Donald Trump claims he didn’t know who Nick Fuentes was before sitting down to dinner with him and other guests at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last week. But Fuentes is certainly well known for groups that track racist and anti-Semitism trends in American society.
Although the Justice Department has described Fuentes in court documents as a white supremacist, that hardly begins to capture the full range of the agitated views he holds. expressed, disparaging Blacks, Jews, women, LGBTQ Americans, Muslims, and immigrants.
At the age of 24, Fuentes has become a far-right star for his radical statements that would disqualify him from meeting any other modern president. He used a racist slur against Black people; calling homosexuality “disgusting”; assert that the Republican Party is “run by Jews, atheists and gays”; said that it would be better for women not to vote; comparing himself to Hitler and hoping for “a complete Aryan victory”; declares that “the First Amendment was not written for Muslims”; and asserted that Jim Crow’s segregation was “better for them, better for us, better in general.”
Fuentes first rose to prominence in 2017 when he attended a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., after which Trump asserted that there were “very good people on both sides” even as he denounced developmentism new acid. Fuentes dropped out of Boston University after saying he received threats stemming from his attendance at the protest and began hosting a live stream, “America First,” that same year, attracted an audience of followers known as Groypers, named for an animated frog.
He founded America’s First Political Action Conference in 2020 and hosted far-right Republicans in the House, including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona. Fuentes rejected the term white supremacist as it was an “anti-white obscenity”, but used the language of white racism and anti-Semitism. white, while calling herself a “reactionary” and a “false feminist”.
Trump often claims to know little about the extremists he accepts to support, as he did with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, the Proud Boys and followers of QAnon. But even if that’s true in this case, Fuentes was brought to dinner by Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who was invited by Trump at a time when West was being criticized for his comments. his own anti-Semitism. And even then, Trump didn’t condemn Fuentes, prompting white nationalists to see the dinner as recognition.
While news organizations are often reluctant to amplify hate speech, it’s important to understand what we’re talking about when discussing someone being welcome to the desk of a currently serving former president. find a way back to the White House. So here is a summary compiled with the help of my colleague Ian Prasad Philbrick from research by the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations and news agencies. Fuentes did not respond to a request for an interview through an attorney.
Anti-Semitism and Racism
Fuentes frequently raised fears of a “white genocide” and echoed the substitution theory, which argued that elites sought to “replace” white Americans with immigrants and non-whites. different color. This theory has inspired a number of mass shootings in recent years, including at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, a Walmart in El Paso and a Buffalo supermarket.
“Our civilization is being destroyed, our people are being genocide, and conservatives cannot foresee what will work well for the free media in the next election, ” Fuentes used to tweet. He also said, “The Founders never intended to make America a refugee camp for non-whites.” And on Alex Jones’ Infowars last year, he said, “I don’t consider the Jews to be European and I don’t consider them part of Western civilization, especially since they are not Christians. “
Fuentes advanced the Holocaust denial, or what he called a “revision” of the Holocaust, most memorably in a short video in which he compared Nazi death camps to baking. Cookie Monster, showing that it was impossible to kill six million Jews during the Second World War. Then he said that the video is just one “lantern,” while saying he acknowledges the Holocaust, and he has said he uses “ironic” to discuss taboo topics.
Violence and politics
While again saying he was joking, Fuentes expressed support for violence against women, speaking to an listener during his live stream who asked how to punish a wife “for having crossed the line” that he should hit her.
“Why don’t you take your hand and give her a brutal slap in the face, right into her stupid face?” he say. “Why don’t you give her a cruel and powerful backhand slap with your knuckles right in her face, disrespectfully, and hurt her?” He later denied the violence and claimed he was joking, saying he would never hit a woman “unless she deserves it”.
Fuentes praised the fall of the US-backed government in Afghanistan because the Taliban “was a religious, conservative force” while “America is atheist and liberal,” and cheered President Trump’s invasion of Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin, saying, “Can we give a round of applause to Russia?” He said that the crusades and the inquests were “pretty good stuff” and that he wants “the people who run CNN to be arrested and deported or hanged.”
As for the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol, when he and other Trump supporters gathered outside the building, Fuentes called it “awesome” and a “fun mischief.” On the anniversary of the riots, he considers it “part of our new legacy,” adding that it should be a holiday. “This is a historic moment for us,” he said. “We should celebrate that it happened, that’s for sure.”
Related: Some Jewish Republicans are among Trump’s most staunch supporters backing up for fear that he was legitimizing anti-Semitism.
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