Groypers On the March

[1]7,991 words

“The groyper thing is going to burn out fairly soon (don’t believe me? Let’s talk again next fall).”

— David Cole, November 26, 2019 [2]

When I heard about the upcoming Million MAGA March, I was torn as to whether I wanted to go. I generally despise traveling. I knew I should go but I really, really didn’t want to. And yet, something told me that if I didn’t go, I would regret it.[1]

I was planning to go to Charlottesville, but I couldn’t get off work the day before. I could theoretically have still gone but the logistics would have been insane. I would have had to go straight from work to the bus station and then taken a 14-hour bus ride and then gotten there sometime in the afternoon. Then I would have had to take a cab to and from the event. Eventually, I just said “Fuck that. This all sounds very complicated, annoying, and expensive. I’ll be there in spirit.”

But with the Million MAGA March, I knew I wouldn’t have either of those excuses. I knew up front that this was going to be something huge and historic. Plus, DC was fairly close, a ticket was cheap, and the event was within walking distance of the station. I had the money, so that wasn’t a problem. And it was taking place in DC, so it was unlikely to descend into a shitshow. Given all this, I knew that if I missed this event, not only would I regret it, but I would have no excuses.

These days, I can afford a train ticket. However, I waited until the last minute to buy one, so by the time I tried, they were sold out. Alright, I guess I’ll take a bus. I checked Greyhound and they were sold out too. I dug deeper and I eventually got a $20 ticket from some no-name bus company (Flixbus, if you must know). The bus left at 3:00 AM and was set to arrive in DC at 8:00 AM. I naively hoped that I might be able to catch some sleep on the bus, but that didn’t happen. I can sometimes fall asleep on a plane with moderate difficulty, on a train with the assistance of alcohol, but sleeping on a bus is impossible for me.

Behind me were a couple of black guys. They struck up a conversation. Listening to them talk, it turned out that they were also going to the Million MAGA March. Ah, so they are based black guys. Eventually, I gave up on trying to get to sleep and struck up a conversation with the two. One of the black guys was a dude named Tim. He seemed pretty Alt-Lite but fairly well-informed. He was up to speed on the various voter fraud talking points. Tim said he was a writer and did “investigative journalism.” My intuition suspected that there was some exaggerated black braggadocio to these claims. Upon clarification, he had a blog and did Twitter. The other black guy was named Joe. He seemed like a fairly normie MAGA guy who just so happened to be black. I talked with the based black guys for a bit about the voter fraud situation, COVID, and other stuff.

Eventually, this fresh-faced 20-year-old white kid from Boston came up to us and said “I heard you guys talking and saying some straight facts so I thought I would come join you.”

(I won’t tell you this kid’s name because it’s one of those newfangled white names. People like to make fun of blacks for giving their kids bizarre names, but to be honest, white people give their kids pretty weird names too. White people will do that thing where they take a normal name but they change one letter. “Hello, I’m Kennifer.” I mean, is naming your kid Brayleigh really less stupid than naming your kid Tashiqua? Okay, maybe Brayleigh is a lot kinder to the ear than Tashiqua, but is it any less stupid?)

Anyway, this white kid from Boston had one of those names. The poor thing. It would basically be doxing him to tell you what it is, because I doubt that there are any more than 3 people in the universe who have it. I asked the kid if he was a Groyper, and he said “yes,” which was not surprising. The kid had Groyper written all over him.

The four of us were now a clique, and eventually, other Trump supporters on the bus started moving to the back to join us. There was one long-haired fellow. He was a libertarian but was apparently high on Antifa’s shitlist. He told me about how Antifash Gordon and Spencer Sunshine had put him on blast. And then others came.

By the end of the bus ride, there were about 9 of us, and we resolved to walk to the event together. However, we eventually got disconnected, and it was just the original four: me, the two based black guys, and the kid from Boston. I had until now kept secret the fact that I was a star writer for one of the major white nationalist websites. I didn’t want to get into it with the black guys. But as we were walking, I did pull Kid Boston aside and say: “By the way, I’m Travis LeBlanc. I write for Counter-Currents.” He said he was not familiar with Counter-Currents. I asked if he knew who Greg Johnson was. He said he did, and I told him “Well, Counter-Currents is his website.” Kid Boston told me that he started watching Nick Fuentes about a year before the Groyper Wars, but before that had been a 4chan lurker. By Groyper standards, that pretty much made him an OG.

It was pretty early by the time we got to Freedom Plaza; about 9 o’clock, and things weren’t supposed to get going until around noon. We had some time to kill. Tim said he knew DC pretty well and knew of a nifty diner where we could get breakfast. It was a short walk. On the way to the diner, a white boomer woman passed us by, smiled at Tim, and said “Oh, thank you. We need more black Republicans.” Sigh. So much work to be done. . .

