James Fishback is attempting to deliver the neofascist politics of Nick Fuentes nonetheless additional into the GOP mainstream—and the grievance-peddling podcaster is glad to oblige.
“Fairly quickly, all successful Republican politicians will discuss like this.”
That was Tucker Carlson’s enthusiastic distillation of the white-nationalist speaking factors provided up on his influential MAGA podcast by final Friday’s visitor James Fishback, a 31-year-old upstart candidate on this 12 months’s gubernatorial main in Florida. Most observers nonetheless view Fishback as an extended shot in a crowded subject of hopefuls searching for to switch incumbent Governor Ron DeSantis, who’s stepping apart as a consequence of time period limits. The front-runner, GOP Consultant Byron Donalds, sports activities an endorsement by President Donald Trump and an enormous conflict chest.
However Carlson granted Fishback a fawning, hour-long interview on his present for a similar cause that, two months prior, Carlson had platformed white nationalist Nick Fuentes, a transfer that despatched shock waves throughout the MAGA institution. Fishback and Fuentes are distinguished figures in an ascendant, Gen-Z America First wing of MAGA overtly suspicious of Israel, economically populist and steeped in a white Christian nationalist worldview that scorns Jews, girls, and nonwhite immigrants.
5 days earlier than the Carlson interview, Fishback did a drive-by video with white nationalist influencer Ella Maulding. “James, what’s one thing that’s such a huge difficulty in America that Republican politicians received’t speak about?” Maulding asked on the 24-second clip, which has now logged greater than 760,000 views on X. Fishback doesn’t miss a beat: “The good substitute and white genocide. They’re each actual, and I’m operating for Florida governor to cease it.”
Maulding’s eyes flashed when Fishback intoned the magic phrases white genocide. “Let’s gooo,” she cheered. This change was designed to pander to Maulding’s fanbase of “groypers,” as Fuentes’ followers are identified. Maulding will not be shy about participating within the different matters she says Republican politicians “received’t speak about.” Her account is riddled with assaults on the Talmud and claims that Jews are behind pedophilia, pornography and immigration. She has known as Nick Fuentes “the best civil rights chief in historical past,” and as soon as posted, “if antisemitism means not wanting my race genocided and overrun by third worlders, fortunately.”
If profitable, Fishback’s candidacy might obtain the identical mainstream acceptance on the appropriate for the rhetoric of “white genocide” that Carlson and others have already engineered for the “nice substitute,” the kindred perception that liberal elites are conspiring to “exchange” white Individuals by way of non-white immigration. For a lot of the MAGA mainstream, discuss of white genocide remains to be a fringe phenomenon, conjuring the obsessions of an especially on-line discourse fueled by accelerationist fantasies of white revolution, the racist invective of 4chan boards, and “race conflict” manifestos.
Present Subject
However Fuentes, Fishback, and Carlson want to change that. Maulding’s video marks Fishback as a hard-right candidate prepared to say the quiet half out loud, and appeals to a groyper constituency that feels emboldened, unashamed, and prepared for energy.
Fishback has distinguished himself within the 2026 midterm cycle as the primary mainstream Republican candidate to court docket the groypers with out pretense or apology. At his marketing campaign occasions, many younger males may be seen wearing Fuentes’s blue America First hats; at one rally, Fishback donned the hat himself. “This hat will not be about hate,” he advised his viewers. “It’s about unapologetic love for Individuals. I’m proud to put on this hat.”
When he got here below hearth, he refused to disavow his groyper followers. “I need to make clear and apologize for completely nothing,’” Fishback declared in a marketing campaign video, saying that the groypers “have an actual pulse for what’s going on within the nation.”
Fishback has additionally floated such defenses within the groypers’ personal mediasphere. “Say what you need about Nick,” he mentioned in a December interview on the streaming present of groyper chief Beardson Beardly. “Nick’s followers, as I’ve met them, are insanely sensible, insightful and patriotic.” In 2022, the final distinguished GOP candidate to flirt with the groypers, Washington state congressional hopeful Joe Kent, distanced himself from the movement when such dalliances had been publicized. However now that pundits like Carlson have made house for Fuentes within the MAGA tent, figures like Fishback are emboldened to embrace the groypers as bearers of the true MAGA gospel.
