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justinspoliticalcorner · 8 days

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Sarah Posner for TPM:

I am a journalist who has covered the Christian right for two decades. Over the past three years, I began to more frequently use the term “Christian nationalism” to describe the movement I cover. But I did not start using a new term to suggest its proponents’ ideology had changed. Instead, the term had come into more common usage in the Trump era, now regularly used by academics, journalists, and pro-democracy activists to describe a movement that insists America is a “Christian nation” — that is, an illiberal, nominally democratic theocracy, rather than a pluralistic secular democracy. To me, the phrase was highly descriptive of the movement I’ve dedicated my career to covering, and neatly encapsulates the core threat the Christian right poses to freedom and equality. From its top leaders and influencers down to the grassroots — politically mobilized white evangelicals, the foot soldiers of the Christian right — its proponents believe that God divinely ordained America to be a Christian nation; that this Christian nation has come under attack by liberals and secularists; and that patriotic Christians must engage in spiritual warfare to rid America of demonic forces, and in political action to restore its Christian heritage. That includes taking political steps — as a voter, as an elected official, as a lawyer, as a judge — to ensure that America is governed according to a “biblical worldview.”

If you want to see that definition in action, look no further than the career of House Speaker Mike Johnson. Seventeen years ago, when I interviewed Johnson, then a lawyer with the Christian right legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, I would have labeled him a loyal soldier in the Christian right’s legal army trying to bring down the separation of church and state. He is a product of and a participant in a sprawling religious and political infrastructure that has made the movement’s successes possible, from politically active megachurches, to culture-shaping organizations like Focus on the Family, to political players like the Family Research Council, to the legal force in his former employer ADF.

In today’s parlance, Johnson is a Christian nationalist — although he, like most of his compatriots, has certainly not embraced the label. But Mike Johnson the House Speaker is still Mike Johnson the lawyer I interviewed all those years ago: an evangelical called to politics to be a “servant leader” to a Christian nation, dedicated to its governance according to a biblical worldview: against church-state separation, for expanded rights for conservative Christians, adamantly against abortion and LGBTQ rights, and especially, currently, trans rights. That mindset is still the beating heart of the Christian right, even as the movement, and other movements in the far-right space, have radicalized in the Trump era, taking on new forms and embracing a range of solutions to the apocalyptic trajectory they see America to be on. Different movements imagining a version of Christian supremacy exist side by side — different strains that often borrow ideas from one another, and that fit comfortably under the banner of Christian nationalism.

The term “Christian nationalism” became popularized during Trump’s presidency for a few reasons. First, Trump, who first ran in 2016 on a nativist platform with the nationalist slogan “Make America Great Again,” was and still is dependent on white evangelicals to win elections and maintain a hold on power. He is consequently willing to carry out their goals, bringing their ambitions closer to fruition than they’ve ever been in their 45-year marriage to the Republican Party. They have been clear, for example, in crediting him for the downfall of Roe v. Wade, among other assaults on other peoples’ rights.

Second, the prominence of Christian iconography at the January 6 insurrection, and the support for Trump’s stolen election lie before, during, and after January 6 by both Christian right influencers and the grassroots, brought into stark relief that Christian nationalist motivations helped fuel his attempted coup. Finally, sociologists studying the belief systems of Christian nationalists pushed the term into public usage, as did anti-nationalist Christians, especially after January 6, in order to elevate awareness of the threats Christian nationalism poses to democracy. (The paperback edition of my book, Unholy, which was published in mid-2021 and included a post-January 6 afterword, reflected the increasing usage of the term Christian nationalists by including the term in a fresh subtitle.)

The Trump era, along with the rise of openly Christian nationalist social media sites like Gab, and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, have given space for otherwise unknown figures, like the rabidly antisemitic Gab founder Andrew Torba, co-author of the book Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations, and Stephen Wolfe, author of the racist book The Case for Christian Nationalism, to enter the Christian nationalism discourse. Although Torba and Wolfe have made waves online, and extremism watchers are rightly alarmed that their tracts could prove influential and radicalizing, they remain distinct from the Christian right.

[...]

The conventional Christian right does not want a parallel society or a divorce. They believe they are restoring, and will run, the Christian nation God intended America to be — from the inside. They will do that, in their view, through faith (evangelizing others and bringing them to salvation through Jesus Christ); through spiritual warfare (using prayer to battle satanic enemies of Christian America); and through politics and the law (governing and lawmaking from a “biblical worldview” after eviscerating church-state separation). Changes in the evangelical world, particularly the emphasis in the growing charismatic movement on prophecy, signs and wonders, spiritual warfare, the prosperity gospel, and Trumpism, has intensified the prominence of the supernatural in their politics, giving their Christian nationalism its own unmistakable brand.

For decades, Christian right has been completely open about their beliefs and goals. Their quest to take dominion over American institutions by openly evangelizing and instituting Christian supremacist policies sets the Christian right apart from other types of Christian nationalists who might operate in secret, or imagine utopian communities as the ideal way to save themselves from a secular, debauched nation. The fact that far-right extremists like Torba or Wolfe embrace the Christian nationalist label gives the more conventional Christian right leaders and organizations space to disassociate themselves from it. Some also berate journalists who use it to describe them, accusing them of hurling a left-wing slur at Christians.

The bottom line is that Christian nationalism takes on different forms, and despite organizational or even ideological differences, ideas can penetrate the often porous borders between different camps. Someone who receives the daily email blast from the Family Research Council might also be drawn to Wolfe’s book, for example. On a more unnerving, macro level, major right-wing and GOP figures, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and the CEO of the Daily Wire, the podcast consortium run by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro, have embraced the rabidly antisemitic, Hitler-admiring antagonist Nick Fuentes, who is Catholic but also is accurately described as a Christian nationalist. The increasingly influential Catholic integralist movement, which seeks a Catholic-inflected replacement for the “liberal order,” is yet another unique form of Christian nationalism.

Sarah Posner wrote for TPM about the variants of Christian Nationalism within the larger Christian Right movement.

#Donald Trump #Christian Nationalism #Christian Right #Mike Johnson #Alliance Defending Freedom #Focus On The Family #Family Research Council #Andrew Torba #Stephen Wolfe #Nick Fuentes

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originalleftist · 4 months

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The US is Israel's greatest ally. It contains about a third of the Jewish people in the world, a close second to Israel itself.