When we got to the diner, the place was packed with Trump supporters. There were a ton of Proud Boys there, mixed in with a fair amount of normie MAGA types.

As I sat in the diner waiting for my food, I looked over the room, and one of the things that stood out to me was the fact that not a single person in the place was wearing a mask. No exaggeration. Not. A. Single. Person. The only people wearing masks were the staff. A few people had their masks around their chin, but most people were going commando with the face covering. COVID skepticism appears to be the default among Trump supporters.

It was somewhat surreal to look at this. A year ago, this would have been a perfectly usual scene. A bunch of people sitting down in a restaurant eating breakfast. But in November 2020, I was looking at a scene of defiant civil disobedience. I thought this was illegal. I didn’t know how the restaurant was allowed to do this. They were screening people. Going in, they took my temperature using one of those laser thingies. But I thought sit-down restaurants were banned, and yet here we were.

After breakfast, we went outside, and it turned out that the Proud Boys had selected that location for their meetup spot.

I have some experience with the Proud Boys. A friend of mine was in Gavin McInnes’ extended entourage and I was present at the first-ever Proud Boys meetup, which took place at some Irish bar in Long Island City. I also went to a couple of Proud Boys meetups during the Gavin era, but never got that involved.

One thing I noticed about the Proud Boys in DC that day is that they seemed, on average, a lot older than I remembered. At the few meetups I went to, the crowd seemed mostly late millennial with maybe some early zoomers. However, the Proud Boys I saw at the Million MAGA March seemed to skew older, mostly early millennials and quite a few Gen X and Gen Y types. It may be that older people are more likely to have the money to travel to DC. But I think most of the younger Proud Boys defected to the Alt-Right circa 2016-17. They also seemed less hipsterish and more Chad. Once the Proud Boys got a reputation for street action and confrontation with Antifa, that attracted a new type of person.

People in the Dissident Right give the Proud Boys a lot of grief for being CivNat cucks. I mean, sure. Ideologically, they leave much to be desired. And yet there is a lot to like about the Proud Boys. They place a very high value on masculinity, and their sense of brotherhood is admirable. They are a very tight-knit group.

As we stood there, the Proud Boys would occasionally break out into spontaneous chants of “four more years” and “fuck Antifa.” Their spirits were high and morale was off the charts.

The Proud Boys are certainly having a moment right now. They recently got a semi-endorsement in an internationally-televised live presidential debate followed by a much less-publicized disavowal from none other than President Trump himself. Of course, the Trump apologist will insist that his initial reaction represented Trump’s true feelings. Trump’s kneejerk reaction, his gut instinct in the spur of the moment, was to defend the Proud Boys, and his later disavowal was a pragmatic necessity done with a wink and a nod. I’m neither endorsing nor disavowing this claim. I’m just telling you what the argument is.

[3]

There are currently rumors that the Proud Boys are experiencing a crisis in leadership. Word on the street [4] has it that Kyle Chapman, AKA Based Stickman (remember him?), is attempting to oust the Proud Boys’ current leader, the Afro-Cuban Enrique Tarrio, and intends to transform Proud Boys into an explicitly White Nationalist organization.

In a recent post, Chapman declared:

Due to the recent failure of Proud Boy Chairman Enrique Tarrio to conduct himself with honor and courage on the battlefield, it has been decided that I, Kyle Chapman, reassume my post as President of Proud Boys effective immediately. We will no longer cuck to the left by appointing token negroes as our leaders. We will no longer allow homosexuals or other ‘undesirables’ into our ranks. We will confront the Zionist criminals who wish to destroy our civilization.

He has also said that Proud Boys’ talk of “Western Civilization” has always been a dogwhistle (which is probably true) and that they should just drop the pretenses. “We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race” (which is definitely true).

Eh. . . I mean. . .

Look, I’m the last guy to criticize any person or group for wanting to go in a more ethnonationalist direction. But the fact that Chapman is talking like a movie villain (or a typical wignat) makes my spidey-senses tingle. Best case scenario, this guy’s a LARPer. Worst case scenario, he’s a Fed. Somewhere in between those two extremes is the possibility that he was just drunk when he wrote that.

Using the word “negro” is one of those things that can sound either retro-cool or tryhard cringe depending on context. It’s like calling someone a “sodomite.” Now, if you are an old-school kind of guy, you can really make “negro” work for you. But if you’re not, it’s like “Bro, you are trying too hard.”

Now, I am a lover of all things old-timey. But in my opinion, if you are going to go old-timey, you should go full old-timey. Don’t just go old-timey with your racism. If you are going to call blacks negros, you should also refer to cat ladies as “spinsters” (“old maid” is also acceptable). Stop calling them “thots” and start calling them “floozies” (unless they are a thot for married and/or rich guys, in which case they are an “adventuress”). Go full old-timey, and then when you use the word “negro,” people will say “Well, he’s just an old-school kind of guy.”

