Trump’s dinner companion is a well known quantity to GOP insiders
Donald Trump says he knew nothing of this Nick Fuentes person who Kanye West brought with him to dinner at Mar-a-Lago. But according to Axios, he was impressed:
Trump at one point turned to Ye and said: “I really like this guy. He gets me,” according to the source.
According to Robert Costa, it’s unlikely that people around Trump, if not Trump himself, knew nothing of Fuentes:
Here’s how it works: Most elected Rs and their advisers closely follow the movements of base voters and track how they gather information. While they prefer to cast that ecosystem as something like a country club message board + Trump rallies, they know it’s anything but that…
For over a decade, since I began tracking it, there has been a rising, online extreme media landscape that now churns daily, but it is often on closed social media groups outside of media glare. It is in these spaces where unvarnished hate about Jewish people, racism is rampant.
Nick Fuentes, while young, has gained major traction in these spaces. He links himself and his followers to core tenets of Trumpism by chanting “America First” and uses monologues in the style of Alex Jones to gain notoriety with a cackling, racist, and grim take on modern U.S.
People in the GOP have noticed. Fuentes is not someone who has slipped under the radar. If you follow the base, you can’t somehow not see it, just like you can’t pretend groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers aren’t gaining ground in these same online spaces, too.
And some Rs are more overt than others in winking at, or meeting with, these types. But it’s often in the style of Rep. MTG earlier this year, when she spoke at Fuentes event. A brush up against that bloc, then quick distancing. And the cost of the brush up? Not a career killer…
In fact, as @axios notes, months after appearing with Fuentes, “Greene… is one of the most influential Republicans in the House” and a key player in keeping Trump base close to the House GOP leadership.
https://www.axios.com/2022/11/14/marjorie-taylor-greene-mccarthy-speaker
Originally tweeted by Robert Costa (@costareports) on November 26, 2022.
In case you were wondering exactly what kind of person Trump was entertaining this week, here’s a run down from the Anti Defamation League:
- Groypers are a loose network of alt right figures who are vocal supporters of white supremacist and “America First” podcaster Nick Fuentes.
- Patrick Casey, who heads the white supremacist American Identity Movement, is also a “lead” Groyper.
- Groypers regularly confront mainstream conservative organizations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) for failing to promote a truly “America First” agenda and for not being adequately “pro white.”
- Many Groypers hold racist and antisemitic views.
- Fuentes is careful to position the Groypers not as white supremacists but rather as “Christian conservatives” who oppose, among other things, immigration (undocumented and legal), globalism, gay and transgender rights and feminism.
- Groypers charge that mainstream conservative organizations like TPUSA want to silence “dissidents” like Fuentes, who has been expelled from TPUSA events because of his extreme views.
Introduction
The so-called “Groyper army” (the term “Groyper” is explained below) is a white supremacist group that presents its ideology as more nuanced than other groups in the white supremacist sphere. While the group and leadership’s views align with those held by the white supremacist alt right, groypers attempt to normalize their ideology by aligning themselves with “Christianity” and “traditional” values ostensibly championed by the church, including marriage and family.
Like the alt right and other white supremacists, Groypers believe they are working to defend against demographic and cultural changes that are destroying the “true America”—a white, Christian nation. However, Groypers differ in a number of ways from the alt right. They identify themselves as “American nationalists” who are part of the “America First” movement. To the Groypers, “America First” means that the U.S. should close its borders, bar immigrants, oppose globalism and promote “traditional” values like Christianity and oppose “liberal” values such as feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. They claim not to be racist or antisemitic and see their bigoted views as “normal” and necessary to preserve white, European-American identity and culture, however some members have expressed racist and antisemitic views on multiple occasions. They believe their views are shared by the majority of white people.
A November 2019 article included a video highlighting the racist and antisemitic nature of the Groypers’ questions at an October 2019 TPUSA event at Ohio State University. One Groyper told the audience to Google the term “dancing Israelis,” a reference to an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claimed that Israelis carried out the 9/11 attacks and then celebrated as they watched the Twin Towers fall.
Another Groyper commented that “whites will account for less than 50% of the population in the United States” by 2045. He went on to claim that most groups other than whites, including immigrants, vote for Democrats, and added, “Can you prove that our white European ideals will be maintained if the country is no longer made up of white European descendants?”
At the Groyper Leadership Summit in Florida in December 2019, Groyper leader Patrick Casey, head of the white supremacist American Identity Movement, focused his remarks on changing demographics in the U.S. and the “downsides to diversity.” Casey said, “Now one of the main things we discuss when we’re talking about demographics is the effect that mass immigration from non-Western countries is having on our political institutions.”
