Who is Nick Fuentes? The white supremacist who has divided the right, explained.

Conservatives have been engaged in a heated and controversial debate about this for several weeks Anti-Semitism and the kind of Characters that may or may not be part of the Republican Party. At the center of this dispute is a 27-year-old white supremacist And far right political influencer who hosts an online show called America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes.

On his show, Fuentes shares Christian nationalist, misogynisticAnd anti-Semitic Recordings with hundreds of thousands of viewers. And that's because of his audience – namely has grown Since the death of fellow right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, longtime conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson decided to sit down with him friendly conversation.

The Game came immediately, in part due to recent cases linking Republican officials to Nazi beliefs and symbols, including the leaked messages of young GOP leaders making jokes about gas chambers, and a The American flag merged with a swastika hangs in the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-OH). But the controversy also spread because “[Fuentes] has become incredibly more powerful, and he knows it too. So he's able to use that to draw people's attention to him,” said Wired's disinformation and online extremism reporter David Gilbert told Explained today Co-host Noel King.

Can Fuentes really influence how young conservatives think and vote? Gilbert, who has watched Fuentes closely, says yes. He spoke with King to explain Fuentes' appeal to young men and to help situate Fuentes in the modern GOP.

Below is an excerpt from their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's a lot more in the full podcast, so listen Explained today Wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, PandoraAnd Spotify.

What is the tenor of Nick Fuentes' show for people who only know him casually?

It's pretty well structured. He usually spends at least a few hours talking about one or two of the biggest stories of the day in his world. And it's just him speaking directly to the camera. He doesn't speak according to a script; He's not talking about a teleprompter. But he's incredibly good at speaking off the cuff. He reports on much of the power struggle within the right-wing media. He talks quite a bit about immigration. He obviously talks quite a bit about the Trump administration.

But I suppose one of the most important, right The The main theme he talks about – and this is what he usually comes back to every time – is his deeply anti-Semitic worldview, that he blames Israel and the Jewish people for all of society's ills.

So there are different aspects here: there is the anti-Israel sentiment; there is the anti-Semitic sentiment; There is an anti-immigrant sentiment. How would you describe his worldview? What does it represent?

He has a pretty hateful worldview. I think the really surprising thing about what we've seen recently – where his profile has increased and he's been embraced by more mainstream members of the right, so to speak – is the fact that they're kind of ignoring the fact that he's championed Hitler in the past, that he's talked about how raping women isn't that problematic.

He has these really hateful views about the world where he feels like he's being attacked as a white male Christian (he's Catholic) and that his homeland is being attacked by all of these things [forces]be it feminism or the woke mob, as he calls it – “the woke mind virus”. He believes that he is the one who is being attacked, that white men, and particularly white Christian men, have been marginalized in their own country. And that's kind of the core of what he believes in […]

He did not vote for Donald Trump in the election. He didn't urge his supporters to vote because he felt Trump simply wasn't “America First” enough. As for JD Vance, it's even worse. He believes Vance failed American men by not marrying a white Christian woman. He said if JD Vance decides to run in 2028, which looks like that, and if the GOP nominates him, then Fuentes will launch a campaign using his supporters to undermine that candidacy.

In recent years there has been a cohort of young conservative men and women who have had different relationships with each other, feuds, alliances and so on.

Talk to me about where Fuentes fits on this spectrum of right-wing figures and what his relationships are like with them.

It's really interesting and it's not the same as it was five, six, seven years ago when he performed after Unite the Right. When people first started paying attention to him, he was seen as something of an outlier, a fringe figure who didn't really take it seriously. And so he wasn't really discussed in the same sense as figures like Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens.

More recently, the same personalities have had to take notice as his audience has grown, particularly in the last six months. [Fuentes] has become incredibly more powerful – and he knows it too. So he can use that to draw people's attention to him.

We obviously saw that Tucker Carlson interviewed him recently, which was the most high-profile interview he's had so far. But we've seen the likes of Alex Jones and Candace Owens – they've all had him on their podcasts. And they argue among themselves on different levels.

His main opponent and the person he fought the most with was Charlie Kirk from 2019, when they began what Fuentes called the Groyper War – “Groypers” was the name for the people supporting Nick Fuentes.

What he did then was, when Charlie Kirk went to the colleges and talked to people and debated, he had his supporters go there and question Charlie Kirk about his support for Israel, question him about immigration, question him about the things that Fuentes felt Charlie Kirk wasn't questioned enough about, and where he felt like he could be attacked for not being conservative enough; he wasn’t “America First” enough.

said Tucker Carlson [that] He had just spoken to Nick Fuentes and didn't necessarily agree with everything he said. But at the same time he is dealing with it. And I think for Fuentes this is victory. That's what he wants. He wants people to be able to see him.

Why do so many people who seem to disagree with him still invite him and talk to him anyway? I assume they get something too. What is this about?

I think people like Tucker Carlson are afraid of being left behind. Because they clearly understand that Fuentes has tapped into something. His audience is this young, white, male audience that is incredibly powerful and that people don't want to miss out on. By interviewing him, Tucker Carlson gets a little of the aura that Fuentes radiates to his supporters.

I think that's the main reason because they know Fuentes will drive the commitment. If you look at the numbers in Tucker's video, they are huge compared to the others posted in the last few weeks.

What makes Fuentes so successful?

I think the fact that he's open about the fact that he's not in a relationship, has never really been in a relationship with a woman, is one of them [his audience] – is one of the people he talks to: these young men who may have difficulty finding their identity in the United States, who may have difficulty finding a job, difficulty finding a house, difficulty finding a relationship or a community of friends. Fuentes responded.

Over the last six months, Nick Fuentes has seen his star rise. He has gained a large number of followers online; A lot more people watch his show every night. Now he is making a lot of money from this show. And he's in a situation now where I don't think he even thought he would come back in 2020 when he was banned from YouTube and all other platforms.

He's now in a position where I think he can implement change within the Republican Party from within. He is smart enough to do this by not creating an organization where people can be identified as members of the Nick Fuentes fan club. He tells his followers: Don't identify yourself as a groyper. Do it under the radar. Join your local Republican Party and influence people from within, not from without.

It is very difficult to fully verify this, but he says he has supporters within the government. He has followers across the country who infiltrate local political parties. He will seek from the ground up to influence the behavior of the Republican Party over the next decade. And he does it really cleverly and in a really dangerous way, so it's very, very hard for anyone to know what's happening.