The Nick Fuentes Question
The Groyper Infiltration of Catholicism
The last few weeks, as admittedly has been the case for the last ten, twenty, or really eighty years, have been a roller coaster of emotion, expectation, fear, and relief as the drums of war beat in the middle of domestic discord, violent posturing, and the seeming inevitability that American tanks would be swerving, bumping, and exploding about the mountains near Tehran by now.
Half of the [“official”] political right was crying for war, the other half, the unofficial half, the masses of the people, crying for peace, and for some, crying about how American foreign policy has been entirely coopted by Israel. I leaned toward the latter side of the debate over U.S. involvement personally, not wanting to end up dead storming an Iranian position when it seemed to me that the recent Iran-Israel war wasn’t really a just, nor necessary war, but a preemptive decapitation strike by one aggressive regime against a terrorist one, halfway around the world.
But one step that I noticed many people making—but didn’t want to take myself, was jumping from “we should not be involved in Israel’s war” all the way to “Israel and the Jews and the Dispensationalist protestants who support them are our mortal enemy”1 and even people beginning to say that certain villains of a war of around 80 years ago were actually the real heroes and certain victims the archvillains.2
Of course the recent 12-Day War wasn’t the first time that many right wing people, including many traditionally minded Catholics have professed such larger claims. Over the last few years I’ve encountered many who tried to push me and my friends in this direction, talking up political grouping of “America First” minded people such as one nicknamed the “Groypers” that has developed around a young aggressive and claimedly Catholic community organizer named Nick Fuentes.3
On the surface, these groups appeal well to many right wing young men like me. The system is broken. The deep state controls and influences just about every event. Epstein’s crimes prove that our politicians are blackmailed and willing pedophile criminals. Mass immigration is destroying our society and our futures. Even the Church is corrupted, prelates bought off, and focused on left wing political games rather than the Gospel.
My Experiences of Groyper Thought in the Church
My exposure to revisionist (yet empathetic) historians like
and realization from my own studies of how fake, manipulated, and messy history is along with my friendship with many right wingers who are far further to the right and in the “trad” directions than I am only made me more susceptible. Mimetic desire, or conforming to the beliefs and desires of an in-group, for me meeting a small circle of traditionally Catholic young people also amped up interest in whatever those around me like me we’re saying, believing, and thinking.But one incident gave me pause. One day I spent two hours with a young couple in such a Catholic circle, where I suddenly realized that something seemed off. For two hours I saw nothing but the young husband either berating or criticizing his wife or talking about how Hitler was actually the hero of World War II and how what the world needs today is that we kill all the blacks and all the Jews and how I need to start watching the videos of a “good trad Catholic” like one man named Nick Fuentes.
I should give this man the benefit of the doubt. I know my own sins and can’t judge his. Perhaps he was merely joking… But something gave me pause. I had been trending, I admit, more and more in a hard right direction for several years the more than I discovered about the “deep state”, the CIA, the military industrial complex, the banking system, etc.
I was a proud voter for Trump, I enthusiastically supported mass deportations. I’ve even talked a big talk about the U.S. invading Canada to eliminate their totalitarian regime and Mexico to take out the cartels. But one has to draw the line somewhere, and something about the man’s behavior toward his wife seemed to indicate to me that he wasn’t joking with his beliefs.
I’ve pulled back from interacting with this group ever since and paused to reevaluate many of my beliefs. On the surface, they didn’t differ much from the path that this man was clearly on. I’m suspicious of AIPAC. I don’t like Netanyahu. I’m obviously not a dispensationalist.4 I was against “the vaccine”. I believe that our country needs to stand for something, and not allow mass immigration. On this, I admit, I probably care more for people who are closer and more related to me.
Who Are the Groypers?
But I draw the line at scapegoating an entire people (or people’s) for the sins of some of its members, moving from justice (even the hard justice of states) to the scapegoating vengeance of groups like Nick Fuentes’s racially-obsessed Groyper band.
