White Nationalist Extremists In The Arizona GQP Are Trying To Normalize Fascism (Updated)

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Above Image: h/t the Arizona Mirror.

The Daily Beast reports, The America First Political Action Conference Is Courting Republicans Towards Extremism:

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White nationalist activists and their sympathizers in today’s far-right U.S. political scene are set to gather this week for a conference meant to showcase their movement’s numbers and its successes courting Republican Party influence in the post-Capitol riot landscape.

The America First Political Action Conference is headlined and organized by white nationalist activist Nicholas Fuentes and derives its name from a merger of Fuentes’ America First podcast and the event it is designed to siphon crowds from: the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

CPAC is also a partner in the anti-democracy, International Fascist Movement.  See, Hungary to host global right-wing populists in support of PM Orban:

[T]he event will be organized under the umbrella of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a U.S. meeting organized by the American Conservative Union since the 1970s. CPAC has more recently branded international editions including in Sydney and Tokyo.

The gathering [in March] of American conservatives along with leaders and activists from Europe and Latin America will feature Prime Minister Viktor Orban as a keynote speaker, said Miklos Szantho, director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights think-tank.

Spain’s Santiago Abascal and Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, accepted the invitation, and several U.S. senators and representatives will also attend, Szantho told state news agency MTI.

Arizona’s Rep. Paul Gosar opened for Fuentes at last year’s AFPAC conference and has continued to root for the young white nationalist. Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, popular with Trump and other 2020 election deniers nationwide, has also sung Fuentes’ praises online. Both Arizona politicians are slated to appear at AFPAC this weekend, in addition to former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio and Iowa Rep. Steve King, both of whom hold notoriety for harboring unusually cruel anti-immigrant attitudes. Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was advertised as a speaker on one iteration of the event’s flier, though she has since denied that she plans to attend. (Fuentes chalked up the confusion to a scheduling conflict rather than an ideological one, writing to his Telegram followers, “Just a misunderstanding. Take it easy on her we support her.”)

There was a period in time where associating with Fuentes and his posse’s naked extremism and hate was a mark of death on conservative political figures’ mainstream careers, and rightfully so. Though Fuentes often denies considering himself a white nationalist, he espouses the ideology verbatim in public settings often and specifically. Fuentes also regularly proclaims anti-semitic beliefs; he has engaged in Holocaust denialism and once denounced far-right commentator Matt Walsh as a “shabbos goy race traitor” because Walsh, who is white, works for an outlet run by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish. Fuentes was a leading figure in 2020’s “Stop the Steal” election-denial movement and has been resultantly subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot. At last year’s AFPAC, Fuentes praised the deadly attack and told the crowd at his conference that “we need a little bit more of that energy in the future.”

Longtime conservative columnist provocatuer Michelle Malkin torpedoed her reputation in mainstream conservative circles in 2019 after she decided to commit herself to Fuentes and the movement he leads. (Fuentes’ followers call Malkin their “mommy” in return.) Conservative youth organizing powerhouse Turning Point USA severed its ties with social media personality Ashley St. Clair after she appeared in photographs alongside Fuentes and other extreme right figures. And organizers of CPAC, who are seldom selective of their attendees, have banned Fuentes from attending prior years’ events.

But that righteous stigma has gradually waned from Fuentes and his movement, thanks in no small part to the tokens of validity loaned to him by elected officials like Gosar and Rogers. Media outlets like Fox News and commentators like Glenn Greenwald have also extended varying degrees of sympathy toward Fuentes in the last year. There has been an apparent lack of interest in condemning or correcting those who have effectively sanitized Fuentes to a portion of the post-Capitol riot conservative landscape. After attending last year’s AFPAC conference, Gosar appeared on a panel at CPAC the next morning without fuss from CPAC organizers or other conference speakers. This indifference has enabled Fuentes to expand his tent to include more far-right figures.

Political Research Associates research analyst Ben Lorber said he finds this trend troubling because “it signals to a broader set of right-wing leaders that white nationalists, and the ideas they represent, are becoming acceptable to include within conservative coalitions and discourse.”