Personally, I think “colored” has more retro charm.

Secondly, the fact that the Proud Boys are not explicitly white nationalist gives them enough plausible deniability that they can go out in public and confront Antifa in ways that we cannot. If they went full white nationalist, the establishment would start throwing these guys 30-year prison sentences for jaywalking.

I’m always happy to see people come over to the white nationalist side, but the Proud Boys do have some value as a junior varsity team.

[5]

While we were standing around with the Proud Boys, some boomer came walking up with a camera in his hand filming the scene. Physiognomy suggested he was a liberal. Experience suggested that he was likely Antifa and doing recon work for the anti-fascists who were assembling down the street. One of the Proud Boys yelled at the guy: “Fuck Biden! Go ahead, support a pedophile!” Ah, he means well. Whatever we in the Dissident Right think of the Proud Boys, Antifa considers them full-blown Nazis, de facto if not de jure.

I watched the Proud Boys as they mingled. One of them approached our group. I was taking pictures of them and I think he may have suspected that I was either Antifa myself or possibly a journalist. But after talking to us, the Proud Boy seemed convinced that we were, in fact, honest-to-God Trump supporters.

Before heading out to the event, the Proud Boys all took a knee to pray for the good Lord’s blessing for a successful day of activism. I know a lot of white nationalists are not too hot on Christianity. I know all the arguments and I get it. I understand where they are coming from. The counter-argument from pro-Christian Dissident Rightists has always been to point to the potential of Christianity as a social binding force. Seeing the Proud Boys come together for prayer was certainly evidence of this. I would see more evidence later in the day with the Groypers who use “Christ is King” as a battle cry.

We followed the Proud Boys on their walk to Freedom Plaza, which was already teeming with Trump enthusiasts. Around this time, I got separated from the three guys from the bus and was kicking it solo for the rest of the day.

If I weren’t a believer in physiognomy before reaching Freedom Plaza, I was soon afterward. White liberals and white conservatives just look different. They look about as different from each other as Italians and Germans do. You occasionally meet someone who could pass for the other, but you will guess right over 90% of the time. As someone who has spent the last several years in one of the most liberal cities in America, that’s something that really stood out to me: just how different conservatives look. Part of it may be differences in fashion and dietary habits. Maybe with a different haircut, clothes, and a vegan diet, some of these people might look more liberal, but I don’t know. People just look conservative, and being around them felt like I had traveled not just to a different city but a different country. I’m sure Ryan Faulk could come in here and give a big-brained explanation as to why that is, pointing out the different migration patterns between red and blue states, and all the gene correlations that go along with a conservative disposition. But that was something that was really hard not to notice.

[6]

There was quite a bit of cringe going on. All the cringe you would expect from a normie conservative crowd. I’ve been redpilled for quite a while but never before had I ever felt as redpilled as I did that day. “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you are inside, look around, and what do you see? Civnats, Christcucks, classical liberals, Zio-shills. The very minds of the people we are trying to save.”

[7]

[8]

Much brouhaha has been made of Trump’s uncharacteristic-for-a-Republican popularity among POC, particularly blacks and Hispanics. Several theories have been put forth to explain this and almost all of them are stupid.

Many conservatives have hailed this as evidence that blacks are beginning to see the wisdom of conservatism. That maybe blacks are finally (FINALLY!!!) starting to assimilate into white culture. Others have said that the Republicans have become the true party of inclusivity. You see, Democrats divide people into groups, black, white, gay, straight, trans, cis, but by golly, Republicans look at those same people and all they see are Americans. I heard sentiments like this expressed by speakers approximately 8 billion times throughout the day.

Over on the Dirtbag Left, the Bernie Bros have been claiming that Trump’s support among POC is evidence of POC’s awakening class consciousness. The Democrats, they say, have become too bougie. They are now the party of the college-educated and the tech giants, so POC are drifting to the Republicans whom they perceive as the more working-class party (at least rhetorically, if not actually). They are just following their class interests.

They are both overthinking it.

I think Trump’s popularity with these groups has to do mostly with Trump personally and little else. Blacks dig alpha behavior and an effortlessly cool don’t-give-a-fuck attitude regardless of race. Just look at blacks’ reverence for the movie Scarface. Back in the 1930s and 40s, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart were both extraordinarily popular with blacks and young black men would strive to emulate their onscreen personas. Blacks are often credited with inventing the concept of “cool” during the jazz era, but a lot of that vibe was actually blacks trying to imitate Humphrey Bogart.

For their part, Hispanics, like all Latino people, have a soft spot for strong men. I doubt that someone like Nikki Haley or Jeb Bush could inspire the same level of passion from these groups. I doubt even an ideological Trumpian like Tucker Carlson could.

