Nick Fuentes’s Strategy is Working
Viral clips of the far-right white supremacist are growing his audience.
Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old white-supremacist influencer, is notorious for a political outlook that he summarizes succinctly: “Jews are running society, women need to shut the fuck up, Blacks need to be imprisoned, for the most part.” For Ericson Contreras, a left-leaning 23-year-old Afro Hispanic man from New York, Fuentes is not a natural ideological guru. So when Contreras was scrolling Instagram at 3 a.m. recently, he was surprised to find himself served a clip of a Fuentes monologue. More surprising still, Contreras was nodding along.
“Trump is better than the Democrats for Israel. For the oil and gas industry. For Silicon Valley. For Wall Street. Is he really better for us? I don’t think so,” Fuentes declared while gazing at the camera in one of these fan-uploaded clips. “Biden made it so that medical debt doesn’t go on your credit report—that was good for me. Biden tried to forgive the student loans—that was good for me.” Retouched in a tasteful black and white, the video featured an orchestral soundtrack that crescendoed as the fast-talking, besuited polemicist delivered his final punch: “The free market says that Republicans have enough money to bomb Iran but not enough money to pay for my student loans. And I’m going to vote for that ’cause I’m an idiot.”
Fuentes’s economic populism resonated with Contreras. “I’m like, Y’know, he kinda has a point,” Contreras told me. He flicked through more Fuentes reels and was impressed to find jabs at President Trump, Vice President Vance, and other leading conservatives, as well as a full-throated takedown of America’s attack on Iran, which has moved Fuentes to encourage voters to back Democrats in the midterms: “We need, in 2026, for this administration to be shut. The fuck. Down.” Contreras admitted, however, that finding common ground with a self-proclaimed racist can be disorienting: “I get mad because I agree with him.”
