In thepolitics of the United States, theradical right is a political preference that leans towardsultraconservatism,white nationalism,white supremacy, or otherfar-rightideologies in a hierarchical structure which is paired withconspiratorial rhetoric alongsidetraditionalist andreactionary aspirations.[1][2][3][4] The term was first used by social scientists in the 1950s regarding small groups such as theJohn Birch Society in the United States, and since then it has been applied to similar groups worldwide.[5] The term "radical" was applied to the groups because they sought to make fundamental (hence "radical") changes within institutions and remove persons and institutions that threatened theirvalues or economic interests from political life.[6]
Among academics andsocial scientists there is disagreement in the past over howright-wingpolitical movement should be described, and no consensus over what the proper terminology should be exists, although the terminology which was developed in the 1950s, based on the use of the words "radical" or "extremist", is the most commonly used one. Other scholars simply prefer to call them "The Right" or "conservatives", which is what they call themselves. The terminology is used to describe a broad range of movements.[5] The term "radical right" was coined bySeymour Martin Lipset and it was also included in a book titledThe New American Right, which was published in 1955.[7] The contributors to that book identified a conservative "responsible Right" as represented by the Republican administration ofDwight D. Eisenhower and a radical right that wished to change political and social life.[8] Further to the right of the radical right, they identified themselves as the "ultraright", adherents of which advocated drastic change, but they only used violence against the state in extreme cases. In the decades since, the ultraright, while adopting the basic ideology of the 1950s radical right,[9] has updated it to encompass what it sees as "threats" posed by themodern world. It has leveraged fear of those threats to draw new adherents, and to encourage support of a more militant approach to countering these perceived threats. A book written by Klaus Wah in the year 2000,The Radical Right, contrasts the radical right of the 1950s, which obtained influence during the Reagan administration, to the radical right of today, which has increasingly turned toviolent acts beginning with theOklahoma City bombing in 1995.[1][2][10]
Wahl's book documents this evolution: "Ideologies of [today's] radical right emphasize social and economic threats in the modern and postmodern world (e.g., globalization, immigration). The radical right also promises protection against such threats by an emphatic ethnic construction of 'we', the people, as a familiar, homogeneous in-group, anti-modern, or reactionary structures of family, society, anauthoritarian state,nationalism, the discrimination, or exclusion of immigrants and other minorities ... While favoring traditional social and cultural structures (traditional family and gender roles,religion, etc.) the radical right uses modern technologies and it does not ascribe to a specific economic policy; some parties advocate a liberal, free-market policy, but other parties advocate a welfare state policy. Finally, the radical right can be scaled by using different degrees of militancy and aggressiveness fromright-wing populism toracism,terrorism, andtotalitarianism."[11]
Ultraright groups, asThe Radical Right definition states, are normally called "far-right" groups,[12] but they may also be called "radical right" groups.[13] According to Clive Webb, "Radical right is commonly, but not exclusively used to describeanticommunist organizations such as theChristian Crusade and theJohn Birch Society... [T]he term far right ... is the label most broadly used by scholars ... to describe militantwhite supremacists."[14]
The study of the radical right began in the 1950s as social scientists attempted to explainMcCarthyism, which was seen as a lapse from the American political tradition. A framework for description was developed primarily inThe Pseudo-Conservative Revolt by the American historianRichard Hofstadter andThe Sources of The "Radical Right" bySeymour Martin Lipset. These essays, along with others byDaniel Bell,Talcott Parsons,Peter Viereck andHerbert Hyman, were included inThe New American Right (1955). In 1963, following the rise of the John Birch Society, the authors were asked to re-examine their earlier essays and the revised essays were published in the bookThe Radical Right. Lipset, along with Earl Raab, traced the history of the radical right inThe Politics of Unreason (1970).[15]
The central arguments ofThe Radical Right provoked criticism. Some on the Right thought that McCarthyism could be explained as a rational reaction to communism. Others thought McCarthyism should be explained as part of the Republican Party's political strategy. Critics on the Left denied that McCarthyism could be interpreted as a mass movement and rejected the comparison with 19th-century populism. Others saw status politics, dispossession and other explanations as too vague.[16]
Two different approaches were taken by these social scientists. Richard Hofstadter wrote an analysis in his influential 1964 essayThe Paranoid Style in American Politics. Hofstadter sought to identify the characteristics of the groups. Hofstadter defined politically paranoid individuals asfeeling persecuted, fearing conspiracy, and acting over-aggressive yet socialized. Hofstadter and other scholars in the 1950s argued that the majorleft-wing movement of the 1890s, the Populists, showed what Hofstadter said was "paranoid delusions of conspiracy by the Money Power".[17]
Historians have also applied the paranoid category to other political movements, such as the conservativeConstitutional Union Party of 1860.[18] Hofstadter's approach was later applied to the rise of new right-wing groups, including theChristian right and thePatriot movement.[15]
