Counter-Currents
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An article by Aquilonius was recently published here at Counter-Currents, ”Is America First Cracking Up?” While I am a regular viewer of Nick Fuentes’ nightly show, America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes, I don’t pay much attention to the broader America First Extended Universe, so I was a bit slow in getting up to speed on the most recent drama going on there.
The short version of the story is that Ryan Sanchez, aka Culture War Criminal (CWC), had been a part of the America First (AF) movement but was recently expelled for criticizing Fuentes and other high-profile AF members. In addition to this, CWC was subjected to an intense online struggle session where Beardson Beardly and Baked Alaska acted as the grand inquisitors. There is likewise another America First streamer who goes by the name of Red Pill Gaming (RPG) who has also earned Fuentes’ ire by questioning his methods and decisions. He was similarly subjected to a hot grilling by Fuentes on a Killstream episode.
The controversy stems from the fact that many people consider some of the critiques made by CWC and RPG to be valid. These include questioning why a nominally pro-white operation employs so much black music in their content; the wisdom of Fuentes participating in a documentary made by Louis Theroux, a notorious liberal hatchet man with a long record of hostility towards pro-whites; the tendency of some AF streamers to do gaming streams rather than more serious political content; and the utility of having a time bomb like Baked Alaska associated with the AF brand.
Many people’s perception is that Fuentes and company are lashing out very aggressively at people who are in fact offering legitimate criticisms. Some believe that this is evidence that Fuentes is becoming megalomaniacal. He’s expelling people from his movement for being honest and telling the truth!
I have a somewhat different take on this, but first I have to discuss another matter.
Counter-Currents has its share of detractors. Around the net, I have encountered people who say, “How could you write for Counter-Currents? One time Greg Johnson said blah blah blah.” This doesn’t bother me, since I would be getting some kind of grief no matter who I was writing for. If I wrote for American Renaissance, I would be hearing, “Jared Taylor won’t talk about the JQ!” If I wrote for The Daily Stormer, it would be “Weev’s a Jew!” If I wrote for VDare, if would be “race-mixing boomers!” Some people will always find something to complain about.
It’s true that I could have just started my own blog and then I would not have to deal with any of that. I would only have to answer for the things I said and did. But building an audience from scratch is a lot of work. Why would I do that when I could write for an established brand that already has one?
But there are some trade-offs when creating content for an established brand. You have to be a brand ambassador. Every brand is going to have a party line, and you have to work within those parameters. The heads of the brand will also have friends and enemies, and while you don’t have to make all of them your own, you certainly can’t go around trashing their friends or praising their enemies. In short, you have to be a team player.
On platforms like YouTube or Dlive, everyone is essentially an independent operator. But even there, there are cliques of like-minded content creators who support and promote each other. Getting in with such a clique might help you grow an audience faster, but it will still function as an informal quasi-brand, with all the same advantages and disadvantages.
When I talk about brands, this can be juxtaposed with a “scene.” The Dissident Right is not a brand; it’s a scene encompassing many brands, sub-scenes, and individual actors. Anyone can come along and call themselves “Dissident Right,” and there is no central authority who can refute that claim or expel the claimant.
When you look at the drama in the AF scene, it boils down to the simple question: Is AF a brand or is it a scene? Nick Fuentes apparently believes that it is a brand. He believes that it is his brand that he created, and that he gets to decide who is and is not part of that brand.
It might be helpful to look at Fuentes’ career arc thus far. He began his political streaming career making content for an established brand: the Right Side Broadcasting Network. He was later dropped by them for attending Charlottesville –i.e., for going off brand. After a brief partnership with James Allsup, he spent the next couple years as a solo operation. Sometime around 2019, he decided to turn his solo operation into a brand.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Year America Died by clicking here.
As a brand, America First works differently from all the other brands I have mentioned so far because it is not based on one website, but rather across multiple streaming services. There are certain people who Fuentes blesses as Nick Fuentes-approved content creators, and they become representatives of the AF brand. There are a lot of benefits in doing so. While Fuentes is not paying his creators, his clout is such being on his team guarantees audience interest and, by extension, superchat money.