In that country, in 2023, an ally and dinner guest of a former President/major Presidential candidate*, by some polls the front-runner, can openly call for the extermination of Jews, amid a spree of attacks and threats against Jews that reportedly included some 200 swattings and bomb threats to Jewish buildings in ONE DAY, and its barely a blip in the news cycle.

This is happening at the same time that the owner of X (formerly Twitter), one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, has just declared that Jews are spreading "hatred against whites" and flooding Western countries with non-white immigrants- the same "Replacement Theory" that has been cited in the manifestos of multiple mass shooters. And it is happening less than a century after two thirds of Europes' Jews were exterminated in countries they once called home- an atrocity that many still deny or downplay.

Does anyone, ANYONE still question why many Jews might feel that they require their own homeland in order to be safe? Or that defending that homeland at all costs is a matter of survival for them as a people?

None of this justifies the atrocities in Gaza, or the criminality of the Netanyahu regime (something which many Jews both inside and outside of Israel also oppose).

But when seeing the power disparity between Israel and Palestinians, and its horrific effects on Palestinian civilians, it is often forgotten (or deliberately ignored) that in the larger, worldwide picture, Jews are still a small, marginalized, and vulnerable group- perhaps more so now than at any time since the Holocaust (and to state what should be obvious, the existence of some individual wealthy and powerful Jews does not negate this either, any more than Obama's election as president ended anti-Black racism).

So fuck ANYONE who tries, even a little, to downplay or justify antiSemitism, for ANY reason. Or who simply labels Israelis as colonial oppressors while ignoring the long and ongoing history of genocidal persecution against the Jewish people in pretty much every other place that they have tried to call home. And especially fuck those who try to present antiSemitism, and agreeing with Adolf fucking Hitler, as the anti-colonialist, anti-racist position.

*If anyone is questioning Trump's or Republicans' antiSemitism because of their closeness to certain Right-wing Jewish figures or stated support for Israel, it must be understood that the American Right accepting Jews of European ancestry as white is a pretty recent development, and one that, like most of their supposed principles, they have adopted only when it is convenient to them. The Klan is an anti-Jewish (and anti-Catholic) organization as well as an anti-Black one, and the support from evangelical Christians for Israel is founded in a combination of hatred for Arabs/Palestinians/Muslims, geopolitical strategic maneuvering, and a belief that Israel needs to exist to fulfill their apocalypse prophecies so that Jesus can send all the Jews to Hell. It is not based in any sincere sympathy for Jewish people, nor a desire for anything for them but eternal damnation in Hellfire, preceded by slaughter here on Earth.

#Israel #Palestine #Gaza #Nick Fuentes #Donald Trump #Elon Musk #AntiSemitism #Never Again

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tomorrowusa · 18 days

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You can tell a lot about people by the company they keep.

Kanye West (AKA: Ye) had been a frequent visitor to the Trump White House and to Mar-a-Lago. A couple of years ago Kanye had dinner with Trump and Nazi Nick Fuentes.

KanYe has been a Hitler fanboy for years. Additional evidence of his devotion to Der Führer was revealed this week in court in California. Apparently he has his own Christian school called Donda Academy – which he runs like a Nazi.

In a text message to the former employee, Trevor Phillips, Ye compared himself to Hitler — “minus the gas chambers” — and appeared to simulate masturbation during a one-on-one meeting in a Southern California hotel room where the musician watched “The Batman” on mute, according to the 47-page suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. The suit accuses Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, of calling out Black people in a discriminatory manner and praising the Nazi leader, pushing employees to do renovations without permits and telling employees they could be fired for being "fat," the suit says. He temporarily stiffed workers after Adidas cut ties with the rapper over his antisemitic comments, when bank accounts at the rapper's clothing brand, Yeezy, had been frozen, the suit says.

Of course he's corrupt like his buddy Donald (source of the name "Donda"?).

Ye “gloated” to staff at Yeezy, his fashion brand, and Donda Academy, the rapper’s Los Angeles-area school, about using $2 million of the school’s budget for a trip to Paris, according to the suit.

You have to wonder about the sort of parents who would send their kids to a hellhole like Donda Academy. Thankfully, the "school" closed last year.

During a Sunday service at the school in May, in front of dozens of people, Ye angrily told Phillips he was fired over an apparent issue with a garden at the school, according to the suit. When a tearful Phillips told Ye that his daughter attended Donda and that he was grateful for the job because of a potentially serious medical condition, Ye allegedly responded with an expletive-laden “tantrum” in which the musician disparaged Phillips and his child, according to the suit. Ye then allegedly told Phillips: “I was going to punch you in the face.”

Trump stated that he want to be dictator on Day One and he hangs around with crazed Nazis. Don't say you haven't been warned.

#kanye west #ye #nazis #donda academy #antisemitism #yeezy #donald trump #dictator on day one #nick fuentes #republicans #the far right #lawsuit against kanye #trevor phillips #election 2024 #vote democratic to beat nazis #vote blue no matter who

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nodynasty4us · 4 months

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#nick fuentes #christofascism #great replacement theory #featured

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reverseracism · 1 year

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Kanye on his way to meet with Trump with White Nationalist Nick Fuentes in tow. Apparently the two met through Milo Yiannopoulos.

#kanye west #nick fuentes #milo yiannopoulos #white nationalist #white nationalisms #white supremacy #white supremacist #racism #antisemitism #antifeminism #facism

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 4 months

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Large Marge speaks at his events.

#republican assholes #republican family values #nick fuentes

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mysharona1987 · 1 year

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#nick fuentes #news #mar a lago #politics #racism

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jerrybogard47 · 3 days

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@mysticofmuelenburg on an average day.

#israel #palestine #hamas #white nationalism #antifa and nazis are the same thing #antisemitism #jew hatred #jew haters #nick fuentes #Wehrmacht

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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A key figure in the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” campaign has apologized after being accused of asking teenage boys for sexual pictures.

Ali Alexander has become one of the most ubiquitous figures in the MAGA movement. Trump himself reportedly requested that Alexander speak at his rally before the riot, with his appearance only quashed by a last-minute intervention from Trump’s aides. But this week, Alexander stands at the center of a scandal that raises questions about how powerful men in the far-right treat their younger acolytes.

“This is so gay,” Alexander said in a statement issued Friday night that addressed the allegations in broad terms.

Alexander, who has described himself as bisexual in the past, added that he was “battling with same-sex attraction.”

The budding online scandal has also roiled the pro-Trump and white supremacist “America First” movement, just months after it reached new levels of notoriety after its leader, Nick Fuentes, dined with Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago. Now Fuentes is facing backlash from his own supporters over whether he ignored warnings that Alexander, his friend and ally, was allegedly soliciting nude pictures from young men within Fuentes’s movement.