Political scientist Gary Jacobson[19] gives an estimate of the "size of the extremist vote" as a fraction of Republican Party voters (there being essentially no right-wing extremists in theDemocratic party), based on sympathizers as well as active supporters of the "Proud Boys,Oath Keepers,QAnon etc.". He points to survey data of Republicans who answered "yes" to questions such as whether they had a "favorable opinion of the people whoinvaded the Capitol on Jan. 6", thought it likely thatDonald Trump would "be reinstated as president before the end of 2021", and whether it was "definitely true" that "top Democrats are involved inelite child sex-trafficking rings." Based on the results, which were stable over 2020–2022, he estimated that "20 to 25 percent of the Republican electorate can be considered extremists".[20]
Sociologists Lipset and Raab were focused on who joined these movements and how they evolved. They saw the development of radical right-wing groups as occurring in three stages. In the first stage certain groups came under strain because of a loss or threatened loss of power and/or status. In the second stage they theorize about what has led to this threat. In the third stage they identify people and groups whom they consider to be responsible. A successful radical right-wing group would be able to combine the anxieties of both elites and masses. European immigration for example threatened the elites because immigrants brought socialism and radicalism, while for the masses the threat came from their Catholicism. The main elements are low democratic restraint, having more of a stake in the past than the present andlaissez-faire economics. The emphasis is on preserving social rather than economic status. The main population attracted are lower-educated, lower-income and lower-occupational strata. They were seen as having a lower commitment to democracy, instead having loyalty to groups, institutions and systems.[21]
However, some scholars reject Lipset and Raab's analysis. James Aho, for example, says that the way individuals join right-wing groups is no different from how they join other types of groups. They are influenced by recruiters and join because they believe the goals promoted by the group are of value to them and find personal value in belonging to the group. Several scholars, includingSara Diamond andChip Berlet, reject the theory that membership in the radical right is driven by emotionality and irrationality and see them as similar to other political movements. John George andLaird Wilcox see the psychological claims in Lipset and Raab's approach as "dehumanizing" of members of the radical right. They claim that the same description of members of the radical right is also true of many people within the political mainstream.[22]
Richard Hofstadter found a common thread in the radical right, from fear of the Illuminati in the late 18th century, to anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic movements in the 19th to McCarthyism and the John Birch Society in the 20th. They wereconspiracist, Manichean, absolutist and paranoid. They saw history as a conspiracy by a demonic force that was on the verge of total control, requiring their urgent efforts to stop it. Therefore, they rejected pluralistic politics, with its compromise and consensus-building. Hofstadter thought that these characteristics were always present in a large minority of the population. Frequent waves of status displacement would continually bring it to the surface.[23]
D. J. Mulloy, however, noted that the term "extremist" is often applied to groups outside the political mainstream and the term is dropped once these groups obtain respectability, using thePalestine Liberation Organization as an example. The mainstream frequently ignores the commonality between itself and so-called extremist organizations. Also, the radical right appeals to views that are held by the mainstream: antielitism, individualism, and egalitarianism. Their views on religion, race, Americanism and guns are held by a significant proportion of other white Americans.[24]
Throughoutmodern history,conspiracism has been a major feature of the radical right[4] and subject to numerous books and articles, the most famous of which is Richard Hofstadter's essayThe Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). Imaginary threats have variously been identified as originating fromAmerican Catholics,non-whites,women,homosexuals,secular humanists,Mormons,Jews,Muslims,Hindus,Buddhists,American communists,Freemasons,bankers, and theU.S. government.Alexander Zaitchik, writing for theSouthern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), credited cable news hosts, includingGlenn Beck,Lou Dobbs, theJohn Birch Society, andWorldNetDaily with popularizing conspiracy theories. In the Fall 2010 issue of the SPLC'sIntelligence Report, he identified the following as the top 10 conspiracy theories of the radical right:[25]
Common to most of these theories is an overarching belief in the existence ofNew World Order intent on instituting a one-world, communist government.[25]Climate change being viewed as a hoax is also sometimes associated with the radical right.[26]
Since 2017, theQAnon conspiracy theory has been widely promulgated among fringe groups on the far-right.[27]
During theCOVID-19 pandemic, far-right leaders and influencers have promotedanti-vaccination rhetoric andconspiracy theories surrounding the pandemic.[28]
From the 1990s onward, parties that have been described as radical right became established in the legislatures of various democracies includingCanada,Australia,Norway,France,Israel,Russia,Romania, andChile, and they also entered coalition governments inSwitzerland,Finland,Austria, theNetherlands, andItaly. However, there is little consensus about the reasons for this.[29] Some of these parties had historic roots, such as theNational Alliance, formed as theItalian Social Movement in 1946, the FrenchNational Front, founded in 1972, and theFreedom Party of Austria, an existing party that moved sharply to the right after 1986. Typically new right-wing parties, such as the FrenchPoujadists, the U.S.Reform Party and the DutchPim Fortuyn List enjoyed short-lived prominence.[30] The main support for these parties comes from both the self-employed and skilled and unskilled labor, with support coming predominantly from males.[31]
