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When it comes to shamelessly piggybacking on a major political story and tripping over ones own feet in the process, there is no more accomplished young man in America than Riversides own Jacob Wohl. The 21-year-old serial hoaxer and his fiftysomething partner in slime, lobbyist and conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman, are the Mutt and Jeff of American political sabotagehapless ideological hit men who have disastrously inserted themselves into just about every major scandal of the Trump era. Last year, at the height of the Mueller investigation, they hatched a scheme to discredit the special counsel by claiming that he had raped a woman. The alleged victim admitted that the charge was baseless. Six months later a similar attempt to smear Pete Buttigieg misfired when the college kid who was the supposed target of the mayors alleged amorous advances claimed that Wohl had duped him into making false charges. These setbacks have done nothing to diminish his notoriety. Before he was deplatformed from Twitter in February, Wohl had racked up 186,000 followers. Among his admirers was the president of the United States, who promoted his young acolyte by frequently retweeting him and meeting with him several times.

In September, as the Ukraine scandal engulfed the country, Wohl and Burkman unveiled their latest scheme: a $50,000 reward for information that would help unmask the CIA whistle-blower who reported the presidents phone call. Their bounty offer came a day after Trump suggested the whistle-blower was a spy who should be executed. Five days later the deceitful duo claimed they would reveal the Ukraine whistle-blowers identity at a press conference in the driveway of Burkmans Arlington townhouse. Spoiler alert: They didnt.

In the past, stunts like these attracted hordes of camera crews and reporters, but that production turned out to be a dud. While the conservative Washington Examiner dutifully reprinted every word of their press release, the mainstream media largely ignored it. One noteworthy exception was the news and opinion site Splinter News, which ran a withering post under the headline: Washingtons Biggest Idiots Offer $50K Reward to Expose Whistleblowers Identity.

Undaunted, Wohl and Burkman continued to insinuate themselves into media coverage of the incident. Wohl says he spent two months this past summer in Ukraine, digging up dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and he has promised to reveal his blockbuster findings since September. But a New Jersey Trump supporter, Deelip Mhaske, who claims Wohl burned him in a financial scheme, told me he didnt think Wohl ever stepped foot in the country. He showed me a bizarre video Wohl had sent Mhaske back in July when he was supposedly doing his oppo research. In it Wohl says the local time is almost 3 oclock, when in fact the time in Ukraine was 10 or 11. He might have been somewhere else, Mhaske said, but he wasnt in the location where he was saying.

Wohl is of one of a dozen social-media-savvy fanboys who became right-wing stars by embracing Donald Trump. Their all-consuming desire to own the libs seems to mirror the presidents. But even in this clique Wohl stands out. Fit and handsome in a creepy Patrick Bateman kind of way, he drops names of friends like Donald Trump Jr. and former Fox News chief Bill Shine. His father, David Wohl, is a recurring guest on Fox News and surrogate of the Trump campaign who had daily calls with the reality-TV-star candidate in 2016. This week, David announced the release of a 2020 MAGA calendar featuring boudoir photos of himself; hes selling it for $25 and donating the money to military charities.

Screenshot of @jacobawohl on Instagram

Screenshot of @jacobawohl on Instagram

Jacobs Instagram feed is packed with pics of Wohl clowning around with Trump world cronies such as Corey Lewandowski and Sebastian Gorka. They appear alongside dozens of vaguely porny photos of Wohl showing off his six-pack abs in a mirror or suggestively puffing on long cigars.

But as the 2020 election nears, the future of MAGA influencers like Wohl is uncertain. In the past year Twitter, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley giants finally started to crack down on targeted harassment and misinformation. Young celebrities of the far right are being exiled to lesser platforms such as Telegram and Gab. Wohls friend Milo Yiannopolous is a cautionary tale. After he was banished from Twitter and Facebook, the British journalist, who was once described as the Mick Jagger of the alt-right, could barely get himself arrested. He recently complained that he cant put food on the table because he is banned from major social media. Wohl shared the comments and added: I agree with all of this. But its not just dwindling followers that worry Wohl. He is facing possible prison time on a recent felony charge in Southern California that stems from a three-year-old incident in which his fraud may have led to a mans death. Prosecutors recently concluded what Wohls detractors have argued for years: The presidents biggest fan is a grifter who may land in jail.

