Title: The Young Republicans' Group Chat

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now I'll end today's show with a closer look at the culture behind the Young Republicans' leaked chats that caused such a controversy earlier this month. If you missed the story with all the other major headlines taking place, here's what happened. A few weeks ago, POLITICO reporters published private messages from a Telegram chat amongst leaders within the Young Republicans organization.

These messages were categorically offensive. I don't think anybody disagrees with that. They contained racial and homophobic slurs, Holocaust jokes, Nazi glorification, and we're just scratching the surface here. Most of the participants did face backlash. Some lost their jobs with Republican elected officials, and the entire New York chapter of the Young Republicans was disbanded.

With me now to discuss where this leaked group chat suggests our politics may be headed is Calder McHugh, reporter at POLITICO Magazine. His piece on this story is titled "The Young Republicans' Leaked Chat Is a Sign of Where We Could Be Headed." Hi, Calder. Welcome to WNYC.

Calder McHugh: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: First, you describe these chats as commonplace humor circulating in far-right circles on social media. Tell us more about edgelord culture as you describe it, or for our listeners who haven't heard this word before, what a groyper is.

Calder McHugh: Yes. For those people who don't know what these words are, I might count them lucky. Edgelords and groypers, this language is often currency in some of these new right spaces. It's kind of the price of entry. Edgelords are people who are adopting a provocative or an extreme persona, in particular online, on purpose, and groypers are a subset of that.

Basically, they are people who are on what would probably be considered the far right on the Internet and have adopted this persona of basically saying anything and everything that can be offensive. In some of these spaces online, people are trying to say things increasingly offensive to kind of shock one another.

Brian Lehrer: Trying to say things that-- Yes, and your article uses the term "vice signaling." I guess that's the opposite of virtue signaling, right?

Calder McHugh: Yes, exactly. You got it exactly right. It's you're signaling to the people within your group, within your little online community, that you're kind of willing to go there. You're willing to say things that might be out of bounds in polite society.

Brian Lehrer: The kinds of things, and I don't want to repeat on the radio what some of the actual content was. Just to say racial and homophobic slurs, Holocaust jokes, Nazi glorification, some of the things. You describe this vice signaling as sometimes loyalty tests. What did you mean by that?

Calder McHugh: Yes, it's basically when you're in these online communities, a lot of what people are kind of wondering or asking is whether you actually belong. There's a lot of in-group, out-group behavior in these spaces. When you're saying something that is offensive, like what you've just mentioned, that is an indication to other people in the group that yes, in fact, you are part of the club.

Brian Lehrer: Listener says, and I haven't seen this myself, but that a lot of the jokes were about rape. Is that your understanding?

Calder McHugh: Yes, some of them. I think it's kind of any and all, it's catch-all. I think another thing that's important to note is that we're kind of talking about two things here. There's the language in these groups, and then there's actual policy and how much these people have kind of control over the Republican Party. I think that that second question is much more of an open one, but in terms of the language question, anything and everything that's offensive, it's a lot of misogynistic stuff. There's a lot of anti-Semitic stuff. There's a lot of openly racist stuff in these spaces.

Brian Lehrer: Some of the participants did face backlash. As I said, some lost their jobs. It's creepy for a lot of people to think that some of these folks had jobs with Republican elected officials while they were saying things like you've been describing. The entire New York chapter of the Young Republicans was disbanded, but I want to play a 30-second clip of Vice President J. D. Vance, who seemed to dismiss a lot of this by saying this.

Vice President J. D. Vance: The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That's what kids do. I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke, is caused to ruin their lives. At some point, we're all going to have to say enough of this BS. We're not going to allow the worst moment in a 21-year-old's group chat to ruin a kid's life for the rest of time. That's just not okay.

Brian Lehrer: There's been a lot of pushback to that. Descriptions of specific individuals who were involved in some of these group chats, who are hardly kids, and even if you count 21 as a kid, significantly older than that. Can you give us a little bit of chapter and verse?