Whatever the cause, Trump’s support among minorities is apparently a very real thing. If anything, they appeared to be some of Trump’s most passionate supporters. The crowd seemed to get whiter as the day progressed and then darker again near the end, meaning that the POC were among the first to get there and among the last to leave. It could be that the POC were disproportionately locals, but who knows?

I don’t know if I would describe Trump’s POC support as “significant,” but it was certainly conspicuous. I don’t know if there were a lot there or if the ones who were there just stood out more. But there were plenty, and it felt like half of them had a mic in their hand. Republicans are supposed to hate affirmative action, but they definitely affirmative action the shit out of any POC with conservative views.

Like this guy.

[9]

The white dude on the right was from some outlet whose name I can not remember. It was some pro-life group or something. He was going through the crowd at Freedom Plaza, picking out all the blacks, handing them a mic, and getting them to make pro-life statements. He was like a kid in a candy store looking at all the blacks in Trump hats. It was like Christmas for this guy.

Sigh. . . So much work to be done. . .

There have always been black Republicans for as long as I have been alive. Not only were they extreme outliers, but most of them gave off a strong Uncle Tom vibe. Either they were highly assimilated and white-presenting and/or they gave off a stench of ruthless careerism. Now, if there is one thing I love, it’s whiteness. While they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, even I had a hard time respecting these guys. “C’mon, bro. We subjugated and enslaved your people. At least try to make it look like you put up a fight.”

However, one thing you couldn’t not notice was the number of black-presenting black Trump supporters, which is the real novelty. Though, while watching some of them, I was wondering if I was actually watching some kind of minstrel show.

I passed by one black guy giving a speech on a megaphone just as he was talking about illegal immigration. He was saying: “Yo, I can’t just cross duh border over into Russia. Like, yo. I’m an American. This right here is my shit. You can’t just walk into my shit like that.”

There’s an extremely popular genre of YouTube videos: black people reacting to white music, usually hard rock, classic rock, and heavy metal. They almost always react positively, with stereotypically black enthusiasm. They will play some Led Zeppelin, then say “Aw shit! That beat is dooooope! Hell yeah, that guitar solo was hot. Dayum, that change up was tight!” And they do all the black facial expressions and body language, head bobbing. The whole bit.

Megadeth - Holy Wars...The Punishment Due (REACTION!!!)Megadeth – Holy Wars…The Punishment Due (REACTION!!!)

These videos get millions of views. I see my normie friends post these videos all the time. “Two black guys listen to “Crazy Train” [10] and they love it!”

Apparently, there is huge demand from white people to have their taste in music blessed by black people. And they don’t want to hear it from Carlton Banks. They want to hear an honest-to-God “real nigga” tell them that they have good taste in music. And apparently, quite a few blacks have picked up on this fact and have found a way to monetize it.

I imagine that a very high proportion of the people watching these videos are red-state conservatives. Hard rock, heavy metal, and classic rock is really the music of the red-state conservative. It’s direct, masculine, unpretentious, and heterosexual (albeit frequently unintentionally homoerotic). It gives them false hope for a future multicultural world where people of all races, religions, and orientations can put aside their differences, join hands, and listen to Black Sabbath together.

I wonder if a lot of these blackety-black Trump supporters are working a similar grift. Maybe it’s not about the money with all of them. Maybe some just like getting a pat on the head from whitey.

I’m going to predict right now that this will become the hot new trend at Conservative Inc. We are going to see the emergence of the “real nigga conservative.” Con Inc. has been pushing black conservatives on us for decades, but I think we will see a sort of “black authenticity” arms race.

If the GOP is going to maintain people’s faith in the feasibility of multiculturalism, they have to be doing more than just putting forward a bunch of Carlton Banks types. Everyone knows that Carlton Banks types are outliers and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. If they are going to keep people on the multicultural plantation, they are going to show that conservative ideas have appeal with “real niggas.”

I can only imagine how bad it is going to get. “Look, y’all. That bitch-ass Assad is wack. He be gassing his own people and shit! America needs to go in there, whoop that nigga upside the head, and be like ‘Blow! America, bitch!’ Cause look, yo. In duh hood, we believe in having your homie’s back. Ya gotta have your homie’s back, y’all. And Israel is America’s number one homie.”

When it is all said and done, Diamond and Silk will be seen as being way ahead of their time. That’s my prediction.

I noticed a similar phenomenon with Lady MAGA.

[11]

When I encountered Lady MAGA, he was surrounded by a phalanx of faghags clamoring to have their picture take with him. I kid you not. Conservative women were utterly fascinated by this creature. The fact that someone could be both a drag queen and a Trump supporter completely blew their tiny little minds.

So much work to be done. . .

