what the Left does. Fuentes' claims - most of which are utterly false, and rebarbative - ought to be defeated on the merits, not by shadowbanning. 

Establishmentarians on the Right, though, must get this through their thick skulls. 

Mark Levin is a good example of what not to do. 

At the Republican Jewish Coalition's Annual Leadership Summit last month, Levin - known for his strident monologies - said the following about cancel culture:

What do you mean we don't cancel people? We canceled David Duke. Donald Trump canceled David Duke. We canceled Pat Buchanan. We canceled the John Birch Society. We canceled Joseph Sobran. We canceled pornography on T.V. We cancel stuff all the damn time. Hitler-admirers, Stalin-admirers, Jew-haters, American-haters, Churchill-haters... You're damn right we're going to cancel them and de-platform them. 

Again, this is not the way. Canceling the Groypers won't make them go away; it will embolden them. Right-wing provocateurs often flex the amount of platforms they've been canceled from. Fuentes, whose wildly-popular show has been relegated to Rumble, has demonstrated that mainstream deplatforming only makes him a more formidable force. He has become something of a free-speech/ anti-censorship martyr. If conservatism's gatekeepers continue this push for cancelation, his following of disenfranchised young men will only grow.  

So... What Now? 

As to where we go from here, I defer to editor-in-chief of NonZero, Robert Wright, who advocates for the practice of "cognitive empathy." 

The following definition is instructive:

Cognitive empathy—sometimes called “perspective taking”—is a colder kind of empathy. It does involve awareness of other people’s feelings; you can’t fully understand how people are processing the world unless you understand how they react to it emotionally. But cognitive empathy doesn’t entail identifying with their feelings, or sympathizing with these people. You don’t have to wish them well, or care about their welfare at all. This is an especially important fact when you’re applying cognitive empathy to enemies or rivals, which I recommend.

The bottom line of cognitive empathy is heightened predictive power. If you skillfully exercise cognitive empathy—do a good job of understanding how things look from the vantage point of someone—this will make you better at anticipating what that person will do under various circumstances. It won’t make you perfect at prediction; people are really complicated and hard-to-predict organisms. But it will make you better, and in the long run that will pay off for you and the world. 

We ought to take heed of Wright's advice. The reality is that Groypers were susceptible to Groyperization - so to speak - for a reason, whether it be increased social isolation, unfettered feminism, or whatever. 

As Tim Carney astutely points out in Alienated America, Trump won in 2016 by appealing to the "forgotten man." This message of "I hear you, I see you, and I want to help you" had resonance with despondent inhabitants of flyover country, many of whom voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. 

Fuentes has a similar appeal. Earlier this year, he referred to himself as "one of the real disaffected white people."  He claims, in other words, to be "one of us." Young, white, male Zoomers, therefore, see him as their leader, while other conservative personalities - particularly of the Boomer variety - are simply out of touch. 

Americans and conservatives who don't like the Groyper-road, thus, must not make the Levin mistake and seek to cancel Fuentes and his followers. Instead, we must try to understand them and the circumstances that led them down this dangerous path.

This is something that Bret Weinstein, co-host of The DarkHorse Podcast, himself a Jew, understands quite well:

The respectable folks are going to keep telling themselves that Nick Fuentes is just some vile, little troll riding a monster wave of bigotry. I’m going to keep pointing out that they’re misunderstanding the wave, and underestimating him. Ultimately I’ll have to explain Fuentes’…

— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) November 9, 2025