Who is Nick Fuentes?

A far-right activist and influencer best known for his racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic rhetoric. He first attracted attention at 18 as one of the
most vocal marchers at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Less than an hour after a neo-Nazi plowed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one person, the then–Boston University student posted on Facebook that a “tidal wave of white identity is coming.” Since then, Fuentes has built a large online audience of mostly young men. His X account, which Elon Musk reinstated in 2024, has 1.2 million followers, and his America First livestream show attracts about 1 million views an episode. In one March show, he summarized his worldview as “Jews are running society. Women need to shut the f--- up. Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise.” In October, podcaster Tucker Carlson—an ally of Vice President JD Vance—hosted Fuentes for a sympathetic two-hour chat in which the self-declared fan of Hitler and Stalin blamed “organized Jewry” for undermining a unified America; nearly 7 million people watched the episode on YouTube and 18 million on X. The interview caused a schism on the Right and led conservative commentator Rod Dreher to warn that the GOP has a neo-Nazi problem: between 30% and 40% of Republican staffers in Washington under the age of 30, Dreher said, are “Groypers.”

What is a Groyper?

That’s the name used by Fuentes supporters, the “Groyper Army.” The origins of the moniker are unclear, but Fuentes fans have adopted a crudely drawn cartoon toad named Groyper—a variant on the far-right Pepe the Frog meme—as their logo. More a loosely knit network of internet trolls than an organized movement, they mock moderate Republicans and rail against pornography, the supposed feminization of America, and the passivity or “cucked” nature of mainstream Christianity. (Fuentes is a Catholic.) But the Groypers are so steeped in social media in-jokes and memes that it’s hard to know what they really believe. “Fuentes is among the best examples of ‘politics as fandom’ that exists,” said Katherine Dee, who writes bout internet culture. Beyond their fealty to Fuentes, she said, Groypers are “a fairly loose group without clear ideological borders.”

What does Fuentes actually believe?

Some conservative critics claim he is just a modern-day carnival barker, spouting hate to get clicks in an attention economy that rewards extremism. Fuentes says there’s some validity to that: His comment about women’s rights after President Trump’s 2024 election win—“Your body, my choice”—“was cheap rage bait.” But there’s no reason to think he isn’t sincere about his positions: support for an ethnic and religious hierarchy with white Christian men at the top; opposition to legal as well as illegal immigration; vehement antifeminism; and disdain for democracy. A former fan of Trump—and, in 2022, a Mar-a-Lago dinner guest—Fuentes now says that “Trump 2.0 has been a disappointment in literally every way” and that Trump is “incompetent, corrupt, and compromised.” He sees Vice President JD Vance as a corporate stooge and “a fat, gay race traitor”; Vance’s wife, Usha, is of Indian descent. Much of his anger toward the administration appears driven by its support of Israel.

What are his views on Israel?

He opposes U.S. backing and funding for the country, claiming the alliance serves the interests of “Zionist Jews” rather than of the U.S. Fuentes endorses the antisemitic “great replacement theory,” arguing that “Jewish oligarchs” have enabled mass migration to the U.S. to destroy the country’s Christian heritage and the livelihoods of white men. He has also said “the Holocaust didn’t happen.” Although he later claimed that this was a mere provocation, Fuentes said in the Carlson interview the Holocaust is used to “browbeat” white Americans to keep them from being “too white and too proud and too Christian.”

How has the GOP reacted?

Mainstream Republicans such as Sens. Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz have denounced Fuentes, and Carlson for giving him a platform. Sen. Lindsey Graham made clear his position: “I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party.” Not all are so opposed. After Carlson’s interview, Kevin Roberts, president of the influential conservative Heritage Foundation, put out a video describing Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition” of “the globalist class.” (“Globalist” is often used as code for “Jewish.”) This led to mass resignations at Heritage. But Trump has not condemned Fuentes, and Vance has only criticized him for attacking
his wife, saying for that, Fuentes “can eat shit.” But Vance also appears keen to avoid alienating young Fuentes supporters, who could help him secure the GOP presidential nomination in 2028. He recently posted
online that there’s a difference between antisemitism and “not liking Israel,” and has said the Right must avoid “self-defeating purity tests.” Vance, an ally told The Washington Post, “is walking a tightrope.”

