In a clip from his web show uploaded online Monday, the racist and anti-Semitic media personality Nicholas Fuentes said that if “Finnish fishermen” replaced Black Americans in Chicago’s south side, “it would probably look a lot more like America than it does now” and “they wouldn’t litter, and they wouldn’t be shooting each other, and they wouldn’t selling drugs.”
Also on Monday: An advertisement circulating online announced that a sitting congressman, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), would appear at a fundraiser with Fuentes in Arizona this week.
After backing white nationalist Nick Fuentes & his America First groyper movement earlier this year, GOP Rep Paul Gosar is doubling down in a big way, holding a fundraiser event with Fuentes during his 'White Boy Summer' road trip pic.twitter.com/zqPjn1P6XG
— Ben Lorber (@BenLorber8) June 28, 2021
Neither Gosar’s congressional nor his campaign office responded to TPM’s request to confirm that the congressman would actually be showing face with Fuentes this week. And Gosar himself, within minutes of this article’s publication, told a reporter, “I have no idea what was going on. I’ve never heard anything like that. I have nothing on my schedule.”
But the congressman seemed to nod at the event on his personal Twitter account, referencing “America First” — the name of Fuentes’ show and self-styled political clique — and saying, “We will not let the left dictate our strategy, alliances and efforts. Ignore the left.”
Not sure why anyone is freaking out. I’ll say this: there are millions of Gen Z, Y and X conservatives. They believe in America First. They will not agree 100% on every issue. No group does. We will not let the left dictate our strategy, alliances and efforts. Ignore the left https://t.co/EJAZopO2pI
— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) June 29, 2021
And it wouldn’t be the first time: In a major coup for Fuentes and his America First Political Action Conference, a far-right alternative to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Gosar appeared at AFPAC in February.
During a speech that night right after Gosar took the stage, Fuentes warned against the loss of America’s “white demographic core” and said the Capitol attack was “awesome!”
The following day, Fuentes posted a photo to Twitter of himself and the congressman at a restaurant, captioning it a “great meeting.” (Across town in a panel at CPAC — both events were held in Orlando — Gosar said, “I denounce when we talk about white racism” without referring to Fuentes by name.)
Asked about the flier advertising the upcoming fundraiser, an RNC spokesperson pointed TPM to a statement from February: “There is no place for anti-Semitism or racism in the Republican Party. We condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
“Our position has not changed,” the spokesperson, Emma Vaughn, said.
Fuentes’ credentials as a bigot are beyond reproach.
After the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which he attended, Fuentes told a reporter that he considered himself a “white advocate” and expressed his excitement about a “tidal wave of white identity.” He’s said the First Amendment was written for Calvanists, Lutherans and Catholics, but not Muslims or immigrants. Referring to segregation, he remarked during one webcast: “It was better for them, it’s better for us, it’s better in general.”
He’s even dabbled in Holocaust denial, saying during another webcast that “the math doesn’t seem to add up there,” in response to a viewer who analogized about how long it would take for 15 ovens to produce “six million batches of cookies.”
“It doesn’t really sound correct to me,” Fuentes said, going on about aerial photography and soil quality. “Six million cookies? Uh uh, I don’t buy it,” he concluded.
“Frankly, I’m getting really sick of world Jewry — that’s what it is! — running the show,” he said during another show.
Gosar has his own history, including previously following openly racist accounts on his personal Twitter page.
Fuentes and his movement — members of which sometimes call themselves “groypers” — have, of course, reveled in the attention that the announced Gosar fundraiser has brought them.
If Gosar does boost the group with yet another appearance this week, the benefit to Fuentes’ racist and anti-Semitic cause will likely out-value whatever fundraising money the congressman brings in.
This post has been updated.
Like-minded bigots are bigots AND like-minded.
It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that some people are this vicious and cruel.
Next up in the “Punchable Faces” contest…
Addendum: This is one of those "fa"s that I’m “anti”. Two, actually.
There’s a trajectory from Reagan going to the Nazi cemetery at Bitburg to lay a wreath.
The Pat Buchanan presidential campaigns. Steve Scalese referring to himself as David Duke without the baggage. Matt Gaetz bringing a Holocaust denier to the state of the union. Madison Cawthorn taking a vacation to Hitlers summer digs.
Now it’s congressman Gosar for most of his career emboldening the same cranks. Plus being unaware or oblivious of the history of the term America First makes him unfit for office.
You simply can’t be surprised by this.