White nationalist and “groyper” leader Nick Fuentes’ prominent role in the Atlanta “Stop the Steal” rallies, and the content of his political framing at the “Million MAGA March” in Washington D.C., highlights the threat of radicalization amidst a conspiracy-theory-driven mobilization against a Biden government that will be seen by many in this broader movement as having illegitimately stolen the election – facts be damned.
Million MAGA March “Official Twitter” account touts white nationalist Nick Fuentes as an “emerging conservative star”
Fuentes’ speeches offer a glimpse into how white nationalists are exploiting the “Stop the Steal” mobilization and framing white nationalism to attract a broader audience and push toward the 2022 election.
First, as we will see below, Fuentes rolled out a white nationalist message in D.C. that is largely devoid of explicit racial content. And second, with far-right leaders such as Qanon-conspiracy theorist, and recently elected U.S. Representative Marjory Taylor Greene (R-GA) appearing on the mainstage in Washington D.C., the globalist-versus-nationalist framing that Fuentes and company push appears far less ludicrous than Qanon rantings about a cabal of pedophiles gearing up to eat American babies. Fuentes and companies’ politics, however, are more radical than Taylor Greene’s, which are disturbing enough.
Nick Fuentes (center with megaphone) surrounded by “groypers” at the Million MAGA March sideshow in Washington D.C. on November 14
To help decipher the messaging that white nationalists are using in this context, passages from Fuentes’ D.C. speech appear below, followed by an IREHR translation based on our long history of tracking white nationalist mainstreamers and Fuente’s previous statements.
Fuentes: “Some people say that America is an idea.” [boos] “Some say that America is about a governing document, like the Constitution, and that’s important, but America is the American people. We are America. And you cannot replace the American people. You cannot disenfranchise the American people. And they will not rule the American people…This election is about the American people rising up and taking control over our government and over our country once again. And if we don’t stop this steal right now, we may never be able to do that ever again.”
IREHR Translation: Push back against the idea that “America is an idea” is common in the white nationalist movement. In effect, it is a rejection of the concept of civic nationalism, the idea that American national identity should be built around a commitment to a body of principles, and an assertion that national identity should be based on specific characteristics of the “American people” – in Nick Fuentes case, race and whiteness. Fuentes has made clear his view that national identity should be rooted in race and biology, including in this statement from 2019: “In a way, I think it’s almost redundant to say that you’re a white nationalist. We know that the word nation almost implicitly talks about ethnicity and biology…So I think if I call myself a nationalist, it’s almost implicit in that word that it’s, well, you know America does have a heritage of being a European Country.”[1] The refrain of not “replacing” us was prominently featured in the antisemitic rantings (e.g., “Jews will not replace us!”) of the white nationalists and national socialists that took part in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Fuentes: “This is only the beginning of the challenge that has been mounted by President Trump, not against the Democrats, not against the liberals, but against the global special interests that have taken over this country. And it cannot stop here. We have to storm every state capitol until January 20th, 2021, until President Trump is inaugurated for four more years!… It is not about Republicans and Democrats…When I see the people in the media, and I see what happened with Jeffrey Epstein, and I see what happened with George Soros…and big tech, and the mainstream media, and I realize this is about the satanic globalist elites…versus us, the people of Christ… It all comes down to right here, right now and [whether] we will continue the Trump revolution to protect ourselves, and our country, and the future for our children, or whether we will concede it to Black Lives Matter” [boos] “and concede it to all of these new Americans pouring across the border” [boo] “We’re not going to let that happen. This is our country.”
IREHR Translation: Fuentes’ articulation of a simultaneous threat to “the people” from globalist elites on the one hand, and immigrants and Black Lives Matter, on the other, exhibits a variant of middle American nationalism – a general nationalist ideology shared by a broad swath of the organizations involved in the “Stop the Steal” mobilizations. First delineated by sociologist Donald Warren as “middle American radicalism,” this nationalist ideology casts “real Americans” – for Fuentes, specifically whites – squeezed and threatened from “above” by elites whose wealth gives then access and power, and from “below” by people of color whose organizing efforts and alliances with elites are seen to give them undue clout.[2] On the “threat from above” front, Fuentes also deploys the common antisemitic tack of placing liberal philanthropist George Soros behind “satanic” globalism. This is done by many on the far right, including mainstage Qanon speaker Marjory Taylor Green who has spuriously called Soros a Nazi and placed him behind machinations for a world government. The Qanon conspiracy “theory,” with its fixation on harming children, also arguably plays on the long-standing antisemitic theme of “Jewish ritual murder.” Fuentes also displays his melding of white and Christian nationalism. Elsewhere, Fuentes has embraced Holocaust denial and expressed open antisemitism. For instance, in response to a claim that “White Nationalism is domestic terrorism and has no place in American,” Fuentes shot back that “White nationalism literally is what America was founded upon,” and continued that such a critique of white nationalism “is a bastardized Jewish subversion of ‘the American creed.’” Fuentes has also repeated the antisemitic canard of Jewish control of the media, writing in 2019 that “Math, unlike the Jewish media, does not lie;” and that “The Bible is full of examples of men with intense personal, Western auras. And so was our lore before the Jews consolidated all the publication and distribution companies within the first 20-30 years of arriving to America.”[3]
Fuentes: “The Constitution did not protect us. And the GOP did not protect us. But President Trump, when he came down that escalator five years ago, he has been the only one who has protected us, and our country, and our heritage, and our interests and the American people. And so long as President Trump is the vanguard and the protector of our people, and our historic nation, he will have my loyalty.” [Emphasis added]
IREHR Translation: The use of the word “heritage” to denote the white “race” harkens back to the mainstreaming efforts of national socialist David Duke in the 1990s. Duke also extended this usage into the Trump presidency, declaring that “voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage.”[4] The term “historic nation,” or “historic American nation,” has been used by white nationalist groups like VDARE to refer to white people. In one of many such cases, VDARE’s Peter Brimelow offered a description of Donald Trump stating that the “President who was the clear choice of the founding stock of the Historic American Nation—63 % of white males and 53% of white women voted for Trump.”[5] As we saw above, Fuentes holds that the term “white nationalist” is redundant given his equation of whiteness and Americanness.
