Copyright The New York Times
Conservatives have a problem, and it is named Nick Fuentes. An avowed white nationalist, Mr. Fuentes commands an immense following of young men he has recently been mobilizing in opposition to President Trump, who he feels has not moved far enough to the right. On Oct. 27, the influential podcaster and former TV host Tucker Carlson posted an interview with Mr. Fuentes in which he gave him over two hours to air his views, which are well outside the American mainstream, even for some of the most provocative members of the conservative movement. As some have disavowed Mr. Fuentes, a single word keeps appearing: Groyper. The word is impossible to disentangle from the figure who now entirely embodies it. Mr. Fuentes is “the leader of the Groypers,” said Will Sommer, author of “Trust the Plan,” a book about right-wing internet conspiracies. Who is Nick Fuentes? After attending the deadly “Unite the Right” rally as a freshman at Boston University in 2017, Mr. Fuentes left college and devoted himself fully to making pro-Trump videos on a YouTube show called “America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes.” He has since moved the show to Rumble, a right-wing video platform, where he has nearly half a million followers. In 2020, he branched out beyond social media with the America First Foundation. A statement on the foundation’s website says the group champions “the role of God in society and upholding the principles of nationalism, Christianity and traditionalism.” After the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Fuentes helped publicize the “Stop the Steal” campaign, which resulted in a violent rally at the U.S. Capitol, and has continued to rise in prominence during the second Trump administration. And what is a Groyper? In the plainest terms, Groypers are supporters of Mr. Fuentes. Katherine Dee, who writes about internet culture, said that fealty to Mr. Fuentes is the Groypers’ defining feature. “I think that Nick Fuentes is among the best examples of ‘politics as fandom’ that exists,” said Ms. Dee, who uses a pseudonym. Otherwise, “it’s a fairly loose group without clear ideological borders,” she added. Especially ardent acolytes have social media handles such as “Voluntary Conscript Groyper” and “Führer Nick Fuentes Groyper.” His detractors also use the term to refer to fans of Mr. Fuentes, but with a strongly pejorative connotation. Although it originated on 4chan, the Groyper movement blossomed on Discord, a messaging service for gamers that has also served as a breeding ground for fringe ideologies catering to alienated young men. While speaking with Mr. Carlson in October, Mr. Fuentes claimed to be against marijuana, pornography and video games — though he said that his followers love all those things. “I think they know it’s bad,” Mr. Fuentes said. “There’s, like, some sense of guilt.” Some of his supporters practice looksmaxxing, taking drastic steps they believe will enhance their physical appeal. They may aspire (with a measure of irony) to emulate Chad, a popular meme of a ruggedly handsome white man; the Groyper version of Chad tends to be a traditionalist, or Trad Chad. What else do they believe? Mr. Fuentes’s organization, the America First Foundation, says on its website that it denounces “immoral ideologies like zionism, nihilism, and liberal multiculturalism” which, the organization contends, “embedded themselves within our society and have undermined our nation’s sovereignty.” The site also condemns “debt slavery and financialization,” an echo of populist economic themes. Mr. Fuentes opposes feminism. “Your body, my choice,” he wrote in a social media post in November 2024. But ideology is beside the point for many Groypers, Ms. Dee emphasized. “It’s more of a posture mixed with fandom that centers Nick Fuentes as the fan object,” she said. Where Mr. Kirk supported Israel, Mr. Fuentes complained to Mr. Carlson in their October interview about “organized Jewry” and what he described as undue influence on American foreign policy exercised by “Zionist Jews.” And while Mr. Kirk was famous for debating college students who disagreed with his views, Groypers favor online confrontation. “‘Groyper’ stands for this racist, mischievous trolling movement,” Mr. Sommer said. Mr. Fuentes did not respond to a request for comment. Where does the term come from? Just where the name came from is unclear. “I am not sure if it has any meaning beyond sounding like a funny name for this funny creature,” offered Don Caldwell, editor of Know Your Meme. That “funny creature” is a cousin of Pepe the Frog, a somewhat crudely drawn amphibian not originally intended to be a political symbol, according to its creator, Matt Furie. In 2014, far-right users on the message board 4chan engaged in absurdist trolling by turning Pepe into an unabashed racist who made light of the Holocaust. By 2016, Pepe was declared a hate symbol by the ADL, formerly the Anti-Defamation League. Groyper was the name of a related frog, created by Pepe enthusiasts. He was “a more pudgy, smug-looking Pepe,” Mr. Caldwell said. Groyper’s creators “wanted this unique version of Pepe to separate themselves from other people,” he added. Some of the edgier users on 4chan may have felt that “Pepe was being co-opted by MAGA boomers,” suggested Mr. Sommer, referencing Mr. Trump’s middle-aged supporters. Groyper was intended to retain Pepe’s subversive appeal with a younger crowd. At some point, the Groyper label became detached from the overweight frog and came instead to be associated with Mr. Fuentes and his movement. Mr. Caldwell isn’t sure when that took place, but he believes it was probably in 2017. And wasn’t there some kind of Groyper ‘war’? Groypers have shown little hesitation about confronting other conservatives — sometimes even in the real world. The first of two significant feuds took place in 2019, when supporters of Mr. Fuentes began to cause disruptions at events put on by Mr. Kirk and his Turning Point USA organization. Then, in 2024, Mr. Fuentes sought to push Mr. Trump’s third presidential campaign in a more nationalistic direction. In early August of that year, he declared “war” on the campaign, despite being a supporter of the former president, having dined with him at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. “Fuentes explained his antagonism was not because he was opposed to Mr. Trump’s candidacy, but in fact because he was so interested in its success,” according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that researches online extremism. In the wake of Mr. Kirk’s killing at a Utah college campus, some speculated that a Groyper had been responsible, given the longstanding feud between Mr. Fuentes and Mr. Kirk. “It turned out to be really false, but it spread like wildfire,” Mr. Caldwell said. The suspect in the killing, Tyler Robinson, has no evident connection to Mr. Fuentes.
