AMMAN, Jordan—Two opposing internet counter-cultures defined by their unswerving allegiance to tradition, misogyny, bigotry, and homophobia have converged around an unlikely allying force: the Taliban.

The akh-right has been celebrating the wins of the “CHADLIBAN”—a combination of the alpha male ethos “Chad” and the Taliban. The Chadliban memes often feature images of Taliban fighters next to men in U.S. military uniforms wearing women’s shoes, underneath the line “barefoot mountain-[n----r] vs strongest most advanced army in the world in high heels.” A defining feature of both the alt-right and akh-right is overt racism, and the use of the n-word to describe allies, enemies, and the use of it in posts, memes, and comments.
It is the concept of tradition that underpins both Islamist and alt-right support for the Taliban on Twitter. Like alt-Islamists who celebrate the Taliban’s “traditions,” including shariah, the alt-right is also drawn to the group because of its stances on women. The support for a diminished role of women in public similarly bleeds over into Incel circles on Twitter, who then take it even further to an outright hatred of women.
While the Groypers adopt much of the Taliban’s ethos, other alt-right movements such as the American Populist Union—a Gen Z splinter group of the America First movement—was dealing with its own splinter faction: the American Populist Union Chads. That faction is responsible for setting up a fake news outlet on Twitter dubbed “Real Taliban News,” which used the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan as an opportunity to target the U.S. government, Joe Biden, top military brass, and the LBGTQ+ community.

The account went one step further than others though—tweeting in broken Pashto.

One of its posts featured side-by-side portraits of a skinny white kid taking a selfie next to a pair of Taliban members laughing at a question about women’s rights (lifted from a recent Vice documentary) with the phrase “American men and Afghan men. We are not the same.” It denigrated Joe Biden in Pashto as not a “leader, but a dreaded dog.”