If we are to take the view that AF is for all intents and purposes a brand, which I do, then yes, Fuentes is entirely within his rights to get angry about being criticized by people who are using his brand. Asking whether or not such criticisms are legitimate is beside the point.
“He doesn’t talk about Jews” is one criticism of Jared Taylor. Is it legitimate? Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. I could see how one could argue that by not talking about Jews, Taylor is not giving people the full picture. But if you want to write for American Renaissance, you are essentially forfeiting your right to complain about that.
Similarly, John Derbyshire at VDare is in an interracial marriage. One might say that it is bad optics or looks hypocritical for an outlet dedicated to white survival. Is that a valid criticism? Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. But do you think Peter Brimelow would tolerate anyone on his own staff complaining about it?
I therefore have to side with Fuentes here. Whether CWC or RPG’s criticisms of Fuentes are legitimate or not doesn’t matter. That’s the trade-off when you want to be a content creator for an established brand. Portraying Fuentes as “not being able to handle criticism” is unfair. No one who operates a brand is going to allow the content creators on their own brand to publicly criticize them, legitimately or otherwise. If something comes up that is such a big deal, you don’t make content for that brand.
RPG disputes this and claims that rather than being a brand, America First is more like a scene. He says AF is more of an idea or a collection of beliefs, and that anyone can call themselves America First with or without Fuentes’ approval. After all, Fuentes didn’t invent the terms “America First” or “groyper,” so who is he to police those who refer to themselves by those labels? In theory, RPG is right, but in practice, if a twentysomething white male starts a YouTube channel and calls himself “America First,” he is probably not marketing his content to Seinfeld enthusiasts. Rather, he is trying to tap into Nick Fuentes’ audience.
When it comes to the claim that these AF disputes are being handled poorly and with bad optics, I think Fuentes’ detractors are making a stronger point. The streams of CWC getting chewed out by Beardson Beardly and Baked Alaska (who came off as particularly unhinged), or Nick Fuentes’ shouting match with RPG on the Killstream, are not pleasant to hear.
Beardson and CWC met in person at an anti-vax rally in Springfield, Illinois over the weekend, and a heated exchange ensued. Beardson was so aggressive towards CWC that some normie MAGA moms in attendance actually came out in defense of CWC. This is a sign that these extremely bombastic humiliation rituals are not appealing to normies. Maybe AF feels that it is necessary to make an example of CWC, but there is nevertheless a subset of their target audience who find their methods distasteful.
Some of this may be due to the nature of America First as a brand. If AF was centered on one website, to drop someone from the brand you could just drop the person from the site. With AF, however, you become part of the brand by being endorsed by Fuentes, and dropped by being disavowed. Regardless, over-the-top aggression being employed to accomplish this is less than ideal.
As a result of these humiliation sessions, some people have started describing America First as a cult. I would dispute this, but the fact remains that there are people who see these developments as a bad sign. If someone were a newcomer to America, and the first thing they heard was the video of Beardson Beardly and Baked Alaska screaming at CWC for disagreeing with the boss, no one could fault them for thinking that they had just stumbled across a cult.
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29 comments
I’d advise everyone to steer clear of any brand, scene or cult that includes Baked Alaska. That guy is either a fed, an informant or a blind idiot instrumentalized by the feds for their own nefarious needs.
Nick’s loyalty to Baked Alaska is the one thing I have never really understood about him. With everything else (his strategy, his philosophy of optics, etc), I get why he does the things he does. But the Baked Alaska thing has always thrown me for a loop.
I’m pretty disappointed in this article. I don’t care what Nick’s “brand” is and neither should you. We all share a general common purpose, which is to preserve the West. And, by following the logic of that proposition, to preserve some sort of European ethnic demographic. That is our Movement. That is the stated purpose of CounterCurrents.
