I remember voting for Donald Trump in 2016, with zero hope or expectation of anything positive coming from his presidency. My only wish was that he might serve as a kind of wrecking ball, that he would break the ossified and corrupt institutions — “drain the swamp.”

Imagine my pleasant surprise when he actually seemed to do some positive things in his first term, in the face of the most vicious smear campaign seen in American politics in living memory. Maybe we were entering the Golden Age!

Alas, the turning of the second term has brought things back to what feels like “politics as usual.” Palantir seems poised to replace Meta as the new surveillance state tool; funding and meddling in foreign wars (in Ukraine and Israel) seems to continue more or less as it has for the past three or four decades, albeit without American boots (as American boots) on the ground; and we’re now being offered 50-year mortgages as some kind of participation trophy for a completely unaddressed debt problem.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful; we have begun to tackle immigration… maybe (much depends on Trump’s real opinion about H1-B visas); woke does seem to be on not just a cultural, but an official, policy-based decline; the anti-American leftism of the 2010s seems to have peaked and run out of favor. One could certainly do worse. But it feels as if “making America great again” got left behind, somewhere along the way… perhaps due to the logic of power that requires the powerful to reward their donors and supporters above their supposed nation.

The problem, perhaps, was that there was no positive vision with Trump from the start. I don’t think that I was alone in supporting Trump for purely negative reasons… so why should I — or anyone else — be surprised if, when given the freedom to create, Trump’s positive vision turns out not to have been what I had hoped?

This is how I have begun to feel about Nick Fuentes, the young “American First” leader of the Groypers. As a speaker, Fuentes is an incredible talent. Equal parts comedian and political pundit, Fuentes has a command of facts and an ability to argue that puts him in the top echelons of rhetorical ability. He survived incredibly intense cancellation attempts, from both the right and the left. As a personality, he is a sharp weapon, capable of dispatching adversaries and clearing the way for… what, exactly?

Despite the name “America First,” Fuentes does not seem to like America. His vision of what should replace America seems to be a kind of Christian Nationalism for white people.

Based!

Is it though?

For those of us who are open to the idea that perhaps the Constitution itself was too liberal, there is a very serious question about how “conservative” Christianity really is, as an alternative. If we are criticizing the Constitution, what — specifically — was wrong with it? Was the fault in America really a fault in the Constitution, or was it something else?

The complaints about American policy — both foreign and domestic, the “selling out” of America to foreigners and to wealthy, unattached interests — do not seem to have any roots in the Constitution itself, but do have roots in Christian spirituality. Indeed, there is no serious philosophical or theological root for a doctrine of “equality” outside of Christianity, based upon the twin doctrines of the divine image and original sin: all are equal as image-bearers of God, and all are equal as sinners, separated from God. Both of these concepts are (at least implicitly) binary, and while Christianity admits of all sorts of differences and distinctions between people, in abilities and aptitudes, here on this earth, the importance of everything to do with this world is contextualized in relation to the hereafter, and to our imminent and present relationship with God, which is not of this world.

When we look at “woke” ideas pertaining to family and nation, they appear to be nothing more than Puritan notions of Christian spirituality, derived from the commandment to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself, not putting ourselves above any other sinner or image-bearer in earthly importance, but to forgive as we hope to be forgiven, and to love as we have been loved. This is not just a feature of Episcopal and Unitarian churches, where rainbows seem to outnumber crosses, but of Christianity in general. What is the Sermon on the Mount, if not a woke-affirmation TED talk? Those who think Fuentes’ Catholicism gets around the “woke” tendencies of Protestant Christianity need only look to the history of their own Church in Latin America to see not only a captured institution, but an institution that has been leading the capture for the better part of a century. One need only briefly look up the history of the Jesuits or Liberation Theology to see the trail.

Is this true Christianity? Or merely a corruption of the true faith? As a non-believer, maybe it’s not my position to say. But as an American, with an interest in this country, Christianity absolutely falls under my right to judge and opine when Christians assert themselves as a political force. And it’s hard not to look at the sorts of lines that Nick Fuentes takes issue with — “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal, and were endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…” — and not pick up a heavy whiff of Christianity, in the very places that these new “traditionalists” Christians are trying to challenge the American tradition.

Perhaps I am being unfair. For all its faults, Christianity still gets a lot of things right, and is, in many ways, an heir to a tradition of Greek heroism stretching back almost 1,000 years even before Jesus. Maybe true Christianity is apolitical, or mixed, embodying conservative values in the home and socialist values in the economy (I am borrowing from C.S. Lewis here). That would be the sort of Platonic ideal, though maybe the believing Christian would shrug at such questions, rendering not only what belongs to Caeser to Caesar, but all questions concerning Caesar too, while dedicating his heart and attention to God.

Whence cometh these Christian political pundits then?

I hope I am not preaching to the choir when I tell Christians that many people who say that they are Christian actually aren’t . Shocking stuff, I know. I don’t mean that these people claiming to be Christian are lying, exactly, but that they hold their faith as one value among many, as a social identity, or as a tool to be used for earthly ends. Many young men who have decided to become Christian in the past decade have done so for political reasons, directly or indirectly — either they feel like they can use Christianity to harness some kind of existing political energy, or else they think that they have seen what the anti-Christian worldview looks like, and so Christianity must be the opposite of all that (there are only two views, in their world). Both sorts of men become vulnerable to wishful thinking, to imagining Christianity as a sort of solution to earthly problems, and in turn, become credulous devotees to political prophets who promise them that this is so.

Such people sometimes manifest their true nature in a more or less visible manner.

