Rikki Schlott, a 25-year-old writer recently published by the New York Post, has characterized College Republicans as dangerously right-wing. It seems that in her view the “Gen Z right has taken a bad turn.” Supposedly, we’re witnessing “an overreaction in the face of woke orthodoxy. Now young conservatives are creating a sort of woke of their own, pushing the envelope until they start embracing total absurdity.”

The political director of College Republicans of America, Kai Schwemmer, is reportedly a close friend of Nick Fuentes, the far-right streamer “popular with Gen Z and Gen Alpha boys.” Schlott writes, “In one exchange on a video stream, Schwemmer suggested that Jewish people ‘run the media.’” Schwemmer’s indiscretions have become so unsettling for Schlott that she cites a respected source, Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, who fears that Schwemmer’s elevation “signals the College Republicans of America is normalizing antisemitism and white supremacy full stop.”

Presumably Greenblatt, a longtime self-avowed member of the cultural and political left, as Mary Grabar has shown in her writing for Chronicles on the ADL, is for Schlott the go-to guy for learning about right-wing extremism. Greenblatt has also argued, not incidentally, that Trump’s election has pushed America to the extreme right.

Schlott presents College Republican chapters as collections of nativist bigots who are infecting unsuspecting college students. Making matters even worse by her lights, instead of dumping Schwemmer, the College Republicans of America (CRA) are standing behind him. Their president, Martin Bertao, has cried out defiantly that he would never remove Schwemmer: “I would like to apologize to absolutely NOBODY. CRA will never back down to the WOKE mob.”

Perhaps Schlott is speaking less for her buddy Jonathan Greenblatt than for the group that pays for her columns, her neocon employers. Her sponsors are beside themselves that Republican college students are no longer echoing their beliefs. Although their smart-alecky edginess doesn’t always please me, these kids at least have one thing going for them, they refuse to take orders from their neocon betters.

These outspoken Zoomers don’t take instructions from the Murdoch family nor from the editors of Commentary or the Wall Street Journal. They clearly believe the right under its longtime occupation has given up too much real estate to the left. Schwemmer’s reference to Jewish control was an inept way of calling attention to the fact that the present conservative establishment has been fixated on Zionist causes, while neglecting social issues and the continuing attack on white males. That is the clear implication of what Schlott cites as evidence of Schwemmer’s right-wing extremism.

Schlott also assures us, based on hearsay, that this young independent right constantly uses the “N word” as a reaction against political correctness and speaks disrespectfully of the LGBTQ community.  Does Schlott dwell on this charge to win over those on the left whom she can influence against the College Republicans, which she accuses of moving our country toward “isolationism, edgelording, nativism and even bigotry”? That’s what happens, we are led to believe, when these adolescents decide to go their own way and disregard their customary gatekeepers.

About 20 years ago, I agreed to oversee the College Republicans at the school where I taught while the regular advisor was on sabbatical. Reading over the neocon boilerplate on the cards that the students received (these were the George W. Bush years) and were supposed to affirm, I gave up the job in protest. When the advisor returned, he was horrified that as Republican, I didn’t just go along with the then-proclaimed party line. Since then, the College Republicans have undergone a sea change, and I doubt they’re still swearing fealty to a missionary “democratic” foreign policy.

Years later, I addressed not the College Republicans, but one of the largest groups of Young Republicans in New York City. Not surprisingly, I can’t relate anything I experienced there to Schlott’s neocon screed.  The young adults I encountered in NYC were highly articulate and independent-minded, and I didn’t notice any of the attendees making insulting references to blacks or denouncing anyone for being gay. There was also a Jewish officer wearing a kippah, who didn’t sound very different from his colleagues.  What was hard to miss was that all the members I spoke with loathed the neocon attempt to control the American right, and they thought (with good reason) that neocons owned the conservative establishment, particularly its Boomer members. Schwemmer has now disavowed some of the “crass or demeaning” things he said in the past. This tactful retreat may be necessary since he will have to raise his level of discourse to count among adult conservative players. After all, he can’t remain an adolescent edgelord forever. Gen Z members of the right will also be required to fight the existing conservative establishment if they hope to prevail. And the opposition they will face will be a lot tougher than New York Post’s perpetually adolescent columnist. Schlott’s diatribe, with obligatory quotes from the ADL, is nothing compared to the battles that an independent right will have to confront in the battle in front of them. Will the Gen-Z right, as it grows up, be up to that challenge?    

(Correction: The first paragraph of an earlier version of this article listed Schlott’s age as 22 rather than 25.)