On Friday night, Alexander—who was questioned by the House January 6th Committee about his role organizing a canceled rally dubbed the “Wild Protest” outside the Capitol, which drew crowds to the building right before the riot began—issued a statement Friday offering a general apology.

“I apologize for any inappropriate messages sent over the years,” Alexander wrote, adding later, “When I’ve flirted or others have flirted with me, I’ve flexed my credentials or dropped corny pick up lines. Other times, I’ve been careless and should’ve qualified those coming up to me’s (sic) identities during flirtatious banter at the start.”

Alexander didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Daily Beast. In his statement, he claimed he had also been targeted by false accusations and edited screenshots of his messages, but declined opportunities to point out which accusers or screenshots aren’t legitimate.

Rumors about Alexander’s alleged sexual behavior towards younger men have circulated in conservative online circles since at least 2015. But they reached a new level late last month after Milo Yiannopoulos —the controversial British provocateur and one-time Alexander ally—turned on Alexander after Alexander and Fuentes pushed him out of a potentially lucrative position in West’s nascent presidential campaign.

Yiannopoulos started releasing video interviews and other evidence meant to prove that Alexander sexually propositioned both adult men in their 20’s and at least two teenagers. Yiannopoulos, whose own career as a far-right pundit imploded in 2017 after remarks he had made downplaying the seriousness of pedophilia surfaced, claims he has more damaging videos to release about Alexander and Fuentes.

Yiannopoulos claims he’s releasing the video against Alexander because Alexander dropped Yiannopoulos’s name to entice young men. One screenshot purports to show Alexander dangling the prospect of a meeting with Yiannopoulos to a teenage boy.

“The reason I’m doing this is because he used my name,” Yiannopoulos told The Daily Beast.

In 2017, Aidan Duncan—a 15-year-old boy in Colorado interested in right-wing politics—sent Alexander nude pictures after Alexander asked him for them, according to an account Duncan gave in a March 2023 podcast appearance.

While Duncan was a high-school sophomore just starting out in politics, Alexander was a 32-year-old with a decade of political work for the Republican Party behind him. And now he was willing to share the connections he had gained through that work with Duncan, as long as the teenager met certain preconditions, including secrecy.

“You’ll have [me] sharing my entire network with you,” Alexander told Duncan, according to Snapchat screenshots reviewed by The Daily Beast.

Originally from Dallas, Alexander pleaded guilty to felony property theft in 2007 and felony credit card abuse in 2008. But despite his criminal background, Alexander—who was then using his legal name, Ali Akbar—managed to rise in the GOP during the online conservative backlash to the Obama administration. Leveraging his position writing for blogs with names like “Hip Hop Republican,” Alexander received funding from billionaire conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer, organized a national club for bloggers that later faced questions about how Alexander spent the money he raised, and hosted an annual party at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

By 2017, Alexander had become an ardent Trump supporter with a passion for social media trash talk. He became a protege of MAGA figures like Roger Stone and InfoWars chief Alex Jones, and ran with a group of other young MAGA internet provocateurs, including anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer and blundering smear artist Jacob Wohl.

But in his messages to Duncan, according to the screenshots, there was one name Alexander dangled as a perk for the teenager if he kept up contact with Alexander: Milo Yiannopoulos. In a Sept. 4, 2017 exchange about an upcoming trip Alexander was planning, Alexander purportedly told Duncan he would introduce the teenager to Yiannopoulos and speculated about whether the boy would be Alexander’s “arm candy” and suggested the boy would have to be “entertaining.”

“Rolling with me?” Alexander wrote, according to the message. “Mostly. I’ll have an Entourage. Depends. Ha. I mean, depends—if it’s me babysitting you during the day, then no. I don’t have kids. If it’s something more entertaining, then maybe. All depends on what we’re up to. No matter what, I’ll let you meet Milo. There’s probably five ppl I’ll introduce to him. But who will be my arm candy—the one with me always in VIP and in/out? Well that is to be determined by the boy who plays his cards the most correct.”

“Arm candy > baby sitting,” Alexander added, according to the screenshot.

Other screenshots show Duncan sending Alexander a picture, which was redacted in the version of the screenshot reviewed by The Daily Beast. Alexander responded with the “face with heart eyes” emoji and asking the teenager which app Alexander should use to send him money.

An undated series of screenshots purport to show Alexander laying out rules for his contact with the teenager, many of them stressing secrecy and a sort of quid pro quo relationship between sexual availability and career opportunities.

“Everything is secret and private,” one rule read. “We’re family.”

Another said that Duncan was “allowed to say no,” but that Alexander might “deprive” him of something unspecified in return.

“Boundaries are cool,” the message reads. “Allowed to say no. However, the less you deprive me of, the less I deprive you of. I’m a big sharing person unless it’s not even.”

Finally, according to the messages, Alexander asked Duncan to “be mindful of each other’s reputation.”

In an appearance last month on a podcast hosted by white supremacist Richard Spencer, Duncan claimed that Alexander wanted Duncan to fly to Texas and “be his intern,” assuring the teenager that the boy could just lie to his parents and say that he was going to a swim meet.

But Alexander had grown frustrated by May 2019, claiming that the still-underage Duncan wouldn’t send him “good jack off material,” according to the screenshots.

“You don’t even send me videos anymore,” Alexander wrote, according to the message. “No good jack off material. Don’t even wanna be my side piece.”

A day later, according to the screenshots, he asked Duncan to come to Texas for a week for an “internship.”

Duncan, now 21, has since become a relatively high-profile member of Fuentes’s racist “America First” movement, going by the name “Smiley.” On Spencer’s podcast, Duncan said he believed Fuentes knew about the rumors about Alexander’s alleged solicitation of nude photos.

“I think Nick is 100% aware,” Duncan said on the podcast.

Last Thursday, Duncan posted a statement on Twitter about his communications with Alexander.

“When I was 15 I was naive and desperate,” Duncan wrote. “I thought I had no choice but to cooperate with inappropriate and humiliating requests if I wanted to make it in politics. I figured that was just the nature of the game.”

Alexander started messaging 17-year-old Lance Johnston in the summer of 2019, according to Johnston. The floppy-haired teen was a rising star on conservative TikTok communities, amassing more than 140,000 followers under the screenname “Lancevideos.”

Johnston and Alexander started exchanging messages about politics. Johnston claims that a friend warned him early into their communications that Alexander has a history of asking for sexually explicit pictures.

