Later, I asked Allen why all the debaters, and most of the attendees, were men. \u201cI think guys like to debate more than girls,\u201d he said. \u201cThey like the structure.\u201d He went on, \u201cThe girls are here for more aesthetic reasons\u2014they\u2019re with a guy, they\u2019re interested in the spectacle, they want to dress up.\u201d He pointed out notable people in attendance: Dasha Nekrasova, an actress and a co-host of the \u201cRed Scare\u201d podcast. A lawyer who had recently got a job in the Justice Department. A guy who worked at Palantir, the software company co-founded by Peter Thiel.<\/p>\n
Every other month or so, the James Duane Society convenes for a toasting session, where the members sometimes sing tunes from a custom songbook. The titles range from \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d to the apartheid-era South African national anthem. There are also satirical original songs, composed by the society\u2019s members. Take \u201cTrump Rest You Merry, Patriots,\u201d set to the tune of the Christmas carol:<\/p>\n
And so we stormed the Capitol<\/p>\n
That January day<\/p>\n
Turned over the election,<\/p>\n
Hanged Mike Pence on our way.<\/p>\n
Now Trump shall reign forever<\/p>\n
With liberals kept at bay!<\/p>\n
O tidings of Trump-fort and joy . . .<\/p>\n
Allen told me that these songs are written as part of the debates, and that the authors may not actually agree with the lyrics. This particular song was submitted for \u201cResolved: The Mob Should Rule.\u201d (The resolution failed.)<\/p>\n
During the history-versus-myth debate, participants effortlessly toggled between provocative jokes and earnest argument. One speaker contended that myths are more useful than history, and that they define our politics. He gave the example of fire trucks spraying Black children with water during civil-rights protests\u2014at which people laughed and stomped. Jokes were made about women and all academics being \u201cstupid and gay or whatever.\u201d At one point, an attendee in the back started shouting, \u201cJEW! JEW! JEW!\u201d (Another member told me this may have been a reference to an Alex Jones meme.) A speaker was chastised for not wearing a tie and was offered a loaner: what Allen referred to as the \u201cautism tie,\u201d decorated with brightly colored puzzle pieces that are used as a symbol by the autism community. Allen described the group\u2019s taste for provocation as a meaningful exercise in trust-building: \u201cProve you\u2019re not a cop. Do this line of cocaine.\u201d It was meta-satire, he said\u2014a knowing performance of lib-trolling among friends, which allowed them to have more authentic conversations. Matt Gasda, the playwright, formed a different impression after visiting a few times: people there weren\u2019t \u201cjust testing the system of Sovereign House\u2014whether it\u2019s free-speech absolutist, whatever. They\u2019re also testing to see if people will like them even if their weird, dark impulses come out.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Allen\u2019s goals, in taking a bunch of people from the internet and encouraging them to foster an in-person community, was to transcend the grievance culture that\u2019s so pervasive on social media\u2014the outrage and mockery directed toward the left. Still, outlandish offensiveness was the local dialect, even in real life. \u201cThere\u2019s a highly combustible, cathartic, and reactionary energy that has been bubbling up in young people over the last few years,\u201d Elena Velez, the fashion designer, told me. \u201cI\u2019d go as far as calling Sovereign House the epicenter of that exhaust valve.\u201d<\/p>\n
The simplest way to visualize the generational shift in American politics is through voting patterns. In 2020, fifty-six per cent of men aged eighteen to twenty-nine voted for Joe Biden, according to an analysis by a Tufts University research center. In 2024, fifty-six per cent of men in this age group voted for Trump. Young women favored Kamala Harris, but they also moved right, by eight percentage points.<\/p>\n
Sovereign House captures and complicates this trend. Some of the cohort are, \u201clike, Zoomers for Trump,\u201d Allen told me. (Born in 1992, he\u2019s technically a millennial, but he told me that he has a \u201cGen Z soul.\u201d) However, Allen also described voting as \u201ca meme\u201d that co-opts people into pre\u00ebxisting political identities, and he did not vote in the 2024 election. \u201cWe love the fact that we have this strongman who makes us laugh,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we understand the bit, and we\u2019re not going to be sucked into this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Later, I asked Allen why all the debaters, and most of the attendees, were men. \u201cI think guys…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4619,9,11,10,87],"class_list":{"0":"post-72789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-events","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}