What is Fuentes' goal?

Apart from attention and money—on his livestreams, Fuentes hawks merchandise and is paid by viewers to answer questions—he wants Groypers to infiltrate the U.S. establishment and GOP, and to displace traditional conservatism with far-right white nationalism. “Your job is to get into the Ivy League,” he told his followers. “Your job is to get into these offices and do what you need to do.” He advises them to hide their
views: “Hold it close to the chest.” Groypers must play a long game, he said, noting that Pat Buchanan, whom many see as the intellectual godfather of Trumpism, first ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 1992. “He didn’t see his vision realized until 2016—24 years later,” Fuentes said. “Are you ready to go until 2040, until 2050?”

If there is a boundary setter in the GOP, Vice President JD Vance might be it. MAGAdom is feuding over whether antisemitic figures like Nick Fuentes will be allowed in the Republican coalition when President Donald Trump leaves. Observers watched last weekend’s Turning Point USA convention to see if Vance would draw a red line against bigotry in the party.

He did not. Vance ducked a chance to “condemn a streak of antisemitism” that has roiled the GOP in recent months, said The Associated Press. “I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform,” Vance said during the convention’s closing speech. That came after conservative commentator Ben Shapiro criticized Fuentes, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson during his own address. Those figures and their allies are “grifters and they do not deserve your time,” Shapiro said. Vance, though, refused to take sides in the feud. MAGA Republicans have “far more important work to do than canceling each other," Vance said.

Vance has repeatedly “refused to pick a side in interparty fights over bigotry,” said The New York Times. The vice president earlier this year dismissed outrage over a Young Republicans chat group that featured racist jokes and memes, and in 2024 “embraced false claims about Haitian Americans.” Antisemitism and ethnic hatred “have no place in the conservative movement,” Vance said in an interview published after his TPUSA speech. But Trump’s America is also a place where “you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore,” he told conventiongoers.

What did the commentators say?

“When presented with the simplest moral test, Vance failed,” said Franklin Foer at The Atlantic. Antisemitism is more than “one more woke fixation.” Trump has “always struggled” to denounce antisemitism, but that seemed mostly a product of a “vanity” that would not let him “speak ill of acolytes” like Kanye West. Vance has “clearly made the calculation that antisemites are part of the Republican Party’s base.” He cannot afford to lose them and be the GOP presidential candidate in 2028. That will give license to right-wing antisemites to “dehumanize Jews with greater abandon.”

Vance’s choice is “clarifying,” said Noah Rothman at the National Review. Rather than condemn antisemitism within the GOP, he chose to suggest that “those who object to the promotion of a bigot” are the party’s real problem. Vance “can read the writing on the wall as well as anyone,” and the signs suggest that young conservatives are increasingly big fans of “Hitlerian Caesarism.” That development “should terrify responsible actors in American public life.”

What next?

Vance has not officially announced a 2028 presidential bid but is already starting to “lock down” support for his campaign, said NBC News. Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA, endorsed Vance at the convention. That is just one sign the vice president is “finding early success in holding together” the various parts of Trump’s coalition: A straw poll of TPUSA attendees found that 84% want him to be the GOP’s next nominee.

Nick Fuentes is a 27-year-old activist and political commentator best known for his Christian nationalist and racist rhetoric. He first attracted attention as a teenager at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Since then, he has built up a large following as a social media influencer, particularly via his “America First” broadcasts, on which he airs white supremacist, antisemitic, misogynistic and authoritarian views.

On an episode of his show in March, he summarised his politics as: “Jews are running society, women need to shut the fuck up, blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise. It’s that simple.” He has also repeatedly described Hitler as “cool”.

Where did Fuentes come from?

Fuentes was born and raised in La Grange Park, Illinois. He describes his childhood, in a largely white suburb near Chicago, with a home-maker mother, a breadwinner father of Mexican heritage, and a strong Catholic ethos, as idyllic. He thinks women should stay at home, and shouldn’t have the right to vote. He told Piers Morgan recently that he had never had sex with a woman; he said he was not gay, “but I will say that women are very difficult to be around.” He studied politics at Boston University, but dropped out after his first year to become an activist.