Nick Fuentes, who runs the American First podcast and also spoke at the Groyper Leadership Summit, was even clearer in his remarks in terms of the Groypers’ wanting to maintain a white, Christian country. Fuentes asserted that “Los Angeles today is the epicenter of what the country will look like in the future.” He went on to argue, “Culturally, demographically, if you’re a white person and you go to Los Angeles, you’re a minority. If you go to a shopping mall, if you walk down a street, you are a minority. You had different people from different countries come into ours and they changed the texture of life.”
Fuentes rejected the white supremacist label and asserts that when others call him and the Groypers “racist,” it is “an anti-white slur.” He adds, “I am tired of caring what the left thinks. I care about the future of the country. We have to [say] what we mean. We have to do what we think is right.”
The Groypers’ focus on Turning Point USA stems primarily from their dislike of founder Charlie Kirk, who they consider insufficiently pro-white. Among their grievances: Kirk has spoken out against white supremacy and dismissed Ashley St. Clair, a TPUSA associate who was photographed at a dinner event attended by Fuentes.
Kirk is pro-Israel, and Groypers oppose Israel and are generally antisemitic. Groypers are also angry that Kirk has invited black conservatives and gay conservatives to TPUSA events as speakers. They believe Kirk is a hypocrite who doesn’t truly want to advance an “America First,” agenda which, for the Groypers, means “whites first.” And finally, they believe Kirk does not support free speech.
Origins
“Groyper” meme
The “Groyper” meme emerged online in 2017, showing up on various platforms including the anonymous image board 4chan. This was during the height of Pepe the Frog’s popularity with the alt right, and “Groyper” was a variation of Pepe the Frog, depicting the character resting his chin on interlinked hands. The Groyper meme was adopted by people connected with the alt right, who added Groyper-related images to their Twitter handles and profile pictures.
More recently, members of the alt right and Fuentes supporters adopted the Groyper meme as a symbol for the “Groyper army.”
Groypers want to confront mainstream conservatives about positions that Groypers believe are not in the best interests of whites. They believe that the mainstream conservative movement is just as responsible as liberals and the left for destroying white America, and that Groypers are the true future of the conservative movement.
And while they are often pitted against traditional conservatives, Groypers have received public support from high profile conservatives who are perceived to be mainstream, including political pundit Michelle Malkin.
On February 28, 2020, Malkin spoke at the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), organized by Fuentes and other Groypers. Speaking to an audience of white supremacists and far-right activists, Malkin complained about the stifling impact of the term “antisemitism,” while reeling off a series of antisemitic tropes.
“It’s antisemitic to mention George Soros’s billions,” Malkin said. “It’s antisemitic to criticize the Anti-Defamation League. It’s antisemitic to question whatever the precise number is of people who perished in World War Two. It is antisemitic for me, being married to a 100% Ashkenazi Jew, to question dual loyalties of people who are working here as agents of a foreign country.”
Leadership and followers
The people behind the Groyper movement include white supremacists from groups like American Identity Movement (AIM), formerly known as Identity Evropa.
Nicholas (Nick) Fuentes, 21, runs the “America First,” podcast. His previous podcast, “Nationalist Review,” was co-hosted by James Allsup, an open white supremacist who is now a member of American Identity Movement. Fuentes, who holds white supremacist views (but claims not to be a white supremacist), positions the Groypers as “Christian conservatives” who oppose immigration (undocumented and legal), globalism, gay and transgender rights, feminism and more. This, however, is a ploy to attract mainstream support and distract from the group’s fundamentally white supremacist ideology. Fuentes and his followers often dress in suits and ties to project a “mainstream” conservative image.
In his podcast on November 11, 2019, Fuentes repeatedly claimed that many of the Groypers, including himself, were once strong Trump supporters but are angry about the administration’s embrace of Israel, and about mainstream conservatives’ support of globalism, “endless wars” and other issues they feel run counter to an “America First” agenda.
Fuentes has made a number of racist and anti-Semitic comments on his America First podcast, but always claimed he was being ironic and provocative rather than expressing actual extremist views. He has referred to Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh as “shabbos goy race traitor” who works for Jews (Ben Shapiro, a Jewish conservative, runs the Daily Wire). On one of his podcasts, Fuentes “jokingly” denied the Holocaust and compared Jews burnt in concentration camps to cookies in an oven. Fuentes has also made racist comments, for example, asserting that segregation and policies in the pre-civil rights-era South like separate drinking fountains “was better for them, it’s better for us.”