We can look at the rise of figures such as Nick Fuentes as a crisis of true shepherds.
By Scott Ventureyra
Crisis Magazine
December 12, 2025
Modern Western culture speaks often of inclusion, compassion, and solidarity, yet there is one group it feels remarkably free to shame and ignore: its own sons. Prof G Conversations to be solved rather than a people to be formed. Schools, universities, HR departments, the media, political institutions, and even some of the Church treat them as bearers of inherited guilt, beneficiaries of privilege they cannot see, and potential threats merely because they exist as white, straight, able-bodied, Christian (even if nominally) males, all the worse if they are Catholics.
I would extend this list to just young Christian men, and even teenage boys and young men in general, but it's hard to turn away from the fact that "whiteness" has been considered a cardinal sin amid our broken culture and institutions. The absence of fathers and mentors has only exacerbated the situation. The Church's silence in assisting them has been deafening. They have chosen to accommodate our decadent culture instead.
This resentment has been fostered by Western culture. This resentment reflects a profound sense of betrayal. One wonders what kind of culture acts shocked when young men and teenage boys who are continuously labeled as "toxic" begin to rebel.
This is precisely what took place over the last decade. Boys and young men had no sense of belonging within their families, churches, and community life. So, what did they do ? They went looking toward YouTube, Twitter, the gaming world, and other social media to discover a sense of belonging. What did they uncover ? Influencers who became father-like figures. But instead of finding direction, they found ideology. Instead of finding courage, they found bravado. They found solace in these influencers.
In 2016, Jordan Peterson, a man whom I have equally praised and criticized over the years, picked up the gauntlet to lead these young men and teenage boys out of the pits of hell into the earthly realm of accountability and sacrifice, even if briefly, to break that pattern. Peterson had accomplished what few, if any, pastors or cultural leaders had the courage or imagination to do. He told them that responsibility was better than victimhood, that truth was better than comfort, and that order was better than chaos. And millions listened.
But Peterson's own life unraveled. His physical and mental health began to fail him. His theological and philosophical framework could not withstand closer scrutiny, much like a Greek sculpture that appears perfect from afar but whose cracks become apparent the closer you get. As his fame grew, his intellectual shortcomings became more and more apparent. He spread himself too thin, wandered into ideological contradictions, and lost the clarity that once made him compelling. Many young men who sought his guidance felt abandoned a second time.
Charlie Kirk's assassination deepened that crisis. Before being a political pundit or influencer, Charlie was a Christian apologist who defended the Gospel. This is why he gravitated toward figures like The Greatness of Charlie Kirk: An Eyewitness Account of His Life and Martyrdom for guidance. Whatever one thought of his politics, he represented for many young conservatives a connection to a larger movement and a sense of belonging. His death created a void, the kind that more aggressive voices are always eager to fill.
Nick Fuentes' own reaction to Kirk's murder, as he explained in a FULL INTERVIEW: Nick Fuentes VS Glenn Greenwald. , complicates the caricature that circulates in short clips and hostile summaries. He admitted that he had been one of Kirk's fiercest critics, yet he described seeing him "struck down" in such a graphic way before thousands of young supporters as "absolutely horrifying" and said he identified with Kirk as a kind of "mirror image" from a similar background. In that moment, he said, it felt as though the country was staring over the edge of a cliff into a race war and political violence. He insisted that, as a Catholic, he does not wish death on his enemies and would rather choose dialogue than bloodshed. It is important to recognize that complexity, even while challenging the wider movement around him.
Fuentes and the broader Groypers orbit were waiting in the wings, ready to offer teenage boys and young men what mainstream culture refused to give them: affirmation and hope (however disoriented it may be), belonging, and a story that made sense of their humiliation. Tucker Carlson summarized part of the appeal bluntly: "The guy is highly articulate, totally fearless. Doesn't care at all; that's always a draw. The man who doesn't care and is just going to say it always has a big audience." Many of Fuentes' followers view his attitude and contempt toward our institutions as a sign of courage and inspiration.
It seems that young men are drawn to Fuentes-even among those who disagree with him-because he speaks with a raw authenticity that mainstream institutions seem unable or unwilling to offer. Charles Taylor observed in The Malaise of Modernity that our age has hollowed out many of the moral and spiritual frameworks that once gave shape to the self, leaving individuals to construct identity in a culture that provides little genuine guidance. In that void, the contemporary notion of "authenticity" becomes tenuous and susceptible to corruption: divorced from profound moral frameworks, it deteriorates into mere self-assertion or emotional fervor.
Taylor's warning becomes prophetic when young men perceive their concerns dismissed, their identity pathologized, or their questions treated as taboo. A society that fails to offer substantive meaning or honest moral formation will drive its sons toward whichever voices appear most "real," even if those voices ultimately lead them astray. Anthony Schratz, a retired lawyer and Catholic thinker who recently wrote a book titled Paradise Cancelled, under my press, True Freedom Press, labels this misguidance as "expressive individualism," which one could say is personal autonomy without real accountability to the world, a "do what you want and how you want" lifestyle.
