The fight against nihilism is here... whether we like it or not (11-12-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. In the last hour, talked about housing and income expectations and gratitude, and I teased, as they call it in the biz, I teased a piece by Rod Dreyer at his Substack newsletter titled what I Saw and Heard in Washington. And he was in DC for like three days. He just got back. He wrote this piece up well on the tenth, so two days ago. He had spent three days I guess, the weekend Friday through Sunday, I guess. And as part of his trip to DC, he spent about ninety minutes and the vice president study with him along with some other very influential people. He posted a picture of I think Orbon, the Hungarian president. I think he's from Hungary. He was in there as well, and he said, you know, he had the opportunity Victor Orbon met him in person. He said he had an opportunity to talk with a lot of people, and he focused on a lot of the what he called Zoomers or DC Zoomer Khn Zoomer is the generation and is that Gen z Or was Zoomer different? It is, so we're calling him Jen Zoomers now Gen z Zoomers, Okay, and Zoomer Cohn meaning Conservatives. He says the claim that I first floated last week, quoting a DC insider who said that in his estimation, between thirty and forty percent of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are actually fans of Nick Fuentes. That's true. So he believes that this has been confirmed multiple times by Zoomers who work and live in that world. About thirty to forty percent of the Zoomer cons are Fuente's fans or Grouper's. This is the guy that was on the Tucker Carlson podcast about two weeks ago, and it exploded this rift which had been growing prior, but it just it all blew up. The Heritage Foundation guy came out, made a statement, and then that blew up, and there is a fight going on right now with the nihilists on the right and the nihilists on the left. And the people on the right are saying like we need to confront these black pilled zoomers and say that we are not on their side, they are not on our side. We are not going to welcome this radical fringe into the party quote unquote, or the Mega movement or the right in general. We're not going to do it because you look at what happened to the Democrat Party on the left, they did not distance themselves from their nihilistic radical base, and now they're being eaten by it. But the phenomenon ise is the same on both of these sides. As I mentioned last hour, this is the horseshoe theory, this nihilistic approach, which is to just burn it all down because everybody's a liar, all the institutions have failed, the society is right, and everything needs to be just torched and then maybe build something better in its wake. And what the left wants built in its wake is communism, and what a lot of people on the right want built in its wake is some form of fascism. And I know what that sounds like. I know when I say that that that sounds like, oh, Pete, you're just now taking the talking points of the anti trumpers and I'm not. I'm just listening to what those people say. That's what they are saying they would like to see in its place. And this is what Rod Dreyer documents in this massive rite up. It's like fifteen pages. It started off he was just like keeping a journal of all of this stuff. And then when he was on the plane back to Budapest where he lives now. He's a conservative writer. He's written for all sorts of publications, and he's putting it all together in this post on the plane, and this is what he is determined. So the housing issue, right, we can't buy houses. The average home buyer, first time home buyer, is now forty years old. We heard that stat the other day, right, So this is what young people are dealing with. And that's real, by the way, Like, I'm not minimizing any of this. And when you see that in your own life, the system is not working for you. In this case the post World War II liberal order, right, And that's why they call themselves post liberals, not the gropers. They call themselves gropers, but this ideology that is manifesting, this nihilistic ideology is manifesting, and they consider themselves post liberals. This post liberal order, in other words, the order that was built in the ruins of World War II in order to avoid another cataclysmic World war. That has not worked for America. And the left says, replace it with a communist utopia, which has never really been tried. Or on the other side, they've got different names for it, national conservatism, right, or there's the white nationalists. There are some radicals that are like white nationalism. You know. So you got the housing issue, the economic issues, the income issues. You also have a generation that was raised in this leftist K twelve and higher ed quote unquote stew of oppress or oppressed ideology, this Marxist ideology, and they're told the whole time, from very young ages, particularly the white boys, they're told that they're the reason why all of these bad things happen and they have to carry that guilt. Then you layer in the feminization that occurs inside the schools, like the idea that look, when I was growing up, I would write stories all the time. I wrote fictional stories