Before President-Elect Donald Trump had time to change the White House drapes back in 2016, serious political commentators found themselves scrambling to make sense of Trump’s black swan victory. A consensus soon emerged that the vast swath of forgotten Americans sent Trump to DC as a shot across the bipartite ruling class’ bow. The people whose ancestors had built the country were sick of being betrayed by their nominal representatives. The conventional thinking went that politics – Republican Party politics in particular – would never be the same.
Establishment Republicans wasted no time doing what they do best: ignoring their voters and striving to reassert the status quo ante. If you look at the Trump administration’s failures, most of them were caused by interference from his own party. It was John McCain who foiled the Obamacare repeal and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell who thwarted the border wall. When congressional Democrats put on impeachment theater to distract from their dirty dealings, a number of Republicans voted for it. People forget that it was Republican governors in states like Arizona and Georgia who ensured Trump would lose the presidency.
But it turned out that getting rid of the flyover rubes’ champion didn’t quash the ideas he popularized. So the GOPe shifted to the other tactic they do best. They trawled the alphabet soup agencies for pliant glowies they could run as MAGA skinsuits. Their MO is always the same: Get a focus-grouped shill to beat the drum for the economic side of Trump’s agenda while declaring the demographic and religious elements out of bounds. The result is a candidate who favors what Democrats were pushing for in 2012, but with lower corporate taxes.
It’s not just the party bigwigs, either. Look around the Conservative mediascape, and you’ll see that every outfit from NRO to Daily Wire to TPUSA is mouthing the same Mammon Mob line.
With one notable yet forbidden exception.
Founded by Christian nationalist Nicholas J. Fuentes, AF rose from the pack of right-wing dissident movements that came to prominence in the Trump years. AF’s groypers distinguished themselves by being smart and clean-cut while others descended into grotesque self-parody.
And no less important, they were effective.
By showing up at Q&A events and putting establishment mouthpieces on the spot, the groypers exposed the skinsuits’ lack of morals. This tactic culminated in TPUSA head Charlie Kirk changing his “green card stapled to every diploma” stance on immigration.
Fuentes’ team has also put on three political action conferences, each bigger than the last. AFPAC has grown out of the budget hotel where it began to hosting sitting congressmen and major media figures at lavish resorts.
And it’s that latter development which led to AF’s biggest achievement to date.
In the runup to this year’s elections, Nick endorsed a number of outsider candidates, some of whom he interacted with through AFPAC:
- Paul Gosar
- Wendy Rogers
- Mark Finchem
- Blake Masters
- John Gibbs
- Kari Lake
- Kris Kobach
- Joe Kent
The last name on that list has special significance, which we’ll get into soon.
But first, here’s a list of this year’s primary results:
That’s right. Every AF-endorsed candidate has won or is winning a (disgracefully drawn-out) race.
With the sole exception of Mr. Kent.
Why is Joe Kent the only candidate on the list above who’s missing from the winners’ circle?
Because Nick rescinded AF’s endorsement after Kent went on record with the following:
What’s left to say? If Joe Kent didn’t already exist, the GOPe “Don’t look behind the curtain!” types would’ve had to build him in a factory.
It also turns out that Joe Kent is CIA.
Not that it should have mattered. Kent got endorsements from Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and Donald Trump himself.
But then Nick Fuentes told his organization to destroy Kent’s campaign.
Full disclosure: I was doubtful that the groypers could have much effect on Kent’s Washington congressional race. They even had to cancel a planned rally in Kent’s district due to lack of time.
Yet instead of coasting to an easy win, Joe Kent is fighting for his political life in a race he was projected to sweep but is now on track to lose.
To my knowledge – and I kept pretty close tabs on this one – nobody else in the dissident scene was trying to spoil Joe Kent’s campaign.
If Kent had won or lost in a landslide, you could rightly argue for more and larger forces at play.
But as of this writing, the most probable outcome is that Kent loses by under a thousand votes. The second most likely result is takes the silver by a few hundred-vote margin.
That means the groypers did this. Joe Kent disavowed them, and they groyped him.
Which, combined with their favored candidates sweeping the primaries, makes AF a serious political movement. The only serious one in dissident politics, in fact.
It’s no coincidence that they worship Jesus Christ as their God and king.
November should be fun.
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