However, scholars are divided on whether these parties are radical right, since they differ from the groups described in earlier studies of the radical right. They are more often described as populist.[32] Studies of the radical right in the United States and right-wing populism in Europe have tended to be conducted independently, with very few comparisons made. European analyses have tended to use comparisons withfascism, while studies of the American radical right have stressedAmerican exceptionalism. The U.S. studies have paid attention to the consequences of slavery, the profusion of religious denominations and a history of immigration, and saw fascism as uniquely European.[33]
Although the term "radical right" was American in origin, the term has been consciously adopted by some European social scientists. Conversely the term "right-wing extremism", which is European in origin, has been adopted by some American social scientists. Since the European right-wing groups in existence immediately following the war had roots in fascism, they were normally called "neo-fascist". However, as new right-wing groups emerged with no connection to historical fascism, the use of the term "right-wing extremism" came to be more widely used.[34]
Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg argued that the radical right in the U.S. and right-wing populism in Europe were the same phenomenon that existed throughout the Western world. They identified the core attributes as contained in extremism, behaviour and beliefs. As extremists, they see no moral ambiguity and demonize the enemy, sometimes connecting them to conspiracy theories such as the New World Order. Given this worldview, there is a tendency to use methods outside democratic norms, although this is not always the case. The main core belief is inequality, which often takes the form ofopposition to immigration or racism. They do not see this new Right as having any connection with the historic Right, which had been concerned with protecting thestatus quo.[35] They also see the cooperation of the American and European forms, and their mutual influence on each other, as evidence of their existence as a single phenomenon.[36]
Daniel Bell argues that the ideology of the radical right is "its readiness to jettison constitutional processes and to suspend liberties, to condone Communist methods in the fighting of Communism".[37] Historian Richard Hofstadter agrees that communist-style methods are often emulated: "The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through 'front' groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy". He also quotesBarry Goldwater: "I would suggest that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not".[38]
American historianRick Perlstein argues that radical right issues, includingpopulism,nativism, and authoritarianism—embodied by conspiracy-minded right-wing movements, such as theBlack Legion,Charles Coughlin, theChristian Front, and "birther" speculation[39]— have had more influence on mainstream conservatism thanWilliam F. Buckley'slibertarian ideas oflimited government,free trade andfree market economics; orneoconservative ideas like pro-immigration and empire-building.[39]
The AmericanPatriots who spearheaded theAmerican Revolution in the 1770s were motivated primarily by an ideology that historians callRepublicanism.[40] It stressed the dangers ofaristocracy, as represented by the British government, corruption, and the need for every citizen to display civic virtue. When public affairs took a bad turn, Republicans were inclined to identify a conspiracy of evil forces as the cause.[41]
Against this background of fear of conspiracies against American liberties the first Radical Right-style responses came in the 1790s.[42] Some Federalists warned of an organized conspiracy involvingThomas Jefferson and his followers, and recent arrivals from Europe, alleging that they were agents of the French revolutionary agenda of violent radicalism, social equalitarianism and anti-Christian infidelity.[43] The Federalists in 1798 acted by passing theAlien and Sedition Acts, designed to protect the country against both foreign and domestic radicals. Fear of immigration led to a riot in New York City in 1806 between nativists and Irishmen, which led to increased calls by Federalists to nativism.[42][44]
In America, public outrage against privilege and aristocracy in the United States was expressed in the Northeast by advocates ofanti-Masonry, the belief thatFreemasonry comprised powerful evil secret elites which rejected republican values and were blocking the movement towardegalitarianism and reform. The anti-Masons, with a strong evangelical base, organized into a political party, the Anti-Masonic Party that pledged to rid Masons from public office. It was most active in 1828–1836. The Freemason movement was badly damaged and never fully recovered; the Anti-Mason movement merged into the coalition that became the newWhig Party. The anti-Masonry movement was not "radical"; it fully participated in democracy, and was animated by the belief that the Masons were the ones subverting democracy in America.[45][46] While earlier accounts of the antimasons portrayed their supporters as mainly poor people, more recent scholarship has shown that they were largely middle-class.[47]
The arrival of large numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1830s and 1840s led to a reaction among Americans, who were alarmed by the levels of crime and welfare dependency among the new arrivals, and the danger of political power in the hands of the Pope. This led to the organizedNativists andxenophobes. Nativists in New York formed theAmerican Republican Party. It merged into theKnow Nothings in the 1850s. The Know-Nothing activists and Irish Catholics fought a series of election-day confrontations especially in the1856, with multiple injuries and a few deaths.
