Update 11:15am CT: After publication, TikTok banned Nick Fuentes and several other Groyper accounts. They issued the following statement:.
“We are committed to promoting a safe and positive app environment for our users. Our Community Guidelines outline behavior that is not acceptable on the platform, and we take action against behavior that violates those policies, including by removing content or accounts.”
The original post follows below.
White nationalists and far-right figures have found a new platform to spread their messages and expand their following, moving to
TikTok, Gen Z’s current favorite app.
The move is being led by Nick Fuentes, who is bringing his loyal, white nationalist “
Groyper” following with him.
“I never got into it cuz (sic) I can’t dance or anything, so I was always … I’m not going to do the ‘Renegade,’” Fuentes
stated on Sunday referring to the wildly popular dance of TikTok.
But he’s since changed his tune.
“We’re on TikTok and we’re going to be using TikTok because it’s fun, because why not?” Fuentes added. He then gave credit to a fellow Groyper who came up with the idea to move to the platform while adding, “It was his idea, he suggested … we get serious about making an American First Hype House on TikTok and bring the Groypers on TikTok … and I think it’s a great idea because you know, when you think about social media, our biggest presence as a political movement is on Twitter.”
As the Daily Dot wrote last year:
A Groyper is a member of Fuentes’ movement of his brand of “alt-right” white nationalism. The alt-right is a loose collection of conservatives that harbor white nationalists. Fuentes is currently one of its most public faces.
As their chosen mascot, Groypers took hold of an
exploitable illustration of
Pepe the Frog. While iterations of Pepe are commonly used within the far-right,
this version is of Pepe resting a conspicuous face against his two hands.
Fuentes further stated that the problem with Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube is that they all have “these restrictions, regulations, community guidelines, terms of service that are obstructive and restrictive,” while adding, “I think TikTok is going to be a great outlet for political content, but particularly for young people, for zoomers…”
“We’re trying to appeal to a younger audience,” Fuentes added.
Asked why he has joined the platform, Fuentes didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Dot.
His white nationalist venture seems to be a work in progress. On Tuesday while making a TikTok, Fuentes apparently became overcome with rage and destroyed a trash can.
“I got so mad making this one [TikTok] that I smashed a garbage can,” he wrote with a picture attached to the message of a shattered plastic waste bin. “I kept accidentally deleting good takes and my phone kept falling off the table, I was so upset.”
But the rest of their use of the platform seems to be going much smoother. Fuentes has been pushing a list of other far-right figureheads who are on the platform as well, hoping to grow their audience.
The list, on messaging app
Telegram, includes the likes of Vincent James Foxx, a far-right YouTuber, and alt-right personality Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet.
Now, they are using the platform to start another “
Groyper War,” their effort to attack conservative Trump supporters who hold a slightly mainstream conservative view.
Other college-aged followers of Fuentes including Jaden McNeil and Patrick Casey have joined the TikTok movement.
They touted the response their presence on the platform received Tuesday on Telegram, noting that “apparently these TikTok dummies are blocking all groypers.”
Fuentes and his crowd have specifically used the “duet” feature on TikTok— which allows them to respond to Trump-supporting MAGA teens in their own videos.
In one video, Fuentes could be seen responding to a user by putting on a Cookie Monster hat—a reference
to his own Holocuast denialism, which he has once made while using a baking analogy.
Casey—a white nationalist who is currently president of Identity Evropa, now known as the “American Identity Movement,” which
seeks to recruit white, college-aged men for their organization—joined Fuentes on the platform.
The ability for Fuentes to “go live” and
talk directly to the young demographic on TikTok has become a main appeal, as a way to further reach an audience while navigating his YouTube ban.
Following violations of terms of service and being booted from
YouTube and
Reddit, Fuentes continues to expand his following on other platforms such as Twitter and
DLive
TikTok appears to be the next front for white nationalists when it comes to the internet culture wars. They’ve even tried to catch some of the zeitgeist of the app, as the crowd of white nationalists has also made a TikTok account
parroting the infamous “Hype House,”
creating the “AF Hype House.”
It currently has no posts, however.
Groypers flooding TikTok is just a continuation of Fuentes’ fight with younger conservative activists.
Last year, he started an online and in-person
feud against the college student activist organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA)—where Fuentes and his far-right fans trolled Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump Jr. for not having “conservative” enough principles.
Predominantly, they consider current conservatives weak on immigration and despise any support for Israel.
The move to the youth-focused platform has even been praised by the movement’s elders. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, a fan of Fuentes’ immigration views, wrote on Telegram Tuesday night that while she supports the move to the social media site, she wouldn’t be joining them.
“Mommy Malkin is way too old for TikTok but I wholeheartedly support the mass migration of Groypers and ‘AF-ers’ to that foreign soil,” Malkin stated.
