After two months of inaction, white nationalist Nick Fuentes has surrendered in his supposed "war on Trump" without firing a shot.
Fuentes, a Hitler–loving racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, homophobic Christian nationalist fascist, had grown increasingly disenchanted with former President Donald Trump since the two dined together at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. Outraged by Trump's decision to tap Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance's wife is Indian and Hindu, Fuentes became an increasingly vocal critic of Trump, particularly regarding the campaign's positions regarding Israel and immigration.
By August, Fuentes had had enough and announced the launch of an operation dubbed "Groyper War II" that would allegedly see Fuentes and his supporters descend on Michigan and other swing states to wage a guerilla war against the Trump campaign.
"We will escalate the Groyper War into every swing state in the country, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona," Fuentes promised. "And we will persist in all of these actions—digital, e-mail, other traditional and non-traditional tactics—in every swing state until the election, which includes telling people to sit this one out and refrain from voting unless or until we see a real change in policy regarding immigration, foreign war, and a change in posture towards the loyal and disloyal personnel that operate inside the Trump movement."
As the weeks passed and Fuentes took no discernible steps toward putting any aspect of this plan into action, it became increasingly obvious that, like so many of his threats in the past, "Groyper War II" would amount to very little.
That was confirmed during Fuentes' livestream on Wednesday. When a viewer expressed disappointment that nothing seemed to be happening, Fuentes lashed out and offered up a litany of excuses, ranging from complaining that nobody else was willing to support the effort to claiming that he did not want to expose his followers to potential identification and backlash.
Amid all the defensive deflection and blame-shifting, Fuentes finally admitted that for all his tough talk, "Groyper War II" was never going to make a difference.
"The outsized impact that we had when the Trump campaign was struggling, which they no longer are, and the impact that we could have in Michigan based on its particular demographics, which is no longer the case, those were the factors that we had going for us, but the circumstances changed," Fuentes said.
"If you ever thought this was about using ten of thousands of dollars and being the most cancelled guy with a reputation that's considered a liability and going toe to toe with the national candidate in every state, you just never understood what the what the position was," he added. "The position was using a small amount of resources but having an outsized effect because it was thought that Michigan would be the fulcrum and Michigan had a very particular demographic makeup and we have an infrastructure in Michigan. Now that that's no longer the case, we no longer have the same position. And again, it also hinged on Trump's weakness, which I think is no longer there. The dynamic of the race changed. The states swung and I don't think that going out in the field is going to have much of an impact."
"I'm still considering doing something," Fuentes claimed, "but I don't want to get people's hopes up because I just think there's going to be a limited chance of success."
This development really should not be a surprise, as Right Wing Watch noted when Fuentes made his declaration of war in August: "Fuentes has a history of impulsively announcing ambitious campaigns that never materialize, so whether he actually has the capacity, resources, and motivation to follow through on these threats remains to be seen."