all the time. I would get to read them in front of the class too. But I've heard assignments where you're supposed to and I got one of these one time. In one class was to keep a journal. I didn't care to keep a journal. I didn't want to write every day about my feelings. Now some men do, that's fine, you can write a journal. I don't care. But when that becomes when that's the assignment, and now I have to write about what happened to me in my day and all of this, and I'm just like inwardly looking in all of this. This is sort of a therapization model versus maybe a resilience model. And that's not necessarily helpful to a lot of young men, to a lot of boys. It's just not It's very helpful for young girls, but not necessarily for young boys, because again, boys and girls are different, men and women are different. So this is the toxic stew that these kids have grown up through. He goes on to say, if you think being Christian is some kind of a vaccination against say, anti Semitism, you're wrong. Even young Christians, especially trad cats or trad Cats traditional Catholics. There's been a resurgence in this people who are self identifying as traditional Catholics. They are neck deep in this anti semitism. They even use it as a litmus test of who can and can't join their informal social groups, which is weird considering the Catholic Church's position on anti Semitism. But anyway, not every DC Zuomerkhn who identifies with Fuentes agrees with everything he says or the way he says it. What they like most of all is his rage and his willingness to violate taboos. I asked one zoomer what the groypers actually wanted, like, what are their demands? His reply, they don't have any. They just want to tear everything down. So that's why I say they're nihilists. They just want to see it burn. That's fun for them. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. 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Writing at his substeck, he says that the Gropers don't have any demands, as was told to him by a Zuomer, con that they just want to tear everything down. Then he went on to explain in calm, rational detail why his generation is so utterly screwed. The problems are mostly economic and material in his view, and this is something echoed by other conversations that Rod had. They don't have a good career, they don't have good career prospects. They'll probably never be able to buy a home. Many are heavily indebted with student loans that they were advised by authorities to take out, and the idea that they are likely to marry and start families seems increasingly remote. Moreover, they grew up in a country that had lost its common culture. Many of these young men are fatherless, which brings me I'm going to take a detour real quick because what he just said there about these kids being fatherless is something that Constantine Kissing noted in a big write up at constantin kissing dot com. He is a host of the Trigger Nometry podcast. Highly recommend that he's British. He said, I remember reading a theory of history a long time ago which gave a persuasive explanation for why human societies seem to repeat the same mistakes over and over every generations, said, only really learns what to do and how to think and which pitfalls to avoid from the two preceding generations with which it had direct contact. So, in other words, their parents' generation and their grandparents' generation. Right, we don't learn lessons from history so much as we learn them from our parents and our grandparents. In other words, if history repeats itself, or if it rhymes, it's because we are repeating the mistakes of our great grandparents, people who lived eighty to ninety years ago and could not personally warn us. Does that sound familiar. It did to me, especially with the eighty to ninety year timeframe. This is the fourth turning. This is the theory advanced in the nineties that civilizations go through four turnings basically like the seasons, and we are in the fourth turning now, which is the winter or the crisis, and from that crisis because the people who are living in that fourth turning, which each turning is about twenty to twenty five years, the people who are living don't know about They have no personal experience or recollection or anybody in their life to tell them this is what happened in the last fourth turning because all those people have passed away. Right, So this theory, and there's one guy now who's There were two guys that wrote it, and one still survives, the other one passed away, and he has a podcast too. He's written a follow up book about it. But from the crisis, people learn how to solve the problems of that crisis. And then you have another spring and a rebirth. But you don't know how that crisis is going to unfold. It's unknown, and that rebirth may not be good. It could just be the birth of something worse, you know, it could be the birth of a new system of government, new authoritarian regime or something. But something else comes along to quote solve the problem. And history shows what happens when you have this nihilistic ideology which Dreer gets into in his piece, multiple examples of it throughout history. And there aren't people alive anymore to tell us this. All we can do is read their accounts. It's not good. