I realized recently that it’s been a while since we’ve seen an incel mass murderer. Because, really, for a time there, it seemed like something of an endless parade of angry young men going on murder sprees over not being able to get laid. It occurred to me the reason for this may be that, while they’re probably still not getting laid, they’re certainly less alone now. “Incel culture” has become mainstream on the Right. They hate women like incels. They talk like incels. Terms like “foid” (short for “femoid” or “female android”), “looksmaxxing,” “______ mogged,” “the wall” have entered their lexicon. Many of them are straight up turning themselves into incels just by hating women and various other groups of people so much that they are repulsive to women.
These days, they don’t have to go to dark corners of the internet in order to share their insane theories about women, to be told by other men that they are inherently superior to women, that women are crazy and evil and that giving them rights has ruined everything. They just have to go over to X The Everything App or to YouTube or, you know, listen to a sizeable majority of the mainstream male Republican pundits.
There are even more than a few women they can listen to. Women who will gladly tweet and stream and podcast all about how they think feminism and the sexual revolution ruined everything for women as well, who will even claim they want to #RepealThe19th because of how stupid and crazy we all are.
But that sort of pretense isn’t easy to maintain, especially once it’s no longer serving you. Thus, we’ve increasingly seen stories about alt-right women defecting from the movement after they have “seen the light” and suddenly come to realize that these men don’t actually like them, either. This week, we’ve got one in New York mag.
They all have pretty much the same story at this point. They fell into all of it because they were mad about “woke scolds” and thought it was cool and rebellious to embrace far-right ideology, because they enjoyed the attention they got for repeating anti-feminist talking points and maybe even believed that they’d rather be stay-at-home moms — literally nothing wrong with that! No one cares! Go and be well! — or that working instead of raising children was making women “crazy.” Then they realized, at some point — whether because they ended up in a pretty bad domestic violence situation like Lauren Southern, or because their baby daddy let his acolytes post AI child sexual abuse images of them on his social media site as happened to Ashley St. Clair, or because they realized that the Right did not actually allow for differing opinions or criticism, or because they realized that the men they were sucking up to hated their guts as much as they hate ours.
“Anna,” a former “celebrated pundit of the New Right,” anonymously told New York her own version of this well-worn origin story. She was liberal when she was younger and living in a conservative town, but then she left and …
[D]uring college in the mid-2010s, she was exposed to the overweening, haughty moralism of Peak Woke.
“I’m somebody, dispositionally, who likes to have a good time,” she tells me. She found the humorlessness of the contemporary left more alienating than the conservatism of her youth.
She wasn’t attracted to the right by the romanticized aesthetic of “traditional America” — big beautiful houses and bread-making and families with half a dozen children. Rather, she says, “I was in love with the frisson of transgression.” The online right had begun to engage more explicitly with forbidden subjects: nativism, race science, and gender essentialism drawn from evolutionary psychology. “There was an element of gnosticism to it,” she says, “the sense that you know secret things that other people don’t know.”
Ah yes, the “frisson of transgression.” “Gnosticism.” What a fabulously intellectual way to say “I got tingly from being a bigot and didn’t actually care about who I harmed as long as I felt special.” Another woman who spoke to New York said about the same thing.
[Alex] Kaschuta [who hosted the alt-right podcast Subversive], like Anna, says she was initially attracted to the New Right out of curiosity, contempt for woke pieties, and a taste for transgression. “I’ve always liked edgy stuff, unfortunately — that’s one of my problems,” she says, laughing.
We’ve seen a lot of this. People attempting to write off racist, misogynistic or otherwise shitty views as some attempt to “freak out the squares” — as though it’s somehow similar to middle schoolers trying to convince their teachers that they are Satanists just to mess with them. The thing is, you don’t do the latter unless you think it’s dumb that people are freaked out by Satanists (which it is), and you don’t do the former unless you think it’s dumb for people to not want to be harmed by bigotry. This kind of thing doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Anyway, “Anne” seems to have realized the error of her ways when they started to harm her.
“Over time, the language of New Right misogyny got way more tuned in to red-pill-type stuff,” she says. Among young MAGA men, there ceased to be a huge difference between self-understood trads — Christians who tend to (patronizingly) venerate women’s special contributions to family and religious life — and rageful incels, who see women as conspirators in a plot to deprive them of sex and status. Both groups, Anna says, came to see women as “these objects you can use at will. So if you want a marriage, if you want a lifelong ‘bang maid,’ then you can pursue that. And if you want to just have endless hookups, you can pursue that by using these dating tactics within the red-pill sphere.”
