Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old far-right provocateur, is sparking deep division within US President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, The Washington Post reported on Sunday morning.
Four years ago, Fuentes was banned from most major social media platforms for spreading hate speech and encouraging rioters to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021. By 2022, he was labeled “the most cancelled man in America.”
Today, Fuentes, who once called Adolf Hitler “amazing,” has amassed more than one million followers on Elon Musk’s X/Twitter platform. His recent interview with Tucker Carlson, which has been viewed by over 5 million people on YouTube, has fueled his resurgence and sparked fierce debate among right-wing influencers.
Fuentes claims that immigrants and “organized Jewry” are plotting to eliminate the white race, and has become a flashpoint for MAGA supporters who oppose limits on free speech, now facing the question of extremism.
In a March podcast episode, Fuentes summarized his worldview bluntly: “Jews are running society, women need to shut the [expletive] up, Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise. It’s that simple.”
Carlson’s October 27 interview with Fuentes drew widespread condemnation.
US Senator Ted Cruz and Jewish commentator Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire, denounced both Fuentes and Carlson. Shapiro wrote on X: “No to cowards like Tucker Carlson, who normalize their trash," while Cruz called Fuentes a "Nazi.
Some conservatives defended Carlson, including Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who criticized the “globalist class.” Jewish groups and Heritage staffers argued that his phrasing echoed antisemitic conspiracy theories. Roberts later walked back his remarks, calling Fuentes “an evil person.”
Anti-establishment journalist and anti-Israel commentator Glenn Greenwald claimed on X that the Republican establishment was targeting Fuentes simply because “he doesn’t support Israel.”
Senior figures in Trump’s circle have avoided weighing in on the controversy surrounding Fuentes, who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. Vice President JD Vance urged conservatives on X to “work together,” while Fuentes mocked Trump in 2024 for including “gays” and “Jews” in his administration and ridiculed Vance’s interracial family.
'Giving them a megaphone to spread hate'
Fuentes’s online rehabilitation began when Musk reinstated his account on X in May.
Daniel Kelley, director of strategy and operations at the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) Center for Technology and Society, called the move a mistake: “When you have bad actors like Fuentes on mainstream social platforms, you’re giving them a megaphone to spread hateful antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and the like to many, many more people."
The ADL described Fuentes’s rise as “a case study in what happens when the major platforms backslide” from enforcing safety and speech standards. While Fuentes remains banned from Facebook and YouTube, the relaxation of content moderation has eroded previous taboos against figures like him.