Governor Gavin Newsom (D) of California has distinguished himself as one of the most ardently, aggressively progressive political figures currently operating in the U.S. From abortion extremism and the transgender mutilation of children to unrestricted mass immigration and draconian COVID-19-era lockdowns, even the prosecution and persecution of pro-life Americans, Newsom has been at the forefront of every moral, legal, and cultural battle in the U.S. for the past decade at least, always on the side of the far Left. Given his prolific leftist portfolio, it may come as a shock to realize that Newsom is nowhere near as extreme a left-winger as his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

The governor’s advocacy and advancement of left-wing policies and positions are tempered by political pragmatism and moderated by the public profile of his elected office. The Golden State’s First Lady (or “First Partner,” as she insists on referring to herself) is hampered by no such considerations, not even by her husband’s potential presidential bid in just shy of three years’ time. Mrs. Newsom, it happens, does not have much of a filter, spewing forth her dogmatic progressive ideology with little to no attempt to even give the appearance of moving toward the political center. It was little surprise, then, to hear Mrs. Newsom speak at the Common Sense Summit on Kids and Families in San Francisco on the subject of brainwashing conservative principles out of boys.

“[We] are increasingly realizing that boys are moving away from sort of the more progressive — boys who spend time online are moving a little bit — ah, I’m trying not to be political here — but, moving to the Right,” Mrs. Newsom said. She shared that even her own teenage son has not only learned that right-wing figures exist but — far worse! — has admitted his admiration for such figures. “So that’s scary. We’re like one of the most progressive households, and our son is confused and asking all these questions.”

Mrs. Newsom’s observation is not just typical leftist panicking though. She is correct: young men who spend a decent amount of time online are introduced to conservative, traditionalist values and right-wing ideas at a rate that previous generations could not fathom. Over the past century, the right wing has increasingly fallen out of vogue, to put it lightly. While some semblance of conservatism has been tolerated in the mainstream, many of the most impactful and influential figures and works on the Right have been all but erased from the public’s consciousness.

Take Jean Raspail, for example. A French adventurer, travel writer, and traditionalist Catholic, Raspail was a well-respected author for much of his life, being awarded the prestigious Grand Prix du Roman and Grand Prix de littérature by the Académie Française and appointed an Officer of the Order of the Legion of Honor. A staunch anti-communist and opponent of liberalism, Raspail nonetheless enjoyed widespread success from the 1950s into the early 1970s. Then he authored “The Camp of the Saints,” published in 1973. A dystopian, pseudo-apocalyptic tale, “The Camp of the Saints” chronicles the journey of millions of hate-filled, vengeful Third World immigrants from the Global South into Europe, and later into the U.S. Much of the plot is centered on a handful of French politicians, journalists, academics, activists, and military personnel as they anxiously await the arrival of a horde of foreign invaders and struggle to devise a response to what everyone recognizes (but too few are willing to admit) is an existential threat to the French people, the French nation, and European culture.

Over the course of his career, Raspail’s work often featured people who were in danger of disappearing. In 1949, Raspail set out on a lengthy canoe trip across North America, where he discovered and fell in love with the fading Algonquin tribe. “I remember my emotion, as if I walked into a church and rediscovered my faith,” the French adventurer wrote of his awe for the almost-gone Algonquins. “Countering those who spurn the past and hail technological conformity,” wrote Nathan Pinkoski, senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, “Raspail told the stories of disappearing peoples whom progressives consigned to extinction.” From the Algonquins and the Alakalufs of Chilean Patagonia to the quiet, reverent traditionalist Catholics and Catholic contemplative orders, Raspail devoted his eloquence and insight to ensuring that there would at least be some record of these disappearing peoples once they had finally disappeared.

In “The Camp of the Saints,” Raspail merely asked what would happen if Europeans and their descendants were to disappear, which seemed a distinct possibility in the early 1970s, as Western self-loathing and shame of imperialism and colonialism joined with the ideals behind the Civil Rights regime, backed the Third World’s increasing envy of the riches, comforts, and advancements of the civilized West, to launch what would become a decades-long invasion of Western nations via immigration — both legal and illegal.

