The Downfall of America First

January 19, 2021 Vladimir Walsh American Nationalism 23

Editor’s Note: As some of you may recall, I was initially supportive of Nick Fuentes and America First during the Groyper War even though I didn’t personally care for him. He struck me as an arrogant, immature and conceited kid. I also agreed with Nick on Christianity. Somewhere in 2020, there came a point when he really began to get on my nerves mainly because it seemed like he had sold out and become just another Trump influencer. This became increasingly obvious during the Stop the Steal rallies which have ended in an absolute disaster for both him and the America First movement. Nick made a fatal mistake in “trusting Trump” and getting involved with these people around him.

I used to have a lot of respect for Nick Fuentes and the “America First” movement. I listened to Nick’s show quite often from around mid-2018 until 2020. I agreed with the vast majority of his viewpoints. I’m even a veteran of the Groyper War and attended one of the Dan Crenshaw events. It was around this time when Nick and his movement started to change.

As a close follower of AF for close to 2 years, summarizing its downfall will be quite easy for me. First off, let’s remember what the main goals of the Groyper War were:

  1. Expose mainstream conservatives (or “Con Inc” as they say) for being hardcore Zionists while rejecting any form of White identity as they also shamelessly pander to other various minority groups
  2. Shine the light on the fact that many mainstream conservatives have been adopting extreme social liberalism
  3. Win people, “the normies,” over to our side into Nationalist politics.

These were not only main tenants of the Groyper War but also main themes of Nick’s show. White Identity, Christian values and highlighting Jewish power were central components of America First until around 2020.

The energy was electric during our feud with TPUSA. I felt as is we were making great progress and exposing the phony liberal right as being completely unfit to deal with any of the problems we are facing as a nation. However, during this time, Nick seemed to make some odd friends. Michelle Malkin, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and various other alt-lite types began to become seemingly sympathetic to Nick’s cause. Malkin even joined in and was a vocal advocate of Nick’s at the time. Alex and Milo both had Nick on their respective shows. Baked Alaska’s career was rehabilitated by Nick and he became relevant again after he had blamed white supremacist meme culture for the Christchurch shooting.

There were definitely reasons to be suspicious of Nick well before the 2020 election. His support of neocon actions in Syria, Iran and Venezuela as well as his various feuds with several of the various figures in the alt-right were all things to raise one’s eyebrows. He went on a weird boomeresque rant on Telegram and questioned if the people who have a problem with America committing war crimes “work for the UN.” But as mentioned before, the overriding theme of America first was White identity, Christian values and the JQ.

Despite being a little late to jump off of the Trump train, Nick was extremely critical of Donald Trump for almost all of 2019 and even called him a Shabbos goy at one point during the Groyper War. He acknowledged the obvious fact that Trump was fulfilling the neoliberal Zionist agenda at the behest of Jared Kushner and his Jewish donors while he completely abandoned the populist campaign issues that won him the 2016 election. Nick also paid little interest to the kabuki theatre surrounding the Russiagate conspiracy that many conservatives became obsessed with (maybe as an excuse to avoid talking about policy that actually affects regular Americans). Initially, he didn’t get onboard with Ramzpaul and Andrew Anglin among others who were claiming COVID was fake or just the flu. Nick supported Yang Gang in early 2019, which became relevant in nationalist circles precisely because of Trump’s betrayal to his pro-white and populist supporters in 2016. Meming Andrew Yang was a repudiation of MIGA.

Even after making some very questionable decisions from late 2019 to early 2020, I thought Fuentes still seemed to have a pretty coherent message and was attacking Republicans, and Trump specifically, for making a concerted effort to bend the knee to BLM while black and anarchist rioters were destroying small businesses and killing innocent white people. He attacked Trump and Mitch McConnell for butchering the COVID relief deal late summer. He acknowledged Trump’s disgusting betrayal of immigration patriot Jeff Sessions.

Today, Nick Fuentes has an entirely different message. Someone who I used to regard as a fellow traveler in the nationalist movement is now nothing but a Trump cheerleader and a self-described Republican. Fuentes is now basically a regular conservative whose biggest gripe with the GOP as it stands seems to be that they are not loyal enough to the King of Israel. This was his main reasoning for telling his fans to not vote in the Georgia runoff. After Loeffler and Perdue lost, Fuentes attempted to take credit by claiming it was payback for the GOP’s supposed betrayal of a New York billionaire who lost the election. The more likely reason the Republicans got smoked in Georgia is the same reason Donald Trump was destroyed in the electoral college: The standard Republican party platform is unpopular with voters.

I suppose Nick hasn’t abandoned talking about Jews entirely, but the seemingly J-woke rhetoric he does now seems to be just partisan attacks disguised as anti-Semitism. During the RNC, he asked one of the Trump critics watching his DLive stream if they were typing their question from Israel. This is an odd accusation to make, considering Trump’s approval rating is way higher in Israel than it is in America (and rightly so). He alluded to Goldman Sachs supposedly gaining prominence in the Joe Biden administration while ignoring the fact that Trump’s economic policy has been run by figures such as Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin.

For someone who used to understand this, I find it hard to believe that Nick is genuinely oblivious to the main storyline of the election, which is that Trump lost much of his white support (mostly in the $50-100K income range) in order to achieve more of a “big tent movement.” Nick openly admitted on a stream before the election that running on the stock market and fear mongering against socialism would not win white working-class voters. Trump won many more libertarians, blacks, never-Trumpers, homosexuals and Orthodox Jews than he did in 2016. This is not a surprise at all. He ran on criminal justice reform, the platinum plan, socialism sucks and MIGA which is why working-class whites rejected him just like they rejected Mitt Romney in 2012. Trump didn’t even pretend to represent whites this time around. Trump and the GOP got the coalition they governed and campaigned for. This is why it is very suspicious for someone who is supposedly a nationalist to attach their movement to MAGA and Stop the Steal.

Why is Nick doing this? What are the reasons for this transformation? Why did he attach his movement to Stop the Steal and the likes of Ali Alexander and essentially QAnon? Did Alex Jones offer him a seat at the table in the rightwing conspiracy-theorist milieu? Maybe this led to him latching onto the hyper-partisan anti-mask crusade or claiming the Coronavirus was a hoax. Or doing Q-tier plan-trusting conspiracies such as suggesting a video of Trump condemning many of his own supporters was potential “deepfake”? Does Milo Yiannopoulos have something compromising on him in his vault? What role did Baked Alaska play? Maybe it was the streaming opportunities and e-clout that arose from Stop the Steal. Could it possibly be a genuine ideological transformation?

One possible argument a defender of Nick’s could make is that he is neutering his message because he thinks it will help him win more people over more conservative Trump supporters. However, I don’t think this makes much sense considering that “normie conservatives” are not ethno-centric and hold far-right economic views that are way more fringe than that of many white independents, who are either moderate or on the left when it comes to economics and often much more ethno-centric. Populists are also the ones who came out strong for Trump in 2016 and then stayed home in 2020 in big numbers. This is largely why Trump lost 13% of the white vote. Why would he bend his message in order to appeal to conservatives and not this demographic?

In my opinion, the most likely scenario is that Nick got bought off by a conservative donor maybe around the time of the Groyper War.

Donald Trump is not a populist, or America-first and certainly not a nationalist. He deported less people than Obama, cut taxes for billionaires and corporations, had an Israel-first foreign policy and was probably the most pro-gay president in history. He supported anti-BDS legislation to strip Americans of their first amendment right to free speech. Trump’s own family members are close to Chabad Lubavitch and he celebrates Hanukkah. True nationalists understand that the GOP is not a vehicle for anything pro-white or populist. It is a wacky coalition of respectable “budget-hawk” Zionists and delusional Trump-cheerleading conspiracy theorists that is primarily funded by Jews and libertarians. Acting like the Republican Party can be reformed into something else is contrary to reality.

I thought the term “wignat” used to mean someone who was a racial purity spiraler, anti-Christian and promoted supposed IRL honeypots (which is ironic considering he incited many of his fans to show up at the MAGA March in DC). Now the term seems to refer to anyone who doesn’t support Donald Trump.

The phony religious angle that Nick tries to play is very misleading too. He has convinced much of his audience that by advocating for Trump (a morally bankrupt billionaire Zionist who has Jewish grandchildren) to have a second term, he is somehow carrying out God’s will.

Overall, I believe the reason that Nick still has any following among people who claim to be nationalists or populists is the same reason for Donald Trump, their personality cult. This is why I think that it’s important to be loyal to your values, your nation and your principles above any one person, especially when that person is an internet streamer who lives with his parents.