“My friend at the time had told me that he had heard some weird rumors about him,” Johnston told The Daily Beast. “At first I was kind of like ‘I don’t know.’ I was 17, I had just gotten into politics.”

Alexander moved “oddly quickly” towards discussing sex with the teenager, according to Johnston. In July 2019, in what Johnston claims was the night of the White House “Social Media Summit” where Trump feted Alexander and other conservatives as victims of online censorship, the 34-year-old Alexander used the eggplant emoji to ask the teenager for a picture of his penis, according to a screenshot.

“Show me ur 🍆” Alexander wrote, according to the messages.

“What’s that?” Johnston said.

“Omg dick,” Alexander wrote back, according to the picture.

Johnston says he refused and quickly blocked Alexander. Johnston took a screenshot of the exchange, but he was fearful of raising the issue more broadly on the far-right.

“I thought in my mind that he would try his best to try to discredit me and ruin me politically and influentially with my time in politics,” Johnston said.

Still, a friend of Johnston’s publicized the screenshot, which began circulating in conservative circles. Alexander took to a video livestreaming app to defend himself.

“You can have any conversation you want with someone who’s 17,” Alexander said.

The eggplant-emoji screenshot gained new circulation in far-right circles in 2022, as Alexander and Fuentes achieved prominence as members of West’s entourage. That’s when, Johnston claims, Fuentes asked him to say in a text message to Alexander that the screenshot had been doctored and apologize. Presumably, that text message could then itself be screenshotted and used to discredit Johnston.

“Nick personally asked me to apologize to Ali for supposedly faking the messages,” Johnston said.

But Johnston insists the eggplant screenshot is legitimate. In exchange for disowning the eggplant exchange, according to Johnston, Fuentes and Alexander offered to get him a job in politics.

“Basically they wanted me to lie, apologize to Ali, and then they said they would try to get me a job,” Johnston said.

Fuentes denied Johnston’s claims about him in an email to The Daily Beast.

“I never offered Lance Johnston a job nor did I urge him to disavow that screenshot,” Fuentes wrote.

In a post on the social media app Telegram, Fuentes claimed Johnston was using the screenshot to “extort” Alexander into giving him a job on West’s campaign.

Four years later, Johnston thinks Alexander used his prominence in the MAGA movement for “very creepy” ends.

“No person like Ali should be even near politics,” he said.

Alexander, who has described his ethnicity as half-Black and half-Arab and says he’s bisexual, might seem like an unusual ally for the avowedly racist and homophobic “America First” movement led by Fuentes.

But Fuentes, a 24-year-old who marched at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville with a long history of racist, antisemitic, and sexist remarks, has appeared frequently with Alexander at events like a “Stop the Steal” rally in Georgia in 2020.

The pair would later become arguably the most prominent far-right figures in West’s short-lived, virulently antisemitic presidential campaign after Yiannopoulos’s ouster.

In text messages reviewed by The Daily Beast, Yiannopoulos warned Fuentes in broad terms about his ally’s reputation. “Alexander wants to come to your events to have sex with underage boys,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a January 2022 text to Fuentes. “Snap out of it.”

As the allegations mounted against Alexander over the weekend, Fuentes said he “disavowed” Alexander’s actions and called them “gross,” but accused Yiannopoulos of sitting on the claims until he could use them to get revenge on his rivals from the West campaign. In a Telegram post, Fuentes also blamed Duncan and Johnston for “flirting” with Alexander to advance their careers.

“[Duncan] and Lance were willing to go along flirting with Ali (to varying degrees) without any protest because they thought it would advance their political careers,” Fuentes wrote. “If you are flirting with adult gay men because you think it’s going to land you a job, you know full well what you’re doing and it’s gross. Sorry but even at 15, I would have never sent nudes to an adult gay man. There’s something wrong there.”

Fuentes added that “the real victim in this entire saga is me.” In a self-pitying post, he referred to himself as an “incel”—internet slang for “involuntarily celibate.”

“Sounds like everybody involved got what they wanted,” Fuentes wrote. “Except me, the incel, who is now somehow being blamed for things I had nothing to do with.”

This isn’t the first time Fuentes’s racist group has been dogged by accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior regarding children. In August, Fuentes associate Alejandro Richard Velasquez Gomez was arrested and charged with possessing child pornography. Velasquez, who went by “LatinoZoomer” online and has been photographed with Fuentes, also faces charges over allegedly threatening a conference held by a rival conservative group.

The accusations against Alexander and his apology have already alienated several far-right figures. Anthime Gionet, the far-right provocateur known as “Baked Alaska” who was recently released from a prison term for his role in the Capitol riot, posted a statement Sunday saying he would not “working with Ali in any capacity moving forward.”

“So Ali admitted to sending inappropriate messages and flirting with young boys?” pro-Trump rapper Bryson Gray tweeted. “Disgusting.”

Despite his Friday night apology, Alexander struck a more defiant tone hours later in a bizarre, late-night Telegram audio livestream from what appeared to be a karaoke bar. As an amateur performance of Billy Joel’s “You May Be Right” played in the background, Alexander told an acquaintance that his life had become a “reality show” revolving around one question: “Implode or not implode.”

Asked by someone on the stream whether he wanted to perform karaoke, Alexander demurred.

“I’m in the middle of a scandal,” Alexander said at one point. “I can’t do karaoke. I’m in the middle of a scandal that I’m going to survive.”

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dontmean2bepoliticalbut · 2 years

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justinspoliticalcorner · 7 days

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Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

The New York Times once described Tucker Carlson’s Fox News hour as “the most racist show in the history of cable news.” In the past week, allegations of bigotry involving his new show on X have come from a rather different corner: his fellow conservatives. The fight started April 9, when Carlson published a friendly interview with Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac. The pastor — who has reportedly praised the “strength” of the October 7 attackers — argued that Israel is no friend to Christians: It bombs them in Gaza, represses them in the West Bank, and restricts their ability to proselytize inside Israel proper. The interview went viral, receiving over 30,000 reposts so far. Erick Erickson, a prominent radio host and former Carlson ally, spoke for many on the right when he labeled Tucker a “pro-Hamas” ally of “the antisemites on college campuses, and the terrorist-supporting progressives of the American left.” Carlson has, according to Erickson, become “willing to use his platform and formerly earned trust and reputation to persuade the easily manipulated to believe the lies he used to rail against.”