As this threat and the demographic replacement of Europeans and Americans became a more and more distinct possibility, and Raspail’s hypothetical novel became less and less hypothetical, the forces of censorship moved to ban the book. While still available in French, the English translation rendered by Norman Shapiro, which had first been published in 1975, was last published in 1995, before the publishing house which owned the rights decided that the novel ought to be suppressed as a racist, xenophobic diatribe for describing (with a high degree of accuracy) what can now be safely said to have occurred in the West over the past three decades. (A new and superior English translation was published last year by Vauban Books.)

Raspail imagined a world where the French (and the European stock of all Western nations) would be systematically replaced by foreigners from the Global South, who would be welcomed into the West by a sense of suicidal empathy, the West’s sentiment that it could not treat economic opportunists, the poor and the greedy of the world, as a threat, even when those poor and greedy brought disease, murder, and rape in their wake. In 1973, when Raspail authored his prescient, perilous tale, the population of Paris was roughly 2.5 million people, of which 120,000 or fewer were non-European foreigners. By 2021, nearly half (41%) of the Paris Region’s population of over 14 million were foreigners. The horror which Raspail had warned against has very nearly come true, yet his prophetic novel was buried in the English-speaking world for 30 years.

The only way that English readers could access Raspail’s work was either by spending hundreds of dollars on old, out-of-print English translations of “The Camp of the Saints” or by finding the book online. Of course, it was largely through online discourse that the memory of “The Camp of the Saints” was even preserved in the English-speaking world, on discussion boards and messaging forums, in quickly-censored Twitter and Facebook comments and paranoid Discord servers and 4chan threads. In short, in the English-speaking world, “The Camp of the Saints” has largely been kept alive — and returned to print — by young men who “spend time online” and not only discovered Raspail’s dire warning to the West, but embraced the French author’s message.

“The Camp of the Saints” is far from the only example. Since tech billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter (now X) in 2022 and aggressively reinstated and expanded free speech policies, the social media platform has become a hub for open, honest discourse, deep dives into niche or controversial chapters of history, and hard-hitting citizen journalism. There is no moderator on X to limit discussion time or steer the conversation away from certain topics. There is no publisher or documentary producer on X standing over a history podcaster’s shoulder to remind him that he’ll lose his funding if he dares to put this historical event or that period of time under the proverbial microscope. There is no team of editors and lawyers reviewing citizen journalists’ X videos to make sure that nobody’s feelings (or, more to the point, corporate interests) will get hurt.

Return to Raspail for a moment. Young men are warned by the late Frenchman that Third World invaders will bring violence and rape with them to the West. “But this is a racist caricature, nothing more than white supremacist fearmongering!” cry the mainstream elites, those who save a small fortune hiring impoverished Third World workers over American and European natives, those who rely on the votes of the non-Western immigrant class to maintain power. Were it not for the freedom afforded by the internet and the plethora of free speech-oriented platforms that have cropped up in recent years, then Raspail’s warning may still be written off as nothing more than the hatemongering of a bigoted old man. But no, the same young men who are warned today against the grave, existential threat posed by mass immigration need not rely on the mainstream censors and thought-shapers: they can see for themselves video after video of young women like Sheridan Gorman being murdered (and worse) by men who never should have been in the country under any circumstance.

In short, Mrs. Newsom is right. Being online most certainly has the potential to send young men down the path to right-wingdom. What’s the “First Partner” of California’s solution? “We’re working on legislation to hold tech companies accountable and help them be a force for good in our kids’ and family’s lives,” she announced, describing “right wing” content as a “rabbit hole of very, very dangerous and limiting narratives around ultimately what it means to be a girl and what it means to be a boy. We owe it to them and ourselves to kind of heal this gift of modern technology, but curb it to be a force for good,” she added. “We’re trying to institutionalize our values so that they carry on beyond our term.”

Put another way: Free speech on the internet risks making too many boys into right-wing men (instead of whiny, androgynous they/thems marching at Planned Parenthood rallies and anti-ICE demonstrations), therefore it must be banned. Why? Because just like mass immigration to the West, honesty is an existential threat to the Left. The entire Left is predicated on a carefully-constructed series of distorted lenses and goggles, warping one’s view of reality. That’s all undone in the space of seconds by some goofy right-wing account with a Hank Hill character or Beatrix Potter-style woodland animal illustration for a profile picture: the gateway to ancient truths, some lost, some suppressed, but kept alive in some corner of some random online man’s heart and mind.