23 Comments

  1. Good article. I think, as the author does, that Nick was bought off. I think he got also got some fame and thought he could ride Trump’s coattails and get a seat at the table. That strategy may have been successful if Trump had one, but looking at Trump’s track record, he would have been discarded as soon as Trump saw no need for him. Like garbage.

    Trump seems to hate his friends. Reminds of me of the Mike Tyson quote, I’ll paraphrase, but he said he didn’t like anyone that liked him because deep inside he knew he was a piece of shit.

    He has completely abandoned Nick and pretty much everyone that supported him during both elections and his time in office. Cheated on all his wives etc. I’d have preferred he won, but I’m also looking forward to this MAGA bullshit to go away. Nick will be dropped just like Milo was. He will be an unknown and like Milo, unemployable. Good lessons learned since MAGA was established in 2015.

  2. I never understood Nick supporters, at least people who are over the age of 28. I never heard him give a hot take, all I ever heard from him was insults and some vague notion of a plan whenever I did give him a listen. I could see if you’re in his age group and acclimatized to his humor maybe you’d find it entertaining, the same way Gen Xers or Boomers enjoy Alex Jones, but there no there there with Nick.

    I’m not a fan of Spencer, but at least he seems to be pushing to the Left on economics like pretty much everyone else in this thing. The few hot takes he gives, are at least hot takes. The closest Fuentes ever got to doing anything was promoting the Groyper War even though he didn’t initiate it.

    What generation do you fall into? How could you stomach even listening to the guy?

    I have more hope in Q-Boomers coming around than Amnats. Who would cling on to the word of a guy in his early 20s that claims to have a master plan as long as you stay away from everyone else he deems “cringe”? That he has some master plan that no one has thought about but he can’t give you any of the details other than to do what he says?

    Then you see him palling around with Fag Informant Milo and retard extraordinaire Baked Alaska and yet you still think to yourself “Yeah, this guy is going to lead us to victory!”

    I guess you could attempt to compare Cantwell to Baked but at least Cantwell has read a book instead of showing it off to random thots outside of sports bars.

    Kudos Vladimir for at least admitting you had a problem, but please enlighten me on what made yourself and other Amnats think Nick was a good leader. I’m genuinely curious to know. To be fair though, every vocal person in wignat sphere deserves at least part of the blame. I couldn’t count how many times Nick’s stupidity or ignorance was explained away by adults (including his nemisis Spencer) as “immaturity” likely because they were impressed by his ability to draw in crowds.

    • I think the generation under 30 are different and respond more to personality cult e-grifter types who they have been influenced by for around 15 years now. Those of us who are older spent our formative years online reading diverse literature, maybe using Usenet newsgroups or VBulliten type forums. We were used to reading different sources and not having any TV host type “personality” guiding us through everything we were learning about. The online political world before social media, video streamers and 4chan was more about ideas and less about simplistic memes and irony/shock humor.

      These millennial e-celebs function just like the old media’s TV talking heads and boomer talk radio. It’s taking the old 1.0 internet, which was based on horizontal discussion and information exchange and replacing it with a clone of Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh who just does a similar show online instead of radio or cable TV.

  3. The difference between him and James Alsup is night and day. James embraced his actual beliefs and acted like an adult focussing on doing research and putting out a great product to the point he is the single person keeping any TRS show listenable. Fuentes got high on his own supply and his little man complex became obvious as he used nothing but obnoxious snark and misplaced arrogance. I watched him a few times and the way he speaks about women sounds like Anglin again with the small man although possibly a homosexual reason behind it. He mocked viewers, dismissed anyone who tipped under five dollars and like women seems to hate anyone who works out and lifts weights.

    He is definitely obnoxious and there is no way anyone under 30 takes him serious unless they are in it for exploitation or grift but it doesnt matter. Nick’s brand was tainted the moment he talked about the JQ. There is no coming back from that in the mainstream unless you go the Cristian Piccolini route and use it as something you have been reformed from. We still should throw the kid some support and vocally make it clear that no one besides Alex Jones, Ali Alexander, Flynn, and especially Trump and Giuliani did to cause the Capitol problem. They are the big players and they openly called for their followers to act the way they did. Fuentes, Baked and the rest I dont want to see go to prison. It was stupid and irresponsible but when the President tells you to march on Congress and you believe in Info Wars type craziness what else do you do?

