Though racism may serve as the calling card for the white nationalist America First movement led by Nick Fuentes, you might say misogyny is its cornerstone.
During his campaign for county clerk in Macomb County, Michigan, a woman claimed that Alex Roncelli—a "groyper" in the white nationalist America First movement and current St. Clair County precinct delegate—had stalked her. Right Wing Watch spoke to the woman, 24-year-old Sarah Menig, who said Roncelli had also threatened to send revenge porn to her family members and boyfriend and called her racist names. She provided screenshots, with Roncelli’s phone number visible, to Right Wing Watch. That phone number corresponds with the official 2022 candidate list provided by the St. Clair County Clerk’s office.
Right Wing Watch reached out to Roncelli by email and phone. He did not respond to questions about allegations that he had stalked and harassed a woman.
Menig says she had an on-and-off friends-with-benefits relationship with Roncelli after they met on Tinder in 2018, and that she briefly helped out with his county clerk campaign in 2020. She claims that, in May 2020, when she told Roncelli that she no longer wanted to have a physical relationship with him, Roncelli harassed her via Facebook Messenger, text, and Snapchat, and showed up at her mother’s and aunt’s homes.
One of the reasons she ended their arrangement, Menig said, was because of his attitude towards Black women. “He only dates mixed girls,” says Menig. “He doesn’t think that Black girls are good enough for him. He told me multiple times that he was glad that I wasn’t fully Black because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to date me.” In texts, he called her a “bitch n*gga.”
In text messages shown to Right Wing Watch by Menig, Roncelli threatened to send an intimate video of the two of them to her boyfriend. Menig says she eventually called the Davison, Michigan, police and state police; only after the state police told Roncelli to leave her alone or he would be charged with harassment did he finally stop, she says.
One of the screenshots provided to Right Wing Watch.
When Menig took her accusations public on social media in 2020, Roncelli, according to the screenshots provided to Right Wing Watch, texted Menig and asked if he could pay her to make a statement that “puts this to bed.” Publicly, he called her his “anti trump democratic ex girlfriend”—Menig describes herself as “hardcore libertarian” and says she was never his girlfriend. Roncelli did not however dispute the text messages’ veracity but claimed in a Facebook post that she was posting screenshots of their conversations out of context.
“He even said, ‘If I wasn’t running, I would sit here and stalk you,’” Menig said.
Roncelli then seemed to have second thoughts about the digital record he had left. In a text to Menig dated Aug. 5, 2020, Roncelli wrote, “I never meant to stalk u so.” He quickly followed it up with a text that read, “I don’t stalk people.”
Although Roncelli ultimately lost his race for county clerk, he recently became a St. Clair County GOP precinct delegate—a low-level position that is not without some power. According to the website of the Muskegon County, Michigan, Republican Party, “The office of Precinct Delegate is a partisan position that helps to elect local party chairs and officers as well as delegates to the state and national party conventions. The precinct delegate is the backbone of the partisan political parties.”
Fuentes—the white nationalist, misogynist leader of the America First movement—has urged his followers to infiltrate the GOP and run in state and national elections. The election of a groyper to become a local GOP official reveals that this strategy applies to the local level, too—even in worker-bee positions.