I don’t really understand what rationale a right wing, essentially “white nationalist” publication has in fellating an organization which has actively disavowed CounterCurrents and would call you, and the readers here, “wignats” to be slandered and avoided.
The main issue is that you’re making excuses for the destructive and non-productive Fuentes leadership which is propping up shit-tier “commanders” like Beardson and Baked Alaska. This is not in the interest of America First. But your article basically boils it down to, “well, it’s his brand, therefor I understand.”
If I was desperately trying to advise Nick as well as possible on how to save his organization from the death spiral its in, I might be inclined to tell him, “sort this shit out. demote Beardson and Baked. promote serious people and put them in the limelite.” Because wasn’t this supposed to be about optics? Strategy? Long term planning? How is turning your entire organization from the very top management into a shit-optics honeypot-vibe shitshow, a viable long term plan for bringing in support? It’s becoming increasingly insular, closed off, and incapable of withstanding any kind of weather from the outside. That’s not a structure that is stable or able to last and influence the world.
that’s an imposion.
I’m sour on Nick, to be sure. I’m very disappointed in him and others in his movement. I was a big fan for a long time. I still watch his show, I think it’s fun and interesting. Not lately. But generally speaking. I’ve had extremely bad disagreements with him in the past. He has often been proven to be right about things. And other times wrong. But he doesn’t have to admit when he was wrong. Don’t look to Fuentes for honesty or rigor. He is a sociopath who grifts off of the rest of us for his own benefit. So be it, at least he’s good at it. But that’s what he is.
I want to support America First, believe it or not. I have in the past. But unless we draw a line in the sand, and help steer this shit in the right direction and away from the pitfalls that it seems to be stuck in, it’s going to collapse big time. The other two articles seemed to understand that. this article seems to be pretty ridiculous if you ask me. The videos from the Saturday protest are absolutely humiliating for Nick’s top brass. That’s just a fact. It was an optics disaster. For a movement whose entire ethos is optics over purity, this is a sign that something is wrong.
Countercurrents is WN. You should recognize how AF relates to your beliefs and how these missteps are not in your interest. So don’t excuse them and play soft ball. Put the pressure on buddy.
Also sorry if that was over-aggressive. I don’t mean to be too antagonistic, not my strong suit. Sincere apologies.
I have to absolutely agree that AF is or has become a brand. That is precisely the problem though, many of us thought that it was more than a brand. Not just a scene, but a revolutionary movement. Fuentes certainly held it out as such. While some of the other Nationalist brands occaisonaly do some irl stuff like conferences, etc, Fuentes and AF made it big with the Groyper Wars. Fuentes has also networked with a sitting congressman, and has an AF Foundation which supposedly has money and interns but then doesn’t do much if anything. He frequently says ‘trust the plan’ but we’re starting to realize there is no plan. Fuentes purposefully created high expectations for AF and has greatly benefited from doing so.
For a lot of us, were coming to terms with how AF is either a brand that dramatically changed from being really cool back during the Groyper Wars to being the current debacle, or, that it was always a brand larping as a revolutionary movement. This inevitably leads to a sense of betrayal among us. This wouldn’t be a problem if Fuentes had been upfront and honest that his goal was to focus on his show.
Either way, AF is a brand that’s done a lot of false advertising.
“Fuentes and AF made it big with the Groyper Wars.”
What was accomplished with that beyond temporarily embarrassing Charlie Kirk?
The most anyone in our sphere can hope to accomplish is influence the national conversation and Nick Fuentes undoubtedly has, more so than anyone else in our circles has before.
There are a lot of Con Inc types who were calling Nick a Nazi a couple years ago who have suddenly started emulating his style and talking points. Matt Walsh is one example. There have been a few times when Tucker Carlson has given takes that Nick gave the night before. A couple weeks ago, Charlie Kirk did a speech about demographics. Now you can say that’s not all Nick but rather the result of a collective effort of the entire Dissident Right but Nick has definitely been making an impact.
He’s also inspired a lot of people to get involved. There are a million kids all over the streaming platforms trying to be the next Nick Fuentes.