In September I reached out to Wohl in an email, telling him I was interested in writing a story on his rise from teenage financial prodigy in Riverside to national media figure and troll for the Trump administration. He responded in 20 minutes. He officially resides in Irvine but frequently turns up in New York, DC, and tony hotels around the world. Despite his jet-setter lifestyle, its unclear how he makes a living. He describes himself as a political and corporate intel consultant. But the website for one of his ill-fated endeavors, Surefire Intelligence, featured photos of station chiefs that turned out to be stock images of people like supermodel Bar Refaeli.

When I finally got Wohl on the phone, he was unflappable and relentlessly on message. He twice mentioned his two-month trip to Ukraine. This was before the whistle-blower complaint was public knowledge, but on fringe sites like 4chan, the fabricated Biden Ukraine problem was already taking shape as Hillarys Emails 2.0. What did Wohl do over there? I asked him. Ukraine? he replied, eagerly. Just doing a little bit of Biden work, he said, looking into some of Bidens dealings over there, of which there were many.

He went on to brag about a range of things, including his supposedly gargantuan shoe size (I wear 15 or 16, depending on the brand), staunch anti-pot position (I think the war on drugs should be stepped up), his carnivore diet (I eat a lot of steak), his encyclopedic knowledge of cigars (My favorite all-time cigar is the Bolivar Libertador 2016 La Casa del Habano edition. Ill text you the correct spelling), and his self-taught fluency in Russian: I would describe my skills in Russian as on the border between conversational and fluent, he said. When I was in Ukraine for two months, I spoke no English.

Wohls detractors have long wondered how he has managed to avoid serious legal consequences despite his questionable practices.

Did Wohl ever visit Ukraine? Like most of his claims, the truth is rather murky. Internet sleuths noted that the pair of Instagram photos he posted of his trip were taken in two cities that are 2,200 miles apart. Oddly, both feature the same backdrop: a patio fence. Wait a sec, wrote r0kkitgirl in reply to one of the photos he had tagged as Minsk, Belarus. This is the same background as the Tel Aviv photo you posted the other day. Where are you? Doesnt matter, Wohl replied.

Two weeks later Wohl was caught in another Instagram lie. This time he had posted a bathroom selfie in front of a shabby-looking shower curtain and tiles and pretended it was from the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Internet users ridiculed his shamelessness by posting photos of an actual Ritz-Carlton guest room in Tysons Corner, and photoshopping pics of Wohl in front of fictitious backgrounds like The Lord of the Ringss Mordor and the Star Wars Death Star.

Wohls detractors have long wondered how he has managed to avoid serious legal consequences despite his questionable practices. His campaign against Mueller is a case in point. In October 2019, Wohl and Burkman announced with great fanfare that they had found a woman who claimed the special counsel had raped her. But a few hours before the press conference was to begin, the accuser disavowed her accusation and ran off, later claiming that Wohl had catfished her, presenting himself as a Mossad-trained investigator named Matthew Cohen. Mueller referred the case to the FBI.

The accuser in the Buttigieg fiasco, Michigan college student Hunter Kelly, said Wohl planted the false accusation on the internet without his knowledge or consent. Like the Mueller accuser, Kelly skipped out before a planned press conference and quickly repudiated the duos allegations. Wohl insists the restaurant in Michigan where Kellys mother works threatened to fire her if her son didnt recant. I think its very sad that he was bullied out of standing up for himself, Wohl said. Kelly declined to comment for this story.

Since he was booted off Twitter in February, Wohl has allegedly branched out into seedier forms of grift. Two women estranged from perennial South L.A. congressional candidate Omar Navarro, an ally of Wohl, alleged in August that Navarro had hired Wohl to harass them with threatening text messages and death threats. The threats to Navarros ex-girlfriend and a former campaign aide came from a phone number associated with Wohl, the Daily Beast reported. In response to another incident, Deelip Mhaske has accused Wohl of bank fraud. He told federal prosecutors that he paid Wohl $20,000 to get Trump to keynote a conference Mhaske was organizing. Though the appearance never happened, Wohl kept the money.

Until the felony charge was brought against Wohl in September, however, the most serious consequence of his reckless displays of ineptitude was being kicked off Twitter after he admitted earlier this year to USA Today that he was creating fake accounts to influence voters in the 2020 election. (There is also the lifetime ban he earned as a teen from the National Futures Association and an order to cease and desist and pay a $5,000 fine and $32,000 in restitution that was issued by the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2017. He never paid, according to the Arizona Attorney Generals Office.)

That Wohl, like Trump, is Teflon may well have something to do with the fact that his father, David Wohl, is a criminal defense attorney in private practice in Riverside. One of the fathers clients is Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist who was busted in February for trespassing on the lawn of the Governors Mansion in Sacramento.