In some ways, Fuentes’s livestream show harks back to a traditional format: he wears a suit, sits behind a desk, and talks rapidly and fluently about current affairs, in a thick Chicago accent. The difference, says Jay Caspian Kang in The New Yorker, is that he inhabits a post-Trump, “post-woke” world, in which “all norms in political commentary have been destroyed”.

Why is he significant?

Because he has become disturbingly influential. His X/Twitter account, which Elon Musk reinstated in 2024, has 1.2 million followers; this month each of his “America First” livestreams have attracted around a million views each. On 27 October, the former Fox News star Tucker Carlson broadcast a sympathetic two-hour interview, which was watched by more than 6.5 million people. Carlson did not challenge Fuentes’s views, which precipitated a major ruction inside the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s Maga movement. Rod Dreher, a conservative columnist, warned that the party has a neo-Nazi problem: between 30% and 40% of Republican staffers in Washington under the age of 30, Dreher said, are “Groypers”.

What is a Groyper?

Fuentes’s fanbase call themselves Groypers, or the “Groyper Army” after their logo: an unwholesome-looking cartoon toad named Groyper, a variant on the “Pepe the Frog” meme that became popular with far-right activists in 2015. More a loose-knit network of internet trolls than an organised movement, they see themselves as Maga’s edgy youth wing, and like to mock right-wing figures who are (relatively) more moderate.

In 2019, Fuentes started to criticise the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whom he saw as insufficiently right-wing and in the pay of corporate donors. (“Conservative Inc.” is his name for Kirk’s brand of activism.) Fuentes’s supporters often attended Kirk’s events to heckle, in a conflict later referred to as the “Groyper War”.

Unlike the Maga mainstream, Groypers favour Catholic ultra-traditionalism or Eastern Orthodoxy over Evangelical Protestantism, and they oppose US support for Israel. But they’re so steeped in social media in-jokes, memes and irony that it’s hard to know what they really believe.

So what does Fuentes believe?

Being more outrageous than his competitors while suggesting it’s all a big game is a part of Fuentes’s act. As well as praising Hitler and Stalin, he has coined the slogan “Your body, my choice” to needle women concerned about abortion rights after Trump’s second election victory. His irony gives plausible deniability, and helps confuse mainstream critics – but there’s no reason to think he isn’t sincere about his positions: support for an ethnic and religious hierarchy with white Christian men at the top; a belief that black people are inclined to criminality; opposition to legal as well as illegal immigration; vehement anti-feminism; respect for authoritarianism; disdain for democracy.

A former fan (and, in 2022, dinner guest) of Donald Trump, Fuentes now says that “Trump 2.0 has been a disappointment in literally every way”, while Trump himself is “incompetent, corrupt and compromised”. He sees the vice president, J.D. Vance, as a corporate stooge and “a fat, gay race traitor” (Vance’s wife is of Indian descent). He has particularly criticised the administration for its support of Israel.

What are his views on Israel?

He rails against US backing and funding for Israel, questioning the mainstream rationale for the alliance, and suggesting that it serves the interests of Jewish elites rather than the US itself. His thinking often tips over into conspiratorial antisemitic tropes. Central to Fuentes’s thinking is the belief that “organised Jewry” exerts a disproportionate control over US political, financial and media institutions – in ways that harm “traditional America”. He has also said “Hitler was right. And the Holocaust didn’t happen.” Although he later claimed that this was a mere provocation, Fuentes has repeatedly said that the Holocaust is used to push a liberal, multicultural agenda – to “browbeat” whites and suppress white pride.

How is the Republican Party reacting?

Republican mainstays such as Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz have denounced Fuentes, and Carlson for giving him a platform. Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, made clear his position by declaring: “I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party.” Elsewhere, the situation has not been so clearcut. After Carlson’s interview, Kevin Roberts, the director of The Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think-tank, put out a video describing Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition” of “the globalist class”. (“Globalists” is often used as code for “Jews”.) This led to resignations at The Heritage Foundation; Roberts eventually had to apologise. However, neither Trump nor Vance has ever condemned Fuentes; presumably because they share some of his beliefs and don’t want to alienate the Groypers.

What does Fuentes want?

