I can’t remember the last time I felt this much hesitation about writing and publishing something. For the first time in years, I was finally seeing growth online. Did I really want to rock the boat this hard, and risk alienating the audience I’d just found?
But I felt this inexplicably persistent pull to write about it, because it seemed like no one else was saying exactly what I thought needed to be said. It felt more important to say what was weighing on my heart than towing the line or remaining silent, even if I risked losing followers just as quickly as I’d gained them.
Whether you love Nick Fuentes or hate him, this blog post probably won’t validate your worldview in totality. My only request is that you read it to the end before reacting.
I don’t remember exactly when I first learned of him, but I think it was around 2017, and I muted him on Twitter shortly after the fact.
At the time, white nationalism was gaining traction online, and Fuentes was a leading advocate for it among young men.
I don’t remember seeing as many clips of him early on. I’d assume that took off after he was aggressively banned from nearly every platform in 2021, and relying on fans to promote him.
I’ll admit I’ve never watched a full episode of his show. I’ve rarely watched a full episode of any podcast or similar format outside of supporting friends, my Lent-ish break from TV and movies, fat positivity shows that I used for motivation in the gym, and then the Bible In A Year after I decided I wanted to make my workouts less vanity-driven. And when Sean Ryan brought on an exorcist.
But I’m going to need you to trust me when I say that I’m not someone that falls for soundbites taken out of context.
I saw a Christian influencer use a video of him talking about how white people no longer wanted to be around black people, and immediately recognized it from a longer monologue about Karmelo Anthony plunging a knife into Austin Metcalf’s chest at a high school track meet earlier this year, reportedly over a seating dispute.
And honestly, everything that he said in that diatribe made sense to me.
So while I have never watched a 2 hour stream and have no intentions to, just take my word for it when I say I say I have a real grasp of his history and what he believes.
When I first discovered him in the mid 2010s, I couldn’t stand him. I thought he was petulant, abrasive and malevolent. He would pick fights with conservative leaders, calling them slurs and end it with some kind of comment that included Israel and accusations of metaphorical sex acts.
Then, after he’d gotten himself blacklisted from events, he’d make a big show of going, getting kicked out, and “confronting” his political enemies. His fans ate it up but it always felt incredibly juvenile and histrionic to me.
In 2020, he attacked a pro-life influencer that was sharing her testimony.
I don’t care how you spin it. You can have your own preferences, but nothing about the way he spoke to that stranger was becoming of a self-proclaimed man of God, and if you’re trying to convince yourself it was, you’re in deep spiritual danger.
I don’t remember how long the tweet was up before it was deleted. I think everyone has moments of poor judgment.
But what was so striking to me was the way his followers came after her and her pre-teen son.
This influencer in particular was someone that I followed on Instagram, and followed me. We’d comment on each other’s posts; reply to each other’s stories. I didn’t *know* her, but I knew her in the way that if I saw her on the street, I’d probably run up and say hello like we were old friends even though it was our first time meeting.
Nothing about what these people projected onto her was true.
She wasn’t a single mother; she got married and went on to have two more kids with her husband. And her oldest son’s father was very much so in his life. I remember her saying stuff like “he’s with his dad this weekend” when asked why her oldest son wasn’t in certain stories or photos.
But they were so deranged and consumed by their hatred, that they were not only writing wildly inaccurate fanfiction about her life, but harassing a 12-year-old. I remember thinking that you know someone by their fruits, and if this is what someone inspired, their fruits were rotten. The way someone’s fans behave can tell you a lot about them.
It’s probably nowhere near the worst thing he ever did or said, but because of my relative parasocial proximity to the family in question, it stuck with me mentally in a way that most things don’t.
Whether you’re a supporter of his or a critic, I’m going to make a point of asking you again to stick with me to the end.
After he was banned, I would occasionally hear something about him, but it wasn’t consistent. Every few months he might reappear into my consciousness over a rumor, some kind of drama, or a high profile appearance.
For a long time, I didn’t think about him, and I didn’t particularly want to.
He represented something sinister, venomous and chaotic.
To me, it didn’t seem like he wanted to fix anything; he wanted to stoke the flames of racial resentment, encouraging everyone to embrace their worst instincts, and champion a movement fueled by rage and revenge.
And at some point, I think that was probably true. But somewhere along the line, I began to see him in a new light.
It’s hard to point to a specific timeframe or series of events that led to the shift in perception.
Obviously, I don’t know this man or what was going on for him internally. I would guess that when he was plunged into obscurity by Big Tech, he was initially furious. But I get the impression that his ire was eventually replaced with refinement and introspection. Because when he started popping up more frequently after years of virtual invisibility, he didn’t seem the same.
He was still animated, he was still unhinged and he was still controversial, but his wrath no longer seemed to define him.