“The most anyone in our sphere can hope to accomplish is influence the national conversation and Nick Fuentes undoubtedly has, more so than anyone else in our circles has before.”
I’d say Hillary Clinton, in the home stretch of a presidential campaign, mentioning the Alt-Right by name in 2016 towers over the Kirk incident—which didn’t even qualify as a big national, household-name story although it apparently mesmerized Fuentes’s acolytes—as far as “influencing the national conversation” goes. It’s not even close. Not remotely close. Nothing about the “national conversation” changed. No one in Dubuque is talking about the Dancing Israelis, and Charlie Kirk (not a fan) still has far more sway that Fuentes does. I’m honestly perplexed why anyone thinks a couple Catholic-come-latelys harassing Charlie Kirk a couple times in late 2019 shifted the tectonic plates of the political landscape. It was a minor incident at best. But this is a problem with online bubbles focused on e-celebs—everyone who follows the same Discord feed thinks the world suddenly changed forever in a massive way. Nothing changed at all.
I can also think of at least one person—one whom Fuentes never missed an opportunity to bash and who is persona non grata on this website—who got tons more national attention than Fuentes ever did or ever will. But Nick convinced a lot of people that unlike that other guy, Nick was going to take it to the finish line. In reality, he didn’t even get out of the starting gate compared to the other guy. A bitter pill, I know, but it’s the truth.
And regarding Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, et al—just as Nick didn’t invent the idea of “America First,” he wasn’t the one who came up with the idea of the Great Replacement. If he has a major skill, it’s convincing the uninformed that he’s ever had an original idea.
If he hadn’t expended so much of his time attempting to take everyone but himself down, neither he nor any of us would be in the current mess.
Re: Hillary’s famous Alt Right speech.
Yes, Hillary mentioned the term “Alt Right” but if you remember the speech, when she elaborated on WHO and WHAT the Alt Right was, she pointed to Milo Yiannopolous and Breitbart and claimed that the whole thing was all being orchestrated by Vladimir Putin.
No one who was ACTUALLY Alt Right or white nationalist was mentioned in Hillary’s Alt Right speech. Not the Daily Stormer, not TRS, not even Richard Spencer. That speech obfuscated more than it revealed. But the term Alt Right did get out there but it did not become synonymous with white nationalism until after Hailgate.
But that was really the problem with the Alt Right. The Alt Right was very good at getting attention and raising brand awareness but it was an utter failure at getting its ideas out. It wasn’t until the Internet Bloodsports era when the Alt Right actually became effective at getting the message out but by then, things were starting unravel.
Take Richard Spencer. Sure, he became a household name but very few people could actually explain to you what Richard Spencer believed. At most, they would say he is a Nazi or some kind of white supremacist who got punched that one time.
And Nick has done more since the Groyper War. He was mentioned multiple times during congressional hearing for J6. There were a lot of politicians talking about him when he tried to do a fundraiser for Paul Gosar. Maybe not as prestigious as being mention by Hillary in the middle of a presidential election but political bigwigs definitely know who he is.
You say “No one in Dubuque is talking about the Dancing Israelis”. I’m sure 18 years old in Dubuque are talking about Dancing Israelis. But really, is that really the standard you judge content creators on? Unless people are discussing your talking point at Aunt Edna’s Diner in nowheresville, you’re not doing anything?
I think you are putting forward a sort of unreasonable standard here. You’re asking what Nick Fuentes has ever accomplished. Would you ask this question of a mainstream talking head? What has Ted Kopple ever accomplished? What has Cenk Uygur accomplished? What has Bill Maher ever accomplished? Bill Maher put out that movie about religion and yet people are still going to church!!!
“If he hadn’t expended so much of his time attempting to take everyone but himself down, neither he nor any of us would be in the current mess.”
Is this a serious sentiment? Do you really mean this? If the Dissident Right was so fragile and unstable that all it took was one (just one) 21-year-old to bring it down, then we were on borrowed time to begin with.
