Read on Twitter
My latest @PRAEyesRight- A deep dive into Nick Fuentes and his America First/groyper movement, the most prominent & mobilized white nationalist formation at the Capitol insurrection, a Gen Z group determined to capture the future of post-Trump conservatism https://www.politicalresearch.org/2021/01/15/america-first-inevitable
Nick & the groypers have been out in force at nationwide 'Stop the Steal' protests in the long leadup to Jan 6, championing the ‘American people’ against 'globalist elites', promising to ‘smash the GOP’ & build a true American nationalist movement https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/protesters-chant-destroy-the-gop-at-pro-trump-rally-1102967/
Nick is careful to speak in a language many can hear. His image-conscious ‘groyper’ movement looks like clean-cut Gen Z White kids- campus Republican types in polo shirts & MAGA hats- concealing the hard-edged white nationalist core of their beliefs. https://www.irehr.org/reports/alt-right-to-groyper/
What they don’t say at these rallies is for them, 'America First' means white dominance. They want to end immigration to preserve a white demographic majority for future generations in America. A small non-white minority can remain, as long as white birthrates stay up.
Like many before him Nick takes great pains to say he's not a white nationalist but it's all there. “Why can’t we wake up and acknowledge,” he said in summer 2020, as the Black Lives Matter uprising grew across the country, “that we as a people- white people- are under attack?”
Nick’s antisemitism misogyny anti-black racism & xenophobia is well-documented. He marched at Unite the Right & is heavily networked with the alt-right. Why does his star continue to rise while most other alt-right leaders have fallen from prominence? https://twitter.com/lcrwnews/status/1346748707878834176?s=21
Despite early enthusiasm for the Trump campaign, most white nationalists had lost faith in Trump by 2018, seeing him as too beholden to the ‘globalist’ establishment agenda of free trade, liberal cosmopolitanism and slavish support for Israel. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/11/27/are-white-nationalists-turning-trump
Many gave up trying to influence mainstream politics entirely, and instead developed inward-facing institutions, went off the grid, & embraced accelerationist terror. Fuentes & co, however, remained committed to transforming mainstream conservatism. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/06/23/there-no-political-solution-accelerationism-white-power-movement
The problem facing Fuentes’ ‘groyper’ movement is that on the mainstream Right it’s still toxic to explicitly advocate for white nationalism. After the fallout from 2017’s Unite the Right rally, nobody wanted to be associated with these ideas. How to overcome this barrier?
In an April 2019 private members-only broadcast Fuentes outlined his strategy. He explained to his groypers that “we need to break away” from the old alt-right and “create a new periphery”, to move white nationalist ideas closer into the mainstream GOP.
“Bit by bit, we start to break down these walls and get back in...what’s going to be critical is, we have to put on the American flag, change the look, change the rhetoric” and create a “new category” of America First patriots, who support explicit white nationalism.
Bursting on the political stage in late 2019, the groypers strategically moderated their white nationalist beliefs in a careful register of apple-pie Americanism and Christian nationalism—a synthesis they hope will resonate with a much larger constituency https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/11/20948317/alt-right-donald-trump-jr-conservative-tpusa-yaf-racism-antisemitism
They are laser-focused on Gen Z- the future of movement conservatism- stoking dissent among ranks of campus conservative group Turning Point USA, forming America First chapters on college campuses, & courting young conservative influencers on TikTok https://www.irehr.org/2020/02/12/groypers-planning-college-campus-tour/
Their momentum is building during Stop the Steal, & Nick’s calls for grassroots revolt against GOP establishment in coming years will likely find traction in shifting conservative coalitions across an embittered, insurgent, conspiratorial post-Trump Right. https://www.irehr.org/2020/11/25/my-mission-is-to-destroy-the-gop-says-white-nationalist-nick-fuentes/
Other white nationalists have tried this mainstreaming strategy. In 1991 former KKK leader David Duke won 55% white vote in Louisiana governor race, impressing conservative leaders like Pat Buchanan, who brought Duke's careful race-baiting further into GOP https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-year-the-clock-broke-ganz
Yesterday & today, the white nationalist threat doesn't just look like tiki torches & acts of terror. Mainstreaming efforts like the groypers can radicalize white constituencies, cast dangerous ideas deeper into the political field & pull the conservative consensus further Right.