That said, most of the based black guys I encountered seemed like genuinely nice, sincere people. Even I, a cold-hearted veteran White Nationalist, felt bad for these guys. If all blacks were like them, then maybe there wouldn’t be a problem, or there would be manageable problems. But they are not and never will be. No matter how sincere these guys are, where we are going, they cannot follow if whites are to survive. But that is some ways down the road. For the time being, the main objective is to get Trump reelected and in that, we can be on the same side. At least for now.

As for the role of blacks in the future of the Republican party, who knows? We’ll see. Just as the internet allowed all the white racists to find each other, it has also allowed all the black conservatives to find each other. There does appear to be a small organic black conservative subculture on the internet and a lot of the based black guys present were there with their based black friends, sometimes in groups of 4 or more.

One of the ways conformity is enforced is by threatening social isolation. The existence of these sorts of subcultures undermines the power of that threat. You can make me persona non grata from 90% of society, but there’s still that 10% of people who will think I’m cool. Some people will make the cost-benefit analysis and decide that they would rather be themselves within a tiny subculture than live a lie in wider society.

A black conservative subculture may be able to siphon some support away from the Democrats but I would guess that it might top out around 30% of black men and 15% of black women at best (black women will always need the welfare more). That might be enough to swing a close election in some places, but would also result in more over-the-top pandering from the GOP establishment.

[12]

Once at Freedom Plaza, I started to looking around for the Groypers, who would be the Dissident Right’s representatives at the event. They were hard to miss. If you didn’t see the cluster of AF flags, the Groypers would occasionally break out into spontaneous chants of various AF slogans, which were audible throughout the park. “America First,” “No more neocons,” and the occasional “Christ is King.” At one point, I think even a “No E-girls” chant got going.

Nick Fuentes was not on the scene yet, but the Groypers were already pretty charged up. A collection of them were standing on top of a. . . I don’t know what it was. Some pedestal thing that was being used as a makeshift stage. Beneath the “stage” were a few hundred Groypers, already amassed. To keep the energy up, people on the stage would get chants going.

“I say Groypers, you say rise! Groypers!”
“Rise!”
“Groypers!”
“Rise!”

They even managed to get some pretty long chants going, like reciting a Fuentes quote from the intro music of the show. One guy would yell “America First is inevitable! It’s unstoppable!” and the Groypers would respond: “AND THE REASON WHY IS BECAUSE IT’S NOT COOL TO SHILL FOR BIG BUSINESS! IT’S NOT COOL TO SHILL FOR ISRAEL! IT’S NOT. IT’S GAY!

Speakers began talking on the “official” main stage and Fuentes still had not arrived. However, rumor was spreading among the Groypers that Baked Alaska was on the scene.

Suddenly, a commotion began. I asked some kid next to me what was going on. He said that a wignat showed up a flag of the Spanish Falange party. I said, “A wignat is here?”

He said: “Yeah, a wignat. A wignat is a White Nationalist.”

I wanted to grab him and say “Look, kid! Do you think I don’t know what a wignat is? Do you know who I am? I’ll have you know that I fought in the Optics War, goddamn it! I helped popularize that term. I was fighting wignats back you were still in high school which, granted, was only about 6 months ago, but still. And look, kid. A wignat is specific kind of White Nationalist. I’m a White Nationalist but I’m not a goddamn wignat!!!”

But instead, I just said “Yeah, I know what a wignat is.”

[13] [14]

I would find out later that the wignat in question was one Jovi Val [15], an infamous provocateur from New Jersey who was kicked out of Proud Boys for pulling similar bad optics publicity stunts, including a rather famous one at Union Square in NYC [16].

The Groypers then broke out into chants of “Fuck Wignats” followed chants of “Optics” and “Fuck that, wignat” and then “fuck off, Fed” and “glowing.” At one point, the Groypers surrounded the Wignat in T-poses.

After Mr. Val left, I heard one of the Groypers say “Now, don’t get me wrong. A Francoist America would be pretty cool, but this is not the time for that.”

When Nick Fuentes finally arrived on the scene, it was like something out of Hard Days Night [17]. The Groypers erupted in jubilation. The kid’s a rock star. With some effort, Fuentes was able to wade through the throngs of his worshipful supporters and make his way to the makeshift stage that had been commandeered for him by the Groypers and began testifyin’. This would be the first of two speeches he would give throughout the day.

Nick Fuentes FULL Original Speech for President Trump - Million Maga March - November 14, 2020Nick Fuentes FULL Original Speech for President Trump – Million Maga March – November 14, 2020

[18]

[19]

From a certain distance from the Groyper stage, you could hear both Fuentes and the “official” speakers on the main stage, and it was apparent just how much better Fuentes was at what he does than the professional politicians screeching Con Inc. boilerplate on the main stage. Fuentes of course had the Groypers eating out of his hands but also attracted quite a few normie passersby curious about all the excitement.