The day earlier than Carlson’s interview, Fishback appeared on The Backlash, a Youtube present run by white nationalists in northern Idaho. On their desk the hosts displayed The Tradition of Critique, an antisemitic tome by white nationalist theorist Kevin MacDonald. When requested if he would attend a Hanukkah celebration as Florida governor—a state with one of many largest Jewish populations within the nation—Fishback responded that “I might by no means attend every other spiritual celebration or service apart from that of my unapologetic Christian religion.” “Very based mostly,” replied cohost Dave Reilly, who helped set up the 2017 Unite the Proper rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier than working as an operative on the far-right fringe of Idaho politics. “I believe it’s vital to protect the identification of heritage Individuals,” Fishback advised the hosts. “I believe it’s vital to not allow us to get replaced.” (“Heritage Individuals” is one other latest white nationalist coinage—a didactic, if fully incoherent, effort to raise white American immigrants above their non-European counterparts.) Later within the present Reilly’s cohost Rebecca Hargraves, whose on-line moniker is ‘Blonde within the Stomach of the Beast’, was unwrapping Christmas items from followers. “This seems a little bit Third Reichy!” she exclaimed, briefly displaying a Nazi flag to the digital camera.
Fishback, a former hedge fund investor, gained notoriety in 2024 for launching Azoria Capital, which sought to exclude firms pursuing variety initiatives from the S&P 500. The enterprise cemented his anti-DEI credentials throughout the MAGA enterprise neighborhood. A self-styled DOGE adviser, he additionally floated a plan to create a federal “DOGE Dividend” that may direct 20 p.c of the alleged financial savings realized by the government-slashing program to taxpayers. That proposal went nowhere—partially as a result of the ballyhooed Elon Musk initiative’s impression on spending was negligible. Regardless, it stays unclear whether or not Fishback ever performed an instrumental position at DOGE.
Fishback is using an rebel wave of MAGA populism towards a bid at main the third-largest state within the nation. With one-time presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis at its helm, the Florida governor’s mansion has emerged in recent times as a flagship for state-level technique within the conservative motion, making Florida arguably the “testing floor for the way forward for the Republican Occasion,” as Fishback put it in an interview with former Infowars host Owen Shroyer final week. Florida has lengthy been a bastion of pro-Israel politics. However as polling exhibits rising skepticism over US help for Israel throughout the MAGA base, particularly amongst youthful conservatives, Fishback is singing a special tune. He has slammed AIPAC as a international foyer and frequently assaults Randy Wonderful, Florida’s hard-right Zionist congressman, who known as him a “weirdo groyper” in response. (Wonderful faces his personal conservative Israel-critical challenger on this 12 months’s main, Aaron Baker, who has lately endorsed Fishback.)
Fishback has pledged to divest $385 million in Florida Israel Bonds, and redirect the funds right into a statewide downpayment help program to assist married {couples} purchase their first residence. “You’ve received my vote,” Carlson, who owns a property in Boca Grande, exclaimed upon listening to this proposal. “That’s all I wanted to listen to. Amen, Amen.”
Fishback has additionally slammed DeSantis-backed state statutes that codify the controversial Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. Fishback’s denunciations echo widespread criticism, together with from many on the left, that the measure will prohibit freedom of speech by equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel. “You might truly be punished, fined, even expelled from a public school or college if you’re so-called ‘convicted’ of antisemitism,” he advised an interviewer. “To easily criticize Benjamin Netanyahu or to say that Israel is committing a genocide—how on earth is that something apart from protected speech?”
