This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Each December, the New York Young Republican Club’s gala offers a preview of the next season’s conservative provocations. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at the gala near the peak of her stardom in 2021; in the audience was another up-and-coming shit-stirrer, the newly elected, pre-scandal George Santos.
At the club’s most recent gala, however, elected officials were notably absent. Making headlines instead were an assortment of controversial livestreamers who roamed the event reciting inflammatory remarks into cameras.
After Donald Trump’s 2024 victory, commentators opined on influencers’ role in shaping new voters. As the 2026 midterms approach and Gen Z ages into power, those figures are increasingly becoming the party itself: Republican campaigns and org charts are increasingly populated by figures from the world of political streaming. At the NYYRC gala, on the campaign trail of a Florida gubernatorial candidate, and in national youth Republican offices, streamers and their strategies are shaping the way the Grand Old Party speaks and the policies it promotes.
“I’m out here normalizing racism,” one streamer told another on a live feed at the NYYRC gala. “I’m not a hater, but I am racist.”
Young Republicans don’t watch Fox News. Young people don’t really watch television news at all. The Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report found that Gen Z gets less of its news from TV, print, or news websites than young people of the recent past.
By 2025, the Reuters Institute found, social media had become the leading news source for people ages 18-24, a stark change from 2015, when news apps and websites commanded the most youth attention.
Dr. Craig T. Robertson, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute, said social media stars can act as interpreters for a generation disenchanted with professional journalism.
“One of the main things we’ve been finding over the past few years is younger people feeling alienated from news because they find it difficult to understand,” Robertson told TPM. “Online creators and influencers are good translators of information. They make information easier to understand for people who are the same age as them.”
Some of those digital creators produce videos on TikTok or YouTube. But many have pioneered the medium of political livestreaming, hosting hours-long shows while interacting with viewers in a chat window. Political livestreaming has origins in video game streaming, with influencers frequently broadcasting from gamer-first sites like Twitch and Kick. The format makes for weird new incentives as streamers and their hangers-on jockey for clout and to create outrageous clips. A viral confrontation, an unexpected guest appearance, or a particularly incendiary remark can elevate a streamer from the bottom of the content mines.
Foremost among the right’s livestreamers is, of course, Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old white nationalist who broadcasts five nights a week. Fuentes has built a fandom on his eagerness to offend. He readily praises Adolf Hitler, drops racist slurs, and advocates for crackdowns on women and minorities.
A generation of wannabe shock-jocks on the right are taking notes. The imitators can be annoying, one of the right’s millennial provocateurs said.
“There are a bunch of Nick imposter-y type of characters that are emerging,” Lucian Wintrich, former NYYRC official and onetime correspondent for the far-right Gateway Pundit, told TPM, “trying to basically leverage his success by saying pretty much the same stuff but missing the true, like, genuine charisma that he has.”
Fuentes was initially listed as attending the NYYRC gala, but was removed from the guest list: a fact bemoaned by some attendees on a livestream and hotly litigated by others after the event. Wintrich, who served as NYYRC press chief at the time of the gala, defended Fuentes’ invitation and panned the event to reporters. The NYYRC is currently suing Wintrich for the remarks.
Fuentes’ disinvitation did not extend to his contemporaries. Among gala guests were Sneako, a popular right-wing streamer with a history of sexist remarks, and EmpathChan, a streaming personality who last year made a blackface video for attention.
Some aspiring GOP politicians are hitching their campaigns to streamers and their audiences. Longshot Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback has become a darling of the Gen Z right by praising far-right streamers like Fuentes and appearing on videos with personalities like Sneako and “looksmaxxing” livestreamer Clavicular.
Fishback has adopted streamer-friendly policy platforms (a tax on OnlyFans creators) as well as streamer vocal tics. Junk food, by Fishback’s antisemitic parlance, is “goyslop.” The 31-year-old has promised to “mog” the competition by “Floridamaxxing.”
“He’s regurgitating what Nick says, but minus the humor, and with a different delivery,” Wintrich said. “I think people like him because he’s sort of lifting Nick’s stuff.”
Fishback has also lifted a social media tactic from livestreamers. The candidate owes much of his modest following to his use of “clipper” accounts, the New York Times reports. Clippers generate second-hand fame by isolating and posting short highlights of streamers’ long broadcasts. After each campaign event, the Times reports, Fishback’s digital director sends footage to a group of young volunteers who splice the speech for viral moments and upload clips to social media. (Clips can also cut the other way, as was the case this month when Fishback told a Black livestreamer that “you should be lynched for lying about me.”)
In Texas, Republican lawmakers like Rep. Brendan Gill are hyping up the mounting streamer-led hysteria about the growing Indian and Indian-American population in the city of Frisco. Right-wing YouTuber Tyler Oliveira and TPUSA contributor Savanah Hernandez are among the young content creators who have put out videos about a supposed Indian “invasion” underway in the state. And just days ago, Gill, the youngest GOP member of Congress, picked up on their claims in a podcast appearance, citing an influx of people “who are not assimilating into American culture” to justify an end to the H-1B worker visa program.
Some young Republican stars were streamers before they were party operatives. Kai Schwemmer, the newly appointed political director of the College Republicans of America, rose to national recognition as a Fuentes associate, appearing as a “special guest” at one of Fuentes’ political action conferences.
In a March statement on X, Schwemmer acknowledged having “spoken in ways that were unnecessarily crass or demeaning” in the past, claiming to have changed his attitude.
“Life is a process of growth and refinement,” he wrote. “My comments in high school and as a teenager should not be taken to accurately reflect my views or demeanor now. I condemn all forms of hatred, including antisemitism, obviously.”
A subsequent investigation by the Guardian, however, revealed even more racist remarks from Schwemmer. Beginning in 2022, Schwemmer hosted at least 48 episodes of the show “Out of Touch” on Cozy.tv, a livestreaming platform founded by Fuentes. In those episodes, Schwemmer made antisemitic remarks and claimed gay men were “weaponizing” gyms “to give you AIDS,” the Guardian reported. He also suggested women shouldn’t have the right to vote.
In mid-2025 streams, Schwemmer declared himself a “fan of Nick” and said he would prefer to live in a society with legalized slavery and criminalized abortion, rather than a society with legalized abortion and criminalized slavery.
In a medium that rewards provocation, edgelords have the edge, turning taboo stances into potentially winning messages.
Robertson, the Reuters Institute researcher, pointed to a March report from Sweden’s V-Dem Institute, which found America to be experiencing the “most dramatic” turn toward autocracy in its history.
The toxicity and political polarization that social media algorithms reward, Robertson said, has likely played a role in that sudden decline.
“These creators and these voices — do they even believe what they say half the time?” Robertson asked. “It’s just all clout chasing, attention chasing, so they can sell you supplements or whatever they do.”
Did Fuentes kill Charlie Kirk?
https://ktla.com/news/nick-fuentes-groyper-influence/
Streaming is easy. Operating a government is hard work. Most of these clowns are not interested in the hard work part. That’s why so many of their “plans” are so poorly executed. It’s really easy to say, “let’s get rid of the brown people.” It’s much more difficult to actually do it inb a way that doesn’t result in say, innocent people getting killed and political blowback.
I’m sure nothing bad could come of this.
Influencer tactics: