Peter Giunta’s response to hearing Michigan delegates would support the “most Right-wing person” was swift and predictable. “Great. I love Hitler,” the New York Young Republicans chair typed into the Telegram chat. Alex Dwyer, his Kansas counterpart, gave him a smiley face reaction. It was June 2024, and this exchange, one of hundreds in a seven-month group chat leaked to Politico this week, captures how the American Right’s edgelord era has reached its embarrassing conclusion.

The leaked messages, spanning 2,900 pages between January and August, show Young Republican leaders from New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont trading Holocaust jokes, calling black people “watermelon people” and discussing concentration camps for political opponents. Bobby Walker, the New York State Young Republicans vice chair, called rape “epic” after another chat member had described consensual sex as “gay.” When someone suggested their hotel room number was 1488 (white nationalist code combining the 14 words with “Heil Hitler”), everyone got the reference.

Just two years ago, this would have been career-derailing. When Breitbart and the Washington Free Beacon exposed old messages from DeSantis ally Pedro Gonzalez, they sparked weeks of coverage and debate. In the 2019–2020 posts, Gonzalez had falsely claimed in leaked private group chat messages that “Not every Jew is problematic, but the sad fact is that most are” and described Holocaust denial as “a rejection of the myth that Americans need to feel guilt”. Some defenders even compared the leak to revenge porn, absurdly equating group chat messages with intimate photos.

The scandal dominated conservative media. Gonzalez had to apologise, and fundamentally reshape his public persona, ultimately moving in a more centre-right direction. But his survival also marked the beginning of a shift. Back then, leaked private messages were powerful enough to instantly destroy careers. Now in 2025, the Young Republicans’ messages land with barely a ripple. While a handful lost their jobs, most face minimal consequences. Luke Mosiman, who wrote “RAPE HAYDEN” about a rival, remains chair of Arizona Young Republicans. Annie Kaykaty, who responded to gas chamber jokes with “I’m ready to watch people burn now,” has (so far) kept her position as New York’s national committee member. Michael Bartels maintains his role as senior adviser in Trump’s Small Business Administration.

In addition, Republicans like Elise Stefanik issued by-the-numbers condemnations while the Trump White House noted it has “no affiliation” with the group. Vermont state senator Samuel Douglass faces bipartisan calls to resign after joking about Indian women not bathing, but remains in office and is still running for reelection.

The mechanics reveal everything. When figures I interviewed like anon alt-Right poster “Ricky Vaughn” emerged in 2016, their transgression felt genuinely dangerous. Vaughn (later revealed as Douglass Mackey and convicted for Twitter-related voter suppression) represented something genuinely new: politically engaged young men weaponising internet culture at considerable personal risk to their livelihoods and possibly even freedom.

Back then, the transgression carried weight because it carried such high risk. The racist group chat now represents what Richard Hanania (himself a past participant in this sort of thing) recently dubbed “the Based Ritual” — conservative elites competing within the youth wing of the party to signal transgression. If anything, though, it does the opposite. In fact, breaking one of the Online Right’s taboos by calling it out, as Hanania did, is far more subversive than simply pushing its ideas to the extreme.

When “I love Hitler” causes less career damage than an academic’s clumsy remark about Israeli overreach in Gaza, when rape jokes brand you as tedious rather than transgressive, the whole ecosystem collapses. And without social penalty, the edgelord’s shock value dissipates. What began as rebellion curdles into routine, its provocations stripped of meaning by overuse and impunity.

The point of shock was always its cost; once that cost disappears, so does the art of transgression itself. In the end, the young right’s “Based Ritual” reveals not defiance but conformity — the sound of a movement repeating itself until no one’s listening.

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Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work

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