[Air-L] Groypers, Fuentes, and America First

[Reed VS]

Thank you, Stu, for bringing these resources to everyone's attention. The
Groypers have been key players in the online Anglophone far-right scene
since just after the Unite the Right rally. While they are not covered very
heavily in the academic scholarship, good research on them does exist. I'd
like to offer some more academic citations to anyone else who may be
interested in learning more about this movement.

You'll find a great comprehensive coverage of the Groypers' and Fuentes's
rise to infamy within far-right spaces in Joan Donovan's book *Meme Wars*,
specifically in Chapter 7. I also couldn't recommend this book highly
enough for folks who don't know where to start in researching the
far-right. Sorry for the Amazon link, only one I could find.
https://www.amazon.com/Meme-Wars-Battles-Upending-Democracy/dp/1635578639

George Hawley writes about them from a political science perspective in
this chapter of the edited volume* Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the
Future of Liberal Democracy*:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003105176-17/groyper-movement-us-george-hawley

Finally, I have a piece out in *Media, Culture & Society* that dives into
the Groypers' digital strategy in the wake of platform governance. I
predict that the neoliberal discourse of free speech gives them lots of
opportunities to stay relevant online despite (at the time) being
deplatformed from mainstream social media -- a prediction that I think,
unfortunately, has aged well.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01634437231169909
And a book chapter on their rhetorical style here:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/conspiracy-theories-and-extremism-in-new-times-9781666933086/

Best,
Dr. Reed Van Schenck
IE University, Madrid

On Sun, Sep 14, 2025 at 3:36 PM stustu12--- via Air-L <
air-l at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:

> Groypers, Fuentes, and America First
>
> These are three of 12 short data documentaries from a series about the
> so-called "America First" movement on Twitter made a few years ago. Since
> the Groyper-in-Chief Nick Fuentes now claims his group is being framed for
> the Kirk murder, it seemed like a good time to surface these data. The
> underlying data is available for replication studies.
>
> It is quite troubling to see public figures and administration officials
> vowing revenge and retribution against "Antifa" (or anyone using the word
> fascist in a U.S. context) when it appears the most likely explanation is
> that this was an unhinged far-right ideologue assassinating Mr. Kirk for
> not being fascist enough...lately. The Groypers v. Kirk saga began in 2019.
>
> I asked a variety of people at APSA, occurring this week in Vancouver,
> whether they knew about the Groyper movement. Almost nobody did. The APSA
> theme this year is: "Reimagining Politics, Power, and Peoplehood in Crisis
> Times." Little fringe movements agitating for racist violence should be
> documented and understood. History speaks to this.
>
> Groypers
> https://vimeo.com/1118493710
>
> Fuentes
> https://vimeo.com/1118493637
>
> America First
> https://vimeo.com/1118493816
>
>
> [
> https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/2058717421-5f2983d1d644c02d8b73e3cb3517fe0d3a2d66d6552d3dca958c0b979335297e-d?f=webp%C2%AEion=us
> ]<https://vimeo.com/1118493816>
> Recent America First Identity Claims on Twitter<
> https://vimeo.com/1118493816>
> This is "Recent America First Identity Claims on Twitter" by Stuart
> Shulman on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love
> them.
> vimeo.com
>
>
>
> --
> Stu Shulman
> MLIS Student
> University of British Columbia
> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stuart-Shulman
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-- 
Dr. Reed Van Schenck
rvanschenck.github.io