I Can’t Believe I Have to Learn Who These People Are

Trump and his top cronies like Elon Musk are closely advised by a circle of unhinged, far-right, terminally online influencers—many of whom got a shoutout from Trump on Election night. 

By Kylie Cheung  |  November 7, 2024 | 6:26pm
Photo: Screenshots Politics
I Can’t Believe I Have to Learn Who These People Are

On Tuesday, millions of Americans made their voices heard, and I really wish they hadn’t! Because now, Donald Trump will be our next president, and in a speech prematurely celebrating his victory early Wednesday morning, instead of shouting out figures like, say, GOP leader Mitch McConnell, he personally thanked misogynist Twitch streamer Adin Ross and the Canadian transplants known as the NELK Boys. You’re probably reading this, scratching your head, and wondering, “Who are these people???” and “Why should I care???” Welp, with Trump on the brink of announcing appointees and staffing decisions, you’d better get used to that feeling.

In the aftermath of his second, shock victory, everyone from journalists to Democratic Party strategists are trying to figure out how we got here, and there are a lot of conversations to be had about Trump’s surging popularity with internet-addicted young men. It helps that Trump and those staffing him are very clearly terminally online, and have been forging close relationships with some of the most unhinged, far-right Twitch streamers, manosphere podcasters, and disinformation-peddling influencers.

Trump spent the campaign trail speaking on their podcasts, appearing on their Twitch streams, and introducing them at his rallies. He also more recently made Elon Musk a major figure on his campaign, capping off Musk’s years-long, far-right pivot, which has seen him bro out with a range of far-right Twitter influencers, from “Catturd” to Malaysia resident Ian Miles Cheong. Both Cheong and “Catturd” played an outsized role in convincing Trump’s base that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs.

And now, especially without any concerns about campaign trail “optics” or running for reelection, the guardrails are off, and we’re about to see some of the internet’s most vile social media addicts file into the White House and dictate the policies that control our lives. Some could serve as informal advisers, others may drop by to stream—but one way or another, we’re being forced to learn who they are. In addition to mass deportation campaigns and a national abortion ban, this is one of the new realities I am looking forward to the least.

In September, the Trump campaign began publicly embracing proud white supremacist Laura Loomer, parading her around at events and on the campaign’s private jet. Faced with backlash, given Loomer’s record of referring to Black Congress members as “ghetto bitch” and cheering for immigrants to be killed, the Trump campaign performatively distanced itself from Loomer around mid-September. But there’s no real motivation for Trump to do that anymore. He famously loathed the mainstream, old-guard conservatives who he grudgingly hired in his first administration; he now sees many of them as traitors. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought in someone like his dear friend Chaiya “LibsOfTikTok” Raichik as, say, secretary of education. It wouldn’t even be Raichik’s first time being recruited and embraced by right-wing government officials: In January, after spewing vile anti-LGBTQ lies that inspired her followers to call in bomb threats to schools across the country, the superintendent of Oklahoma’s State Department of Education appointed her to OSDE’s Library Media Advisory Committee to help dictate what books students are allowed to read.

Over the summer, Trump also appeared on Ross’ Twitch stream in an appeal to his seven million followers, though the two mostly chatted about Young Thug’s criminal trial while Ross illegally gifted Trump a watch and a Cybertruck. (Ross has been banned by Twitch several times for spreading hate speech that I won’t repeat here.) In the final stretch of the campaign, Trump collaborated with the NELK Boys—Nick, Elliot and Lucas Gasparini, and Kyle Forgeard—who host a bro-y podcast whose YouTube was temporarily demonetized in 2020 after they threw massive parties on college campuses, violating strict covid policies and endangering people’s lives. The NELK Boys, who rose to fame with viral pranks and sexist dating advice for young, disaffected single men, spearheaded a range of pro-Trump get-out-the-vote events catered to young men on college campuses across the country. In addition to Ross and the NELK Boys, Trump stopped by the podcasts of other popular manosphere influencers, like Theo Von and Logan Paul.

Within hours of Trump’s victory, proud neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, who’s publicly worshiped Adolf Hitler, smugly tweeted, “Your body. My choice. Forever,” a rapey, vomit-inducing catchphrase that’s since caught fire on social media. In 2022, Trump personally dined with Fuentes. They haven’t met or collaborated recently, but if Fuentes—who, as recently as this weekend, disavowed the MAGA movement, only to seemingly pivot back this week—resumes aggressively stroking Trump’s ego, what’s to stop our president-elect from picking up the phone next time Fuentes calls?

Also, in August, Wired reported on the extensive, disturbing parallels between Trump and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate’s rhetoric about women, calling for women to be stripped of basic rights and completely dominated.

This week also marks a truly nauseating milestone for right-wing digital media stars, like far-right podcaster and professional transphobe Matt Walsh, who giddily confessed on Wednesday, “Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol.” Far-right YouTube star Benny Johnson similarly tweeted, “It is my honor to inform you all that Project 2025 was real the whole time.” Project 2025, created by former and likely future Trump advisers, outlines national bans on abortion and porn.

Trump’s rise comes with the validation and political empowerment of some of the world’s loudest, proudest online neo-Nazis. As writer KT Nelson put it, “the absolute most insane, most shameless, and most villainous posters are the ones moving up to the big leagues,” and some of the biggest “freaks and psychopaths” on the internet “have slowly slithered their way into almost every organ of the conservative power structure.”

So if you’ve managed to avoid knowing who any of these professionally misogynistic idiots are for the last few years, unfortunately, that’s probably about to change. Some of these dumbasses are about to have more access to the president of the United States than probably any Republican in the Senate.

 
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