Nick Fuentes Twitter background.
Something strange is happening to conservatives on campus. Events held by conservative pundits like Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA, Ben Shapiro, Congressman Dan Crenshaw and even Donald Trump Jr. are being disrupted by insurgent conservatives. These "groypers", named after one of the offshoots of Pepe the Frog, have been taking over Q&A sessions and asking very uncomfortable questions about Israel, homosexuality and immigration.
They are led by Nick Fuentes, at least symbolically. Fuentes is a young conservative pundit and is linked to the alt-right before it's collapse at Charlottesville. He was generally unknown, at least to me, before these disruptions started to happen.
Vox has a hilariously biased post on the situation that is actually pretty good when you ignore all the racism hysteria and bias. In short, Fuentes and the groypers see themselves in a battle for the soul of conservative thought with Kirk, Shapiro, Crenshaw and others all being fake conservatives that don't actually conserve anything.
I have conflicted thoughts on these events. More than anything else I think the timing for this is absolutely terrible. To put it as a metaphor, all strains of conservatives are under massive threat. The Democrats are huge invading army surrounding our last outposts and are about to put us all to the sword and both Fuentes and Kirk are arguing who gets to be in command when the enemy scales our walls. Even worse, it threatens to spill into a conservative civil war where the fighting goes on while the President gets impeached, everyone gets banned from social media and people lose their jobs and livelihoods due to left wing trolls.
The other thing that just drives me nuts about this is why aren't these people protesting the left? No matter the differences between Kirk and Fuentes, either strain of conservatism is much better than any of the garbage the left is doing right now. Fuentes is obviously good at organizing protests, which has always been a weakness of the right. Why is he targeting conservatives and not gun control groups or immigration advocates? It almost makes me wonder if Fuentes is either a useful idiot for the left like Richard Spencer was or if he's a plant for them.
That being said, I do think that there is a real conflict here. There are multiple visions of conservatism and there is a debate to be had about these issues. Conservatives have to ask themselves what do we actually believe and what are we actually going to conserve.
I tend to see Charlie Kirk, Dan Crenshaw and Ben Shapiro to be of the old school conservatives that used to dominate before the rise of Donald Trump. These people and their beliefs are more acceptable to the mainstream media but don't really represent many conservatives. There are some things I agree with them and some things I do not. In general, they argue for the conservative status quo and want to expand immigrant and LGBT support of the Republican Party
The groypers and Nick Fuentes are the more radical edge to the Trump evolution. To be clear, even though they supposedly support Trump there isn't any mutual love there. They are, if not white nationalists, supporters of ending immigration, stopping demographic change and canceling outreach to the LGBT community. They are pretty much 4chan's /pol/ board incarnate and, appropriately enough, /pol/ is a major headquarters for them.
But the biggest sticking point is Israel and it's role in American government. The obsession over Israel in America has always been one of my biggest headscratchers. A decent portion of the United States practically (or in some cases literally) worship the country and claim they are the only good people in the Middle East. Another faction says that Israel is the cause of literally every single problem in the United States and is practically committing genocide on Muslims.
For some reason, those are the only two positions that are allowed to exist in America. My position, that Israel happens to be our ally but has its own list of major flaws and problems, but is still much more sympathetic than any Palestinian, is pretty much totally ignored.
It's not like the right is the only group having problems with Israel. The left had it's own counter culture rise up to tackle the issue with the congressional "squad" lead by Ilhan Omar being about as critical of the country as Nick Fuetes was. Just as these congressional leftist split and fractured the party on the issue, Fuetes and the groypers is doing so on the right.
To be fair, I do think the role of Israel is an important discussion to have. Like I said, I'd prefer a more moderate approach to them where we recognize that Israel isn't an end all be all state in the Middle East while also recognizing that they are still better than most of the Muslim states they are surrounded by. But that's not the discussion. Instead it's about the USS Liberty (that happened in 1967!) and 9/11 conspiracy theories. It's not helpful in the least.
That being said, the other side's reaction to these groypers has been pretty pathetic. Kirk and Shapiro at least have built their brands on "owning the liberals" but cannot answer or deflect these questions from the right. Instead they are adopting their own enemies approach to criticism. Silencing and de-platforming anyone who disagrees with them. They won't let anyone speak and they are calling for social media bans. For people that are supposedly in support of free speech, they certainly can't handle criticism.
It's dumb because some of these criticisms are easy to answer. For example, when asked about the USS Liberty, I'd say something to the effect of "sure it was a bad thing and fairly shameful for the Israels to attack an US warship and kill US sailors, but it's ancient history. Most of you weren't even alive in 1967 and it makes as much sense as continuing to stay made at North Korea for the Korean War". The fact that none of these people seem to even be able to do that and instead have to shut down their Q&A sessions, which are all about owning people, does not reflect well on them.
The LGBT thing isn't helpful either. I've said for a while now that the GOP and conservatives have an opportunity to peel off the G portion of the acronym (or even some of the L's and T's). The Pulse nightclub shooting was a wakeup call for many gay men and the dominance of both leftist lesbians and the transgender community has pushed gay men out of the coalition. In the leftist totem poll, gay white men are about as "evil" (ie privileged) as straight white men and it wouldn't be any surprise that gay men won't like that. They are people that are ripe to be recruited to the conservative community. From a purely strategic point it makes no sense to attack them.
Furthermore, gay conservatives have been a great ally to the new Republican coalition. We had some very big names help us in 2016, including the now disgraced Milo Yiannopoulos. Peter Theil was a huge backer of President Trump and helped kill leftist gossip rag Gawker. And there are other more rank and file people like the tireless and genuinely good person Scott Pressler.
That doesn't mean that conservatives have to support everything about LGBT. I'm generally opposed to the various attempts to force religious people into participating in gay marriage and am more than a little horrified by what the Transgender community wants (while still retaining some sympathy for the transgendered themselves). But I do think that a little tolerance here will help us at the polls and won't do anything bad that hasn't already been done.
With that being said, I do think this whole incident shows how fragile American coalitions can be. We have seen much more of it on the left than the right these days but that doesn't mean that the right is immune. Keep in mind that President Trump was elected in part due to major dissatisfaction with the leadership of the Republican Party. Just electing President Trump isn't going to be enough to stop that dissatisfaction.
And I do think that Fuentes has a point about immigration. Without going into the more radical fringe of what he is saying I do think that it's absolutely crazy that anyone on the right can still be pro-immigration. Immigrants lower wages, take jobs that non-immigrants should have, bring crime and cultural changes and, worst of all, vote for Democrats. Unfettered immigration has already turned Virginia from a red state to a blue one and threatens to do the same thing to Texas (!) and Arizona. Unless we starting importing conservative immigrants supporting immigration at this point is just political suicide for Republicans.
Of course Nick Fuentes realizes this but also seems to ignore the fact that we could be working to peel off minority voters from Democrats. Fuentes should know better because he is Hispanic himself. Conservatives can be anti-immigration and still work to get non-whites on our side. President Trump is doing so pretty well with his outreach to black voters and inviting Kanye West to the White House.
In the end though, I don't think this situation makes anyone on the right look good. Fuetes and his groypers look like actual bigots spouting off irrelevant crap while the other side is just completely unable to deal with them. Trump Jr.'s girlfriend, Kim Guilfoyle even essentially called the groypers "incels" which is just pathetic. Talk about using the left's language and tactics!
And, more than anything else, the timing is horrible. Now is the time for unity, not discord. Though the Democrats do have their own unity problems, which are more severe than those on the right, they are unified in their hatred of us. If they are allowed to win in 2020 then it won't matter which side of the conservative movement wins as we will all be done for...
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