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The rizz kid: How a campus Communist turned conservative kingmaker put the ‘social’ in ‘social movement’

7 0
17.08.2025

Gen Z calls it “rizz.”

Conservative theorist Frank Meyer radiated it.

Rizz is what Donald Trump exudes and Kamala Harris lacks, and this je ne sais quoi quality, at least to all who came before Gen Z brilliantly put a name on it, explains not just one’s success on Hinge but whether a political figure can pull a crowd.

Marble-mouthed mumblers and shoegazers take note: It turns out people follow the very individuals in mass movements they follow around in social situations.

Frank Meyer’s 3D, pops-off-the-page life illustrates this truth.

After the Newark-born Meyer acted as the pied piper of campus Communism in 1930s England, he remarkably became in America during the 1960s, as the title of my new biography puts it, the man who invented conservatism.

British intelligence conducted a black-bag job on his apartment, placed a mail cover on his correspondence and noted the bars he frequented, the tweed he wore and the frequent female company he kept as they tailed him.

Nowhere in the 161 pages of the declassified Meyer files do agents memorialize on paper that the revolutionary they followed — described therein as “the founder” of the student Communist movement — dated the big boss’ daughter.

The most Frank Meyer thing Frank Meyer ever did was enter into a relationship with Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s youngest child as he conspicuously called for the violent overthrow of the British government the man led.

Che, Lenin and Mao never pulled off such a brash caper.

“Come here at 7.0 — or if you don’t like the idea of Downing Street — even though I am the sole occupant at the moment — fix any........

© New York Post