The elder Wohl has had his own problems with the government. He has been the subject of at least a dozen state and federal tax liens in Orange and Riverside counties since 1995, USA Today reported. Though several of the liens were paid, a recent one for $22,002.31 remains active.

Jacob told me a few times he would do stuff, and his dad would always have his back, says Shane Bouvet, a pro-Trump celebrity and one-time friend of the younger Wohl. Bouvet says he blocked Wohl on all social media because he has the complex of a serial killer. He learned a lot from his dad, Bouvet continued. How to write up legal contracts. How to do law language where wording can get you out of trouble. He feels like hes bulletproof.

Wohls alleged crime in Riverside stems from the pre-Trump days of 2015 when Wohl, while still a student at Santiago High School, reinvented himself as a corporate raider he called The Wohl of Wall Street. A handicapped Arizona man who watched Wohl on Fox Business News, where he was portraying himself as the 17-year-old principal of a $500,000 asset fund, liked what he saw and gave Wohl $75,000 to invest. A year later the same man called in a tip to the Riverside County District Attorneys Office that Wohl and a business partner had lost it all. The investor subsequently killed himself. Wohl is awaiting trial on one felony count of unlicensed sale of a security stemming from the case. If convicted, he could be sentenced to three years.

When I ask him about this, Wohl replies that his counsel, by which he means his father, has advised him not to comment. Then he changes the subject to the big things hes working on, though he wont offer specifics. I mean big, as in number-one trending on Twitter in the news, he says. (Three weeks later he made national news when he tried smearing Elizabeth Warren.) It strikes me, not for the first time, that Wohls greatest strength is his ability to keep a straight face.

RELATED: Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out Why People Are OK with Trumps Endless Supply of Lies

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Who Is Jacob Wohl? The Right-Wing Political Operative Faces a Felony - LA Magazine

On the campus of Baylor University in Waco, Texas Thursday, bestselling author and editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire Ben Shapiro explained why the Left, which portrays itself as the great promoter and defender of science, frequently rejects it, discarding scientific evidence whenever it conflicts with progressive ideology.

Tonight Im talking about why the Left hates science, Shapiro began (video below). Now to a lot of folks on the Left, this sounds ridiculous. After all, its right-wingers who are climate deniers, science deniers, and they believe in that book, the Bible, and theyre all wild and crazy they dont believe in anything like the scientific method.But the truth is, right now many of the attacks on science are coming from the political Left.

Shapiro first zeroed in on the significant difference in the Left and Rights diverging views of human nature, the former pushing the idea of infinite human malleability, which posits that human beings can be altered from anything to anything, particularly by government coercion thus providing the impetus for top-down governmental control.

If you can remove the remediating institutions of society, human beings can be remade from the top down, Shapiro explained in summary of the Lefts view of an infinitely malleable human nature.The problem, Shapiro argued, is that this view is undermined by reality. Infinite engineering of humankind, unfortunately, tends to be undermined by the facts of human nature, he stated.

Conservatives view human beings in a more scientific way, Shapiro suggested, believing that we operate in part by a fixed human nature and accept the premise that human beings are happiest when they exercise reason in accordance with that nature.

While the Left likes to pretend that it loves science, Shapiro argued, much of what it terms science is not in fact science. As examples, Shapiro pointed to the Lefts embrace of political science and the social sciences, which often do not meet the rigorous standards of science.

What the Left actually means by science, Shapiro underscored, is anything that is not religion.

Thats because people on the secular Left see religion as an obstacle to progress all progress, the bestselling author explained. Theyre not merely concerned with Galileo who, by the way, was an ardent believer in the Divine. Theyre concerned that religion acts as a retrograde check on their ambitions to rewrite society, including the rewriting of fundamental societal truths, like distinctions between the sexes and the value of the family unit.

This animus for religion, said Shapiro, is why so many on the Left will routinely characterize science-based conservative positions as religious in nature.

As an example, he pointed to the Lefts criticism of pro-lifers, which focuses mainly on the fact that many pro-lifers believe in the Bible as a definitive authoritative source. While it may be true that pro-lifers are often people of faith, that point is simply a convenient strawman for the political Left, said Shapiro.

The distinction the Left attempts to impose between religion and science, Shapiro maintained, is ultimately false, resting on an utter misunderstanding of both science and religion.