As I was watching Fuentes speak, a couple of young girls walked by. The prettier of the two stopped and her eyes lit up as they looked over to the Groyper stage.

“Is that . . .?”

I told her “That’s Nick Fuentes.”

The pretty girl’s friend said “Oh . . . We don’t want that.” The friend then grabbed the pretty girl’s arm and led her away. Not a fan of Cookie Monster jokes [20], I suppose.

Other people from the America First extended universe appeared on stage, including Jake Lloyd, Vincent James, Steve Franssen, and Jaden McNeil.

[21] [22] [23] [24]

And of course, there was Baked Alaska.

[25]

Baked Alaska has staged one of the most remarkable and unlikely comebacks in the history of e-celebrity. He’s like Jason from the Friday the 13th movies. You see him get killed over and over, but then he just keeps coming back. Over and over. You watch his e-celebrity go up in flames, but then a year later, you find out that they are coming out with a Baked Alaska Part VIII, and think “Wait, he’s back? No way! How is he back? How is that even possible? I saw him die in a fiery explosion that surely no one could walk away from. The end credits started rolling. That’s supposed to be The End. How is that not The End? How is he back?”

I thought he was done after the whole Sweet Erin/Ice Poseidon thing when he attempted to rebrand from an Alt-Right personality to a normie IRL streamer. I wrote an article about it [26] that I thought would serve as his obituary. I thought that if the controversy itself did not ruin him, that surely a hit piece by yours truly would sow the fields with salt.

Sometime later, Porsalin made a documentary [27] where he absolutely bodied Baked Alaska. The Irony Bros were nice enough to let him join their crew, but then his psychotic Alt-Lite girlfriend started reporting them to Antifa. Few people have the kind of cringe rap sheet that Baked Alaska has. Literally. The guy’s Kiwi Farms page is longer than War & Peace.

There are people who have become White Nationalists. There have been people who have become White Nationalists who then later publicly disavowed White Nationalism. Baked Alaska might be the first person to become a White Nationalist (when the Alt-Right got hot), publicly disavow White Nationalism (after Christchurch), and then publicly un-disavow White Nationalism (once Fuentes got hot). The closest example might be David Cole, who disavowed and then un-disavowed his work in Holocaust revisionism, but Cole at least has the excuse of the JDL putting a $25,000 bounty on his head.

But I’ll be damned if Baked Alaska is not more popular now than he was when he was the #2 Internet Bloodsports channel (behind Warski Live). His IRL streams have been getting over 3,000 live viewers, which makes him the 3rd biggest streamer on DLive behind Fuentes and Owen Benjamin.

Throughout all his controversies, Fuentes has remained stubbornly loyal to Baked Alaska in ways that bewildered even some of Fuentes’ most ardent plan-trusters. If nothing else, it speaks to Fuentes’ loyalty as a friend that he would stick up for Baked Alaska even when it was extremely uncool to do so. Whether it was right or wrong, wise or unwise, is another matter. It took some balls.

I don’t fully “get” Fuentes’ reasoning on Baked Alaska but I’m going to go ahead and trust the plan nonetheless.

I’ll admit that I am an unapologetic Fuentes plan-truster.

Look. I’m a militant pragmatist. Redpilling people is really fucking hard and we are in a race against time. To that end, I am pro-whatever works and I am anti-whatever doesn’t work. If you could show me irrefutable evidence that strapping on a swastika armband and marching through town in a plastic Stahlhelm was effective at winning people over to the pro-white cause, I would do it. I would feel like a complete idiot while doing it, but I would do it for the white race. Lucky for me, no such evidence exists.

The fact is that Fuentes knows what he is doing and he gets results. I’m willing to overlook a lot if someone gets results. I’m not interested in hearing you “Yeah, but. . .” There is no “yeah, but. . .” after that. If you want to convince me that your way is better, get results.

Wignats like to say “AmNats may be doing well now but they will eventually reach a dead end.” Okay, if AmNats reach a dead end, then we will change direction when we get there. The point is to keep moving forward. Wignats, on the other hand, are already at their dead end.

I’ll take effective over pure any day of the week.

The thing about purity and why it is not very impressive is that you don’t have to do anything to be pure. Being effective requires some combination of talent, skill, hard work, and patience. Being pure, on the other hand, is simply a matter of ticking boxes. As such, people who don’t do anything for the movement and/or people who are not effective at what they do are always going to place a high value on purity because it’s an easy metric for them to score high in.

Useless people will always push for more purity.