Apart from attention and money – his influencing operation is carefully monetised, from paid-for questions to branded merchandise – he has said for years that he wants the Groypers to infiltrate the US establishment and the Republican Party, and to displace traditional conservatism with his brand of far-right white nationalism. “Your job is to get into the Ivy League,” he told his followers. “Your job is to get into these offices and do what you need to do, say what you need to say.” He advises them to hide their views: “Hold it close to the chest.” Fuentes generally demurs when he’s asked if he wants to be president himself. But as the Maga movement begins to contemplate the post-Trump future, there are likely to be opportunities for a white nationalist influencer with a large, fervent online fanbase.

What do the numbers show? 

That antisemitism is surging. According to FBI data, there were 2,086 anti-Jewish hate-crime incidents in 2024—up 4% from 2023 and the highest number since records began in 1991. While Jews make up only about 2% of the population, 17% of all reported hate crimes last year were against Jews. But the FBI data doesn’t capture the full scale of the spike in antisemitism, because it includes only crimes reported to authorities. The Anti-Defamation League recorded more than 9,000 incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault in 2024—the highest number since it began tracking data in 1979. And a report published by the organization last month found that 57% of Jewish Americans believe antisemitism is a now normal part of Jewish life in the U.S. For decades, most antisemitic incidents in the U.S. stemmed from old conspiracies and tropes, such as a 2019 attack on a California synagogue by a gunman who believed Jews controlled the news media. But since Oct. 7, 2023—when Hamas attacked Israel and sparked the Gaza war—a larger share of perpetrators has cited Israel or Zionism. “For antisemites,” said Oren Segal of the ADL, “the Israel issue has been a convenient tactic to pile onto the Jewish community.” 

Did antisemitism increase significantly after Oct. 7? 

In the three months after Hamas’ attack, antisemitic incidents were up 361% compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the ADL. The organization counted 3,291 incidents in that period, including bomb threats against synagogues, swastikas spraypainted onto Jewish schools, and 56 physical assaults. The violence seemed to intensify this year. In April, a man set fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence as Shapiro, who is Jewish, and his family slept inside. The attacker said he was motivated by Shapiro’s support of Israel. The next month, two young Israeli embassy aides were shot dead as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.; the alleged gunman told police, “I did it for Palestine.” Eleven days later in Boulder, Colo., a man shouting “free Palestine” threw Molotov cocktails at demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza. An 82-year-old woman later died of her wounds. “People like me made arguments for years about how you should be able to criticize Israel and not be seen as antisemitic,” said Joel Rubin, a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Barack Obama. “That’s collapsed, and attacks on Zionism now target Jews.” 

What’s behind the spike in attacks? 

Some experts argue that antisemitism on the Left is being driven by ideas about “settler colonialism,” an academic theory that divides the world into foreign colonizers and Indigenous peoples, oppressors and the oppressed. Under this theory, Jews “are not a historically oppressed people” with historical ties to Israel, said Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, but instead are imperialists “and even white supremacists” who have stolen Palestinian land. Under such an ideology, violence against any “oppressor” can be justified. Some researchers argue that criticism of Israel is too often conflated with antisemitism by the ADL and others, and note that antisemitism was rising in the U.S. before 2023. “To lump as antisemitic all people who don’t believe in Zionism is just wrong,” said Kevin Rachlin of the Nexus Project, a nonprofit that combats antisemitism. Still, he adds that antisemitism has “unequivocally” increased in the U.S. since 2023. And that bigotry is gaining traction on the Right as well as the Left. 

What’s happening on the Right? 

A growing number of “America First” figures are embracing old antisemitic tropes. Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old white supremacist influencer, has blamed “organized Jewry” for sowing division in the U.S. and claimed American Jews put Israel’s interests “before the interests of their home country.” Conservative writer Rod Dreher said he was told by a Washington insider that “30% to 40%” of young GOP staffers in D.C. are Fuentes fans. Candace Owens, one of the nation’s most popular podcasters, claims the U.S. has a “Zionist occupied government” and has dismissed accounts of the torturous experiments conducted by Nazi scientists on Jewish and other prisoners during World War II as “bizarre propaganda.” Tucker Carlson, the top right-wing podcaster in the U.S., has hosted Fuentes on his show as well as Nazi apologist blogger and Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper, whom Carlson called the “most important popular historian working in the United States today.” 

Are many Americans receptive to these messages? 