If Nick Fuentes is accomplishing nothing then the rest of us are accomplishing nothing times a million.
That’s not accurate. I’m pretty tired of AF myself, but I do think Groyper Wars were world-changing. They represented one of the first times that our talking points breached the protective walls of the gatekeepers like Ben Shapiro, Kirk, and Peterson. Something changed in those moments. We put the gatekeepers on their heels and in a position of defensiveness, where they were forced to wall in. They didn’t have to do that before the Groyper Wars. They are still in this kind of defensive, paranoid position today. And so long as they are in that posture, they are much easier to direct. At the very least, their air of authenticity and credibility has been completely sucked away. And I think so long as this is the state of affairs, the system is very, very uncomfortable.
Two questions: 1) Is Baked Alaska the Trump 2016 Twitter guy who was blinded-albeit temporarily blinded-at Charlottesville?; 2) Why is Nick Fuentes slandering Counter Currents?
Nick Fuentes is a megalomaniac if he thinks Tucker Carlson is signaling Nick Fuentes’ ideas. Tucker has been reading Steve Sailer since Nick was literally learning the alphabet. This kid deserves to be taken down a notch.
At UCLA Don Junior was booed off stage, which was big because it was a show of force. It showed that young men, especially white ones, are ready for open revolt against the GOP. This sends a signal to other actors that running a third party candidate, radical republican candidate, or calling for us to abstain from voting is viable.
At the time, we had hoped that it would give Donald Trump more spine to stick to his original 2016 agenda through a combination of carrots and sticks. That obviously didn’t happen, but the bright side of that is that it makes crystal clear how much Trump doesn’t care about his base, which will hopefully help deter future support for Trump’s grifting campaign.
The Groyper Wars also set the stage for more on campus college Republican clubs to be taken over by dissidents. Several college Republican groups spearheaded by the one at SDSU sent a letter to Trump asking for a halt to temporary worker visas, which he did via executive order. I assume those groups were infiltrated by dissidents, or at least friendly with them. This went well for a while, until COVID and a lack of direction from above (so called Groyper Generals don’t seem to command much) led to college Republicans losing steam, especially after J6.
and by proxy, support for Nick fuentes, if this September 2021 Telegram post is representative of the America First doctrine to come:
https://ibb.co/R4K5sN7
Nicholas J Fuentes, September 23, 4:43PM :
I don’t know about you, but the proposition of listening to anyone – including or perhaps especially Nick Fuentes – try to sell me on Donald Trump in 2024, is far more black pilling and disturbing to think about than say, America being nuked by China and everyone I know dying.
And that really sums up what’s at stake here. We can’t settle for “Well, at least we have AF” or something like that. The alternative dissident right needs to reconvene and re-assert the tenets of our beliefs and knock these grifters down several pegs. They basically need to be put in their place and reminded that they are a tool of the Movement, not the other way around. As soon as they stop being useful to our cause, or worse become an impediment and obstruction because of their grifting or sucking people down bad paths, then they need to be dismantled.
Fuentes openly disdains the movement, even though Travis, Thomas and others here at Counter-Currents have said good things about him and his movement and we are, as a site, generally pro-AF. He has repeatedly insulted Greg Johnson (and all of us by proxy) and has claimed to be better than the movement, because (as he puts it) he built AF and the groypers from scratch.
That and other actions have soured me on Fuentes. Keeping Blacked Alaska in his orbit and associating with Milo Yiannopoulos make me doubt his motives or at least situational awareness with regard to possible infiltration and subversion.
Networked with a sitting congressman and started a foundation?? Sounds like pure DC scum to me, might as well be a Clinton. Foundations are pure money laundering operations/schemes.
Could it be that the thrust of the ‘plan’ is to furnish a sinecure for its instigator?
Feelings of betrayal can also come from unrealistic expectations and not necessarily anything dishonest from Nick. If winning were as simple as mapping out a plan and then doing it, we’d already have power. As the groyper war energy subsided, it actually makes sense for Nick to have doubled down on content. Doing so bolsters his metapolitical influence while maintaining a central hub for AF guys to rally around and then reorganize when the next wave comes.