  4. Did Nick associating with a freakshow like Catboy “Lolisocks” Kami and all of his other closeted tendencies start to wear on you after awhile? I largely stopped taking him seriously after he did a several-hour stream with this nobody wearing cat ears and an anime girl t-shirt- where almost anyone who saw them would think they were a gay couple- and everything else that came about some random Australian pedophile he wanted to convert to catholicism.

  5. His shift in tone is because he is desperate for normie approval, even though normies are never going to view him any differently than Richard Spencer (perhaps worse actually, since he supported the capitol siege)
    It was probably all bullshit since the beginning though, a dude who is literally Mexican calling someone a shabbos goy for condemning the El Paso shootings cannot be taken seriously.

  6. No, “America First” isn’t finished (unfortunately). It will linger on in Conservatism, even in Nationalism to an extent, and every group who lies between the two spheres in limbo. That Nationalist-lite slogan is now the new Conservatism through a Conservatization-effect.

  8. Fuentes is a callow political commentator, HW. He is still in his early 20s and will no doubt undergo many more changes before he finally develops his true political identity. Having said all that he is still a smug, annoying little fruit.

  9. I didn’t think he would say this but I agree with you.
    Nick changed after the groypers wars, I mean since he became “mainstream” he began to have a ridiculous obsession with optics, he began to betray his old friends, he began to moderate to the point that he was indistinguishable from Charlie Kirk, of course , the groypers lobbied Kirk and Con inc on immigration issues and condemnation of degeneration, but he is no longer the same fascist Nick from 2017-2018. Nick used to talk about Franco, Mosley, Mussolini, and other fascist leaders on his show, he didn’t have an obsession with optics, he didn’t seek to fight everyone and he didn’t seek to have a cult of personality.
    I wish him the best and I hope he can mature, because despite everything I think he has a lot of potential, now that Trump is gone, will Nick be the one he was before?
    Who knows, but for now, I’m done with AF.

  10. Off topic but I was just reading over at the Daily Stormer to see Anglin’s reaction and he has an article up saying not to use soap or deodorant, or wear underwear. He’s having a good laugh at the expense of his loyal followers. He and weev have been trolling pro-Whites for awhile.

  11. Excellent critique. Nick’s message has definitely softened and his back-peddling in the wake of 1/6 are embarrassing.

  12. In the post Stalin Soviet Union, most dissidents were bought off by KGB . Repressions were only for hardcore patriot’s who refused any compromise.

    Soviet system was much more intelligent . After Stalin, everybody understood that blatant violence does not work and since then , system operated by rewards. When someone quit dissident activity, he was no longer repressed.

    Of course, suspicious people were kept away for important position, but living normal life and make career was not a problem.

  14. There was a remarkable documentary on BBC last night that looked at the move of the Jerusalem embassy. The documentarian was covering the role of Hagee and Robertson. The filmmajer appeared to be a secular Jew. Basically it is outlining a Jewish scam that empties the pockets of the Goyim evangelicals but somehow the film maker ended up placing teh blame on the marks for the con. Fuentes is in this deeper than you know as a middle man for the Globohomo gay Op.

  15. The only way Americans will get their liberties back is to make America unattractive and useless to Zionist parasites.

    • The post-white US looks like a post apocalyptic third world plague zone run by a military junta.

      Very Appropriate.

    • That’s going to happen regardless. We will have a lot more “liberty” as the USA becomes more like latin america. For now, American corruption is concentrated at the top. The ruling class holds the monopoly on corruption and does not allow others to practice it. But as the country circles down the drain, corruption will become democratized and trickle down to the lower centers of power like it is in latin america. Ironically, this sort of widespread corruption allows more liberty in a way because it becomes easier to bribe law enforcement.

  16. “highlighting Jewish power”

    The “Groypers” were a target as soon as that guy stood up and mentioned the “dancing Israelis.” One can assume Fuentes was in a “plato y plomo” situation, and as these things often do, you make a deal with the devil and you will eventually pay the price.

    Fuentes knew that Trump’s movement was Israeli.

  18. Guys like Fuentes don’t have any allegiance, they just where the money and popularity is. Nick is just young kid with no real integrity

  19. He was squeezed by the system just like everybody. If we had the freedom we had just five years ago he would probably be making the same points. Sharp kid, though. If he had Done The Kirk and signed up with Conservatism Inc. he’d probably be a millionaire by now, a young Rush Limbaugh.

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