While the language has certainly become more coarse over time, while it’s much more “acceptable” on the Right to now say, as Nick Fuentes does, that you’d like to see women put in concentration camps, this really isn’t anything new. In fact, what many of these women imagined themselves “rebelling” against was the silly feminist notion that these men thought these things and behaved this way in the first place. That the “woke scolds” were imagining all of this sexism and racism that didn’t actually exist anymore. Indeed, the swiftness with which they waver between blatant misogyny and racism and claiming that these things are not a problem in today’s society will give you whiplash.
Now, I am always glad for people to defect from any bad way of thinking, whatever it is that wakes them up. The fewer of these fuckers, the better. That being said, I do think this is all bullshit. I do think that the reason they’re leaving is because they’re being pushed out, not because they are suddenly realizing that right-wing ideology is bad.
The Right has fallen in love with the narrative of “the woke scolds were too much and we were all rebels who would never be any good, so we had to become Nazis!” but that is, and always has been, absolute bullshit. If someone’s instinct is to “rebel” or even simply to be contrarian, they’re not going to be out here demanding that everyone go along with them — because once that happens, you’re not a rebel anymore, you’re not “transgressive,” you’re just like everyone else. Their anger wasn’t ever that they couldn’t use slurs. The power to do so was within them all along. What they were mad about was that it wasn’t socially acceptable for them to do so. That other people weren’t doing it.
Similarly, no one (other than companies that don’t want to pay people enough money to subsist on a single income) has done anything to prevent any of these women from becoming housewives or stay-at-home moms. I’ve been a feminist my entire life. I’ve been a feminist in a professional capacity for over a decade at this point. At no point have I ever heard any feminist disparage “stay-at-home moms.” Literally not once. Ever. This is a narrative that lives exclusively in the minds of paranoid conservatives who live in terror of someone policing their life choices the way they police the life choices of others.
But you know what? Even if they did! Even if absolute legions of feminist writers devoted themselves fully to proclaiming that stay-at-home moms should not exist … other people’s opinions are not the law.
The fact is, both the men and the women who participate in this bullshit are looking for the same thing — validation and self-esteem. They want to be told “you’re better than other people just by being you.” For all the talk of “merit” on the Right, this is what they’re most thirsty for. The men want to be told they’re inherently superior to women — as well as people of color, Jewish people, LGBTQ+ people, etc. depending on their personal identity — and the women wanted to be told they’re “not like the other girls!” or “so based!”
I suppose it is entirely possible that these women spent years in the dark and are just now realizing that the men in their movement really do hate women and really do want to deprive them of rights and that this would be unpleasant for them were it to actually occur — this seems to be what “Anna” feels happened to her.
“You almost don’t realize what’s happening until five years later,” Anna says, “when you look back and you’re like, Oh gosh, I was being used.” She also blames herself: “I was too frivolous with ideas.”
But I don’t think these defections are happening by coincidence at a time when shitty men now feel so “empowered” that they no longer require the permission of pick-me girls willing to say “I agree! Women are terrible and crazy and too emotional and shouldn’t have rights!”
Arguably, these women are no longer necessary to their movement and are being cast aside as such. Conservative men no longer feel like they need to be able to point to a woman and say “Look! She’s okay with it!” because they have gotten to the point where they do not care about that anymore.
This, indeed, is more or less what Kaschuta’s former compatriots had to say about her.
Many attacked her looks (Kaschuta is blond and conventionally attractive) and then attributed her defection to those same insults. Charles Cornish-Dale, a New Right figurehead who goes by the name Raw Egg Nationalist and appeared several times on Subversive, posted on X, “The truth about the whole saga … is that people (i.e., men) started calling Alex fat and telling her they didn’t want to be browbeaten and tone-policed by a woman.” This, he said, was the real reason she had turned against the right, “not principles or ideas.”
At this point in their evolution, they now feel free to denigrate those women just as furiously as they denigrate feminists, if not moreso.
They now take pledges to, as the article notes, “rape, kill and die” for Nick Fuentes (frequently abbreviated “RKD4NJF”). As “Anna” put it, they are “insisting that women subject themselves entirely to male authority, while advertising that male authority will be cruel and vicious and fickle.” They no longer feel the need to pretend that this is meant to be a good time for women as well. They’re just viscerally furious at women for existing and “ruining” everything for them by insisting upon being treated like human beings. They want to see us all punished for this and they no longer want to have to pretend to not hate a few women here and there.
In return, they are gaining power in the Republican Party. A follower of Fuentes’s was just elected as president of the College Republicans of America.
Granted, these defections and even these men outright saying that they want a world in which they get to be horrible to women will probably not deter other women from attempting to join in on all the #RepealThe19th good times. Because sure, they’ll still get a few “so based” and “If only all women were like you!” comments here and there and that will make it all worth it for them — for a while, at least, until they, too, experience the spontaneous revelation that they will have to also accept a much larger dose of disrespect in exchange.