Former Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke: “Voting against Donald Trump at this point, is really treason to your heritage.”
Fuentes: As the crowd around Fuentes chanted “four more years,” the white nationalist declared, “I would be ok with 8 more years; I would be ok with 12 more years. I want President Trump to rule for life.”
IREHR Translation: White nationalism is the most persistently fascist segment of the American political spectrum. Nick Fuentes is no exception, and this call for a such a radical assault on the U.S. Constitution likely reflects his stated desire to be part of a fascist movement. This was made clear in this 2019 statement: “If antifa were marching down the streets and they were waving the banner of Benito Mussolini or Francisco Franco, I’d be joining them, frankly. If antifa was waving the banner of Falangism, if they were waving the banner of Franco, and they were saying ‘Catholic fascism now,’ I would join them… Yes, take over the country. Storm D.C. Take over the capital. Raise the banner of Mussolini and Franco, and, you know, some notable others, right. Oswald Mosely, that would be a great thing.”[6] Fuentes’ call for a president for life is entirely compatible with such fascist leanings.
Nick Fuentes is a white nationalist with a strong affinity for fascism. His speech at the Million MAGA March demonstrates how he, and likely his “groyper” compatriots, intend to frame their effort to recruit members to their cause in the post-election context. He has also positioned himself to take up the “anti-mask” cause in connection to COVID-19 restrictions, an issue that has been dominated by far-right nationalists, but not as actively embraced by white nationalists.
This context is already filled with conspiratorial nonsense, some more outlandish than Fuentes’, as well as a variety of forms of bigotry.
The context for radicalization is upon us and we must be vigilant in understanding its unfolding dynamics and opposing all its permutations, including exposing and opposing those who ally with white nationalism and fascism.
[1] Murray Patrick. Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer. YouTube. November 14, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sCYSS_XUCU&feature=youtu.be.[2] See Warren, Donald I. 1976. The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
[3] Fuentes, Nick. Telegram. August 5, 2019; Fuentes, Nick. Telegram. September 12, 2019; Fuentes, Nick. Telegram. September 11, 2019. Examples of Fuentes Holocaust denial include: Nick Fuentes has also flirted with Holocaust denial. On the Holocaust denial front, on his America First podcast Fuentes employed an analogy of Cookie Monster being unable to bake 6 million cookies given limitations in his infrastructure. The analogy is an obvious reference to the Holocaust, with 6 million cookies referencing the 6 million Jews murdered in the Nazi genocide. Fuentes concludes, “So, none of it really adds up…So six million cookies, eh, eh, I don’t buy it.” Fuentes fully embraced Holocaust denial, when he regurgitated the scurrilous lie downplaying the extermination of more than six million Jews in the Holocaust. A smirking Fuentes “joked” in a video about Adolf Hitler of “the two hundred to three hundred-thousand Jews that he killed during the Holocaust,” adding that “that’s a joke of course, we all know the number was closer, probably, to at least a billion.” See Intergalactic Lebensraum. Nicholas J Fuentes: The Cookie Question. YouTube. January 11, 2019; Nick Fuentes on Hitler, YouTube, February 25, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Y3CDkLBK0&feature=youtu.be&t=277.
[4] Collins, Eliza. David Duke: Voting against Trump is “treason to your heritage”. Politico. February 25, 2015. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/david-duke-trump-219777.
[5] Brimelow, Peter.
“It Will Come To Blood”—Reflections On The Left’s Anti-Trump Inauguration Tantrum. VDARE. January 22, 2017. https://vdare.com/articles/it-will-come-to-blood-reflections-on-the-left-s-anti-trump-inauguration-tantrum.
[6] See Benny Johnson. Twitter. November 19, 2019. https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1196606504637521920.