If America First is a brand, then Woodrow Wilson’s estate owns the copyright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy)
Wow, listening to Fuentes on the killstream is total cringe. “You should shut up pokemon b*tch!” [16:45] on the youtube kill stream link. I just lost all respect for Fuentes and his brand.
I like your scene and brand metaphor. In a way, I think everyone, even the incel gamer groypers Fuentes caters to and Fuentes himself, has their own unique part to play. Things like American Renaissance, Counter-Currents, and VDARE are like the pre-frontal cortex of the dissident right pumping out real though provoking and intellectual articles, podcasts and debates while Nick Fuentes et al. are the last parts of the digestive system. Sorry, but I just can’t imagine Jared Taylor calling someone a “pokemon b*tch.” X incel gamer zoomer may agree with Jared Taylor but not be at the maturity to appreciate his podcasts and content and hence likes Fuentes brand and content better. Different strokes for different folks.
Maybe someone here can enlighten me on the streaming and gaming thing. Do some of these people game while going off on political rants or something?
Game streaming is a big thing among Gen X and late millennials. Yes, there are young people who enjoy watching people play video games and joke around. Pewdiepie became the biggest Youtube in the world doing gaming streams. And yeah, there are some people who play and talk about politics. I don’t really get it. It’s a generational thing.
There was a pretty funny South Park episode about it where Kyle gets a new video game and is surprised and confused to find out that his brother would rather watch Pewdiepie play the same game on Youtube than play the game himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehash_(South_Park)
I dunno. I mean, I would prefer the youth not be into that sort of thing but as long as they are, I would rather have them watching our guys play video games than someone else.
I saw that southpark. One of the good new ones.
What’s the premise of “killstream” and this Ethan Ralph guy? I listened to it at least once, for the Milo interview. Why did he get banned from youtube? It seems like a competitive market for these streamers. People only have a limited amount of time, they can’t go around listening to every dissident podcaster. It seems like quite the art to develop the personality and brand to get people to invest 1+ hours to listen to you.
Someone once told me there are two kinds of power. There’s the kind where you get more powerful the more power you give away (creative power). Then there’s the kind of power that only exists if access to it is limited (scarcity power).
Nick was willing to hop on the Groyper bandwagon and ‘lead’ it. It’s his fault that he slapped the ‘America First’ brand on a loosely-organized and ideologically heterogeneous Groyper scene.
If you climb on the tiger and pretend to be guiding it in order to get attention, don’t expect the tiger to not bite you at some point.
All I see is the Groyper Tiger biting Fuentes.
And it’s going to keep doing so.
I hope these kids will figure out that it’s time to figure out what the stakes are and get serious.
I have never been a fan of the whole America First thing. I have always thought it is an immature “movement” and not-well-thought-out juvenile shenanigans. Publicity seekers. I have nothing against lightening things up and having a good time, even in a crisis, but the AF guys come off as a bit….ridiculous. I agree with some of the comments here and there about AF; on the whole, I think they are a distraction at best.
I much, much prefer the crowd over here at CC, even though we obviously have strong disagreements about some important matters. But those disagreements can help sharpen focus and clarify confusion. I appreciate that.
I just ignore all the drama on AF front. I just don’t think AF is helping us at all.
Most of this is youth, he is in his early twenties and I cant really expect a totally developed mastermind of political thought to suddenly burst out. Controlling emotions is harder when you are younger, as well as getting though stressful situations. He is young and wants to have a good time despite getting banned de platformed constantly. I am actually impressed with what he was able to do despite the constant attacks. Most likely he will fade out and then re-emerge, hopefully with more experience and a better mindset.
This commenting system seems set up so you can only reply to replies for so long, so keep that in mind. This is a reply to an ever-narrowing thread.
Travis: “The most anyone in our sphere can hope to accomplish is influence the national conversation.”