“Over the last year, this trend has arguably raised Fuentes’ profile in conservative circles and cemented his status as the standard-bearer for white nationalism in the post-Trump era, and it has emboldened many of his Groyper followers to seek further inroads into different corners of the MAGA ecosystem, from QAnon and anti-vaccine movements to electoral campaigns and more,” Lorber said.

This year’s conference will also host an expanded rogues gallery of extremist movement figures and disgraced far-right media personalities. Gavin McInnes, the Canadian media figure who founded the violent Proud Boys group, is new to this year’s roster. So is Milo Yiannopolous, who fell from his one-time throne in conservative media after an audio clip emerged in which he appeared to defend pedophilia. Longtime publishers of white nationalist writing Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow are announced to be attending this year’s conference, as will Andrew Torba, who runs the far-right social media site Gab. Other notable guests will include noxious far-right conspiracy theorists like Stew Peters and Patrick Howley, anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer, and far-right podcasters Vincent James Foxx and Jesse Lee Peterson.

Hannah Gais, a senior researcher for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that Fuentes’ proximity to less-fringe politicians like Gosar and Rogers “has demonstrated to other parts of the far right that his movement is deserving of their support,” even if those speakers don’t always support the entirety of Fuentes’ agenda.

“He’s shown that he can garner the attention of people with power, and that sort of access is very enticing to more fringe far-right figures,” Gais said. “Fuentes’ goal is to transform the GOP into a ‘truly reactionary party.’ It’s a goal he shares with many of the far-right extremists coming to AFPAC, regardless of whatever ideological differences they may have.”

It is with that common cause that Fuentes and his guests will convene the third year of his conference orbiting CPAC in Orlando, Florida. CPAC regularly attracts and courts large groups of young conservatives from around the country, offering them networking and job-hunting opportunities. Fuentes’ evident strategy is to siphon away an amount of those young faces to his burgeoning hate movement in hopes of strong-arming the conservative movement more broadly toward an unapologetic far-right bent.

That strategy, which began in the wake of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which some AFPAC speakers including Fuentes attended, has accelerated in effort since the Capitol riot marked the strength of an insurgent anti-democratic movement among the conservative base. Earlier this month, that swell was cemented in the Republican National Committee’s record when it declared the riot “legitimate political discourse.” For Fuentes and his AFPAC allies, the sea change represents a chance to claw further toward the acceptability they seek.

“These figures see the growth of the hard-right, anti-democratic faction of the Republican Party in the aftermath of January 6 as an opportunity to push their own reactionary agendas further into the mainstream,” Gais said.

Without aggressive pushback, that strategy just might work. As the lines between mainstream conservative politics and once-taboo far-right ideologies have blurred, figures like Fuentes are capitalizing on the moment.

AFPAC has two mystery speakers listed on its lineup. Last year, the event’s unannounced speaker was Gosar. If this event is like last year’s, we may see more high-profile names validating a racist hate movement.

It is well past time for level heads in the Republican Party to speak out and act against those enabling people like Fuentes within their ranks. If the Grand Old Party chooses to remain silent as politicians like Gosar lend extremists the keys to influence, they may never get them back.

The Arizona Mirror adds: Wendy Rogers, Kari Lake and Joe Arpaio are listed as speakers at white nationalist conference:

Flagstaff Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake are all listed on the America First Political Action Conference website as being in attendance, with Rogers and Arpaio as “featured speakers.”

The third annual America First Political Action Conference, or AFPACIII for short, is the brainchild of white nationalist Nick Fuentes. It is designed to be a rival to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, and is scheduled on the same days at a nearby location.

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Rogers is a vocal fan of Fuentes, authoring at least two dozen fawning social media posts about him, according to Left Coast Right Watch. Fuentes is an avowed racist and Holocaust-denier who advocates for a white, Christian American theocracy. (“This is going to be the most racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying speech in all of Dallas this weekend,” Fuentes boasted of one of his upcoming speeches after he was kicked out of CPAC in 2021, the Daily Beast reported.)