Thus, Fuentes' appeal to many young men is rooted in a sense of unfiltered authenticity, a willingness to say what others will not. But this authenticity is also deeply disordered. It often takes the form of narcissism, a lack of charity, and a habitual reliance on insults and personal attacks. From a Catholic perspective, this style touches directly on sins of pride, wrath, detraction, and scandal. It may feel entertaining or cathartic to a disaffected Gen Z audience, but it is a poor model of Christian speech and moral seriousness.
Rod Dreher has recently noted that J.D. Vance personally despises Fuentes' behavior yet understands the political cost of denouncing him outright, since many of Fuentes' followers are potential Republican voters in 2028. That hesitation reveals something telling: the same qualities that make Fuentes popular among frustrated young men—his defiance, his abrasiveness, and his transgressive flair—are the very traits that should trouble Christians most deeply.
Part of the appeal is also that Fuentes has been right on certain political failures. He refused to vote in 2024 because he no longer trusted that Trump would deliver on America First priorities. And now the country sits in a worse position than many expected: MAHA has stalled, ICE has done next to nothing, Americans were gaslighted over the Epstein files, the government edges toward insolvency, the financial crisis continues, and Trump surrounds himself with people who betrayed him while publicly shaming the very patriots who stood by him: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and Rand Paul. He even makes a concerted effort to maintain a warm, smiling, and overly friendly relationship with Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, despite the fact that grassroots voters are still struggling with crime and inflation.
A young audience notices that Fuentes warned about these second-term failures long before they happened. He is not right about everything, far from it, but he was prescient about some of the weaknesses now plainly visible.
And then there is the way the "respectable" Right handled him. In his interview with Carlson, Fuentes recounts how, as an unknown 18-year-old with barely a thousand followers, he was publicly branded an anti-Semite by Ben Shapiro on Christmas Eve simply for questioning why The Daily Wire never criticized Israel . When he persisted, he says, The Daily Wire figures worked behind the scenes to isolate him, pressured employers to fire him, and even funneled clips to Media Matters to destroy his early career.
Teenage boys watching do not see principled leadership here. They see gatekeeping and persecution. It convinces them that certain questions are forbidden (a third rail, as I discussed in my previous article in Crisis Magazine) not because they are evil but because powerful people fear where honest inquiry might lead.
In the words of Eddie Vedder of the grunge rock group Pearl Jam, in the song " Jeremy ,": "Oh, we unleashed a lion." The attempt to shut him down only persuaded his early followers that the so-called respectable Right was just as allergic to uncomfortable questions as the Left. That kind of treatment doesn't silence the boys who already feel shamed, ignored, and marginalized. It confirms their suspicion that the entire system wants them quiet. That feeling of being singled out, of being punished for asking the wrong questions, has become one of the main currents carrying the movement forward.
Yet the real wound is not only that these boys are drifting into harder and more chaotic spaces online. The deeper wound is that most Christian leaders have offered them nothing stronger or more hopeful to cling to. Too many churches adopt a soft managerial tone instead of demonstrating genuine pastoral courage. Too many pastors behave like administrators when the moment demands fathers. These young men do not need to be analyzed, reprimanded, or told they are a problem. They need direction. They need presence. They need someone willing to stand in the gap.
They need to be acknowledged, challenged, formed, and properly loved. Worsening this crisis is the fact that countless Protestant ministers and Catholic priests speak so blandly and uninspiringly, which leaves much to be desired, a spiritual vacuity of sorts. They are oblivious to their needs.
Unsurprisingly, behind every ideological radicalization is a pastoral failure. When churches stop speaking directly to boys and young men, someone else will. When families disintegrate, ideologues step in. When society treats masculinity as a defect, boys will seek voices that call it a virtue, even if those voices mix truth with poison. Difficult questions about foreign policy, identity, and loyalty will not magically disappear because gatekeepers declare them too taboo. If we fail to answer those questions patiently, substantively, and truthfully, then we give way to treacherous voices.
Instead, address the anger of these boys and young men and avoid assuming they are all bigots. The anger is real, and some of it is justified. But anger without wisdom becomes bitterness, and bitterness without guidance becomes extremism. The Church must recover the courage to tell teenage boys and young men that they are made for something higher than grievance or despair. They are made for sacrifice, for service, for truth, for holiness.
They must be taught that strength is good but domination is not. That responsibility is liberating but resentment destroys. That their identity is not rooted in race, status, or political tribe but in their creation and redemption in Christ.
The Church can no longer afford to disown its own sons—because the people waiting to claim them are not shepherds. They are competitors for the souls of the very boys and young men we have failed to love, to teach, to form, and to inspire. We must find these lost boys and bring them back home.