Not for a moment have I ever claimed that you, me, Nick Fuentes, Richard Spencer, or any of us have “influenced the national conversation.” In the long run, we clearly haven’t. But getting Hillary Clinton to mention the Alt-Right was a deeper incursion than asking Charlie Kirk about anal sex and Jews. But none of it had any lasting effects.
The strength of ideas, not how many people like those ideas, is what’s important to me. Good ideas outlast e-trends. Scenes? Brands? I’ve never even claimed to be right-wing. If popularity had ever been my goal, I would have gone about things entirely differently.
If it’s true that no one who heard about the Alt-Right on TV via Hillary Clinton can articulate Richard Spencer’s talking points, this is also true: Compared to Spencer, very few people have ever heard of Nick Fuentes. And if they’ve heard about him via the mainstream media, they’d probably say, “Oh, that’s the short little Mexican anti-Semitic fag-basher whose voice hasn’t changed yet.”
Asking Charlie Kirk about Dancing Israelis did not “influence the national conversation.” All Fuentes’s followers did was embarrass Charlie Kirk for a few moments, and Kirk is still doing fine—far better than Fuentes is. This was hardly some titanic accomplishment. The fact that anyone thinks it was, especially two years later with everything being far worse for all of us, including Fuentes, is a source of bemused bafflement to me.
As for the guy who claimed the Groyper Wars were “world-changing,” what world do you inhabit? Ben Shapiro was well aware of the Alt-Right long before then (he even incorrectly listed me as some kind of Alt-Right influencer in some dumb “Shapiro’s List” document he tweeted in 2016). Jordan Peterson was confronted in front of a huge crowd about Solzhenitsyn’s “200 Years Together,” which was also long before the Groyper Wars and actually comprised much better political theater. For fuck’s sake, Tucker Carlson has been following me on Twitter for years. No one has mentioned any “big name” who wasn’t already well aware of all these ideas long before Fuentes decided it was dumb to attend Charlottesville.
Regarding having one’s name entered into the congressional record about January 6? I can think of two words—BAD OPTICS. But nothing about white demographic decline or Jewish influence on government was entered into the congressional record. Just a name.
Hillary name dropping “alt-right” had the Streisand effect on me. I wonder if it had a similar effect on others. 2016 was such a strange year politically. I’d love to drink beer and smoke cigars with other fellow travelers who have crossed the proverbial libertarian to alt-right pipeline.
I hear you on the ideas thing. Some of these people haven’t even published books. In a way these groyper wars against Charlie Kirk and Conservative inc. seem sort of counter-intuitive. One of the things that turned me off from the left was how cringe the left was back in 2016. Seeing Milo troll SJW’s was very entertaining. The powers to be saw that and that’s how he got canceled and the heckler’s veto allowed. Don’t get me wrong, Charlie Kirk and Conservative inc. have their flaws but this sort of in-fighting isn’t good for any sort of rightist movement to gain momentum.
In Fuentes’ defense, he did seem to be networking well with a Republican Congressman, Paul Gosar. It’s funny seeing the media report this, “Rep. Paul Gosar, seen with white supremacist, Nick Fuentes.” The same way the media still reports Jan. 6th as an insurrection even though the FBI literally said it doesn’t meet the legal definition of an insurrection.
It took Gosar about five minutes to disavow. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/gosar-knocks-white-racism-after-speaking-at-far-right-conference-that-glorified-white-supremacy
I’m on the side that Fuentes has done a fair bit of good for the cause. Sure, I get it that he is a blend of CIVNAT and Catholic Nationalist and not explicitly /our guy/, but he has engaged the young zoomer category like no one else. He’s also helped show the ineptness of the GOP to a whole new generation by staging events at CPAC.
He also has influential pundits like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter connected to him and pushing some of his talking points. Despite being labeled a literal Nazi, they’ve not disavowed him as far as I know.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a big name political influencer, but it’s also disingenuous to downplay his role in shifting the mood among younger Trump voters and normal conservatives types who have become disaffected.
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