Nick Fuentes Emerges as Far-Right Firebrand Shaping Extremist Fringe

Lead: Nicholas “Nick” Fuentes, a 27-year-old American live-streamer and activist, has risen to national prominence by promoting white-supremacist views and leading the so-called “Groyper” movement from his Chicago base today, September 13, 2025.

Nut Graf: Once a fringe figure, Fuentes now commands a devoted following through his nightly “America First” broadcasts and annual America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), challenging mainstream conservatism and pressuring Republican figures to adopt his hard-right agenda.

Origin and Rise

  • Born August 18, 1998, in Chicago, Fuentes dropped out of Boston University in 2017 after attending the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
  • He founded AFPAC in 2020 to rival CPAC, drawing crowds of thousands of far-right activists.

Ideology and Tactics

  • Fuentes openly espouses antisemitic, misogynistic, homophobic and xenophobic conspiracy theories, denies the Holocaust and praises authoritarian regimes.
  • He deploys “irony poisoning”-masking extremist rhetoric as humor-to evade content moderation, leading to his permanent YouTube ban in 2020.

The “Groyper” Movement

  • His followers, nicknamed “Groypers,” disrupt conservative events to accuse establishment figures of being insufficiently radical, notably targeting Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk since 2019.
  • The group’s guerrilla-style confrontations underscore Fuentes’s strategy to pull the GOP toward hard-right nationalism.

Political Influence and Controversies

  • Fuentes dined with former President Trump and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022, provoking bipartisan condemnation.
  • White House and Republican aides often refuse to comment on him, fearing online reprisals from his zealous supporters.
  • He publicly broke with Trump ahead of the 2024 election over immigration and foreign-policy disputes, accusing the former president of betraying “America First” ideals.

Legal and Personal Profile

  • A self-described “involuntary celibate,” Fuentes claims traditionalist Catholic beliefs and controversial personal directives for his followers on relationships and conduct.
  • In late 2024, his home address was doxed during an online backlash over one of his tweets, leading to an alleged attack and subsequent legal charges-an incident that Fuentes says was a “murder attempt”.

Outlook As 2025 unfolds, Fuentes continues to leverage social media platforms like X and Rumble to expand his reach, leaving mainstream conservatives to grapple with the growing influence of his extremist network on American politics.