Byron Donalds, the GOP frontrunner for the race, is a staunch supporter of Israel. The Republican Jewish Coalition has attacked Fishback as “a radical fringe candidate,” and Israeli media has called him the “Republicans’ model of Zohran Mamdani.” Fishback claims that the pro-Israel Proper views his race “as a proxy conflict” for management over the Republican Occasion and says that he welcomes the combat. However as is the case with many on the appropriate, his hostility to international intervention stays selective. “It’s our hemisphere,” he proclaimed in response to Trump’s assault on Venezuela. “We personal it.… we are able to do regardless of the hell we wish. We’re America.”
Well-liked
“swipe left beneath to view extra authors”Swipe →
White grievance has lengthy been commonplace throughout the MAGA proper. “The one systemic racism in America,” Fishback advised Carlson, “is in opposition to white Christian males.” “I’m conscious,” Carlson replied. However greater than most, Fishback explicitly casts race conflict because the pivotal characteristic of political life. Fishback has outlined “the nice substitute” as “a coordinated effort by each the authorities and huge multinational firms to switch the founding inventory, the heritage Individuals in our nation with low cost international slave labor.” Whereas many Republicans nonetheless communicate euphemistically of substitute campaigns concentrating on a obscure grouping of “voters” or “residents,” Fishback doesn’t mince phrases: He means white Individuals. He has framed the difficulty as existential, advising conservatives to not vote for any Republican “if they’re unwilling to acknowledge that the good substitute is each actual, is going on and it have to be stopped,” as he mentioned in final week’s interview with Shroyer.
He has come below hearth for slamming Donalds, who’s Black, as a “slave” to company and international pursuits, and borrowing from the Trumpian playbook, mocks the front-runner with nicknames like “AIPAC Shakur” (a time period that, he took care to make clear to a chuckling Carlson, he wouldn’t have utilized to Randy Wonderful, who’s white). “There’s a fork within the street,” he told one crowd, channeling latest groyper assaults on Indian American figures like Usha Vance and Kash Patel. “I advised that to Vivek [Ramaswamy] and he mentioned, ‘what’s a fork?’”
Fishback additionally appeals to Christian nationalist sentiments, pledging to shut all abortion clinics in Florida and impose a complete abortion ban, together with in circumstances of rape and incest. “We’re one folks, united below a Christian God,” he told the identical crowd. Whereas Donalds wished supporters a Completely happy Kwanzaa and Completely happy Diwali, “Let me say proper right here, proper now, Christ is King!” (“Christ is King” is one other groyper-branded chorus, which got here to nationwide consideration two years in the past when hard-right provocateur Candace Owens tweeted it out at Ben Shapiro, her then-employer at The Each day Wire, in a combat over Israel’s conflict in Gaza.)
Fishback follows a well-known America First playbook, mixing white Christian chauvinism and criticism of Israel with a pseudo-populist financial agenda. “I’m operating…to make life extra inexpensive for you and your loved ones,” he announced in his marketing campaign launch video. “The tip for our society,” he told streamer Auron MacIntyre in December, “needs to be a free folks, not a free market…I outline America First not by the inventory market going up, not by GDP going up, however how are common Americans fairing economically?” Recognizing the salience of residence possession for younger voters particularly, he assaults the worldwide asset administration agency BlackRock, and Airbnb, for purchasing up Florida’s housing inventory, and he helps a ban on the possession of residential actual property by non-public fairness or international traders. Taking purpose on the state’s builders, he’s slammed giant AI information facilities for driving up electrical energy payments and harming the water provide. He’s additionally introduced that “we [in Florida] don’t need to be the monetary capital of the world. We need to be the citrus capital once more, the ag[ricultural] capital, the cattle capital, the tourism capital.”
However like different self-professed proper populists Fishback endorses options, just like the DOGE dividend or his proposal to abolish property taxes, that supply little greater than nominal modifications to market-driven neoliberalism. Since he stays dogmatically hostile to useful resource redistribution or a social security internet, he attracts battle strains not between labor and capital however between Florida households and the agenda of “globalist” firms. The chief villains on this persecution fantasy are additionally immigrants—each authorized and undocumented. Fishback’s cohort of America First propagandists attribute practically all of Gen Z’s financial woes to crafty globalist-backed, immigrant-driven schemes to wrest away the fabric birthright of white America. These pursuits converge, Fishback and his allies argue, in measures just like the H1‑B visa, providing residency and eventual citizenship to expert staff in key industries akin to tech. Eliminating the H1-B program, they contend, will defend not solely the demographic dominance of the “founding inventory” but in addition its beleaguered incomes energy.