AFPACIII is part of the Groyper movement, white nationalists and far-right activists who often troll conservatives who they feel are not extreme enough. Though loosely organized and members of many different groups, Groypers are almost all followers of Fuentes.

One of the main goals of Groypers is to push conservatives in a white nationalist direction. and one of their strategies is by presenting their views in a mainstream appearance or within mainstream organizations. They have a well-documented history of antisemitism and racist remarks.

None of that was a problem for Arpaio, who told the Arizona Mirror he didn’t care that he would be speaking to a gathering of white nationalists and helping promote their event.

Arpaio said he was invited to speak by “Mommy Groyper” Michelle Malkin.

Rogers did not reply to a request from the Mirror confirming if she is attending but on Twitter in response to the flier said she has always “been supportive of America First for a long time.”

Lake, the former television journalist now running as a Republican for governor, said on Twitter that a flier touting her involvement was a “false photo,” adding that she is not taking part in the conference.

“Just a misunderstanding. Take it easy on her we support her,” Fuentes told his supporters, who had been lashing out at her on Twitter. After this story was published, Lake was removed from AFPAC promotional materials online.

Other Arizonans will also be in attendance at the event as “special guests.”

Anthime “Tim” Gionet, a right-wing activist who goes by the moniker Baked Alaska online, will be there. Gionet live-streamed his attendance at the Jan. 6 insurrection and has been charged with damaging a Hanakauh display at the State Capitol. He also has faced charges for assault, disorderly conduct and criminal trespass in a case in Scottsdale.

The Arizona Mirror continues, The ‘groyper army’ is looking to make white nationalism mainstream. It has key allies in Arizona politics:

The Republican state senator was clear in what she wanted in a recent post on Telegram, the encrypted messaging app that has become a haven for far-right politics and extremists.

“Dear Groyper army, please hit Ron Watkins. Love, Wendy,” she wrote.

[B]ut who or what is the “groyper army” that Rogers, a Flagstaff Republican, was calling to act?

The self-styled online “army” that Rogers was imploring to rally to her aid is a collection of white nationalists who often use online trolling tactics against people they don’t like. Their goals broadly include normalizing their extreme and racist views by aligning them with Christianity and so-called “traditional” values.

“It’s a pretty unprecedented move,” Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, said about Rogers’ request. “These are things that help their ability to move from the margins to the mainstream.”

Burghart and the IREHR have been tracking white nationalist extremist groups for decades, and Rogers’ request for groypers to help her startled their researchers. And they fear it could help the group find legitimacy, something that they’ve been attempting for some time now.

The movement was birthed in part over 2,000 miles away and nearly five years ago in the warm glow of tiki torches.

The violent “Unite the Right” rally held in Charlottesville, Va., brought white nationalists together from across the country. It was marred by bloody fistfights between the racists and counter-protesters, and culminated in the death of anti-racist activist Heather Heyer, who was mowed down by a white nationalist who drove into a crowd leaving the rally.

The rally organizers faced a lawsuit for conspiring to commit violence, and a jury found them liable for lawsuits. A number of lawsuits descended upon many who helped organize the rally and a recent ruling hit the organizers with a $25 million judgment.

The violence brought national attention to the festering issues of white nationalism driving the “alt-right,” making the moniker toxic. For those working behind the scenes of white nationalist movements, a new approach was needed to court those in power and to distance themselves from what they had seen on television and headlines — something that could be digested by mainstream Republicans.

That thing has been the groyper movement, which is now moving more and more into the GQP mainstream. Their annual conference, the America First Political Action Conference or AFPAC, is set to be the biggest one yet and with a major Arizona presence.

Rogers will be a featured speaker. She’ll be joined by former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and local groyper Anthime Joseph “Tim” Gionet, who goes by the moniker Baked Alaska online. Last year’s conference featured the first ever speech by a sitting politician, Arizona’s own Congressman Paul Gosar, R-Prescott. But AFPAC is just the start of the Arizona push by groypers.