Watch Shapiros speech below:

Shapiros speech at Baylor is part of the Young Americas Foundations Fred Allen Lecture Series. Last week, Shapiro visited the campus of Boston University to address the Lefts Claim that America was built on slavery, a view Shapiro argued is based on reductive presuppositions that result in a grim and flawed vision of what defines the country. (Watch the speech here.)

A week earlier, Shapiro spoke at Stanford University, focusing on the dangerous game being played by the Alt-Right, whose leaders he condemned as espousing racist and anti-Semitic views diametrically opposed to conservatism, and their counterparts on the radical Left, who attempt to brand conservatives as Alt-Right despite their glaringly diverging views. (Watch the speech here.)

Related: WATCH: Hecklers Attempt To Trap Ben Shapiro, Fail Miserably

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WATCH: Ben Shapiro: How The Left Pretends To Love Science But Actually Hates It - The Daily Wire

Mia Levine, Scarlet StaffNovember 22, 2019

Most people in todays world love social media. Popular social media apps include Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Each of these platforms has differing user factors and offer different types of content. Facebook is or supposedly is a way to connect with close friends and family. When I open Facebook, I tend to see photos posted by awkwardly-friended estranged relatives and baby pictures of my friends posted by their Great Aunt whom I do not know. Personally, Facebook feels like a more professional or family-friendly social media source, while other platforms such as Twitter feel completely different.

While Facebook is more image-based, Twitter is usually full of text chains posted within the 280- character limit. Twitter is a place where people ranging from Jojo Siwa to our own commander in chief Donald J. Trump to the average millennial can post whatever comes to mind at any given moment. Opening Twitter usually results in spending 30 minutes going through my personalized feed liking tweets I find funny or keeping up with angsty politicians and other political opinions. Most of my generation tend to pay attention to and listen to politics through various tweets rather than through people one knows on Facebook.

Starting this past fall, Facebook has come under a lot of fire in terms of its policies relating to political ads. Facebook had announced that it would not be fact-checking political speeches including various campaign financed ads. Essentially, they said that they would not remove any political advertisements.

Twitter responded to this by removing all political ads beginning soon after Facebooks announcement. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, said: This will be the broadest possible ban and will specifically cover ads regarding individual candidates and issues. Within Twitters terms and conditions they write anyone who is affiliated with a group either on- or offline that is found to engage in and/or promote violence against civilians to advance a political, religious and/or social cause is in violation of Twitter policy. However, Twitter still has thousands of users that spread lies and promote violence within their tweets. So then, if these new guidelines regarding political ad bans are to be implemented, how can users trust that Twitter will follow through when they have not clearly been able to complete their mission regarding average users?

Earlier this month, audio of Richard Spencer, an American Neo-Nazi and white supremacist, was leaked on twitter. The clip, allegedly recorded during the Summer of 2017, hears Spencer hurling racial and ethnic slurs in reference to the Unite the Right rally, an alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Within the clip, Spencer says my ancestors enslaved those pieces of f*!^%&g s&!t. While many see this phrase as Spencer clearly affirming and voicing his stance as both a racist and a white nationalist, Twitter does not feel that the audio bite violates their aforementioned policy. In a statement from the company, Twitter said that we have not received reports of content that would result in [Spencer being] suspended and that Spencer did not have any known affiliations to hate groups, though, in my opinion, both this specific clip and many other statements Spencer has made prove the contrary.

If Twitter is worried about advertising being able to target communities and ambush them with false information, then I do not understand why they are allowing the founder of a modern Neo-Nazi movement to maintain space on their platform. If Twitter wont allow prominent political figures to post ads and expand on their ideologies but allows Neo-Nazis to express their opinions, what does that say about the morality behind Twitters leaders and their future policies? Twitter bans political ads concerned with abortion and gun control but allows white-supremacists to boast their bigoted opinions on their platform. Jack Dorsey has a lot of explaining to do.

Read the rest here:
Political Ads, Twitter, and Neo-Nazis - The Scarlet

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In September, the former darling of the alt-right, Milo Yiannopoulos, used the messaging app Telegram to complain to his followers that he was talking to the same 1,000 people, none of whom buy books, tickets or anything or donate and that he cant put food on the table that way. A case can be made that Yiannopoulos complaints display a bitterness at his shrinking audience and a diminished reach, following a period of relative fame as the alt-rights charismatic bad boy.

The main complaint Yiannopoulos is making, however, is that he is not creating enough revenue to financially keep afloat. Like other alt-right figureheads, he apparently relies on donations. Requests for donations are common across the far-right web. And while far-right personalities are not the only people asking for donations online, the constant, public referral to ones financial troubles is recurring.