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. 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You cannot simultaneously appease people who believe in a fixed set of ideas and people who believe that the only ideas worth having are cynicism and revenge. Those are the camps, people who have a fixed set of ideas and people who want revenge. There's no appeasing both of these groups. The Boomer khn establishment, so this would be the boomers who are conservatives. The Boomer Khan establishment does not understand that Nick Fouentes is not the problem. He is a symptom. And the reason they don't understand that is that they don't understand young men, who make up the overwhelming majority of Puentes's audience. The entire fact phenomenon, Rather, the entire phenomenon is driven by a number of factors which are affecting young men. They are the most fatherless generation in history. A quarter of Gen Z grew up without a father present. That is up from just nine percent back in nineteen sixty. So they've had less male guidance and direction than any group of men in American history, even the boys born after World War II, the most murderous war in human history, which killed over four hundred thousand American men. They did not experience the economic prosperity or political stability of the pre nine to eleven era buying a house, especially in America's major cities, becomes harder every year. They were educated in a school, in a college system which is overwhelmingly female. Seventy seven percent of teachers are women. As I don't bring this up to criticize female teachers or suggest they're not as good as men. Many female teachers are great at teaching mathematics, music, geography, and history, but it's just harder for women to teach boys how to be men. As a result of the growing feminization of education and society at large, many young men were taught to channel their aggression, anger, and competitiveness. Oh sorry, they were not taught how to channel their aggression, anger, and competitiveness into productive activity. They were instead taught to suppress these natural male urges. And as any therapist will tell you, you can't keep the things you suppress down forever. Gen Z, men spent their entire formative years lagging behind women in education and now earnings. Young women without children out earn men, and for the entirety of this time, these boys were told that all men are trash. That's a quote, the future is female, that's another quote, and that these young boys were to blame for every ill of humanity. It may be true that women haven't always had a fair deal in society, but that was never the fault of a fifteen year old zoomer boy, who understandably would bristle at being held responsible for something they neither created nor benefited from. And because they're white men, nobody cares about their problems. Is it really a surprise that some of them are resentful, angry, and openly rebellious. This perfect storm of alienation and the dearth of male guidance presents a lucrative opportunity for a new breed of influencer. Unlike fathers, uncles, male teachers, sports coaches, and so on, Nick Fouentes is not motivated by a desire to make a positive impact on the lives of the boys who listened to him. See a father is incentivized to raise his sons in a way that makes them resist their worst instincts. As an influencer who makes money getting views online, Fluentes is incentivized to do the exact opposite. Back to Rod Dreyer's peace talking about this same group of young men, gen Z the zumer Cohns, most of them spent their youths being told that as whites, and especially white males, they are what's wrong with the world. Their own speech was policed with stasy like ruthlessness for racism and bigotry, while people on the left routinely slandered whites, males, Christians, heterosexuals, and even were rewarded for it. Believe that seems to be the reaction now. Fuentes is a living, breathing illustration of what Hannah Arent meant when she spoke of people willing to revel in transgression such that they tear down the pillars of civilization just for the fun of seeing those who had been gate kept away breaching containment. They just want to see it burn. That's the extent of the ideology. That's why I say they're nihilists. After this trip that Drere took to DC talking with all of these gen Z people and people in the conservative movement, after these last three days in Washington, he says, I am more convinced than I have ever been that we are moving towards some kind of totalitarianism, or at best authoritarianism. It could go either way, left or right, It could go either way. When I mentioned fascism, earlier, there was a Zoomer con that Drer was talking to, and he said to Rod Dreer innocently, this wasn't something like he was fending fascism, but he asked, so, what's wrong with fascism? And he meant it not in like a challenging way, but in a way that conveyed this sense of, well, we have to think about this now. He talked about how the disintegration of our culture is accelerating and liberal democracy seems impotent to stop it. He went on to explain that if he had to choose between living under left wing