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) wrote a blistering post on X that attempted to banish Carlson from the conservative movement entirely. “Tucker’s MO is simple: defend America’s enemies and attack America’s allies. There isn’t an objective bone left in that washed up news host’s body,” Crenshaw wrote. “Tucker will eventually fade into nothingness, because his veneer of faux intellectualism is quickly falling apart and revealing who he truly is: a cowardly, know-nothing elitist who is full of shit.” While Erickson and Crenshaw are seen as more establishment-friendly voices nowadays, the outrage at Carlson was shared even by some in the right’s Trumpier corners: Even the sorts of people who oppose Ukraine aid laid into the former Fox host after the Isaac interview. Only an openly antisemitic fringe of the conservative movement — the so-called Groypers — seem to be gleeful, believing that pitting Israel against Christians can bring old-school European Jew hatred to contemporary America.

“It’s waking people up. It’s making people aware of the fundamentals — which is first and foremost that Jews are not Christians,” said Nick Fuentes, the leading voice of the Groypers. “Once you get into those basics, you can start to build upon that and get to where we are.” So is what Carlson suggests about Israel and Christians accurate? And what does the right-wing backlash against him say about the state of the conservative movement today? Broadly, I think there are basically three key answers to these questions:

It’s true that Palestinian Christians are suffering, though it’s largely because they are Palestinians rather than because they are Christians. Carlson’s message, however, does less to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinians than to pit Jews against Christians.

In trying to excommunicate Carlson, conservatives are pretending that he’s changed — but he’s really the same guy he always has been. The antisemitic and otherwise bigoted things he said on Fox were far worse than anything in the Isaac interview and received only a fraction of the internal right-wing condemnation.

Carlson is exploiting legitimate criticism of Israel to fan the flames of Christian antisemitism, which has become a growing problem on the right even as much public attention recently has focused on the left wing.

Israel doesn’t persecute Christians, but it does oppress Palestinians

Christians are a small minority inside Israel — about 2 percent of the total population. But this mostly Arab group’s numbers are growing, and they tend to do better than their Muslim peers in socioeconomic terms. A 2021 report from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics found that Israeli Christians were more likely to get a college degree and less likely to be on welfare attainment than Muslims and even Jews. Israeli law guarantees formal freedom of religion, and there are no legal restrictions on Christian worship. There is some restriction on missionary activity, but that typically only affects travel visas for foreigners rather than Christians living in Israel. No one in the country has been prosecuted for missionary activity. That’s not to say Israeli Christians have no problems. Jewish extremists occasionally harass Christians in Jerusalem, and there are tensions surrounding the city’s holy sites. Danny Seidemann, a leading expert on Jerusalem, has warned that settler plans for the city threaten the historic Christian presence there. But this, per Seidemann, is less a reflection of hostility toward Christians per se than it is a reflection of the generalized settler goal to control all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

But while the Israeli state does not officially discriminate against Israeli Christians, it does oppress Palestinians — and Palestinian Christians suffer along with their Muslim brethren. From churches bombed in Gaza to Israel’s “security barrier” cutting right through Bethlehem, Palestinian Christians experience Israeli occupation the same way that other Palestinians do: as violence and unfreedom. “The major threat to Christian communities and institutions is dismissiveness. They’re not seen,” Seidemann writes. “What’s seen are Palestinians and Arabs who are always suspected terrorists.” Most of Isaac’s comments in the Carlson interview were focused on explaining how the general cruelty of the occupation hurts Palestinian Christians. But Carlson’s additions — such as saying Israel is “blowing up churches and killing Christians” — go a bit further. He suggests that Israel is targeting Christians as a class, and that the Jewish state is fundamentally hostile to Christianity.

[...] From openly espousing the “great replacement” conspiracy theory to suggesting that immigrants to the United States are dirty and diseased to peddling the same sort of antisemitic lies that motivated the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting, Carlson consistently worked to make some of the most dangerous fringe ideas in American politics palatable to mainstream Republicans. This flirtation with antisemitism isn’t a break from Carlson’s longstanding persona but an extension of it.

The internal conservative discourse on Carlson is thus both substantively and psychologically revealing. Substantively, it shows that the right is willing to forgive or downplay antisemitism unless it’s somehow linked to criticism of Israel — in which case there’s a zero-tolerance policy. Psychologically, it shows there is a powerful need to reconcile conservatives’ previous love of Carlson with the reality of who he is, requiring implausible contortions about his changing radically after leaving Fox.

[...]

The right’s growing antisemitism problem

In the past few years, the Groypers have looked more influential than many on the more mainstream right seem to appreciate. In 2022, Nick Fuentes finagled an invite to Mar-a-Lago and had dinner with Donald Trump. More recently, popular podcaster Candace Owens has outed herself as a Groyper-adjacent antisemite. While this turn led to her departure from the right-wing Daily Wire, it also showed how much the movement has made inroads on the broader right. During the Owens saga, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing sat down for a conversation with Fuentes that was streamed on X. Speaking to a man he had once called “a wicked little s**t with evil ideas,″ Boreing praised Fuentes as a “most talented” and “very funny” broadcaster — and invited him to be a guest on a Daily Wire show. There’s a lot of evidence that right-wing antisemitism is rising. While much attention has been paid (rightly) to left-wing antisemitism after October 7, academic research suggests that antisemitic attitudes are disproportionately concentrated among right-wing young adults. Right-wing extremists are responsible for nearly all of the deadly attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in recent years. Trump’s own rhetoric has long been rife with antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories.

Tucker Carlson, like Candace Owens, has learned that criticizing Israel in right-wing media spaces comes at a great cost. Even before his recent interview with Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac, Carlson has pushed antisemitic tropes.

#Candace Owens #Israel/Hamas War #Israel/Palestine Conflict #Palestine #Antisemitism #Groypers #Erick Erickson #Dan Crenshaw #Munther Isaac #Tucker Carlson Network #Tucker Carlson Uncensored #Nick Fuentes

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Optical Illusion: Perceptions of Race and Sexuality with Right-Wing Internet Personality Nick Fuentes, Part 3

[originally posted here]

Part 1, Part 2

The Gospel of Judas

There have been multiple references throughout this article to Fuentes’s former associate Jaden McNeil, but to understand the true depth of that situation, one must know who Jaden McNeil is and what he meant to both Fuentes and the America First movement. Simply referring to him as “Fuentes’s ex-associate” is greatly underplaying the role he played in Fuentes’s movement and life in general. The two were a veritable right-wing version of Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins and, as with that political friendship, it was not made to last. It ended, however, not at the guillotine, but in an ongoing online battle of insults and accusations.

