Groypers Are Just More Honest MAGAs

Why Fuentes has already won

There’s a quote from one of Lincoln’s letters in 1855 that perfectly sums up how I feel when thinking about the current conservative movement and the challenge from Groypers.

As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

When I say the right is being Groyperized, some respond that not that many people have heard of Nick Fuentes. This is kind of like saying that Republicans aren’t a low tax party because nobody knows who Grover Norquist is. Obviously, people can have major impacts on political movements without being household names.

I think the revolution has already happened, with National Conservative ideology and MAGA only adding to Groyperism the “base alloy of hypocrisy.” To see why, we can just look at what Groyperization essentially means. I’d argue it has the following five elements.

1. A strong white identity and focus on whites being oppressed, which in terms of policy manifests itself mainly in a preference for reducing immigration so whites can maintain demographic dominance.

2. A belief that policy and culture should be understood through the lens of zero-sum competition between Americans and foreigners, whites and nonwhites, Christians and non-Christians. This is the case both in terms of public recognition and the struggle for tangible resources.

3. There is a hierarchy of Americanness in which people are ranked according to race, adherence to Christianity, and how long their ancestors have been in the country.

4. A communication style and aesthetic that centers around shock value, giving the middle finger to PC, and taking “based” positions on identity issues.

5. A dislike of Jewish power and influence, manifesting itself most clearly in wanting to end the US special relationship with Israel

Mainstream MAGA has already fully adopted 1-4. These also are part of the worldview of what are called “dissident right” or “national conservatism,” with broadly defined race being an arguable sticking point. Only 5 is left to fight about.

On immigration, the watershed moment came in 2019 when Charlie Kirk changed his position on the issue in response to pressure from Fuentes and his fans. Although practically everyone on the right already opposed illegal immigration, until that point, supporting legal, especially highly skilled, immigration, was a popular conservative position, while white nationalists and nativists just wanted fewer people coming in. Over the last several years, the nativist position has triumphed among right-leaning intellectuals and influencers.

Not only do most mainstream conservatives with national ambitions oppose more legal immigration, they make nativist rhetoric central to the worldview they pitch to voters. When Vance was asked by Ross Douthat about his economic vision, the two problems that he pointed to were too much trade and immigration. As I’ve pointed out, this makes no sense when placed alongside his support for AI and automation, and his positions on trade and immigration should therefore be understood as reflecting identitarian signaling rather than a coherent economic vision. When discussing why housing prices are high, the vice president similarly goes straight to competition with newcomers, showing no interest in the serious work that has been done on this issue. Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, has decided to put his newfound opposition to H1B visas central to his attempts to stay relevant as a potential presidential candidate.

Now, if you ask Fuentes why he wants less immigration, he’ll say that it’s because he thinks America should be a white country. JD Vance and Ron DeSantis, like Charlie Kirk before he died, will always deny racist motivations, but go out of their way to blame immigration for all problems that the country faces, cherrypick whatever evidence they can find to make that case, and prioritize keeping people out. There is a reason that white nationalists once considered Republicans to be part of an establishment duopoly they were opposed to, and now have become cheerleaders for the Trump-era GOP. People can oppose some forms of immigration for non-identitarian reasons, but given that the stated reasons for making restrictionism a priority centering around crime and economic harms are simply not true – especially for tech workers! – the motivation is clearly something else. Groypers are just more honest about what is going on here.

Although tonally different, in reality Fuentes and mainstream Republican politicians are not that far apart on identity issues. Vance, for example, has said that Americans whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have more of a claim to the country than their political opponents. Senator Eric Schmitt just gave a speech that in effect endorsed an ethnic conception of the nation. Josh Hawley meanwhile calls himself a “Christian Nationalist,” which makes it difficult to oppose the Groyper view that other faiths are less welcome. And Congressman Randy Fine just denounced antisemitism and advocated for Zohran Mamdani to be deported in the exact same speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition. What he would apparently like is a country that says some American citizens belong based on their religion and others don’t, differing with Groypers only in that he wants Jews placed in the inner circle.

Fuentes willing to say the word “white,” while normal GOP politicians won’t is more an issue of branding than anything else. You could even say Fuentes is more inclusive than Vance, since whiteness includes people like Slavs. Vance placing those who were here in the nineteenth century at the top of the hierarchy reflects a much narrower vision.