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Within the far-right, requests for money include crowdfunding via donations through sites like Patreon, the constant reiterations by InfoWars host Alex Jones to buy his products and lengthy, emotional YouTube videos made by far-right activists and media personalities.

Begging for money is a well-known device of far-right agitators, and it by far exceeds the simple request to donate a few dollars every once in a while. Constant begging is not an indicator of mere grifting but has a number of different functions and benefits. For one, if people pay money for something instead of getting it for free, they tend to ascribe a higher value to it. So, besides the obvious benefit of generating revenue, the increased commitment of followers to figureheads alone could justify the permanent request for donations.

It stands to reason, however, that repeated and personal requests for money transcends this aim. To shine a light on todays far-right media personalities strategies, it helps to look at their ideological ancestors.

In the late 1930s, Theodor Adorno wrote in The Psychological Technique of Thomas Radio Addresses about the Christian fundamentalist Martin Luther Thomas. Adorno described the psychological tricks Thomas employed for his political, personal and financial gains. While a few of the devices seem like common rhetoric, such as referencing the good old times, some of them are rather unusual. One of these is what Adorno calls the great little man device.

The great little man is both weak and strong: weak insofar as each member of the crowd is convinced as being capable of identifying himself with the leader who, therefore, must not be superior to the follower; strong insofar as he represents the powerful collectivity which is achieved through the unification of those whom he addresses.

Requesting money, or begging, as Adorno puts it, is an important tool to construct this image: Financial worries are relatable to most people. Raising the issue of financial struggles in Yiannopoulos case that he allegedly cannot put food on the table is part of this great little man strategy. Adorno writes about Thomas: the way in which he discusses money with them is rather unusual. No consideration of dignity inhibits him from asking for money again and again All his speeches are interspersed with whining and pointedly shameless appeals for funds; one may say that he plays the beggar.

This, of course, contradicts the usual image as a leader that far-right figureheads often seek to convey. Yiannopoulos combines this begging attitude with personal disappointment in his followers who dont buy books and tickets and have thus failed him.

Yiannopoulos is by far not the only alt-right personality to use this strategy in his social media appearances. Richard Spencer, the most prominent figure of the alt-right, published a video requesting money for a legal fund for himself. These donations would help fund the lawsuit resulting from the deadly Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville in August 2017.

Likewise, Christopher Cantwell, depicted in a Vice documentary about the rally, begged for money in the aftermath of the event. Cantwell, often mockingly referred to as the crying Nazi, embodies the great little man in the performance which brought about his nickname. His crying is not a break in the performance, but a crucial part of it.

Adorno describes several other strategies that are tied in with the great little man device. For example, there is the indefatigability device, or claiming that the great little man works tirelessly for the cause, and that the opposition never stops, or the prosecuted innocence device claiming to have done no harm and yet being prosecuted by foes regardless.

What all of these methods have in common, and which make the great little man device quite effective, is the mixture of pettiness and grandeur, a combination commonly found throughout the far-right, where a sense of superiority (or supremacy) goes hand in hand with victim narratives. With these great little men making prominent comebacks, being aware of its implications and effectiveness is crucial for understanding far-right online culture.

*[The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Rightis a partner institution ofFair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the authorsown and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

Read the original here:
Great Little Men: Why the Alt-Right Begs for Money - Fair Observer

In an incredible twist of irony, Donald Trump Jr. was heckled off stage last week during a talk about his new book Triggered after he couldnt handle the onslaught of right-wing trolling at his event.

Trumps son being harassed from the right seemed surprising, but the heckling represented a new height for a growing movement thats been seeded by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist upstart whos been taking advantage of major tech platforms to gain prominence. The increasingly prominent racist had been feuding with Charlie Kirk, Don Jr.s friend and the founder of Turning Point USA, an organization for young conservatives with chapters at colleges nationwide.

After a Turning Point USA event last month in which Kirk defended the US relationship with Israel, Fuentes decided to sic his followers on Kirk and his organization, advising them to show up at his and other conservative events and manipulate the question and answer portions into confrontations designed to spread alt-right ideasin effect, make them real-life internet red-pilling sessions designed to win converts to the racist, far-right. Fuentes followers flooded the mics with questions about Israel, littering their queries with suggestions for the crowd and people watching the events livestream to Google far-right conspiracies, including anti-semitic ones.

Fuentes has harnessed tech platforms to help fuel his rise and to spread white nationalism, using at least one YouTube account and a verified Twitter handle, which hes deployed to rally his followers to turn out for Turning Points events.