Rabbi Moti Rieber watches law enforcement as they confront protesters March 10, 2026, outside the Senate chamber in the Kansas Statehouse. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — Rabbi Moti Rieber sat on the tiled floor, legs akimbo, in front of the arched passage leading to the Kansas Senate chamber with at least 20 people behind him and more lining the walls with handmade signs.
“We are here because when injustice becomes law, then resistance is necessary,” Rieber said. “We are here as moral witnesses.”
Clergy members led a sit-in protest Tuesday in opposition to a recently passed anti-trans law. The Republican-controlled Legislature used tactics to avoid public input and overrode the governor’s veto to pass Senate Bill 244, requiring people in public buildings to use the bathroom that coincides with their biological sex and also mandating driver’s licenses include a person’s sex assigned at birth instead of their gender.
Sergeants-at-arms looked on from behind the group, and Kansas Highway Patrol troopers soon joined. But it wasn’t until the group prevented Sen. Tim Shallenburger, R-Baxter Springs, from entering the chamber that troopers grabbed people by the arms to clear a path.
As troopers hoisted activists up from their seats, encouraging them to disperse, the group sang in harmony: “No one is getting left behind this time. No one is getting left behind. No one is getting left behind this time. We get there together or never get there at all.”
At one point, a trooper knocked a woman to the ground as she tried to pass through the crowd, appearing to mistake her as part of the demonstration. Protesters responded with chants of “Shame!”
The woman declined to be identified or comment but told Kansas Reflector she was OK.
Rieber, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, said while sitting on the floor, addressing the crowd, that the process to pass SB 244 was “crooked.” (There is a TikTok embedded on the page, linked in the title above.)
The law has already been challenged in Douglas County District Court, where a judge decided Tuesday not to pause enforcement of the law. The state sent letters to 275 Kansans shortly before the law went into effect, telling them their driver’s licenses were invalid. Some experts say laws targeting trans people can harm their mental health and increase the likelihood of discrimination.
The Rev. Mandy Todd, pastor at Messiah Lutheran Church in Lindsborg, said SB 244 is hurtful, targeted and part of a culture war. She said the group is “disgusted by this Legislature’s treatment of trans people.”
The bill stokes fear and anxiety, she said.
Todd, the director of engagement for Kansas Interfaith Action, said trans people in her community have felt the immediate effects of SB 244. The closest driver’s license office is in the next town, which Todd said has hamstrung one Lindsborg woman, who now cannot legally drive to sort out her invalid license.
Pastor Charles McKinzie II of Grace United Methodist Church in Winfield is confident the law, which he said was flawed in process and in substance, will make its way to the Kansas Supreme Court to be overturned.
“In the meantime, people are hurting, and people need to know that they are seen,” McKinzie said.
Conversations about the effects of SB 244 aren’t limited to a courtroom. They are taking place in churches, synagogues and other small group settings across the state, McKinzie said, and the sit-in was meant as a show of nonviolence “to shed light on a violent system.”
About an hour after the protest, Master Trooper Scott Whitsell said that no one from the group had been cited or arrested to his knowledge. The only law the protestors broke was blocking an entryway, he said.
I know Jill posts songs and Randy recently posted some also. I don’t want to step on their toes and wont be able to do the grand job they do. But just now I went out to tell Ron something as he worked in our back yard raking leaves from the neighbors sea grapes. As I came back in side I noticed the dark black clouds in the sky and the increasing winds. It reminded me of the first song below. My adopting parents were huge C7W fans and Porter Wagner was one of their favorites. So as a kid I heard the first song a lot. It is often in my mind when the vortex comes for me, as it is the same kind of big winds in my mind. The second song I heard when I was in the military and it stuck with me as it also was played a lot. It fit my mood well back then. Hugs
This caller is a well know immegration lawyer who calls in often. There has been a long running joke about the buttons on Sam’s shirts so ignore that part. The lawyer talks about what ICE is doing to help the detained people and he describes how horrific the conditions are. The goal is to make it so horrific these people will self-deport willingly. But the government is doing everything possible to hurt and harm the immigrants and detained people because of hate and bigotry of ICE and the white supremacists in the US government. Hugs
It surprises me how many religious evangelicals or fundies or whatever they are called are in Congress and government offices. They really are believers in the 7 mountains religious theocracy takeover of the US government. Between AIPAC and these religious people who believe Israel must be a beacon for all Jewish people to start the end times for their god to come home and hug them is horrific and costing the US every shred of our public safety net while providing Israel and religious organizations a free ride on our dime. Hugs
President Donald Trump has long treated reality like something that can be bent to his will — declare that everything is under control, insist the operation is flawless and expect the people around him to project the same confidence whether the facts cooperate or not.