Nick, claiming to be a “trad Catholic” as do most of his followers, often preaches a (sometimes seemingly) good talk with a Christian veneer, as Anya Parampil at The Gray Zone reports
Characterizing himself as a “Christian reactionary,” Fuentes described his vision for the future of American politics: a total purge of government agencies, complete shutdown of the border, and constitutional reform to mold the country into a true “Christian nation.”
“Not a violent revolution, nothing illegal,” he adds. “I’m a revolutionary in that way. And so that’s why when people say, ‘oh, like, you’re making the Republicans look bad.’ It’s like, ‘oh, f*ck the Republicans and f*ck their party, because it doesn’t do anything for us anyway.'”
But as evidenced by this very dark investigative report into his movement, his real ideology is something darker:
As Christopher Brunet exposes in his report on the surprising amount of sexual innuendo and crimes for a group that claims to be “based”, traditional, “anti-gay” and supportive of Christian morality, there’s a few things that are quite violent and a little off for a supposedly Christian movement
Look at the social media profile of anyone identifying as a Groyper if you don’t believe this—and then immediately look away because of the sexually suggestive, ruthless, actually racist to a sardonic, hilarious if it wasn’t so sad, “I want to oppress women” on purpose attitude that you’ll find on almost every single account. While proclaiming “Christ is King” they use it as a cover for their violent sadomasochistic fantasies—and in many cases, already, pedophilic and violent crimes.
For The Gray Zone as with many other commentators, the absurdities of the cult’s behavior, so often counterproductive to whatever remains of their stated “Christian values” lead many to see Nick as the leader of some sort of controlled-opposition. Whenever Nick intervenes in a situation, other right wingers, Christian movements, and his seeming allies seem to end up the worse for it, while Nick got off without charges after the January 6th protest, even after being one of the only people actually calling for violence that day. Anya continues:
With theories about the Groyper leader abound, one thing is obvious: he has proven to be a curse on the America First movement. By undermining MAGA, the self-described “Christian reactionary” has played into the hands of his establishment opponents on both sides of the political aisle, paradoxically advancing the cause of centrism across the country.
Regardless of Nick’s true colors, it’s true that he’s leading a large online movement of disaffected, mostly right wing young men who are willing to say and vow many nasty things in his name which all seem to center around condemning and threatening entire races with death as Brunet continues:
To Nick's loyal "Groyper army," led by his handpicked "lieutenants" and "generals," he’s more than a pundit or provocateur. He’s a messiah. They see him as divinely ordained to one day seize the American presidency, with many vowing to "Rape, Kill, and Die" (RKD) in his name.5
Most of you have probably never heard of him, and let’s pray that remains the case, but the larger problem are these general trends, the belief that present injustices in our political system justify scapegoating violence against entire classes are widespread and affecting even very faithfully minded young Christians, even traditional Catholics. These ideas haven’t taken over a majority, or even a large minority of young Catholics, at least based on my interactions. But many are at the very least tempted by them.
Again, perhaps the young man (and others I’ve met like him) were joking. Perhaps this is all some farce and no one intends anything more than justice. But the political scapegoating of these conspiratorial occasionalists and their one-dimensional world where everyone without the right physiognomy deserves death will get a lot worse unless someone provides an off-ramp to return them back to reality. As I wrote about last week, these conspiratorial occasionalists believe that all the world is one massive grand conspiracy, with omnipotent dark powers that they and only they can thwart. And Nick’s Groypers are the poster child people who believe this way.
I don’t like the ideas of people like James Lindsay who paint with a broad brush and call anyone to their right the dangerous “woke right” either. I wrote a three part essay series last winter about Lindsay’s attempt to besmirch
and , for example.
I believe that people can believe in a Christian America, even a Catholic America, and work towards it without being dangerous extremists. One can criticize Israeli policy without hating all Jews or even point out racial differences in policing without jumping to genocide or oppressing women on purpose to gain social points.
