It’s remarkable how right-wing authoritarians like Donald Trump and his white-nationalist handmaidens are able to successfully market themselves as “populists”—men of the people, who stand up for ordinary Americans, etc. etc. But anyone who pays close attention or peeks behind the authoritarian stage curtain is well aware that this façade masks a seething contempt for those same ordinary people, as well as a driving desire to control them.
White nationalist “Groyper army” general Nick Fuentes—evidently angry and exasperated that the right’s eagerly awaited “red tsunami” utterly failed to materialize during this week’s midterms, and reaching for the Copium along with the rest of his MAGA-loving cohorts—let the mask slip the day after the election. Acknowledging the election actually manifested that abortion is popular with American voters, he ranted on his podcast that America is “an evil country” and that “dictatorship” is the only solution: “We need to take control of the media, take control of the government, and force the people to believe what we believe.”
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Fuentes’ “America First” PAC has been effective at spreading its white-nationalist agenda within the Republican Party, though GOP leadership continues to keep him at arm’s length. In his Wednesday podcast, Fuentes noted that Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy has told people who’ve inquired about Fuentes that “he doesn’t like me.” Nonetheless, his “Groyper army” maintains a grip on influential segments of the GOP, particularly the Marjorie Taylor Greene/Paul Gosar bloc.
White nationalists have a hoary tradition of claiming to represent real Americans, something the name of Fuentes’ organization reflects—along with its ardent embrace of Trump and his politics of authoritarian conspiracism. And of course, Fuentes has played a leading role not just in participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection when it happened, but in organizing and promoting the ensuing far-right insurgency that has followed in the many months since.
But after dealing with Tuesday’s bitter disappointment, Fuentes went on his Wednesday podcast and—after reminding everyone that “It really is us and Trump against everyone”—made it clear that he actually hates America and Americans, has nothing but contempt for whatever might be “popular” since, he acknowledged, “the abortion effect was felt, in early voting.” Then the “populist” mask came off:
And you gotta recognize the fact that this is a godless country. I hate it. It’s immoral, it’s wrong, it’s heinous, it’s evil. But this is an evil country. And this country will surprise you with how evil it is.
And that’s why you’ve got to get this out of your head that there is some silent majority cavalry that’s going to come out of the woods and save us at the last minute. It’s not. ….
Because we are in the minority. There are not as many of us as there are of them. If they all had to vote, if you forced every man and woman in America to vote, there would be more of them than us by a lot. That’s why they win the popular vote … There is no evidence there is a silent majority. There are too many nonwhite people in the country.
Fuentes then launched into his customary antisemitism—which is a fundamental part of what he considers being a “real American”:
There’s not enough of us, OK? Now, that’s not a total blackpill, because this isn’t a democracy, and we don’t want it to be. But the point is, when you look at these things like abortion, it’s popular. People like abortion. Hate it, but it’s true. And you can thank the Jewish media for that. Abortion’s popular, sodomy’s popular, you know, being gay is popular, being a feminist is popular, sex out of wedlock is popular. Contraception is—it's all popular. That’s not to say it’s good. That’s not to say I like that. Popular means the people support it. They do.
This, naturally, brought out his inner, unrepentant neofascist authoritarian:
And it sucks, and it is what it is, but that’s why we need dictatorship. [Guffaws] That’s ironically why we need to get rid of all that.
We need to take control of the media, take control of the government, and force the people to believe what we believe. Or force them to play by our rules, and reshape the society. Because right now, you look across the board, and you put on a referendum whether we want to live in a gay country or non-gay country, a feminist country or a non-feminist country, abortion land, no abortions—you’re gonna be disappointed in the results.
Fuentes ranted along these lines for the better part of an hour. He denounced democracy as an invalid system because it gives equal power to people of wide-ranging abilities and disabilities. He also ran down a list of people he would deny voting rights to:
If you’re an immigrant, no vote for you. If you’re here for one or two generations, you don’t get to vote. If you’re a woman, you will never get to vote. If you’re a child, you don’t get to vote. These are my stipulations, OK? That’s how you prevent stroke victims and criminals and Nelson Mandela-style terrorists that wanna kill all white people for being beautiful—that’s how you prevent them from getting elected. Because otherwise it’s gonna be Brazil and South Africa forever.
… These are one of two pathways if we don’t save ourselves with a return to dictatorship, aristocracy, something a little more … refined, a little more sensible.
This is where open white nationalists now are in the post-insurrection arc of radicalization: explicitly racist and antisemitic, and openly agitating for replacing democracy with a Trumpian autocracy. For guys like Fuentes, Ye’s recent embrace of antisemitism simply became an excuse to be open and unapologetic in his bigotry—to try to make it part of a recruitment appeal. With the election over, their desire to remake the GOP into a minoritarian-rule, pro-dictatorship party is now out in the open, for everyone to see.
Don’t expect the Republican establishment to embrace Fuentes’ open authoritarianism in public, at least not right away. They’ll either be cowed or weasel right into it eventually, anyway.
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