Jaden Patrick McNeil was born to a modest background in a small town in Nebraska on May 17, 1999. He would go on to be a student at Kansas State University with the intention of one day becoming a lawyer. He proved quite effective as a conservative activist as the president of Kansas State’s Turning Point USA chapter, which would become one of the largest in the country. McNeil’s success with Turning Point led to invites to conservative conferences, including to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

For all of his success with Turning Point, McNeil found himself becoming disillusioned with the movement. In initial interviews, McNeil would say that it was because the stated views of Turning Point did not align with his own, such as being accepting of nonwhite immigrants so long as they arrived via legal routes. Later, he would state that he was disturbed by the number of older men at these events who appeared to be there to sexually prey on the college and high school-aged boys they knew would be present. At an event in 2019, Canadian white nationalist activist Faith Goldy introduced him to Nick Fuentes. The two began talking and McNeil felt he finally found someone he could see eye-to-eye with and be open with politically and, he would later say, a movement that he hoped would be less infested with predators than Turning Point. The connection was mutual as Fuentes would describe the meeting as “divine intervention,” saying that God intended for them to meet. McNeil’s fellow Turning Point associates were not as enthusiastic about their president’s new friendship and warned him that Fuentes was a “Neo-Nazi.” McNeil did not heed their warnings and stayed in contact with Fuentes. The two participated in some events together, such as when Fuentes publicly accosted Ben Shapiro, eventually culminating in McNeil founding America First Students, an extension of Fuentes’s organization aimed at college students, after McNeil resigned as president to Kansas State’s Turning Point chapter.

McNeil’s continued association with Fuentes and statements online perceived as racially charged drew ire from some of the less conservative Kansas State student body. For example, he complained about Kansas State’s Ethnic Studies GE requirement and said that the Jennifer Lopez and Shakira halftime show at the Super Bowl displayed everything that he hated about immigration. This came to a head in June of 2020 when McNeil made a tweet “congratulating” George Floyd on being “drug free an entire month,” followed by a reference to the widely debunked claim popularized by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, of whom McNeil is a fan, that George Floyd’s death was the result of a drug overdose rather than being asphyxiation by the cop kneeling on his neck. This caused immediate public backlash, including calls for McNeil’s expulsion and a boycott by the Kansas State football team. McNeil was unapologetic and remained enrolled at Kansas State even as the outrage reached outside of the student body.

It is unclear what the final straw was, but McNeil was eventually expelled from Kansas State. Fuentes offered to let McNeil live in the basement of a building he had recently bought in Chicago free of charge while he acted as treasurer to America First. There were even discussions of him possibly moving forward to produce the show and act as a co-host in the future. In addition to his new position as America First’s treasurer, he became a gaming streamer to make ends meet. McNeil would continue to participate in events with Fuentes for the next few years, even serving as a featured speaker at a few of them, such as anti-vaccine rallies, the next few AFPACs, the events that preceded the January 6th storming of the capital, and even serving as Fuentes’s travel partner and videographer during the White Boy Summer Tour of 2021.

The image of the bond between Fuentes and McNeil was shattered in April of 2022 when McNeil made a post on Telegram announcing that he was resigning as treasurer to America First. He said that his political views had not changed but that it was not what he wanted in life at that moment, wishing everyone well. However, this would continue to unravel in the coming weeks as Fuentes’s associates began bitterly speaking about McNeil. His streaming channel was removed from Cozy without warning. Shortly afterward, McNeil appeared on Kino Casino, an Internet show that had often been critical of Nick Fuentes, along with fellow America First defector Simon Dickerman to discuss what led to their eventual departure. McNeil’s friendship with Fuentes was revealed to be far more fraught than previously presented. Issues arose between the two of them soon after McNeil moved to Chicago. Fuentes was painted as a controlling, paranoid narcissist who wanted more from McNeil as a friend than he was offering. He claimed that Fuentes became jealous of his relationships with girls and would feel hurt when McNeil would invite him to play video games with him as part of a group chat rather than reaching out to him individually. Many allegations arose, such as that Fuentes was using a multiplier to increase the number of views on his shows and building on the claims that he was a federal informant, but the most often-cited moment to Fuentes’s critics across the aisle seemed to be the allegation that he had posted in a group chat about searching McNeil’s apartment with a blacklight for traces of his semen on the bed and couch. This startling image portrayed of Fuentes was not invalidated by the May 10th, 2022 episode of his show in which he addressed McNeil’s appearance on Kino Casino, something he felt was explicitly done to hurt him. While he insisted that the story about him searching for semen was based on a joke he made about how unavoidable the stains on the furniture were when he went in to clean out the basement apartment out for the next tenant, he did not deny and in fact built upon the image of the demanding, co-dependent friendship he had attempted to forge with McNeil. The two hour stream included a monologue in which Fuentes he described all he did for McNeil - doxxing Kansas State students who had threatened him, moving him out to Chicago to get him away from a girlfriend he could not bring himself to break up with, cleaning his room when he was depressed, buying him soup and tea when he was sick with COVID, and more - while feeling he had received an insufficient reciprocity, something he had brought up with McNeil near the end of their friendship. It appears that he had expected more, alleging that McNeil frequently got in phone arguments with his mom with regards to his friendship with Fuentes. He portrayed the dissolution of their friendship as starting in December the year before due to how much time McNeil was spending with his new girlfriend. Fuentes appeared to be holding back tears multiple times during the stream as he described how devastated he was over the perceived betrayal and the love he still felt for his former best friend, holding out hope that they could someday make amends. It would have been easy to feel sorry for Fuentes; losing a friend is difficult for anyone, moreso when trapped in the right-wing emotional prison in which men cannot express emotions, certainly not love and heartbreak over platonic friends. That is, it would have been if not for what happened next.

