who the hell is a hegelian e-girl?

And why is everyone talking about them?

Abha’s note: This week’s issue is a guest essay by Kate Bugos. Kate is a feminist writer and historian based in London, UK. Her work centres on digital culture, sex, and interpersonal relationships, as well as the history of feminism in the twentieth century. 

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On July 28th, a flyer for a party in New York City threw a certain philosophically inclined corner of the internet into mayhem. The flyer was an old school word art meme style design featuring a blurry, blown-up image of the German Idealist philosopher George Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, proclaiming the “Hegelian E-Girl Launch Party” and telling prospective partygoers to RSVP for address. The flyer advertised thirteen different people as hosts, including the now deleted alt-right racist Instagram meme account Beyond Woke and Problematic.

The advertised event instantly spawned mockery, discourse, defences, and allegedly violent threats leading to the event being cancelled. Or maybe it was never happening in the first place, as the venue allegedly had no idea what callers were talking about. The event was eventually rescheduled as invite-only and went ahead on August 3rd, as conservative digital magazine Compact reported. 

This whole ordeal left the digital masses with a million questions. Who are all these people? What exactly were they “launching”? Is it not a bit weird to call yourself an e-girl in a physical offline space? But most importantly: who the hell is a Hegelian e-girl?

I will admit to not being particularly well-versed in Hegel. I’m familiar with his view of history as a rational, linear struggle towards true freedom, and I’m vaguely familiar with his influence on Marx. I’m aware of his influence in the field of dialectics.

Hegel’s idea of dialectics does not refer to a literal dialogue as it does in the context of Socrates, but to — as per Collins dictionary — “an interpretive method in which the contradiction between a proposition (thesis) and its antithesis is resolved at a higher level of truth (synthesis).” Mostly though, I know Hegel as a famously dense writer whose work is challenging to read, as is indeed common to many German philosophers.

To the best of my knowledge, there was nothing particularly politically provocative about his work. Yet my timeline was full of posts accusing the so-called Hegelian e-girls of being either Stalinists or MAGA Communists or “cryptofascists” or members of the new right.

What was I missing? Does something insidious lurk at their ideological core?

To best understand the ideological underpinnings of the Hegelian e-girls, let’s turn to their mini-manifesto, published on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month. The manifesto talks about “loyalty-testing in the background of the culture wars,” “the logic of fascism as the objective unconscious truth of liberal democracy,” and the “self-interested nihilism of bourgeois democracy,” and a “new piety to the absolute.”

Lots of big talk, but I think we can (somewhat uncharitably) summarise their goal as an academic regurgitation of the classic conservative complaint that leftists are too concerned with identity politics and too stuck in echo chambers to engage in rational political debate.

Their manifesto tells those on the left that they are too sensitive about identity politics, aka racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, et cetera, and need to engage in discourse with people holding those views to pursue the Hegelian ideal of dialectical objectivity.

I am not a Hegel scholar by any means so I will not attempt to explain his conceptions of dialectics and objectivity, but if you are interested the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a good resource. Then again, I’m not sure anyone involved here is a Hegel scholar.

This anti-woke, post-liberal ideology has permeated a certain subset of chronically online young people, with its seeming ground zero as the Dimes Square microneighborhood of New York City. Much of this edgy contrarian approach to online political discourse can be traced back to the Red Scare podcast.

Red Scare is a podcast that started in 2018 with two Twitter friends, Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova, offering an edgy critique of feminism and the neoliberal condition. Their original political leanings could be described as socialist, though still with an anti-woke undercurrent, but in recent years Dasha in particular has become explicitly conservative, mingling with the likes of Alex Jones and (allegedly) Peter Thiel.

The podcast migrated away from the “dirtbag left,” and has become a symbol of the new “edgelord right,” associated with a resurgence of conservative Catholicism (at least in aesthetics) and a reactionary anti-identity politics tendency. This subculture posits itself as somehow revolutionary and new, while in reality, it calls for a return to social traditionalism.

In case you’re in any doubt about how sincerely far right this movement is, they have somehow brought back the concept of phrenology — scientific racism — but “as a joke.” It is scared of anything sincerely transgressive, and instead drapes itself in a shroud of 2012 teenage Reddit user edgelordism, calling things “retarded” and upholding regressive ideas about gender roles.

But let’s return to Hegel.

Some critics have dismissively said that they doubt the women involved in this project have even read Hegel. This is a fair interpretation, since Hegel seems largely irrelevant to their main aim, and they seem to be operating under a pretty crude interpretation of the Hegelian dialectic.

Although I don’t doubt that they have read Hegel, I also don’t think that is incredibly relevant. It is more about what Hegel, and specifically the book (used in the aforementioned flyer) Phenomenology of Spirit (or Mind, depending on the translation) represents.

Hegel is famously difficult to read. Associating yourself with Hegel allows you to project an air of intelligence and intellectualism, as an enlightened student of the philosophical greats. Being able to speak in the language of Hegelian philosophy lends you an air of authority, allowing you to act as a leader in the righteous struggle for rational objectivity. This is evident in the general vibes of their eventual party, wherein Compact reports the hostesses proclaimed “the need for a vibe shift and the memetic power of e-girls.”

The Hegelian e-girl project isn’t a call for people to engage critically in Hegel’s work, it’s a vanity project to promote the egos and digital presence of a couple of possibly well-read, likely conservative-leaning women with moderate online followings. 

Ultimately, I am not interested in any detailed dissections of what actually went down at their party, or of the philosophical validity of their ideas, or whether these random women are practising true German Idealism. If the goal was really to encourage the study of dialectics, perhaps they could have started a reading group rather than flyering for an exclusive VIP party in Brooklyn.

This is just another attempt to form a “hot girl philosopher” cult of personality around reactionary conservatism masquerading as a revolutionary worldview. It is a way to legitimise the worst excesses of far-right ideology under the guise of philosophical debate. It is also, of course, very embarrassing, as things often are when people who are terminally online try to transition that culture into the real world.