Next month, prominent members will be holding a retreat in the state, and local politicians are doing more than just asking their “army” for support. 

You are not welcome here in Arizona. Get the fuck out and stay out!

Groyper started off as a meme, a fatter and more grotesque iteration of Pepe the Frog, the cartoon that became something of a mascot for the alt-right as it began to coalesce into a political movement.

In the past few years, groypers have been increasingly active in internet trolling and “irl,” or “in real life,” trolling. But while many on the right focus their efforts on badgering liberals, groypers have made sport of targeting conservatives they feel have not been extreme enough.

Groypers are also largely followers of white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Patrick Casey. Fuentes is a Holocaust-denier who routinely makes antisemitic remarks and has said that Blacks in the South were better off under Jim Crow. Casey is the founder of American Identity Movement, a white nationalist group formerly known as Identity Ervopa. 

The two men led the “Groyper Wars” in 2019, an effort to inject their views into mainstream conservatism, pull more young men like themselves into the movement and harass their political opponents. But while most conservative movements focus their energies on liberals, groypers instead took aim at the conservative establishment.

In 2019, they heckled Donald Trump Jr. at an event in California and asked antisemtic and racist questions at other events. They also disrupted multiple Turning Point USA events, and targeting the Arizona-based group was a main priority of Fuentes and Casey for some time.

Researchers said the strategy worked, as evidenced by the more radical positions taken since by Turning Point USA and its founder, Charlie Kirk.

“And now Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric sounds a lot more like Nick Fuentes than it ever has before,” Burghart said.

Kirk has recently defended the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory on his YouTube channel. The “Great Replacement” theory, an idea popular among white supremacists that has inspired real world violence, holds that white Americans are being replaced by immigrants and other minority groups. It has been seized upon by extremist groups like the American Identity Movement and Generation Identity.

In 2020, the groypers would start reimagining how their movement would grow — and how to take it into the mainstream.

America First

America First Students was one of the first initiatives bearing the name “America First” to come out of the groypers. Its leader, a former TPUSA leader in Kansas and known groyper, has used homophobic slurs and has links to many prominent white nationalists.

The group was quickly promoted by both Casey and Fuentes, and other “America First” groups have been popping up across the country. America First quickly became the go-to phrase for the groyper movement.

The phrase “America First” has been a centerpiece of former President Donald J. Trump’s appeal to an overwhelmingly white voter base, but it has roots in America’s racist past.

It was used as far back as 1896 by President William McKinley, but became prominent in isolationist and xenophobic circles in the 1920s when the Ku Kluk Klan adopted it. “America First” was later promoted by American Nazi sympathizers. And David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKK, would use the term in 2016 when describing his foreign policy platform as a U.S. Senate candidate.

In 2020, Arizona saw the launch of its own America First Union chapter. Its Instagram and Twitter pages quickly began spreading hateful content and misinformation.

The account was one of many AFU accounts that adopted similar imagery, a wooly mammoth in front of a state flag with the name of the account. The Arizona account shared antisemitic posts, touted the “great replacement” theory, provided updates on the Arizona 2020 election “audit” and told followers to “fight for your blood and soil,” a slogan associated with Nazi Germany. 

At the Jan. 6 riot in Washington D.C., flags bearing Fuentes’ America First logo can be seen throughout the day’s events. Fuentes encouraged violence against lawmakers and police in the days leading up to the failed overthrow of the 2020 election.

“What can you and I do to a state legislator besides kill them?” Fuentes said days before the insurrection. He later couched his comments: “We should not do that. I’m not advising that. But, I mean, what else can you do, right? Nothing.”

The latest stage of the movement’s evolution has seen the groyper moniker take a back seat to “America First” because it appeals so readily to mainstream conservatives and Trump voters.

“You’ll still see them use (the term) groyper, but they have really taken up America First as a tool to enter into recruitment and movement-building with the Trump base, which was initially how they formed to go after TPUSA,” IREHR Research Director Chuck Tanner said. “They’ve really taken up this America First mantle.

