Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign fired a young staffer named Nate Hochman after Hochman created a pro-DeSantis video that featured Nazi imagery.
In the wake of Hochman’s firing, commentators like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg have noted that Hochman’s views and presence on the DeSantis campaign “tell us quite a bit about the culture of the young right,” particularly its reverence for fascism and authoritarianism.
One of the key figures intent on radicalizing the younger generation of right-wing activists is Nick Fuentes, whom Hochman had explicitly praised. Fuentes is a racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, homophobic Christian nationalist who openly hates this country yet he has nevertheless managed to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago with former President Donald Trump in November of 2022 and secure the support of elected leaders like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Paul Gosar, and Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers.
As Right Wing Watch reported earlier this year, Fuentes is essentially a cult leader who heads up the America First movement and who is infamous for the torrents of antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and endless admiration for Adolf Hitler that he espouses during his nightly livestream broadcasts.
All of that was on display during a recent livestream in which Fuentes fantasized about teaming up with Hitler to beat a Black man to death.
Fuentes, an unapologetic Holocaust denier, fumed as he demanded to know why he should care about anything Hitler did decades ago when there is a Black man tossing trash out his car window while stopped at a traffic light right in front of him. As Fuentes sees it, in a just society, that motorist would be “dragged from his car and beaten to death by the public” simply for littering.
“You’re telling me I’m supposed to hate Hitler?” Fuentes said. “This guy is throwing garbage in my neighborhood. This guy is driving around like a disgusting animal, throwing wrappers out of his window. This is in my neighborhood. I’m supposed to mad at Hitler? I’m supposed to be cross with Hitler? I want this guy dead, and I wish Hitler would kill him.”
“I’m supposed to be mad at Hitler because of some fantastical Hollywood story about a gas chamber that looks like a shower? Give me a break,” he continued. “If I was in a room with Hitler and that guy, me and Hitler would team up and fuck that guy up. We would kill that guy. Hitler would hold him down and I would beat him to death.”
As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo recently explained, the modern GOP seems to be awash in “a generation of young Republican operatives who are fanning out into campaigns, congressional offices and think tanks” who are “wholly immersed in a world of digital racism, incel-drenched misogyny and fascist-curious strongman worship.”
This is precisely Fuentes’ master plan, as Right Wing Watch explained earlier this year:
During a livestream in late May, Fuentes stated that his plan is to use his nightly program and appearances on other programs to spread his ideas to as many young people as possible on the assumption that a certain percentage of them will then go on to become highly successful in business and politics. If these activists are properly indoctrinated, Fuentes believes they will then use their money, power, and influence to bring about the far-right authoritarian dictatorship for which he has been advocating.
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Fuentes and his ilk know that they have little chance of winning converts or elections with the stream of bigotry, intolerance, and hatred that the movement promotes. As such, Fuentes has realized that he must focus on gaining power from the inside via surrogates if he is to ever have any hope of seeing the fascist dictatorship he longs for imposed on this nation. Meanwhile, Fuentes is more readily able to indoctrinate young men into his anti-democratic ideology, and move closer to the achievement of his long-term goals, every time a politician like Donald Trump or Paul Gosar gives him and his movement credibility, and every time a right-wing political or media figure encourages his followers by adopting their rhetoric or policy agenda as their own.
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