'I Like How Racist Everyone Is': Streamers Flock to the New York Young Republican Gala
WALL ST. — Behind the velvet rope of the VIP section at Cipriani on Saturday night, as members of Congress and European dignitaries sipped champagne and nibbled on pigs-in-a-blanket, some of America’s most prominent internet bigots stood beside them, live-streaming about their affection for blackface and disdain for non-white people.
“I’m out here normalizing racism. I’m not a hater, but I am racist,” Hayden McDougall, an internet personality with 1.4 million followers on Instagram told the popular Twitch streamer Sneako. “I go pretty hard after Blacks and a little bit after Jews, but really everyone. I’m racist toward everyone, but I think racism is just being honest.”
Thirty minutes later, an OnlyFans model named Empath, who was wearing a glittery white dress, approached Sneako and asked if she could show him a video of her doing blackface.
“We should do a stream sometime,” said Sneako’s cameraman, who was zooming in on guests with yarmulkes throughout the night.
“A blackface stream?” Sneako asked, smirking.
“Yeah,” Empath replied. “Or we can dress up as Jews.”
It was the annual New York Young Republican Club gala, an evening of revelry and right-wing ridiculousness in the same neo-classical event space where Hillary Clinton made her infamous “basket of deplorables” gaffe in 2016. Just two years ago, President Donald J. Trump delivered the keynote address to a room full of thunderous applause. Last year, he sent in a video addressing the crowd. But there was nothing from Trump this year.
The gala has become a mainstay on the right-wing social calendar, attracting the nation’s most lurid Republicans to lower Manhattan every December. But much has changed since Trump took that podium: He became president again, Charlie Kirk, the leader of the conservative youth movement, was assassinated, and Nick Fuentes, an openly bigoted streamer who delights in the n-word and denies the Holocaust, stepped in to fill the void.
On Saturday night, Fuentes’ allies lined up thick in tuxedos for an event at which they weren’t previously welcome. With new club leadership planning the gala, the guest list this year included people who immediately began live-streaming opinions that once registered beyond the pale in most GOP circles—or were at least relegated to hushed tones after several drinks.
The NYYRC has long feuded with the New York State Republican Party, whom they criticize as too moderate and insufficiently supportive of Trump. The city kids were the first to endorse the President for a second term in 2022, and their bet paid off big-time as Trump ascended back into control of the GOP. Then-president of the NYYRC, Gavin Wax, got a job in the administration at the FCC, and he’s now at the State Department.
In October, Politico’s Jason Beeferman got his hands on a massive group chat in which members of the state Young Republicans praised Adolf Hitler and called rape “epic.” It caused a five-alarm fire for the state party, which immediately disbanded its Young Republican organization, making the NYYRC the only powerful right-wing youth outfit in the Empire State. But group chat members accused Wax of leaking the messages to Beeferman to exact revenge for a personal grudge. On X, Fuentes’ groypers got mad at Wax for violating Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment—no punching right—and Wax soon resigned from his role as president. He wasn’t there Saturday night.
Neither were Trumpworld celebrities Steve Bannon or Corey Lewandowski—who both attended the previous gala. Former guest and Congressman George Santos, fresh out of prison, also wasn’t in the mood to party. Neither was his old House colleague Matt Gaetz, whose wife, Ginger, sang the national anthem last year. Conservative muckraker Jon Levine was also missing from the crowd, and so was Elise Stefanik’s spokesperson Alex deGrasse, despite their past attendance.
“It’s a shame Nick’s not here. I know they tried,” one guest told Sneako, referring to Fuentes, who claimed he was invited and then disinvited at the last minute. The old club leadership wasn’t on good terms with Fuentes—in January, he mocked Wax’s grandmother for being a Holocaust survivor, and in October, Fuentes demanded Wax be ostracized from conservative politics for leaking.
While nobody in the room had a bad word to say about their old president—and publicly, the club ended its relationship with Wax on good terms—it was a new era at NYYRC on Saturday night.
White supremacist Jared Taylor got the VIP treatment, along with Red Scare’s Dasha Nekrasova, who interviewed Fuentes on an episode, and members of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party. There were just two members of Congress, Reps. Andy Ogles and Mike Collins. Benny Johnson—the conservative media personality routinely derided by his allies as a closeted homosexual—mentioned his wife at least five times in his speech and urged the audience to “outbreed” the left.
“It’s pretty cool, I like how racist everybody is,” YouTuber Steezy Kane, who has 3.7 million subscribers, told Sneako.
This year’s keynote speaker was the Pizzagate conspiracy theory author Jack Posobiec, who’s plenty popular on the Right, but not exactly a difficult act to book.
As Posobiec spoke, a protester stood up and waved a red flag with a swastika, before being removed by security.
“They invited people who praised Hitler. They invited people who called Jews cockroaches,” the protestor said on the sidewalk.
McDougall happened to exit the party at the same time and began mocking the protester, who offered him the flag with the swastika. McDougall gladly accepted it, before his friend made him give it back, saying they had “plenty at home.”
“I wish Trump was a Nazi. I wish Trump was racist,” McDougall said. “This guy’s a faggot.”
After a heated back-and-forth, Kevin Smith, founder of the Loud Majority, separated the two men, telling the protester to “stop answering this piece of shit.” Smith then turned to McDougall, smacked him across the head, chased him down the street, and called him a “faggot.”
McDougall fled to the corner, where he found Sneako and Fuentes live-streaming in the snowy rain.
Later that night, Smith apologized for slapping McDougall, who then posted a video of the two hugging it out. Smith claimed he thought the 5‘7 internet troll was a leftist protester.
Smith is an outspoken booster of Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who’s vying to unseat Governor Kathy Hochul next year. He had “Team Stefanik ‘26” in his bio on X, but when a reporter from The Judge Street Journal asked him about his affiliation, Smith denied working for the campaign and then scrubbed the mention of the gubernatorial candidate. DeGrasse, Stefanik’s spokesman, told the Journal that there was no connection between Smith and her campaign. Stefanik, who is 41, joined the NYYRC in 2022 but was not in attendance that night.
Unlike past years, when many reporters had free rein of the gala, on Saturday they were all restrained to the press pen, under the watchful eye of a firm but amicable club member. Some reporters were allowed into the VIP section but then quickly removed. When one of them asked Taylor to confirm his identity, the white supremacist provided a fake name.
During the Wax days, reporters sat for dinner with young members who put a friendly face to the club. But with everyone roped off, they were forced to rely on Sneako’s live-stream for behind-the-scenes access.
“I was just hoping to make you happy,” the club treasurer told Sneako earlier that evening, “so you make us look good tonight.”
How can anyone not be utterly repulsed by these people?
Feels almost like an Onion article, unfortunately...