Two leaders in the Arizona groyper movement would emerge In 2021: Kyle Clifton, the man behind the AFU account, and Greyson Arnold. Both gained notoriety on the far right when they confronted a Jan. 6 riot attendee named Ray Epps, furthering a conspiracy theory that Epps was a federal informant.

Arnold, who goes by “American Greyson” online, is behind a popular Telegram account dubbed “Pure Politics.” The channel often shares posts by Fuentes, Rogers and others; comments in the channel’s exclusive chat are often riddled with racist and antisemitic messages.

Greyson and Clifton both have been active in Arizona politics, as well.

Rogers met with both Greyson and Clifton when she did an interview with the groyper-aligned American Populist Union.

Greyson has also met a number of other local politicians, including Congressman Paul Gosar, R-Prescott.

Greyson interviewed Gosar at an event in Lake Havasu City and appeared in a video Gosar posted to his Twitter account where he helped pick up trash along the U.S.-Mexico border nearl San Luis.

He has also shared content from groyper accounts on Gab that have signaled their intentions to bring white nationalism into the mainstream without using violence.

“‘W**nats’ are mad when politicians like Paul Gosar and Wendy Rogers come on Gab,” a post by one popular groyper account shared by Greyson said. “They are success averse, they simply want their little internet ghetto to say racial slurs and talk about how much they dislike jews…as much as you guys hate us, we will drag you to success kicking and screaming!”

The term “w**nats” is used by the alt-right to describe people within the white nationalist movement that generally advocate for violence, antisemitism and accelerationism, the idea that violent acts are required to drive radical changes to lead to a white ethno state. The New Zealand Christchurch shooter was a firm believer in these ideals.

On his Telegram account, Greyson has shown that he is getting closer to politicians and getting the groypers closer to that success, posting a picture with Gosar and claiming he is “interested in 76fest.”

The groypers come to Phoenix

In March, Phoenix will be the site of 76Fest, a three-day groyper conference. Last year’s event was described by one of the event’s headliners as “Hitler Youth, without the Hitler.”

Keep a close eye on the Republican politicians who attend this conference. They should all be expelled from office.

The event is to be a who’s who of the groyper movement and includes workshops like “Aesthetic Warfare” and is organized in part by Clifton.

One confirmed speaker for the event is Lauren Witzke, who formerly was a host of the online show TruNews, which posted antisemitic content and interviewed Rogers twice. Witzke also said in an interview that the groypers were instrumental in her failed U.S. Senate campaign.

“They’re equipping the next generation of Republican leaders,” Burghart said about the groypers. “This is an attempt to mainstream white nationalist ideas. This isn’t just about meme wars, this isn’t just about trolling. This is an effort by Holocaust-deniers and supporters of fascism to move these ideas into mainstream Republican ideas.”

The Arizona Mirror reached out to both Gosar and Rogers about their connections to prominent Arizona groypers, their comments, the history of the movement and asked if they’d be planning to attend any Groyper events such as 76Fest or the Fuentes’ sponsored America First Political Action Conference, also known as AFPAC.

Neither Gosar or Rogers replied to the Mirror’s request for comment.

In recent weeks, both Rogers and Gosar have shared posts on Twitter and Gab by prominent groyper artists and groyper influencers. The Mirror also discovered that Rogers follows Harry Hughes, the National Socialist Movement’s regional director in Arizona, on Twitter.

“They rely on that legitimacy provided by those legislators to further worm their way into every recess of the Republican party,” Burghart said of people like Rogers and Gosar.

Rogers has tweeted and posted multiple times about her fondness for Fuentes who has boosted her to his followers by sharing screenshots of her posts about him.

“It’s really disturbing. They’ve got allies in positions of power in the government,” Tanner said.

UPDATE: Anti-democracy, pro-authoritaitarianism white Christian nationalist Wendy Rogers loves to talk tough but melts like a snowflake when challenged about her cavorting with white supremacists.





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