Eventually, as more and more videos of him began to surface online, I found myself grinning, giggling and occasionally in agreement with him.
Sometimes I don’t know what to think.
He’s incredibly intelligent, articulate, and cunning. He seems to have a once-in-a-generation talent for public speaking and a media savvy that I can only compare to President Trump. After October 7th and his dramatic surge in popularity for his criticism of Israel, I wonder if his newfound levity was a strategic pivot rather than a byproduct of genuine transformation.
He’s done some things over the past few years that make me second-guess his motives. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Trump, but his decision to turn against him could have had more to do with personal feuds and his bruised ego after being kicked out of Mar-a-Lago than he wants to admit. He campaigned against him in 2024, only to turn around and try to join the victory lap after the election. He’s gone aggressively after JD Vance based on his connections to Peter Thiel and his Indian wife, but I’ve also heard whispers that despite his public explanations, it’s actually rooted in a vendetta against his staff. His most egregious offense, in my opinion, was when he started propping up Gavin Newsom of all people, who accelerated California’s demise, turning it into an unlivable hellscape hemorrhaging residents by the thousands.
He had already lived through 4 years of the Biden-Harris regime, and if anything, California was a preview of what was to come nationwide if the Harris-Walz ticket prevailed. How could he call himself “America First” while encouraging its destruction?
I’m familiar with the accelerationist argument, but I think it’s a shortsighted one. His followers’ main gripe with Trump is that Israel has too much influence on him, and it’s understandable. But if you look at what he has actually accomplished in under a year since his return to the White House – and what he would have accomplished if it weren’t for the activist judges blocking him at every turn, no rational right winger can tell me that he isn’t useful or a net asset.
That said, when I listen to Fuentes talk about God, and faith – even as grating and arrogant as I find what he says about Catholicism versus Protestantism – there is no doubt in my mind that at least part of him is earnest, or that God is working on him, and could eventually work through him.
Jonah was the Bible’s most notorious bigot. He hated the Ninevites, and one could argue, with good reason. They terrorized his people for decades. God had to drag him kicking and screaming to preach His Word to them, but even after he did, he hoped for their demise. If God can use someone like Jonah, why wouldn’t he be able to use someone like Nick?
Progressivism has convinced a lot of people that racism is the one unforgivable, irredeemable sin. They can sympathize with prostitutes, violent criminals, and terrorists, but draw the line at a white person that’s ever uttered the N word. And worse, it convinced large portions of the American populace that as long as their racism was directed at white people, it was somehow acceptable.
But nothing about that is biblical or productive.
You’re no better than a racist, and I’m not either.
You’re not better than Nick Fuentes because he’s made disparaging comments about black people and you joke about beheading billionaires.
You’re not in a separate, better category of sin because you’re self righteous, but not a segregationist.
And whether or not you’re willing to admit it, a lot of the anger he’s tapped into comes from a legitimate place.
I’ve never been one to blindly follow conservative outrage. When they pointed to movies like White Chicks or the existence of BET as racism against white people, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. But I’ve always known that racism against white people existed and it was wrong. But during the Biden-Harris administration, it was institutionalized at a level unlike anything I’d seen.
From the professional world to the government to the education system, white people are being made to feel like second class citizens and that they should quietly accept their own denigration.
White men were being blatantly told by companies that in spite of their qualifications, they’d be passed up for jobs or promotions in the name of “diversity.” Joe Biden’s FEMA – literally designed for disaster relief – spent a billion on settling illegal immigrants, just to tell hurricane victims in Appalachia that they had nothing left to give. Critical Race Theory was introduced in public schools across the country, and had 6 year olds asking their parents if they were “born evil” because they were white.
All that to say, whites have real grievances in this country. And as long as it’s considered appropriate for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians to demand “representation,” white people are entitled to the same. And the longer people dismiss the idea as absurd and extreme, the more powerful and restless the fringes will grow.
I hate identity politics. If your identity is rooted in anything but Christ, it will eventually destroy you. I dream of a day when America outgrows racial tribalism once and for all, and I believe through Christ, all things are possible. But until that happens, it doesn’t seem sustainable or justifiable to exclude one race from what all the others are doing.
Nick Fuentes has the potential to advocate in a way that few else could. But whether he lives up to it remains to be seen.
He still has a lot of growing to do, and I don’t think he’s anywhere where he needs to be to achieve the good he’s capable of.
But I truly believe that he’s lightyears ahead of where he was a few years ago, and if he stays on his current trajectory, he’ll be an entirely different man a few years from now.
It should be obvious that I have significant and serious disagreements with him. But I don’t think he’s the monster I used to think he was, and I hope that as God softens his edges, he softens his heart, and that in his activism, he can ultimately play a role in America’s healing.
what do you think?