authoritarianism or the right wing version, then that wouldn't be much of a choice. Now. To be clear, he doesn't want either, but he fears that the disintegration of the culture is going to put us all in the position to have to reconcile ourselves to one or the other. And so if you have to pick between the poison of communism or the poison of fascism, then well, you know, at least fascism is of the right, and that's kind of where I am, so like, I like, maybe I'll have some more benefits under that. He says he's not cheering for fascism. I heard real despair, well informed despair in his voice about you know, the conditions that make for a viable democracy disappearing, the dissolution of a common culture, the collapse of religion in his generation, the material impoverishment of his generation, so on and so forth. I tell you it was dark, he said. But I kept hearing this over and over and over, and I concluded it cannot be dismissed. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago, and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered. And by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot Ground, dot News slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Rodreer, writing at his substack, talking about this gen Z mentality that's pervasive. He says in thirty to forty percent of the Zoomer cons gen Z conservatives Zoomers this groperism, which is nihilism. And you see the same thing on the radical left. And by the way it I mean, I think it should be pointed out that both of these nihilists forms on the left end on the right. And I use these terms loosely because they're not it's not left and right, especially the right. It's not. I'll come back to that. But what what they share in common, aside from some tactics, is anti semitism, right that the Jews are to blame. They're both they're both also post liberal. They want to see the World War two post World War two liberal order destroyed because it's not working for us. On the left, they want communism. The gropers want some form of fascism, if they've even thought that far. A lot of them just want to see everything burn. I use the terms left and right, but I use them in terms of and this is why I don't like it, and I don't think it applies to the Gropers and Fuentes, is that the spectrum is I mean, if you're thinking of it on a left right linear sort of graph, the chart is actually total government versus no government. Those are the endpoints on either side of that line, complete government control and zero government control. Anarchy right one side, tyranny one side, anarchy. That's the actual left and right. And the Founders wanted us to be as close to the anarchy side as we could, because the less government you have, the more free you are, and they tried to construct a system, the constitutional order, in order to protect the people from their government as much as possible. Now, what Drer says is that the inability of US older people boomers, gen X, older millennium, even the inability of US older people to comprehend the world through the eyes of zoomers is a big, big problem. Another strong theme that he encountered. While it's important to take a clear stand against anti Semitism in the ranks, there is no way to gate keep our way out of this. You cannot simply point out you can't. Sorry, you cannot simply point at the zoomers and say thou shalt not and expect it to work. The problems are too deep and complex. And anyway, they have learned to have no respect for authority. Anyway, they don't care, and why should they. The institutions of our society as they see it, have lied and lied and lied and lied and still lie. They still lie. He then gives sort of a parade of lies from COVID what is a woman and a man? We don't know right, universe and forced ideological ideologies of lies, Catholic Church lying about the sex of the scandal, lies about the benefits of mass migration and diversity that's our strength. Why about Donald Trump and Russia? Why about what globalism would mean for ordinary people? The media lies. I'll just put a period right there. Way too many examples. The bottom line, trust in the system is gone, he says, Hell I share some of these conclusions myself. The difference is that I'm not a nihilist. I don't want to tear it all down. I'd rather reform it, fix it. There are no historical examples in which tearing it all down produced a better, more just, more functional order. The Zoomers don't seem to have any knowledge of history, nor do they care about it. They don't even take Trump all that seriously. It appears they see him as an out of touch boomer whose value lies in how now he can be used to achieve the system's destruction. That's what they see him as it has not escaped their notice that the ten months into Trump's second term, the economy is still crap. Right. This is who we are dealing with and the old peracles. Quote. Politics may not care about or you may not care about politics, but politics cares about you. Okay, if you're listening to this show, you're listening to this station, it is imperative that you understand the fight that is upon us because it is here. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to vpecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.