Beneath the spectacle, the right-wing influencer has created a heap of human wreckage.
Whatever else may be said about him, one fact cannot be denied: Nicholas J. Fuentes, the 27-year-old racialist influencer, is on the run of his life.
That’s a remarkable shift from 2017, when Fuentes was a little-known university freshman who hosted alittle-watchedpolitical talk show. Over time, he developed a fanatical, cultlike following known as the “Groypers.” His digital following soon crossed over into the real world: first, with hisinvolvementin the 2017 Unite the Right rally; then, with his long-running feud with conservative activist Charlie Kirk; and finally, with his role in “Stop the Steal,” which culminatedoutside the U.S. Capitolon January 6.
Finally, a reason to check your email.
Fuentes has cultivated a reputation as the most provocative and controversial figure on the Right. He has done this by embracing taboos,praising Hitler, andopposinginterracial marriage. In turn, he has ridden a wave of spectacle and outrage to new heights, with an appearance onThe Tucker Carlson Show, and garnering frequent coverage in outlets such as theNew York TimesandThe Atlantic.
Attempting to undercut his growing influence, the media and Fuentes’s right-leaning critics both tend to focus on Fuentes’s record of offensive remarks. Take Fuentes’s appearance onPiers Morgan Uncensored. During the two-hour interview, Morgan played a litany of clips from Fuentes’s talk show, highlighting bigoted comments he’s made over the years.
But this line of attack merely plays into Fuentes’s hands. As one of us has previouslynoted, Fuentes is best understood as an actor in what postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard called “hyperreality.” Under conditions of hyperreality, symbols of past phenomena lose their meaning and circulate as hollowed-out images through the digital landscape, where they drive discourse and spark emotional reactions.
This is the framework through which Fuentes, with his professed admiration forHitler and Stalin, and his embrace of anti-Semitism, should be understood. Above all, he is engaged in a performative demand for attention, cynically harnessing transgression to drive clicks, sow chaos, and gain notoriety.
By contrast, thisCity Journalinvestigation—which draws on livestreams, a review of public records, and interviews with key associates—focuses not on Fuentes’s words but on his actions. (Fuentes did not return a detailed request for comment for this article.) It looks beneath the spectacle of outrage and the self-mythology he has curated and reveals a shocking heap of human wreckage that has accumulated within Fuentes’s political universe: betrayal, pedophilia, suicide, murder.
Welcome to the freak world of Nicholas J. Fuentes.
Source: Drudge Report