There’s also the fact that most purity spiralers are anonymous. Not only do they not have to do anything to be pure, they don’t even have to prove that they actually live up to their ideals. We’re just supposed to take on blind faith that they are not having gay interracial orgies at their house every weekend while they dissect the personal lives of people who, you know, actually do stuff. I’m from Missouri, so you have to show me something before I believe it. My default assumption is that all anonymous people attend gay interracial orgies until I have specific reason to believe otherwise. I do not consider the burden of proof to be on me.

If someone is anonymous, I can only assume that they go about their day to day life pretending to be some kind of liberal, either classical or full-flavored. And yet I’ve been called a coward by more anonymous people than I can count (and I can count very high).

I realize that anonymity is necessary for some people, and there are anons who do good work, but goddamn, it’s hard not to resent them sometimes. “They are going to call us Nazis no matter what we do!” No, motherfucker, they are going to call me a Nazi. Maybe they will call your fake fucking screen name a Nazi, but no one is going to be calling you shit. And if someone did call you a Nazi, you would probably quit the movement and go into hiding, which is what all anonymous tryhards do after they get doxed. We’d be lucky not to get a public disavowal. Remember the Bowl Patrol? The Dylann Roof-worshiping accelerationists? Those guys were like the wignats’ wignats, and oh how they folded like a deck of cards [28] under the light of scrutiny.

[29]

In my opinion, anonymous people should not be allowed to have an opinion on optics. Why should they? Let’s say that we take some anonymous guy’s opinion on optics, make it movement-wide policy, and then things go horribly wrong as a result. Well, that anonymous fellow can just quit the movement and go on with the rest of his life as if none of this ever happened. Meanwhile, us non-anons for whom there is no turning back would be left cleaning up the mess. So why would I want to listen to that guy?

If you are invisible, optics should be a non-issue for you.

One of the virtues of not being anonymous is that it makes you never want to make a mistake. Anonymous people act like they are playing with Monopoly money.

No doubt, some of you are probably thinking “Well, Trav, it’s easy for you to not be anonymous. You have a cool-sounding name. You’re a white nationalist whose name literally means ‘The White.’ Who named you? Charles Dickens? The only reason I go by AryanWarrior1488 is that no one wants to hear about Khazar Theory from a guy named Melvin Snodgrass. If I had a cool sounding name like Travis LeBlanc, I’d be out there peacocking it like you do!”

That’s no excuse. Okay, so you have a silly-sounding name. Do you know who else had a silly-sounding name? Mussolini. I mean, Benito is not bad, but the name “Mussolini” is objectively silly. But Il Duce didn’t let that stop him. He went out and did badass things and now people associate the name “Mussolini” with being a badass.

Be like Mussolini.

Let me preemptively address another one of your arguments.

“So Trav,” you say. “You claim that people who don’t do anything turn into wignats. And yet most of the Groypers don’t ‘do anything’ in terms of making content, serious activism, or whatnot. So why don’t they all turn into wignats?”

That’s because the Groypers are, to a very large extent, a cult of personality. Within the context of the Groypers, “purity” means believing whatever Nick Fuentes believes. A purity-spiraling Groyper would be someone who was a militant optics-respecting AmNat.

This is one of the things that separates the Groypers from the Alt-Right of yore. I think Richard Spencer very much would have liked to have turned the old Alt-Right into his own private cult of personality, but unfortunately for Spencer, one of the requirements for starting a cult of personality is actually having a decent personality.

Within the Groypers, it’s all based on Nick. He is the President and the Supreme Court. What he says is law. There are some upsides and downsides to this.

The downside to this is that if Nick were to die in a car accident next week, I don’t think there is anyone within the America First scene who could step up and do what Nick does. Or at least, not anywhere near as well as Nick does. There are smart guys in the AF scene (like Vincent James) and there are funny guys in the AF scene (like Beardson Beardly), but Nick is the complete package.

At the moment, Nick is irreplaceable to his movement. He has said that he does not plan to do his show forever. At the rate he is going, he will probably eventually be called up to the big leagues of either TV or government or something. At some point, he should find himself a protégé to mold into a potential successor.

There are some upsides to the Groypers being a Cult of Nick.

First of all, there are a lot of mistakes that I trust Nick not to make. He doesn’t drink, use drugs, or chase girls. I trust Nick not to go on drunken rants about retaking Constantinople [30]. I trust Nick not to upload videos of himself crying [31]. I trust Nick not to allow himself to be photographed giving Nazi salutes [32]. I trust Nick not to make up stories about being a war hero [33]. I trust Nick not to have sex with Jaden McNeil’s girlfriend and then start strangling him in a trailer park [34].

Back in the Alt-Right days, there were about a dozen high-profile figures you had to constantly worry about. “Please don’t embarrass us, please don’t embarrass us, please don’t embarrass us. . .” With the Groypers, you really only need to worry about one person. And the fact is that Fuentes does not make many unforced errors.