Calder McHugh: Yes, the Young Republicans club in question, membership is from 18 to 40. Vice President J. D. Vance is 41 years old, so he's really, actually right on the edge. He's just aged out of that group himself. Many of the people in the group chat were in their late 20s and early 30s, and some of them did have not super prominent roles in any state GOP parties, but did have jobs in some of these larger organizations.

It's a very clever thing that J. D. Vance is saying, because he's not wrong, right? Kids say stupid stuff to one another. I think most people would agree, you shouldn't be judged for the stupidest thing you said when you were in college, but at the same time, these are group chats that are theoretically professional. The other stuff that they were talking about in there was the sorts of people who they want to run for chapter head, what's going on with the Republican Party. These are professional group chats. A lot of these people are not 21, just to be clear, to fact-check there.

Brian Lehrer: When you look at these messages and the response to them, what does it tell us about where the Republican Party may be headed at kind of a grassroots level, as some of these people were in very responsible positions in Republican elected officials' staff lists in their offices? We wouldn't know about these, these extreme and hateful attitudes that they were expressing, unless something like this did get outed by POLITICO and others. What might American politics look like in 5 or 10 years as groypers rise up?

Calder McHugh: Yes, so another important thing to note is, this is not the first time that something like this has happened. There was a young staffer, for example, fired from the DeSantis presidential campaign for posting some Nazi imagery in a video that was theoretically praising DeSantis. These young staffers are often really sort of they're very on the Internet. They spend a lot of time in these spaces, and they think that, like I said, this is currency in these spaces.

Yes, as a lot of these people age into power, and I think it's not only Republicans, right? As people who have grown up online around more offensive jokes in general are aging into power, this sort of thing is going to become much more prominent. Much more, these racist and offensive jokes that have a place on the Internet are going to kind of seep into real life. Something that people say--

Brian Lehrer: On the other hand, could you, could you consider it encouraging that those who did get named, in most cases or in all cases, I'm not sure, lost what jobs they had?

Calder McHugh: Yes, I think certainly, these parties, the grown-up organizations, they don't want this for good reason. I think the question again is, it goes back to, this is language that people love to say to shock one another. Whether it's affecting policy is more of an open question, but for a long time, people said Twitter is not real life. You can't actually trust these online spaces to suggest anything about real life, but in fact, it increasingly is. I think a lot of people in prominent positions are very online and are taking that with them into their more real-life interactions.

Brian Lehrer: On the J. D. Vance clip, after he said these people's lives shouldn't be ruined for saying something stupid or awful as young people, listener writes, "Yet J. D. Vance wants anyone who posted anything at all negative against Charlie Kirk punished. They're just protecting hate," writes that listener. Timothy in Vermont, I think, has a story about one of the people involved in his state. Timothy, you're on WNYC. Hi there. Real quick.

Timothy: Yes, hello, gentlemen. The senator in question, his name is Sam Douglass. He's in Orleans County, which is the northeasternmost county in our state. Very, very, very conservative. Anyway, quickly, according to POLITICO, the chat included comments about rape, Hitler, and gas chambers. Douglass allegedly made a comment about an Indian woman not bathing often.

Brian Lehrer: Timothy, I'm sorry, because we're running out of time in the segment, did he have to resign from the state senate?

Timothy: He did, yes. Because Governor Scott, who is a Republican, by the way, he's like, "You got to go, man.

Brian Lehrer: Timothy, thank you for your call. Can you confirm that real quick? We only have about 30 seconds left in the segment. If you're familiar with that particular individual and anecdote. I guess the larger question here is, will the Republican Party, over time, actually draw the line and stand against sentiments like this, or did we just catch people saying the quiet part out loud? 20 seconds.

Calder McHugh: Yes, Tim Douglass, that is true. He was, I believe, a state senator in Vermont. I think, to that other question, it remains an open question. These online spaces are here, and I think they're here to stay. Whether that seeps into party politics, we'll see.

Brian Lehrer: Calder McHugh, reporter at POLITICO Magazine. His piece on this story is called "The Young Republicans' Leaked Chat Is a Sign of Where We Could Be Headed." Thank you for sharing your reporting.

Calder McHugh: Thanks very much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Thank you for listening today. Stay tuned for Alison.

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