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who formerly employed Owens at his Daily Wire site and is a frequent target of antisemites online, said there’s a ready audience for anti-Jewish conspiracies among young people who feel the economy is against them. They are told their troubles “can be solved by externalizing those problems onto a different group,” said Shapiro, who adds that social media algorithms incentivize such conspiratorialism. “You get a lot more likes and clicks if you are promoting an anti-Israel, anti-Jewish agenda than if you are doing the opposite.” Research shows that antisemitism is blooming on the major social media platforms, most of which have dialed back content moderation in recent months. An Israeli study found a 41% increase in antisemitic posts on TikTok from 2020 to 2021, a 912% increase in antisemitic comments, and a 1,375% increase in antisemitic usernames. Another study, by the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, identified nearly 679,600 antisemitic posts on Elon Musk’s X platform over 11 months that garnered a combined 193 million views, despite being in violation of X’s own antisemitism policies. “Antisemitic conspiracy theories and hate that were once fringe have been wholly normalized,” said Amy Spitalnick, head of the JCPA. And they’re “thriving in plain sight.”

The poison of antisemitism is “growing on the new right,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, and it’s “spreading wider and faster than we thought.” Last month, Tucker Carlson hosted “Hitler fanboy” Nick Fuentes on his podcast for a “chummy” two-hour interview watched by more than 5 million people. The white nationalist influencer, 27, toned down his material for the chat—he’s previously talked about wanting a child bride and fantasized about killing a Black man with Hitler—but still praised Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin and assailed the threat of “organized Jewry.” Carlson largely nodded along and even admitted he loathed Christian Zionists such as the staunchly pro-Israel GOP Sen. Ted Cruz “more than anybody.” That Carlson would grant Fuentes access to his massive audience is proof that his hate “is entering the MAGA mainstream,” said Ali Breland in The Atlantic. Look at the recently leaked group chats of Young Republican leaders, which were “full of the kind of antisemitic and racist jokes” beloved by Fuentes and his legion of young fans, known as groypers. Conservative writer Rod Dreher, a friend of Vice President JD Vance, says he’s been told that 30% to 40% of Republican staffers in Washington under age 30 are groypers. Fuentes said in 2021 that his goal was to turn the GOP “into a truly reactionary party.” That “vision is coming true.” 

“Conservatives who detest antisemitism were shaken by the interview,” said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. But “they were even more alarmed” when Kevin Roberts—head of the Heritage Foundation, the GOP’s preeminent think tank—released a video defending Carlson’s decision to host Fuentes. He said Heritage doesn’t police “the consciences of Christians” and accused a “venomous coalition” of targeting Carlson. It’s an argument made by other prominent new right thinkers, who portray the Left as an existential threat that “necessitates the final loosening of all remaining restraints.” Roberts did eventually denounce Fuentes after some Heritage donors and staffers slammed his video. But it was too late to stop a MAGA “civil war,” said Will Sommer in The Bulwark. Podcaster Ben Shapiro attacked Carlson for “normalizing Nazism,” Cruz called Carlson a “coward,” and Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) said he’d canceled an event with Heritage because “I don’t work with antisemites.” 

Yet the silence from President Trump’s heir apparent was “deafening,” said Eli Lake in The Free Press. Vice President JD Vance, a Carlson ally, said nothing about Fuentes, despite being a repeat target of Fuentes’ bile. In recent livestreams, Fuentes has called Vance—whose wife, Usha, is Indian American—“a fat race mixer” and vowed to disrupt Vance’s likely 2028 presidential campaign if he gets too close to “the Israel First lobby.” Vance has gone out of his way to avoid offending groypers, chiding the “pearl clutchers” who were outraged by the Young Republicans chat. Perhaps Vance thinks “he can tame the feral groypers, retain his friendship with Carlson, and keep the MAGA peace. But this is delusional.” 

It’s not if you remember “Never Trumpism circa 2016,” said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. Back then, plenty of Republicans—like Vance—denounced Trump as “an unfit degenerate” only to embrace him “as the specter of a Hillary Clinton presidency loomed.” So why wouldn’t they embrace a future candidate who’s friendly to Fuentes or, at least, one who can triangulate “the growing divide between antisemitic and anti-antisemitic Republicans?” Practicing “strategic silence” might just be enough for Vance to keep everyone on side. “There will be no right-wing crack-up.”