As the weeks went by, the love and sadness were replaced with bitterness. Fuentes went on a trenchant spiel about how McNeil lacked intellectual depth when it came to media consumption compared to himself and wrote him off as “[his] former bitch.” It was clear the intentions to make amends with McNeil were gone as the accusations against him became increasingly bizarre and personal such as saying that he was a sugar baby to a high paying super chatter, was secretly transgender or intersex, and had attempted to nonconsensually kiss Fuentes while drunk. In keeping with Fuentes’s alleged grandiose self-perception, he took to thereafter referring to McNeil as “Judas” or sometimes “Judy” to allude at the gender ambiguity he was now accusing him of. In yet another unexpected turn, followers of Fuentes began publicly posting various unflattering photos of McNeil, purportedly meant to paint McNeil as an irresponsible alcoholic libertine. While he was drinking or smoking in a handful, in most, he was simply sleeping and did not necessarily appear to be passed out from alcohol consumption. Most of the photos appeared to be taken by Fuentes himself, namely one being a literal selfie he took with McNeil sleeping on a couch behind him. McNeil stated that he had no clue any of them existed and that they appeared to have been taken over the course of the three years that he and Fuentes knew each other. McNeil confessed that, while he knew saying so was “kind of gay,” that seeing these pictures made him deeply uncomfortable and made his “skin crawl.” In keeping with the response to Fuentes’s monologue about his loss of McNeil’s friendship, naturally McNeil was not going to permit himself to be seen as a man showing vulnerable feelings or other times when he likened Fuentes’s need for emotional validation as being “like a girl,” but even he could not help himself here and his viewers expressed sympathy, remarking that he had every right to “feel violated.” He questioned why Fuentes had taken them to begin with and what purpose they had served him in the years that he kept them before leaking them to the public, speculating that his intentions had been sexual in nature. Whatever the reason, one can generally consider nonconsensually photographing someone in their sleep and then posting those pictures publicly to be inappropriate, regardless of the nature of their relationship. With all the debates about whether or not Fuentes’s actions were “gay,” the subject of whether or not these actions would be appropriate in any situation has been overlooked.

McNeil had previously stated an intention to move on with his life and “get a blue collar job,” should his work with America First come to an end. However, Fuentes vowed to keep him from ever having a normal life or getting a normal job. This led McNeil to carry on as a streamer, primarily focused on conservative critiques of America First and Fuentes, such as his ideological inconsistencies, the federal informant rumors, and protecting alleged sexual predators connected to the movement, namely Ali Alexander whose antics McNeil says Fuentes was aware of. There are of course less refined critiques as well, such as vulgar references to Fuentes’s speculated sexual orientation, his supposed excessive pornography usage, and comments about Fuentes’s conception as the child of in-vitro fertilization, something McNeil views as unnatural and the cause for all of Fuentes’s bizarre personality traits. Fuentes would continue to directly or subtly reference McNeil in the months to come, making references of his own to McNeil’s lack of adequate masculinity and being the child of divorce. Both examples highlight a rightwing fixation on having been brought into the world from a proper beginning in an almost Calvinist view of predetermination.

The two would not directly interact again until July of 2023 when McNeil called in to a discussion with LeafyIsHere to both defend his honor and bring to light the situation with Ali Alexander. Before the discussion even began, groypers poisoned the well for LeafyIsHere by leading him to the dox of the netizen whom they claimed was McNeil’s sugar daddy. During the call, Fuentes joined in, repeatedly questioning McNeil about his super chatter, taunting him about sexual acts the two presumably engaged in, and went on to repeat the claim that McNeil had attempted to kiss him once, this time adding a story about how it happened after the two of them saw Spiderman: No Way Home together in theaters. McNeil essentially broke down in frustration and left the call. Both on his show and on Kino Casino later, he claimed that LeafyIsHere had repeatedly muted him and denied having attempted to kiss Fuentes ever, let alone in the story he told. Perception by their respective supporters colors how these incidents were perceived. Unsurprisingly, groypers took Fuentes’s word at face value and McNeil fans did not. How they discuss these alleged interactions is obviously painted by these opinions and end up portraying them in entirely different lights. Over time, the respective supporters of these men have developed rather specific images of their alleged attraction to the other for being something denied on both sides. Once again, images of race and sexuality are at the center. McNeil fans present Fuentes as this evil, conniving gay Mexican attempting to sexually manipulate their pure, white heterosexual hero. Even left-wing Fuentes critics have fallen victim to this mindset that infantalizes McNeil, with more than one having referred to him as “the teenage boy [Fuentes] tried to groom,” as if he was not less than a year younger than Fuentes and a legal adult for the entirety of their knowing each other. Groypers emphasize McNeil’s lack of traditional masculinity in appearance, calling him a “twink,” and suggest he was attempting to seduce their dear leader, sometimes leaning into the sugar baby angle. A more confusing claim they cling to to is Fuentes’s allegation that one of McNeil’s grade school friends came out as came as gay as an adult, meaning that McNeil is likely gay by association; why someone who claimed he was his best friend as an adult and has been unnerved by gay rumors about himself would use this argument is unclear. Some take a third approach. Inevitably, the fact that Fuentes portrays one of McNeil’s fans as offering him an exorbitant amount of financial support as driven by sexual desire has caused some detractors to assume he is speaking from his own experience as his former employer and the provider of his home. The canard developed here is that McNeil was attempting to lead Fuentes on or even acquiesced to his supposed desires for financial gain before moving on to an older, more financially and emotionally stable sugar daddy. This still portrays Fuentes as a sniveling, pathetic imp of a man driven by unnatural lust, while McNeil is portrayed as a monetarily predatory manipulator who cannot rely on his own means to take care of himself.

It is curious that both Fuentes and McNeil would bring up traits that they were clearly aware of from near the beginning of them knowing each other in their critiques of each other. In both instances, there is an attempt to rewrite their history. Fuentes has referenced being disappointed to learn that McNeil was not a celibate virgin like himself after he moved in, but he still remained friends with him after that, even continuing to provide him with a job and free housing. For all of McNeil’s jokes about Fuentes being Mexican, there is minimal chance he did not consider someone with the last name of “Fuentes” might be partially Latino, even if he somehow missed the streams where Fuentes actively referenced having a Mexican grandfather. His own jokes about Fuentes’s possible homosexuality are not only in reference to incidents that occurred while they lived in the same building or spent time together, but events that have become part of the general Nick Fuentes lore. Certainly, some of the cited events, such as Fuentes’s monologue about sex with women being “gay” happened after he and McNeil had parted ways, but McNeil’s references to the infamous “CatboyKami date” as if it was a shocking new revelation are rather confusing. The event in question happened at the end of 2019, the year McNeil and Fuentes got to know each other; in fact, the viewers of the entire stream can confirm that Fuentes made multiple references to his “friend Jaden” throughout the night, presumably referring to McNeil. It is difficult to imagine that McNeil did not hear about the stream, given he was getting involved with America First at the time and both right and left-wing detractors replied to nearly everything online related to Fuentes or his organization with taunting images and references to the stream, especially during the first few months of 2020. All of that and McNeil apparently did not consider it suspicious at the time, considering he moved into the building that Fuentes owned and became a more involved member of America First all after that happened.