Meanwhile, in foreign affairs we observe the conservative movement adopting priorities that only make sense from an ethno-nationalist perspective. See the deep concern with immigration to Europe. If that is about maintaining Western Civilization rather than race, what are we to make of the Trump administration cutting refugee numbers from 125,000 to 7,500, with most spots going to white South Africans? This is exactly what you would get if refugee policy was rewritten by Groypers in the federal bureaucracy, which it may have well been given what we know about the views of staffers in the Trump administration.

One might argue that the ideology of MAGA is just as much multinational nativism as white nationalism. There is something to this, as immigration restrictions, for example, are justified as protecting the jobs of all Americans, rather than those of a specific skin color. I think the way to understand mainstream MAGA is that it creates a hierarchy of concern and legitimacy, with whites outranking nonwhites; Christians outranking non-Christians; and the native-born outranking the foreign born, regardless of legality or naturalization status.

Here you can make an analogy to wokeness, which gives individuals oppression points based on various identity traits. This creates certain tensions, like whether you should listen more to the opinion of a white lesbian or a straight black male. Likewise, under mainstream MAGA, a Hispanic individual born in the US is more part of the community than one born abroad, even if naturalized, but a white person whose ancestors have been in the country for hundreds of years is valued more highly than both. Maybe there is controversy over who is more credible as a nationalist, say a native born Hispanic or a new migrant from the UK. This is why among foreigners, white South Africans get priority. Just as with wokeness, sometimes the hierarchies are in tension, but what you’re essentially doing in each case is ranking individuals according to identity-based characteristics and then working out the details.

Nationalism based on religion and ethnicity is particularly pernicious in America. Some nations like Japan and Hungary are still at the point in their history where they can maintain an overwhelming majority for their ethnic core. In the US, non-Hispanic whites are already a minority of children. Only about 60% identify as Christian. We’re facing an ideology that says maybe a third of the population are true Americans, and everyone else has a second- or third-tier status. And you potentially kill what actually makes the US great, which is not how many of your pappies or grandpappies are buried in the same place, but liberal values, which includes openness to immigration. The US has left other rich countries in the dust on the back of the success of its tech industry, which draws talent from across the world. The nativists want to make us “like every other country,” forgetting that most countries contribute nothing distinctive to humanity. If they win, we’ll get the slower growth and civil strife that is normal, without even the consolation of a common culture, since we’re already too diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, and values to create the kind of homogenous society that they want.

Note how when a nonwhite American citizen who is of recent immigrant status becomes prominent on the other side, rightists will start advocating that they be kicked out of the country. We’re not talking about only fringe figures doing this. Ilhan Omar became a US citizen at 17 years old. Calling for her deportation is now a normal part of right-wing discourse, coming not just from frog accounts on X, but also Ron DeSantis and sitting members of Congress, with one of them asking people to sign a petition to expel her in a fundraising letter. As mentioned, there have been similar attacks on Zohran Mamdani. Remember that Trump initially emerged as a major player in Republican politics by being the most prominent figure willing to embrace the Birther conspiracy theory about Obama. Whether anyone on the right actually believes denaturalization is possible or that Obama was born in Kenya isn’t the point. Rather, the culture of the right revolves around signaling the idea that nonwhites and recent arrivals are less American than white conservatives.

Almost all Republicans will officially denounce racism. Fuentes likewise sometimes adopts more moderate language. Along with claiming that America is a white nation, he has also said that if you were born in this country, it is your birthright and he will ally with you as long as you are America First. So sometimes he speaks in racial terms, and at other points endorses color-blind nationalism. This is not much different from Vance, who likes to pull out the ancestor card in the same way a black woman might have at the height of the Great Awokening. Maybe Fuentes talks about race 80% of the time and endorses color-blind nationalism 20% of the time, and the proportion is flipped for Vance. But both agree that time in the country, religious background, and ancestry all matter, and that some have more of a claim to America than others on that basis. It’s pretty thin gruel to put so much stock in the fact that Vance just doesn’t say the word “white.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean 100% of Republican politicians are on board with this vision. Vivek Ramaswamy is likely to be the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, and he speaks out against racism and doesn’t prioritize demonizing legal immigrants. But just because you can find Republican politicians who are pro-choice doesn’t mean that as a party it doesn’t oppose abortion rights. One has to bend the knee to pro-lifers to some extent if you have national ambitions, and the same is true now for white nationalists, especially when it comes to their ideas about immigration and identity. This is true even if at the state level and among members of Congress, you still see some who take a position contrary to the dominant trend in the party. Vance is still unique among Republican politicians in the extent to which he stresses identitarian concerns, but he’s ridden this ideology all the way to the vice presidency, and all the momentum is with people who talk similarly and have the same worldview based on white grievance and anti-foreigner demagoguery.

