A year ago, I wrote that Birkin bags do not build a nation. The handbag was never the point. I was writing about an economy of appearance in which the photograph becomes the achievement, the follower count becomes the qualification, proximity becomes accomplishment and personal branding begins masquerading as leadership. Critics turned it into a fight about women, beauty and success. Fine. Remove the handbag. Remove the gender. Look at the incentives. Braden “Clavicular” Peters has now supplied the case study.
Peters, the 20-year-old “looksmaxxing” influencer, has been criminally charged in Massachusetts with rape, administering a substance for sexual intercourse, and supplying alcohol to a minor in connection with an alleged May 2025 encounter involving a 17-year-old girl. He denies wrongdoing, has not been convicted and is entitled to due process. But nobody needed September’s charges to know warning lights were already flashing. Before his July Israel trip, Peters had appeared beside Nick Fuentes singing Ye’s “Heil Hitler” and later said he was not sorry. A civil suit alleging sexual assault was already public. During the Israel controversy, he was recorded making crude comments about finding Israeli women for sex.
That is what makes Lizzy Savetsky’s defense so revealing. “Clavicular’s controversial past is exactly WHY this mattered,” she wrote, arguing that his reach among young people made exposing him to Israel strategically valuable. In other words, the controversy did not merely fail to disqualify him. It increased the perceived value of converting him.
The warning label became the sales pitch.
Savetsky deserves credit for something real. She has spoken openly about the professional price she paid when she pivoted toward Jewish and Israel advocacy. She says she lost tens of thousands of followers, her management company dropped her and brand partnerships disappeared because she was no longer marketable to mainstream clients. That matters. Standing up for what you believe can cost money, and sacrifice should be acknowledged.
But sacrifice does not confer infallibility.
Nor did the economic story simply end when fashion sponsorships disappeared. Savetsky now speaks extensively at Jewish Federations, synagogues and national Jewish organizations. She has said publicly that she is paid for speaking engagements, “just like any other public speaker would be paid.” Federations have repeatedly booked her as a featured speaker, including events in Houston, Detroit, and Delaware, while Jewish institutions have bestowed prominent recognition on her, including a “Voices of Iron” award at the Knesset.
I am not claiming every Federation appearance is paid or that Jewish organizational money replaced every dollar of sponsorship income. The public record does not establish that. But it is equally naïve to pretend no economic ecosystem exists. One marketplace receded and another grew around advocacy, speaking, access, status and institutional recognition.
The customer changed.
And Jewish institutions are not outside that economy. They help capitalize it. A Federation stage creates content. An award creates prestige. Institutional validation increases booking value. Access produces photographs, photographs produce engagement, engagement produces followers, and the expanded audience becomes the justification for the next invitation. Attention becomes authority, authority becomes access, and access becomes more attention.
Emily Austin illustrates the other half of the problem. At 21, she was simultaneously a Hofstra student, sports reporter, intern at Israel’s mission to the United Nations, social-media personality with more than one million Instagram followers and one of seven judges at Miss Universe. Since then she has built genuine sports-media experience. But the speed with which the labels accumulated should still make us ask a very basic question: expertise in what?
Journalist. Broadcaster. Model. Influencer. Entrepreneur. Podcast host. Israel advocate. Miss Universe judge.
Those are not interchangeable credentials.
Success at attracting attention is a real skill. It does not automatically create expertise in diplomacy, Jewish history, antisemitism, sexual violence, or moral judgment. Yet social media performs that conversion constantly. First comes the audience. Then the titles. Then the invitations. Eventually the fame created by access is offered as evidence that the access was deserved.
And I genuinely do not give a shit whether Austin has had cosmetic work done. I have had a hair transplant and gynecomastia surgery myself. Modern medicine exists. Mazal tov. The issue is not improving your appearance.
The issue is confusing presentation with qualification.
Then there is the sacred metric: followers. A March 2025 Influencer Hero audit provided to me showed Austin at roughly 2.6 million Instagram followers while estimating 57.6% as fake or suspicious and rating the account “Bad.” That is a third-party algorithmic estimate. It does not prove Austin bought those followers, and I am not claiming she did. Influencer Hero itself says large accounts naturally attract some fake followers, but it advises caution above 30 percent suspicious accounts and typically recommends against working with accounts above 50 percent.
That uncertainty is precisely the point. If follower count is going to function as a credential, institutions should know what the number actually measures before treating it like a constituency.
Then came Clavicular
On July 21, after the controversy around his Israel trip was already public, Austin gave Peters almost 25 minutes on The Emily Austin Show. Interviewing a controversial person is not automatically an endorsement. Serious journalists interview awful people. But there is a difference between interrogation and normalization, and between exposing somebody and converting his notoriety into mutually beneficial content.
When attention is the currency of your world, a man carrying millions of impressions does not arrive looking like a liability.
He arrives looking rich.
Neither Austin nor Savetsky is responsible for anything Peters allegedly did. They are responsible for their judgment about whom they elevate, normalize and turn into content. Jewish institutions are responsible for the larger question: what qualities are we rewarding, and why have follower counts become substitutes for experience, service and discernment?
That is what "Birkin Bags Don’t Build a Nation" was always about. Not the bag. Not the woman carrying it. Not Botox, fillers, hair transplants or any other modern attempt to fight gravity. It was about confusing symbols of success with the substance of leadership.
Before the next award, influencer mission, Federation keynote or VIP panel, ask a question older than Instagram: What has this person built that would still matter if social media disappeared tomorrow? What have they studied? Whom have they served? What judgment have they demonstrated when judgment actually cost them something?
Israel was built by people who planted, fought, taught, organized, immigrated, invented and constructed institutions meant to outlive them. Followers can amplify that work. They cannot substitute for it.
Birkin bags still do not build a nation. Followers do not either.
And if Jewish institutions choose their public representatives according to the logic of Instagram, they should not be shocked when Instagram’s values become our values.
The algorithm was never supposed to become our rabbi.
Adam Scott Bellos is the founder and CEO of The Israel Innovation Fund, creator of Wine on the Vine and Project Maccabee, and author of the forthcoming What Is Zionism? Why Never Again Is Not Enough.