Editor's note: welcome back to Film Sessions; our quasi-regular feature here on Media Madness in which I share, analyze and expand on a relevant video created by someone on the left wing of YouTube.
Nick Fuentes Should Be In Jail Though
As you may have heard recently, perhaps even from everyone's favorite crypto-Strasserist online media personality, noted insurrection enthusiast and white nationalist provocateur Nick Fuentes is claiming that he's been placed on the U.S. government's "no-fly" list, presumably as retaliation for his, um, political commentary. You might remember the "no-fly" list as an authoritarian relic of the War on Terror that was typically applied in an extremely racist manner to restrict the movement of Muslims in America; most of whom were in fact U.S. residents, and some of whom were mere infants at the time. Given these known facts about the no-fly list, you might also be surprised to learn that yes, it still exists; even though we know it doesn't work and is habitually abused. It is in short, an extremely bullshit form of security theater that probably should have been abolished a long time ago; regardless of the current row with Fuentes.
Perhaps then you will not be surprised to learn that Fuentes' claims about being placed on the no fly list, immediately lead to widespread calls to protect his civil liberties across a broad spectrum of the fascist and fascist-curious reactionary right; including outlets like Andy Ngo's Post Millennial, the Tucker Carlson show on Fox News, and of course, Glenn Greenwald. This hue and cry in turn has lead some portions of the online left to question whether or not responsible opposition to the clearly authoritarian no-fly list, would require one to defend someone as odious as Nick Fuentes; an issue we will return to in a moment.
Of course, it must be noted here that there is some doubt about whether or not Fuentes actually has been placed on the so-called "no fly" list; he's provided a short video on Twitter as proof, but this is in fact something he's been accused of lying about before. Furthermore there is at least some evidence that Fuentes is currently under some type of investigation by the FBI, and the internet is full of video clips featuring this little hate troll threatening to murder airline stewardesses if they ask him to don a mask because of Covid-19 concerns. Maybe the reason Nick can't get on a plane is because the airlines themselves would rather not have him as a passenger; who can say?
Truthfully, I can't answer that question, so I won't waste any more time speculating on it here. What I am going to do however is present you with a twenty-two minute video published by anarchist YouTube creator Thought Slime, and in doing so answer some key questions about the larger debate surrounding Fuentes. You may recall Thought Slime's work from our December 2020 Film Sessions post looking at their emotionally satisfying video "Oligarchs Will Let The World Burn," or perhaps my recent essay about online crypto-fascism "The Enemy of My Enemy Is Still a Fascist, Actually," in which I featured Thought Slime's video essay "The Boogaloo Boys: A meme that kills people."
So what kind of questions are we talking about answering here? How about things like "just who the fuck is Nick Fuentes," or "where did this goddamn muppet come from," and why does this discount Matt Gaetz-looking dipshit matter at all?" Although I don't want to spoil too much of the video, let's offer up some back of the napkin answers to these three basic queries:
- To describe Fuentes accurately but still in the broadest possible strokes, it would be best to refer to him as an extremely fucking online fascist provocateur who seeks to repackage white nationalist ideas and eliminationist conspiracy theories for a conservative audience; an audience he is able to reach because, I shit you not, he's got a stock broker's haircut and wears an ill-fitting, off-the-rack suit. While our featured video does a good job of running through some of Nick's greatest reactionary hits, you can also read more about him in this Southern Poverty Law Center report, as well as numerous other outlets that track online fascists.
- While the fact that his online content is constantly being deleted for violating hate speech rules does make it a little difficult to pin down an origin story for Nick Fuentes, his path to public notoriety is somewhat easier to track. Nick first hit the national spotlight by tricking pinheads in the mainstream media into believing he was a victim of political intolerance after he was "forced" to quit his studies at Boston University when he was identified as a participant in the deadly "Unite the Right" neo-nazi rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina. Fuentes parlayed this into a hosting role on the nativist, pro-Trump Youtube streaming channel Right Side Broadcasting, before seeking to elevate his profile through a series of unhinged (but highly amusing) attacks on various Republicans for not being fascist, nativist, or racist enough. This in turn has allowed Nick to establish himself as a leading figure in the so-called Groyper movement, set up an objectively fascist political conference, and ultimately settle into his highly-profitable current role as the host of the nightly streaming show "America First."
- Fuentes himself probably doesn't matter in an individual sense at all; he's a twenty-something year old white nationalist with an internet talk show that you absolutely would never have heard about if not for famous American nativists and Fox News. As part of a larger trend in which openly fascist ideas are being washed into mainstream American political culture as bog standard conservatism however, Fuentes and folks who're a lot like him, are in fact an extremely serious problem.
Naturally, our YouTube video essayist delves into each of these topics in more detail over the course of this presentation, but given the reason we're even talking about Nick Fuentes today, it's that last point I'd like to focus in on here for a moment. Look, I know it can be hard to take Fuentes seriously because he's a walking meme with ginormous hands and extremely weird hobbies for a fascist. The problem is that despite all this Nick is still a very real danger to not only marginalized communities, but basically anyone who isn't also a white nationalist with open fascist beliefs. Furthermore, this is only partially because of his ability to spew hateful and eliminationist rhetoric; despite his bizarre game of Simon Says provocation, Fuentes also appears to be criminally responsible for inciting a violent insurrection attempt, election interference, and encouraging his devotees to obstruct a federal investigation into the January 6th, Capitol Hill riot by destroying their phones.
In other words, even by the extremely permissive standards of the "defend free speech for nazis" brigade online, Fuentes isn't a victim of political repression so much as a guy engaged in criminal acts of inciting violence; which means this isn't a civil liberties issue at all, and pretending otherwise ultimately makes one a party to those acts - at least from a moral perspective. Even setting aside the fact that Fuentes probably isn't on the no-fly list, the hard truth here is that whatever harm preventing this muppet from stepping on an airplane causes to political freedom in the United States, is more than offset by the harm reduction accomplished by simply not defending and legitimizing a shithead like Nick Fuentes with "civil liberties" arguments on his behalf; especially from the "left." Frankly I'm inclined to believe it's probably always a bad idea to cry tears of outrage for fascist criminals who sincerely want to kill you for political reasons, but as always your mileage may vary.
While I'm certain that staring deeply into the abyss that is the mind of Nick Fuentes has by no means made you happier, I hope this mini-essay and Thought Slime's video will demonstrate to you why you shouldn't let yourself get roped into defending this human piece of fascist dogshit by nazis arguing in bad faith. You can check out "Nick Fuentes is the Hate Nerd" by clicking the header below, or watching the embedded video itself:
Know Your Fash: Nick Fuentes is the Hate Nerd
Additional Resources
nina illingworth
Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog
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