Jewish pro-Israel MAGA pundits akin to Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin stand as handy targets representing what Fishback has known as “nation membership institution Republicans”—an ironic time period, provided that the overt antisemitism embraced by the groypers was used not too way back to police the memberships of those self same nation golf equipment. Carlson and Fishback scoffed, paraphrasing Shapiro’s latest comments at AmFest, the annual convention held by Turning Level USA in December (itself a flashpoint in MAGA’s ongoing divide), that “I need [young] white males to cease complaining and get off the sofa, as a result of there are jobs which are out there.” Florida staff deserve “an trustworthy wage for an trustworthy day’s work,” Fishback countered, “however they’ll take off on Sunday to reward our Christian Lord.” Shapiro’s “complete disdain and loathing for white Christian males,” Carlson agreed, is “bristling with hostility.”
Many have famous that Fishback is a reasonably latest convert to the hard-line America First trigger. Pointing to bylines within the pro-Israel conservative outlet The Free Press and images of Fishback showing with the outlet’s editor, Bari Weiss, and selling her e book Learn how to Combat Antisemitism, suspicious groypers have dismissed him as an opportunistic fairweather pal, and claimed that his marketing campaign is a skinsuit engineered by the Jewish institution to co-opt their trigger. Some have even prompt that Fishback is a crypto-Jew himself.
However with candidates akin to Fishback edging towards the mainstream, the groypers’ long-term technique seems to be paying off. Because the “right-wing flank of the Republican Occasion,” Fuentes told his followers in 2022, it’s the groypers’ job to “push the envelope”, dragging the celebration “kicking and screaming” to grow to be “a really reactionary celebration.” Nowadays “there’s much more urgency,” he advised his followers on the finish of 2025, “and we wish greater than what we’re getting…. I’m prepared to punish the GOP. I do consider the GOP must be burned to the fucking floor.” Regardless, it will have been unthinkable, simply a short while in the past, for a viable conservative candidate for main workplace to embrace groyper help, face up to pushback from no matter stays of the GOP mainstream, and be rewarded with a spot on the MAGA motion’s largest platform. The laborious proper has leveraged its infrastructure of on-line streamers and influencer networks to cement what might show a sturdy political constituency, with affect spilling over into the electoral realm. Fuentes has efficiently breached the MAGA gates, and it appears that evidently groyper politics are right here to remain.
Fishback is betting on younger MAGA males to assist translate his on-line buzz into real-world momentum. In December, he received a heat welcome at a “Florida First City Corridor,” organized by College of Florida Faculty Republicans—a bunch whose members had been expelled from the group chat of the college’s Turning Level USA chapter for supporting Tucker Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. The occasion promised to spotlight a “new period of proper wing politics and America First beliefs.” Fishback has pledged to hold the campaign to extra campuses throughout Florida. Spurred on by an energized younger cadre, the appropriate’s widening fault strains over central points akin to immigration, nationwide identification, Israel might flip right into a chasm. “The Republican Occasion is both going to go within the path of America First working‑class populism,” Fishback mentioned in one other latest interview, “or it’s going to stop to exist, and it ought to stop to exist.”
Extra from The Nation
On January 7, an ICE agent shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis—state violence rooted in racism, concern, and impunity, echoing America’s darkest histories.
The Massachusetts senator argues that, with the intention to prevail within the midterms, the celebration must recuperate its populist roots—and preventing spirit.
To defend the indefensible, the appropriate goes after white girls as race traitors.
An in any other case inert opposition celebration might nicely clear up on Donald Trump’s harmful and hubristic governing report.
On this week’s Elie v. U.S., our justice correspondent makes the case to eliminate ICE, explores George Conway’s congressional marketing campaign—and shares his New 12 months’s decision.