Recently, Christian advocate and blood sports gladiator Andrew Wilson was debating a feminist who responded to an insult by saying “your wife has three baby daddies, and has been married twice before.” Now, culturally speaking, this is a fairly brutal criticism, at least to someone who stands for and champions “traditional values.” But from a Christian perspective, where is the insult? Is it not just a statement of fact? One could even find John 4:18 parallels in the expression. And could a Christian not say “yes, that is true; my wife and I both had a path before Christ, made mistakes, but we’ve been improved by our faith, and want to bring that same benefit to others”? Such a response would hardly be a brilliant work of rhetorical genius (certainly not for someone like Wilson), but would be a natural and intuitive response from one who was sincere in their faith, and had worked even a little bit on their own heart, in the direction of Christ.

But Andrew did not respond in anything like that manner. Instead, he replied by accusing his opponent of “licking snizz.” Aside from its very un-Christian nature, it is a strange counter on its face, from a married straight man to a lesbian, given the widespread similarity between straight men and lesbian women on — if nothing else — at least this one hobby. I get the desire to defend the honor of one’s wife, but Andrew hardly got ambushed by the attack; his opponent’s observation was immediately preceded by him calling her “too stupid to understand the argument”. Such caustic insults are par for the course, for Andrew Wilson. There’s probably a dozen verses warning believers of exactly this dynamic: “live by the sword, die by the sword,” “throwing the first stone,” “judge not, lest ye be judged,” etc. Take your pick.

This is, of course, not about Andrew, but an illustration of the behavior of a fake Christian, of someone who is trying to use Christianity for political or personal ends.

Might we see that in anyone else? In any other characters with a caustic personality and political aspirations?

I think we might.

I’m not going to pretend to know what’s going on in Nick Fuentes’ mind or in his heart. He’s clearly an extremely intelligent person, and there might be a lot of layers to his thinking. But we are not obliged to trust him or to listen to him just because we can’t prove he has bad intentions or something. We are allowed to have heuristics of our own, and to treat him according to these inferences based upon what he is.

What is Nick Fuentes?

Nick Fuentes is a political animal. In his interview with Tucker Carlson, he described himself as being obsessed with politics even in his early teenage years, and a model-UN nerd. By all appearances, he has always wanted to be involved in politics, and has studied power since high school, maybe since middle school. Is such a person likely to put on religion as a cover for political power? The answer is obviously yes. Is that what Nick Fuentes is doing? We can’t know. Maybe not. But that is the kind of animal that Nick appears to be.

This nature is also evident in his appearance and his choice of lifestyle. I don’t bring this up to mock or belittle him, but his physicality and manner of expression is a “type”, and a fair part of how he presents is not mere genetics, but an expression of his choices and desires — what has he leaned into? How he holds himself, how he speaks, how he dresses, even how he looks, reflect his preferences. Tucker Carlson didn’t call him “gay” out of nowhere; he presents as a gay or bisexual guy. He is, by his own admission, a weirdo — and there’s nothing wrong with that, exactly, but where is the effort in embodying the traditionalist values he supports and believes in? Or… maybe… does the ambitious, talented, political aspirant from the competitive streets of Chicago maybe not always mean what he says?

Indeed, some of Nick Fuentes’ success seems to come from the way he seems to perfectly capture the Left’s caricature of the young political right. A friend described Nick as a kind of egregore of the Left, and it certainly looks that way.

A lot of Nick’s political takes revolve around rejecting people based upon ethos, or “standing”: who is, and who is not, American? He concluded one bit where he was making fun of Curtis Yarvin, the monarchist political philosopher, by simply saying “shut up, Jew.” Fair enough; perhaps there’s something valid in rejecting people with ethnic and national loyalties that might oppose America. Would this also extend to Catholicism? Up until JFK’s election, it did apply in this way, at least in the United States. But maybe a more important ethos rule for exclusion — better than racial or religious nature (although there might be something in those to consider) is political nature. Is someone a politician in spirit? Are they like Trump? Maybe — just maybe — such a person is not someone to take at face value, or to put too much trust in.

I’ve begun to see more and more friends say things like “he’s not wrong…” about this or that. Such a standard is the lowest hurdle for a politician imaginable. Barrack Obama was “not wrong” when he said “you didn’t build that.” But what was that moving us toward? What was the positive vision behind the hope and change, or behind the making of America great again?

What is the positive vision behind America First?

Anyone who believes that they saw through the childish word-thinking of “anti-fascism” in the 2010s should feel at least a little bit ashamed of imagining that the right wing version of this sort of bumper-sticker labeling — “America First” — is straightforward and honest.

Again, we can’t know Nick’s mind. But it’d be a pretty bad bet to assume he’s different.

None of this is to say that Nick Fuentes is going away, or that he might not be politically useful in some way. But it’s a little bit sad to see people who were disillusioned with Trump become enamored with Fuentes, when they are essentially the same kind of creature. The difference is that Trump has more experience in the world, and aesthetically, Nick feels like a downgrade.

Like, this is your guy?

This unmarried, childless, skinny weirdo is the champion that you’re betting has all the incentives aligned to promote and defend what you care about, on the other side of an entertaining, destructive rise to power?

I think it’s good that people listen to what Nick Fuentes has to say, much in the way that a chess player ought to study other chess games to improve their own skill. Again, the guy is incredibly sharp, and yes, he is right about a lot of things. But there is something sad and embarrassing about seeing strong, intelligent dudes with promising lives and good hearts put Nick Fuentes on a pedestal, like he’s going to save them, like he’s some kind of guide, or avatar of their values. Just because someone says something you vaguely agree with doesn’t mean you have to share and promote them — especially when what they are is at odds with how you yourself desire to live.