But as the war in the Middle East continues to spiral outward, the White House is once again finding that projecting strength and actually convincing people things are under control are two very different things.
President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable discussion on college sports in the East Room of the White House on March 06, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The latest flashpoint erupted after the White House posted a pair of bizarre, Hollywood-style propaganda videos celebrating U.S. missile strikes on Iran — a move critics say only reinforced the growing perception that the administration is treating a deadly war like a movie trailer or video game.
The posts immediately set off fierce backlash online. One video stitched together scenes from blockbuster action films with real footage of U.S. strikes on Tehran, while another blended clips from a video game.
The first video, posted to the White House’s X account on Wednesday, March 4, opens with a clip from Call of Duty before cutting to footage of military aircraft taking off and real U.S. airstrikes on Iran. Upbeat music plays beneath the one-minute-and-five-second montage captioned, “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue.”
Critics say the second video, posted Thursday, March 5, is even more disturbing.
The 42-second montage opens with a scene from Iron Man in which AI assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. tells Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., “Wake up. Daddy’s home,” before cutting to action-heavy clips from films including “Gladiator”, “Braveheart”, “Top Gun” and “Superman” — all interspersed with real footage of the U.S. attack on Tehran.
Another moment features a line from the television series “Better Call Saul”, when the character Saul Goodman declares, “You can’t conceive what I’m capable of.”
The video is captioned “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY” and ends with a deep, ominous voice declaring, “Flawless victory.”
Some of the footage of the U.S. airstrikes appears to have been pulled directly from posts on U.S. Central Command’s own X account.
But instead of projecting strength or confidence, the videos quickly ignited outrage online — reinforcing the criticism that Trump’s team appears more interested in staging a cinematic show of force than explaining a coherent strategy for a rapidly escalating conflict.
French TV host Alex Taylor in post on X called it, “Quite simply one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen on here.”
“Whatever you think of the awful Iranian régime, the White House treating bombing raids like a cheap video game is gut-wrenchingly shocking America, your country is going to hell,” he declared.
Yahoo readers were similarly “disgusted” by the first post on Wednesday likening war to a video game.
“Just imagine if Obama or Bush or for that matter any other president had spliced together a propaganda video like this?? The GOPed would impeach within minutes of its release,” one reader pointed out.
Trump’s White House is known for posting both vulgar and offensive videos. In October after millions took to the streets in cities across the country for the “No Kings” protests, Trump posted a gross video of himself flying a fighter jet and dumping feces on demonstrators.
Others argued the videos trivialized the human cost of war and only reinforced the growing accusation that there are no adults in the room running the administration.
“RIDICULOUS VIDEO! Real people are dying IRL. Don’t make it like you just reset and no one’s has died.”
“CHILDISHLY INAPPROPRIATE, THOUGHTLESS, JUVENILE, SADISTIC, MEAN, IMMORAL AND SAD! WAR IS NOT A GAME OR A MOVIE,” one user wrote. “There are men, women and children being killed, maimed and left homeless because of the cruel leadership in America and Israel.”
“It is all a game with these creeps,” another commenter wrote. “Fantasy is their truth — men who know nothing about war using sci-fi and movies to sell their real killing.”
Some observers also pointed out the bizarre irony in the White House’s choice of film clips with one X user providing a full breakdown.
“Dumb f***ers didn’t understand any one of these movie plot lines?! That tracks.”
The backlash is unfolding as the war launched by the United States and Israel continues to escalate across the region.
In less than a week, since Trump, along with Israel, launched airstrikes on Iran on Saturday, Feb. 28, six American service members have been killed in an Iranian drone attack on a port in Kuwait.
Iran’s Red Crescent says the death toll in Trump’s bombing campaign inside Iran has reached at least 1,000, according to PBS.
Meanwhile, Trump and his allies have offered shifting explanations for the purpose of the operation.
The president initially suggested the campaign was about regime change in Tehran before later saying it was about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has framed the operation as an effort to “protect Americans” and destroy Iranian ballistic missile capabilities.
But critics say the administration’s messaging has been anything but clear — feeding the rumor spreading online that the White House may not have a coherent plan for how the conflict ends.
Meanwhile, Iran is signaling it has no intention of backing down.
In an interview with NBC News, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi struck a defiant tone when asked whether Tehran feared a potential U.S. ground invasion.
“No, we are waiting for them,” Araghchi said. “Because we are confident that we can confront them — and that would be a big disaster for them.”
Scottie's Playtime 