Stylistically and in terms of aesthetics, the conservative movement has likewise moved towards Groyperdom. Regarding number four from the list above, this is just the Based Ritual, which has become the default way of communicating among conservatives. See Matt Walsh denouncing the idea that anyone would ever “punch right” by criticizing those who say pro-Nazi things. Groypers are simply a more extreme version of this, and one key to Fuentes’ success is that he says on livestream what a lot of young rightists only say in group chats. Again, we’re only talking about a matter of degrees.

That leaves the Jewish Question. We no longer see debates between Groypers and more mainstream figures on immigration or national identity because the Groypers have won. Vance has basically adopted every substantive idea and aesthetic preference with regards to this issue being pushed by white nationalists, short of denouncing his own family. The same is true for opposition to DEI and affirmative action, which also used to be an issue that distinguished white identitarians but now is so baked into Republican politics that you can’t even list it as a feature of Groyperism.

That’s why the focus has moved to Israel. Nearly every ambitious Republican politician and right-wing influencer thinks whites are oppressed and immigration should be significantly reduced, if not ended, and that it is wrong to ever denounce anyone on their side for racism or sexism. But the Jews remain the final boss of Republican establishment taboos. The Trump administration is of course pro-Israel, and has even created a moral panic backed by federal power on the topic of antisemitism. But things are shifting in the direction of the Groypers, with young Republicans more likely to be anti-Israel and adopt antisemitic attitudes, and major right-wing influencers sounding more and more like Fuentes. Unlike with immigration, there is more pushback here from GOP donors, so the ultimate Groyper victory is taking longer. But the trends are unmistakable.

There’s a subtext to debates about Israel, which is over whether Jews should be considered true Americans. People like Tucker say they want Israel to be treated “like every other country.” Yet when it comes to Europeans facing threats from Islamic radicals, or even Muslim economic migrants, the American right is overwhelmingly on the side of the white Christians. This is why they spend a lot of time talking about topics like Pakistani grooming gangs in the UK, which resembles their obsession with white South Africans. An anti-globalist movement suddenly starts closely following international news when there is a dispute between white Christians on one side and blacks or Muslims on the other.

Jewish MAGAs look at this and wonder why Israel doesn’t get similar sympathy. Nobody on the right says don’t talk about UK grooming gangs because you have to be America First. Why is Israel’s war different? A liberal might say that Israel has killed too many civilians for it to deserve sympathy, but even if that is true, the idea that the right at this point in history cares about the human rights of Palestinians is a joke, and misunderstands everything that’s been happening over the last several years. When Tucker says that Israel should be treated like every other country, then, he means every other non-white country: they don’t get the presumption from the MAGA coalition of always being the victims in disputes occurring overseas in the same way that white Christians do.

This has implications for how Jews are thought of within the United States. Whatever one believes about the war in Gaza, the focus on Israel coming from people like Tucker and Fuentes is part of a broader effort to delegitimize the idea that Jews have status equal to that of white Christians within the United States. Randy Fine kind of gets this, which is why he begs Jews and Christians to unite around ideas like deporting Mamdani.

With all that in mind, it’s no wonder that Fuentes has been succeeding. Politicians like Vance tell Americans that immigrants are destroying the country, that foreigners are taking their jobs and committing crimes, and that anyone who ever denounces anyone else for bigotry is a cuck doing the bidding of the left. A guy who talks about ancestry being central to American identity suddenly finds himself shocked when members of his movement start asking questions about his Indian wife and brown children.

MAGAs, National Conservatives, and postliberals want to have the best of all worlds. They go around heavily implying that some American citizens belong less than others on account of their race, religion, or place of birth. They will usually avoid explicitly putting things in those terms, because they also want to avoid charges of racism. Their politics revolves around stoking bigotry against Americans of the wrong religion and recent arrivals, falsely arguing they have high crime rates and relying on economic illiteracy to portray them as threats to Americans’ standard of living.

MAGAs who want to exclude Groypers from their coalition would like to continue benefitting from racist ideas and attitudes without ever having to face electoral, coalitional, or PR consequences for it. Nick Fuentes has helped make this balancing act less tenable. We should perhaps thank him for showing so clearly what is the ultimate end point of right-wing identity politics.