Secondly, because there is no dispute as to who is in charge, you don’t see the same kinds of ego-crashing and jockeying for status among the Groypers that you saw in the Alt-Right. Infighting is virtually non-existent within the Groyper movement. The rest of the extended America First crew seem perfectly happy to simply ride Fuentes’ coattails.

Back to the story. . .

From Freedom Plaza, it was difficult to get a feel for how big the crowd was. Your eye could only see so many people from any given vantage point. Plus, there were Trump supporters all over DC, some sightseeing, others getting lunch, others rendezvous-ing with friends. But when the march proper began and we started climbing up the hills on the way to the Supreme Court, you were able to see just how massive the attendance actually was. It was truly a breathtaking sight. Red hats and Trump flags as far as the eye could see until they vanished into the horizon. You literally could not see the end of it.

[35]

Fuentes marched flanked by security guards and spent the entire walk shaking hands, signing autographs, and having his picture taken with fans. Hundreds of Groypers followed in tow, breaking out into occasional chants and slogans.

[36]

After arriving at the top of the hill, we reached a park and Fuentes began setting up to give another speech. A boomer lady looked over at the crowd of Groypers and could tell that something interesting was happening.

“What’s going on over there?” she asked.

I said: “That’s Nick Fuentes.”

The lady said “Oh really? Where is he? I want to see.”

Nick Fuentes FULL BULLHORN SPEECH Washington DC MAGA Million March November 14 2020Nick Fuentes FULL BULLHORN SPEECH Washington DC MAGA Million March November 14 2020

The second speech was plagued by bad sound. The acoustics were not as advantageous as they were at Freedom Park. Even with the bullhorn, you could only hear him from about 20 feet away. Slightly more if the bullhorn was pointed directly at you. But if he turned (as he did often because he was completely surrounded), he would become inaudible. I heard someone behind me ask a woman “Can you hear him?” She answered “I can hear every other word.”

But the wild enthusiasm of the Groypers still attracted curious onlookers who continued to watch Fuentes even though they could not hear what he was saying.

[37]

At some point, Antifa showed up across the street and the Groypers and Proud Boys pelted them with taunts of “get a job” and “take a shower.”

It was slightly after this that Trump made his much-anticipated cameo appearance as he was chauffeured by in his motorcade. I’m afraid I missed this part as I was busy getting an overpriced cheeseburger at a food cart down the street. Curses. Somehow, this bothers me less than missing Kurt Cobain in high school.

By the time I finished my cheeseburger, the crowds were breaking up, the sun was going down, and the festivities were coming to a close. I didn’t know what the Groypers were up to after that — if they were having some kind of afterparty or whatnot. If they were, I was happy to leave them to it. I’m old enough to be some of their dads and didn’t want to be the old guy trying to hang out with a bunch of kids. I was a kid once and I remember that guy.

I walked to the train station and got a ticket. All the liquor stores in DC were closed, so I would be making the journey back sober — and very awake.

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Asides

1. When I was in high school, I passed on the chance to see Nirvana four months before Kurt Cobain killed himself, and I’ve been annoyed with myself ever since. I thought Nirvana was okay, but I wasn’t a huge fan. I liked Nevermind, but In Utero left a lot of people scratching their heads. It was looking like Nirvana were going to be one-album-wonders like The Stone Roses. At my high school, Nirvana had already been surpassed in popularity by Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. All the preppy kids listened to Pearl Jam while the stoners and social outsiders listened to Alice in Chains. It was sort of like a tribal signifier. Nirvana was sort of everyone’s 2nd favorite grunge band. Point is, at the time, Nirvana appeared to be on the decline.

But since then, Kurt Cobain has become the avatar of my generation. When people think of the early 90s, they think of grunge, and when they think of grunge, they think of Kurt Cobain. As a consolation prize, I did get to see Alice in Chains (original lineup with Mike Starr on bass), and half that band is dead now. But Mike Starr and Layne Staley both died post-Zeitgeist. That’s not as cool. I’ve seen a few dead people in concert. I mean, we all die. But the ultimate in cool is being able to say you saw a person who died young, at the peak of their success, and Cobain was a real shooting star. Blink your eyes and the opportunity is gone. As time goes by, more and more, I really wish I had gone to see them when I had the chance.

In my defense, I didn’t know that Cobain was going to kill himself. Cobain’s suicide created a mythos around him — had he not killed himself, Cobain may very well have faded into has-been obscurity (I believe that 100 times about Ian Curtis). I can at least console myself with the knowledge that I had no way of knowing the historic significance of what I was passing on.

I didn’t go to Charlottesville either, but my feelings on that are more mixed. On one hand, it was a historic event, and the street cred and bragging rights of having been there would be a nifty feather in my cap. But on the other hand, if I had gone, I might very well be in prison right now for defending myself and/or tied up in some huge lawsuit.