Ground Your Politics in Christ
It’s actually simple. You just have to put your Faith in Christ as a guiding principle in your life before your racialist politics as a right wing commentator named Will Spencer does in this essay that some friends of mine, Abby and Jon, interviewed him about recently. Will describes his life and how he was drawn into the same “alt-right” racialist circles that I’ve described infiltrating even trad Catholic discussions. For Will, only his pastor reminding him to put Christ first restored him to a more reasonable balanced, and grounded perspective. One can and should, as I believe, and so does Will, be critical of neo-cons and Israeli foreign policy, and even believe that WWII has been heavily mythologized (as
does) without going all the way to claiming that evil is good and good evil:The danger is not that [these] views are wholly false. Rather, like all convincing lies, it’s that they draw incorrect conclusions from partially accurate observations.6
The point isn’t that the Groypers and the racialist right are wrong on a lot of things. They’re right on a lot. It’s just that they choose to act on their beliefs in a very un-Christian way. But they’re especially dangerous because they’re very bad examples (especially in personal morality) even while claiming to be Christian. Will is Presbyterian and writing to a Protestant audience, but seen some of the same concerning trends in traditional Catholic circles I’ve been in. Many young men, Will points out, turn to people like Nick Fuentes because of a lack of fatherly influence on their lives, out of a feeling of betrayal by the world, women, and their families. But the key that he points out, and to which I firmly agree, is that the only real solution to these problems and to our politics is Christ. Absent Him at the center, we all become as bad as the conspirators we think we’re fighting.
Members of the dissident right like
and , and hopefully most traditionally Catholic minded ones as well, however, are grounded in Christian praxis and belief that has been proven to actually affect how they live their lives. Living a Catholic life is more important than living the facade of a “based and trad” one. Having a heart open to grace and charity is more important than looking “manly and tough” on the outside while berating and abusing one’s spouse.Catholic tradition is not a cargo cult or reality TV show where we pretend to relive the past to live out power fantasies for one’s own adulation and status within an in-group. But if you turn your faith into those things, you’re going to be a juicy target for the enemy. My (from the outside) judgement of Nick Fuentes is that he appears to have done just that, turned “being Catholic” into a garment one can wear for social status, self-aggrandizement, and followers without retaining the inside, humble submission to Christ and the Gospel. While cloaked in right wing values, such a stance is actually modernism, the subversion of the Faith beneath a veneer of respectability, the inner essence of the Faith having been discarded.
But as long as your Faith is more than a facade and you are wary of those who offer simple (and violent) solutions one can engage with the dark realities of the world without being so polluted by them that you begin to offer dark “final solutions” back to the world’s darkness. And let’s save each other from falling into these traps. Social pressures even the social pressure of inaction, are dangerous, but so is the solution, it takes just a few in a crowd standing up against it to normalize right behavior and destroy the spell that bad practices have upon your social group.
Let’s pray for the true conversion of Nick Fuentes and his Groypers to the true faith and that those who attempt to fight evil with evil may see by the aid of grace the prudence and wisdom that comes from the way of the Gospel instead of the way of hatred and discord put forth for us by the lying deceiver(s).
As best evidenced by Dave Smith and Tucker Carlson over the last few weeks and Tucker’s interview of Senator Ted Cruz.
I can’t judge his heart, but every time I watch a video clip of him, something seems very very off. And it only takes a little bit of digging to uncover a whole lot more darkness, as with this three part series by The Gray Zone on Nick Fuentes’ career up through 2023:
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/15/nick-fuentes-america-firsts-death/
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/16/groyper-wars-america-first-nick-fuentes/
Have you read the Fourth Lateran Council documents, and Cum Nimis Absurdum? Chrysostom, Tertullian, Athanasius? Ælfric of Eynsham? Josephus? All could be accused of “scapegoating an entire people.” And of course, the Old Testament makes this move all the time: Amalek is to be destroyed — even the children, women, etc.
I appreciate your article!
I yearn for the Catholic Church of my youth but it will never return to that through thoughts, words, and actions that are directly opposed to true Catholic teachings.
In my church, some of the priests slip in a little Latin which takes me back to my early days. I was feeling that our new Pastor would frown on that but, fortunately, he stood in solidarity as one of our priests said Kyrie Eleison…, and closed with El Nomine Padre… yesterday. Then, with no musical accompaniment, he and the other priest burst out with God Bless America as they proceeded out. The entire church joined in the song, Beautiful!
Have a great and blessed day!