Red Caesarism and the Young Right

In 49 B.C., Roman general Julius Caesar marched his legion across the Rubicon River, violating a law forbidding a general to enter Italy with an army. This action ignited a civil war that culminated in Caesar’s victory and autocratic rule, effectively ending the Roman Republic. 

The famous metaphor “crossing the Rubicon” refers to a point of no return, at which a momentous decision is made. Over two millennia later, Gen Z conservatives in America have reached their own unique, intellectual Rubicon. They can either cross the river and embrace authoritarianism or turn away and preserve the ideals of the republic. 

The ascendant “Groypers,” led by far-right livestreamer Nicholas J. Fuentes, are ostensibly “Christian nationalists,” but they don’t want to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” — they want to anoint a new Caesar to rule America with an iron fist. They seek to advance a jingoistic and tribal nationalism fixated on race and racial identity, which is contrary to the principles of the American founding and the spirit of ordered liberty.

Fuentes advocates for a strong, authoritarian government to impose its will on the American people, and he is disenchanted with President Trump for not governing as a “Caesar-like figure.” If he were president, he said he would immediately declare martial law and abolish voting rights for any group he deemed unworthy of the franchise, including women and citizens under age 25. 

The U.S. Constitution wouldn’t grant him such authority, but the Groyper preference for Caesarism over constitutionalism is nonetheless palpable. Livestreaming his reaction to a Turning Point USA “Culture Wars” event, in which Charlie Kirk customarily defended the Constitution, Fuentes once quipped, “The Constitution is gay.” 

Such right-wing Caesarism isn’t confined to chronically online Groypers. The intellectual case for a “Red Caesarism,” characterized by a “form of one-man rule,” was articulated by former Trump presidential advisor and Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Michael Anton in his 2020 book The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return.

The longest-standing written constitution in the world, mandating a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances, is an obstacle to the Groypers and the New Right’s Nietzschean “Will to Power” approach to politics. Fuentes has long admired dictators and autocrats, including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and stated that “perfidious Jews” and other non-Christians need to receive the death penalty when the Groypers “take power.” He has vowed to make his political enemies “die in a holy war.”

Fuentes may claim that these remarks were frivolous expressions of shock jock “edgelording” or “rage bait,” which he routinely engages in during his livestreams, but many of his impressionable Groyper followers may not always interpret them that way. It’s often hard to distinguish between his provocative jests and his candid political commentary, and perhaps that’s an intentional strategy to maintain plausible deniability for his most extreme views.

Whereas the conservative movement historically marginalized fringe and absurd figures, Fuentes has been platformed and legitimized by popular voices like Tucker Carlson and Patrick Bet David, which has only boosted his popularity and secured a foothold for the Groypers in mainstream American politics. While some of Fuentes’ audience growth may be attributed to foreign bots, viral interviews on major podcasts undoubtedly drove his publicity surge in 2025. 

If the Groypers ever “take power” as Fuentes envisions, don’t count on them to uphold the rule of law, downsize the administrative state, or curtail the surveillance apparatus and its Orwellian breach of privacy rights. They will instead weaponize the federal bureaucracy and its vast instruments of power and coercion to serve their own agenda — punishing their enemies and rewarding their friends.  

The penchant for Caesarism and worship of power among the young “alt-right” has been revealed through the popularity of internet personalities like Bronze Age Pervert and Raw Egg Nationalist, who have been prominently featured by the Claremont Institute’s publication, The American Mind. These post-Christian figures are obsessed with race, fitness, eugenics, male beauty, and sexual potency. They are contemptuous of democracy and equality and reflect the resurgence of a pagan ethos. 

The “Groyperification” of the young Right is a major leap in this direction, and only a thin veil of Christian sentiment is disguising the countenance of pagan idolatry. As Daniel J. Mahoney wrote, this cadre of political extremists, represented by Fuentes, “is far more Darwinian and Nietzschean than classical, Christian, or American.” 

When Nicholas J. Fuentes became a household name this year, especially after his softball interview with Tucker Carlson, many older movement conservatives were astonished to discover that a significant proportion of young men on the Right had become radicalized. Rod Dreher reported that, according to credible sources, “between 30 and 40 percent” of conservative Zoomers working in Washington are Groypers. He later wrote in his blog, “The inability of us older people — Boomers, Xers, and older Millennials — to comprehend the world through the eyes of Zoomers is a big, big problem.”

One may question the accuracy of Dreher’s 30-40 percent estimation, but Zoomers like myself, who have been active in conservative circles, particularly in campus politics, are not surprised by the Groyper phenomenon. At my alma mater, Illinois State University, a student informed me that he used to be a libertarian, but had since become a white nationalist and was “open to a dictatorship.” Another student, a self-described national socialist, heckled Young Americans for Liberty events on campus and once told me that “we need to nationalize Hollywood.”

The libertarian to authoritarian pipeline is not uncommon on the Gen Z Right. This storm has been brewing for much of the past decade. The Groypers are the outcome of a weakening civil society and represent an organic and grassroots reaction to progressive “wokeness,” which they’ve been inundated with through education and media, framing them as an irredeemable oppressor class. Many of the right-leaning Zoomers who attended college post-2015 — when institutionalized “wokeness” kicked into high gear — are now working in the think tanks, media, and Congressional offices of the conservative movement. Some of them are watching “America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes,” and they’re hoping for a “Caesar-like figure” to save Western civilization. 

The Groypers are young, energetic, and proudly extreme. But they’re also nihilistic and deeply immature, exhibiting an alarming dearth of knowledge, prudence, and principle. In short, they want to burn everything down, have a good laugh doing so, and wage memetic warfare behind the anonymity of the internet. Aside from intellectual incoherence, there is pervasive ingratitude and ignorance in this form of grievance politics — uninformed by history, tradition, reverence for the tried and true, and respect for institutions and procedures that have stood the test of time.

Edmund Burke wrote in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, “Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.” The Burkean outlook and the American Founding Fathers’ emphasis on ordered liberty, the rule of law, free enterprise, and human dignity must remain strong intellectual pillars of American conservatism. Within this framework, there is ample space for respectful disagreements about a range of issues that have long divided conservatives.  

But as Gen Z and its appetite for Caesarism climbs the ranks of the conservative movement, we risk losing the ideals that have animated and defined conservatism for generations — our rich intellectual inheritance of Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, and Roger Scruton, which may be cast aside by Groyper indignation and spurning of ancient wisdom. 

It is a time for choosing on the Gen Z Right, and we must steadfastly refuse to cross the Rubicon. Once liberty and the self-evident truths of the American founding are abandoned, there is no turning back.

Aidan Grogan is a history PhD candidate at Liberty University, a senior contributor with Young Voices, and the donor communications manager at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). His work has been published in National Review, The Daily Wire, The Federalist, The American Spectator, Law & Liberty, and AIER’s The Daily Economy. Follow him on X @AidanGrogan.