Traditional Values and the Collapse of Tradition
Short form: It happened again.
Another rightist-traditionalist has fallen into serious disrepair because his tradlife just wasn't entertaining enough. Podcaster Elijah Schaffer has fallen from grace with one of his employees, herself such a tradwife that her marriage received particular papal blessing.
Somewhere between tradhoes and e-girls, it might sound like a complicated thing, but it's also straightforward. Between the pressures of marital publicity, the demands of celebrity, and a secret affair with a fellow exemplar, Elijah Schaffer finally cracked.
To understand how we got here, let's go back a bit.
For much of the past decade, Schaffer has been a regular presence on the far-right conservative media scene, as a podcaster, commentator, and, in his latest incarnation, as CEO of the outlet the RiftTV. Schaffer and various sidekicks would often discuss trad values, of which he—married in 2020 and now the father of two young children—was not just an outspoken supporter but presumably an exemplar.
A few months ago, Schaffer took a mysterious month-long absence from his livestreamed show on Rumble, the right-wing video platform. And when he returned last week, on January 26, he looked rough. Schaffer admitted his face was unusually red—he blamed the lights in his new studio—and said he had developed a "permanent black eye" from crushing mental stress that, as he put it, would cause lesser men to commit suicide.
Schaffer certainly had plenty to be stressed about. FBI Director Kash Patel's girlfriend is suing him for suggesting she's a Mossad agent. He claimed that people were trying to kill him.
But unbeknownst to his listeners, something else was weighing on Schaffer. Despite being one of the digital right's most vocal boosters of traditional families, he had filed for divorce from his wife four days earlier.
Ditching his usual material aimed at whipping up hate toward Indian immigrants and Muslims, Schaffer instead used his return show to launch into a baffling rant straight out of family court. He vowed that he wouldn't give up his sons "without a few shots fired." He told his viewers that he wasn't necessarily speaking metaphorically.
"I'm not going to go down without—without, you know, a few shots fired," Schaffer said. "Figuratively, of course, we're saying. But physically too, if needed."
Then Schaffer appeared to address his estranged wife.
"Mama bear, mama bear, fuck you!" Schaffer said. "What about dad? What about dad? Don't fuck with me! Don't fuck with my kids. Don't fuck with my income, don't fuck with my ability to take care of my kids. I will fuck you up."
The monologue grew stranger ....
(Sommer↱)
Schaffer rose to prominence in part by misrepresenting an armed assailant as an innocent victim of the people he attacked in order to discredit antiracist protesters. His popularity was such that he could utter against Mormons, on the air, at The Blaze, without fear. What finally did Schaffer in was his conduct, allegedly groping a coworker, and harassing his co-host so badly that she sued the company. Schaffer tried to repair his image by becoming a tradman, advocating certain family values, bragging about his wife and kids, and shaming others—including fellow influencers—for insufficient households. "It worked for a time", writes will Sommer, but Schaffer's online channel has declined. Last month, Schaffer complained, "This job has destroyed me, and I'm not even very popular."
"No one believes me," he lamented on Monday, "that my life doesn't make any sense right now." Tuesday saw Schaffer make claims that his family had been kidnapped, and that the FBI was trying to murder him. Some of his fellows worried that he might have already hurt his wife and kids.
In a mark of how twisted the online right has become, far-right YouTuber Jean-François Gariépy, whose own wife disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 2023 and was never found, wondered openly whether Schaffer was smart enough to murder his spouse without being discovered.
"Poor Elijah," Gariépy asked. "Does he have the brains to get away with it?"
Sommer notes that Schaffer's family does appear to be safe, but things are only going downhill. It's enough to get Milo Yiannopoulos to speak up. In one of the recordings he posted, a woman alleged to be Sarah Stock describes a sexual relationship with Schaffer at CPAC, including alcohol, Benadryl, and blacking out.
Yesterday, Sarah Stock posted a vague denial and apology, and then deleted her X account. A recent convert to Catholicism¹, Stock gained some rightist credibility shortly thereafter, advocating xenophobic nationalism based on Euro-Christian values and identity.
†
This has long confused conservatives:
Look, your family is your family, but when you make a living talking about how your family is better than others, yes, the collapse of your publicly-advertised family values probably means more to others than if you were just an average, unheard nobody enduring divine trials of normalcy.
The thing about changing a "boozy, racist frat-boy persona" into a tradman for the sake of being seen is that, at some point, the tradfans want that trad representation to be genuine, and tradlife is something of a change for the boozy, racist frat boy.
It's one thing if, somewhere between the Kissing Congressman and Slutwalk, something something mumble, murmur, but it's really hard to explain the significance of the range between. A consensual blackout would not be the weirdest thing in the world, but compared to the guy who resigned his office for kissing a staffer who wasn't his wife, it is hard to say these trads got caught up in the little things.
Of course, it's probably not really the affair itself that has undone Schaffer. Another thing about these right-wing sensationalists is their penchant for exaggeration, so it's hard to figure the impact of the lawsuit about accusing Kash Patel's girlfriend of being a Mossad honeypot. But between the pressures of declining ratings for an apparent one-hit wonder, internecine rightist bickering over Jewish conspiracy theories, and the wreck of his exemplar marriage, perhaps some erratic behavior ought not be unexpected.
†
One thing that is difficult to explain to the intractable is the sort of point you wouldn't make to anyone else:
At some point, we should acknowledge the impact of living in self-imposed epistemic delusion. Enabling that delusion is actually easy.
It's the thing about politics: Someone says something, someone else says something else, and it's hard to know who's right, except sometimes it is kind of like when the one says science and the other says young-Earth creationism because God is great; if you look beyond the mere fact of being told two different things, you might be able to discern a little bit about who's right, or who to believe, or, at least, who is making believe, pretending, insupportable, &c.
You don't suddenly become ignorant and unable to remember science just because another person told you the Earth is six-thousand years old. Just like you don't need to be confused just because your favorite celebrity wants to rehash rightist-Christianist propaganda like it's new. Just like you don't need to forget history because someone you don't like happens to coincide with the right answer.
"No one believes me that my life doesn't make any sense right now", Schaffer laments, and it's true I might easily sympathize with that sentence. Might. Solidarity is complicated because of generality; his complaint is nearly a requisite station of existential masculinity, and hardline rightists generally don't trust the advice of ideological diversity. I can't make his trad life make sense to him; I can't make his prejudice look pretty enough for his need. To the other, I can also accept that he's not in a position to abandon that much of his principle. If he must lose everything before anything will start to make sense again, it is unlikely Schaffer would tolerate that advice from someone like me.
There is an old saying about what you live by, you also die by. Even figuratively. At some point, we should acknowledge the impact of living in self-imposed epistemic delusion.
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Notes:
¹ Conversion to Catholicism is a recurring feature in rightist tradlife advocacy with some, albeit undetermined, affecting relevance. J.D. Vance, for instance was an atheist who converted to Catholicism in 2019 because he really liked that the Catholic Church was really old.
Sommer, Will. "A Shocking Sex Scandal Rocks the Trad Right". The Bulwark. 5 February 2026. TheBulwark.com. 5 February 2026. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/shocking-sex-scandal-rocks-trad-right-elijah-schaffer-sarah-stock