One recalls him mentioning in the past that Turning Point members warned him about Fuentes and cannot help but consider that speculation about his sexuality was a part of that. Speculation about McNeil’s own sexuality was rampant during his association with America First, despite all of his confirmed relationships at the point of writing this being with women. Most of it was based on very little, some just remarking on his appearance and calling him a “twink.” One can find an older rumor spread around attaching a Freudian explanation to McNeil’s racial animus, saying he was sexually assaulted - ranging from a pantsing to a more violent tale - by a pair of black male students in the restroom while in high school, further adding to this image of him as on the receiving end of predatory sexual attention from men of color. Considering McNeil has stated that the town he grew up in was fairly homogenous and that he did not develop his ideologies until college, all versions of this tale seem deeply unlikely, but that did not stop it from gaining traction in the gutters of KiwiFarms and such. The exact birth of this rumor is unclear, but it did not appear to take hold until after McNeil was associated with Fuentes, further emphasizing how it was likely based more on the perception of him during that time than actual fact. Many rightwing detractors of Fuentes who have since become supporters of McNeil admit to having previously assumed he was his boyfriend. It is not difficult to find older posts on KiwiFarms and similar websites with lurid posts joking about what sort of sexual acts the two were speculated to have engaged in together. Even the hosts of Kino Casino had initially reported on the split between Fuentes and McNeil as a “break up” and made crude sexual remarks about the two of them prior to McNeil’s appearance on their show. Perhaps McNeil’s reaction now is a mix of regret that he did not listen to detractors sooner and a need to overcompensate for the rumors that spread about him as a result of his association with Fuentes. On that topic, Fuentes has himself appeared to attempt to change history as well. He has since tried to claim that he lost interest in McNeil as a friend after incidents of him trying to pressure him to drink and ultimately culminating in the alleged incident of him trying to kiss him after seeing a movie, despite them being not only publicly associated for four months after the fact, but Fuentes’s infamous sorrowful monologue was after all of that and complaints about the time McNeil spent with his girlfriend. One would think that he would respond to someone expressing unwanted romantic advances towards him proceeding to get a significant other would be met with relief and, if the alleged attempted kiss was so off-putting that it put an irreparable dent in their friendship, he would not mind the friendship formally ending, let alone be nearly brought to tears lamenting that end.

It is difficult not to feel a semblance of sympathy for McNeil. Regardless of the reasons behind some of Fuentes’s antics, whether it was attraction, an attempt at control, or undiagnosed neurodivergence-related social awkwardness, one thing that is for certain is that the way he treated him was professionally inappropriate at best and abusive at worst. When looking at McNeil’s older posts or listening to his stream to this day, between the provocative references to race and gender, there are some genuine frustrations about not having the opportunity to grow up in the same world generations before did, not unlike those of other young people of quite different political leanings. This is compounded when one remembers his working class upbringing, preventing him from accessing what positives remain. It is true that many of the most obvious scholarships and other assistive programs are focused on aspects of identity like race and gender, one can see how a young white man that still has all of the struggles of someone lacking resources would interpret this. As despicable as many viewed America First, it is easy to see how a desperate nineteen-year-old was drawn in. One cannot help but speculate, had events occurred a bit differently, that he would have instead been pulled into the Center for Political Innovation, a group that espouses left-wing, class-based politics with a strong criticism of identity politics, though declaring them capitalist constructions to divide the working class rather than a Jewish conspiracy to take down the white man. Of course, rather than addressing the antics of Nick Fuentes, he would instead have to reconcile with accusations of that group’s leader, Caleb Maupin, who would face questionable allegations of his own and a mass exodus from his movement in the middle of 2022. Finding an extreme political movement without members accused of inappropriate actions towards their underlings is becoming increasingly difficult.

Class remains at the center of the struggle between these two. McNeil joined the movement so young and is now being kept from moving on with life by someone whose upbringing was far more comfortable than his own. McNeil criticizes Fuentes for his “unnatural” IVF conception, something that requires a great deal of money to undergo. Fuentes criticizes McNeil for having divorced parents when working class families are far more likely to experience divorce than wealthier ones. It is also undeniable that the dynamic between the two, even if it lacked the context of attraction that some allege was there, was deeply unbalanced and controlling. The two were attempting to navigate a friendship while Fuentes was also McNeil’s employer and provided his housing. Hearing McNeil’s voice crack as Fuentes went after him in that phone call, it is clear that imbalance remains. McNeil has jokingly talked about how odd it is that Fuentes continues to go after him, calling himself a “nobody.” For all of the criticisms McNeil has launched against his former boss and friend, one wonders if, at the end of the day, Fuentes convinced him that he was nothing without him and he still believes it. From an optical perspective, it certainly appears that way.

Conclusion

How to precisely define Nick Fuentes’s race and sexuality is a mystery to anyone aside from himself and even that may be up for debate. More important than whatever may actually be true is what is seen as true to his critics, something that varies by person and situation. In the end, Fuentes was correct in identifying optics as the most important factor of a movement. What is really there does not matter. All that matters is what people perceive.

Sources

The initial pieces of research on Fuentes and his associates was discovered in articles by the SPLC, ADL, Mother Jones, and the Kansas Star. Much of the rest of the personal information was found from much less official sources, namely an Illinois-based Facebook group dedicated to outing the personal lives of the Chicco-Fuentes family to keep them from profiting financially on account of the son’s political involvement. Most of the information was from watching episodes of Fuentes and McNeil’s shows, both live and uploads on Bitchute, Odyssee, Rumble, YouTube, and the Internet Archive, as well as following their social media accounts on Twitter, Telegram, and Gab. The episode of Kino Casino that McNeil and Dickerman appeared on was helpful in assessing their views. Additionally, their interviews with others, as well as reaction videos by leftist streamers critical of them - including Shark3ozero, Vaush, and Creationist Cat - were also utilized. As for the commentary on the response by fans and critics, much was obtained from KiwiFarms and other websites dedicated to mocking Internet personalities. The anecdote about Martin Luther was based on the teachings of a deeply-influential, now-retired high school AP European History teacher. Everything else is based on the author’s own observations and opinions.

Bonus: The playlist I made to accompany this essay.

#Nick Fuentes #Jaden McNeil #KiwiFarms #Kansas State #Turning Point USA #classism #gay panic #George Floyd #French Revolution #Caleb Maupin #Naden playlist

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