Its unclear why Fuentes still has a presence on the platforms. On YouTube, where he hosts his show, hes repeatedly denied the holocaust and said demeaning things about gay people including slurs like faggot, both of which should be considered violations of YouTubes hate speech policy, which bans promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on attributes including Sex/Gender.

While Twitter has banned some white supremacists and stripped others of their verified badge, nether has happened with Fuentes. Instead the platform has emerged as a pivotal tool in his push to spread white nationalism. In 2017, he had barely 2,000 Twitter followers. He now has over 70,000, gaining 20,000 since he started targeting Turning Point USA events at the end of October, according to SocialBlade, a social media analytics website.

Its also possible that Fuentes actions violate both Twitter and YouTubes policies against coordinated abuse and harassment. Both companies have vague rules governing such violations, but in the past, Twitter has taken against users who took part in a coordinated harassment campaign telling journalists to learn to code in the wake of a large wave of media industry layoffs. The companies declined to answer questions for this piece, including whether Fuentes encouraging his followers to engage in a harassment campaign in which they spread antisemitic hoaxes would break their polices.

There is some precedent among tech companies for banning him. Reddit removed a subreddit in support of Fuentes earlier this month, according to The Daily Dot, but hasnt explained why it took down the group. The Daily Dot reported that it had been used to organize targeted harassment on Fuentess critics; Reddit did not respond to a Mother Jonesrequest for comment.

Joshua Citarella, an artist who researches and has written about fringe internet political trends, pointed out at least one instance where a Fuentes follower told viewers of a TPUSA event to Google an obscure antisemitic conspiracy prompting the most Google traffic its ever generated, according to the sites own search trends tool.

In the past, tech companies have been hesitant to act on problematic accounts on the right out of fear of sparking conservative outrage. While anti-immigration writer Michelle Malkin has supported Fuentes in his recent confrontations, many other conservatives have disavowed him, even saying that his ideas are Nazi ideas. Former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka even questioned why Fuentes has maintained his Twitter verification.

Actual Nazis seem to think that Fuentes is one of them, or at least on their side. Neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer has excitedly chronicled Fuentes campaign against Kirk and written guides educating budding, young neo-Nazi, Fuentes fanboys on how they can successfully troll Turning Points events and redpill new followers. One Stormer post urged Fuentes followers to shout suggestions for those watching in the crowd and on the livestream to Google specific terms about far-right, fringe conspiracies, either during the Q&A or, if they were removed from the event, as security escorted them out .

Another reason tech platforms might be slow to react to Fuentes, despite his explicit bigotry and harassment campaigns, is that hes taken steps to shield his racism. As opposed to figures like Richard Spencer, Fuentes avoids giving voice to outright white nationalism. If pressed, hell deny it while putting forward more palatable seeming positions that can be but arent always necessarily racist.

In his own presentation, Fuentes isnt an antisemite, hes just posing reasonable questionable questions about Israel. Fuentes doesnt believe in outlandish conspiracies about the extermination of white people, hes just worried about birthrates. Fuentes doesnt hate people of color and want an ethnostate, he just believes that its fine to raise the question because of how valuable free speech is.

But no matter how careful he is, Fuentes ends up breaking character a lot, revealing who he and his followers actually are. In a livestream offering realtime commentary on a Turning Point USA event, he repeatedly called one of the speakers, who is gay, a faggot. In a debate against progressive streamers, Steve Bonnell, who streams under the name Destiny, and the Young Turks Hasan Piker, Fuentes says that he disagrees with interracial marriage.

Right Wing Watchs Jared Holt has documented other recurring slips by Fuentes seemingly outing himself as a white nationalist, including one instance where he explained that he doesnt publicly label himself as a white nationalist because its not politically expedientnot because, in his own words, he doesnt see the necessity for white people to have a homeland and for white people to have a country.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who is closely aligned with Turning Point USA and has appeared at its events, broke Fuentes doublespeak after dealing with it first-hand after his followers mobbed a Q&A session at Arizona State University where the congressmember spoke.

The basic nature of their questions was to ask a question that at first seems like a legitimate policy difference, perfectly debatable, Crenshaw wrote inan email exchange with Voxs Jane Coaston. But what then becomes clearand there are hints along the waythe motivations are deeper and darker than their original question indicated.

See original here:
How Twitter and YouTube are Helping a White Nationalist Build a Community Fueled by Hate - Mother Jones