The Know Nothing party split over the issue ofslavery and its northern wing merged into theRepublican Party in the late 1850s.[48][49]
Starting in the 1870s and continuing through the late 19th century, numerous white supremacist paramilitary groups operated in theSouth, with the goal of intimidating African-American supporters of theRepublican Party. Examples of such groups included theRed Shirts and theWhite League.[50]
In theMidwestern United States in 1887, theAmerican Protective Association (APA) was formed byIrish Protestants from Canada who wanted to fight against the political power of Irish Catholic politicians. It was a secret organization with vastly exaggerated membership claims whose members campaigned for Protestant candidates in local elections and it opposed the hiring of Catholics for government jobs. The movement relied on forged documents and was rejected by mainstream Republicans. Anti-Catholicism was declining in America as the Catholics moved up the social ladder, and the APA quickly faded away in the mid-1890s.[51][52][53]
TheSecond Ku Klux Klan, was formed in 1915 but grew very slowly until the early 1920s. Then entrepreneurs took it over as a cash machine whereby well-paid state and local organizers formed a local chapter and collected initiation fees, while the national office sold expensive white robes with masks. The organizers collected the money and moved on, leaving locals with weak leadership.[54] Once the state leaders were exposed as frauds in the mid-1920s, the KKK collapsed rapidly. Organizers promised membership would be secret, and appealed to Anti-Catholicism as well as hostility to Jews and African Americans.Protestant fundamentalists were the main recruits, along with poorly educated men. The Klan organizers claimed that Catholics were controlled by the Pope. They supported prohibition and public schools. The Klan was anti-elitist and it also attacked "the intellectuals", seeing itself as the egalitarian defender of the common man.[55] The Klan was denounced by the Republicans, but the Democrats split bitterly on a proposal to denounce the Klan in 1924.[56][57]
During theGreat Depression in the United States there were several popular new movements. On the left the largest by far wasHuey Long'sShare Our Wealth, which attacked capitalism and was expanding from its base in Louisiana when Long was assassinated. On the right the most important wasFather Coughlin.[58]
Charles Coughlin (Father Coughlin) was a Catholic priest who immigrated from Canada to Detroit and began broadcasting on religious matters in 1926. When his program went national in 1930, he began to comment on political issues, promoting a left-wing attack that was highly critical of American capitalists. By 1932 he had millions of regular listeners. He supportedFranklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and promoted the earlyNew Deal.[59] He broke with Roosevelt in 1935 on foreign policy. Coughlin then denounced theNew Deal, which he claimed had accomplished little but instead had strengthened the position of the bankers.[60]
In 1934 he set up the "National Union for Social Justice", as a network of local clubs he would control. The National Union never flourished and it closed in 1936.[61] Instead he endorsed the left-wing presidential campaign ofWilliam Lemke, who campaigned on theUnion Party ticket, as a new third party. Lemke was also supported byGerald L. K. Smith, head of the remnants of the Share Our Wealth movement and Dr.Francis Townsend, head of the left-wing Townsend Old Age movement. In the election, however, Lemke received fewer than 900,000 votes.[62][63]
After 1936 Coughlin used his radio show and magazine to push America far to the right.[64] He endorsed the fascism of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Nazi Germany. At home he attacked labor unions and liberal politicians for being pro-Communist. He called for a corporate state and setting up "Social Justice Councils", which excluded non-Christians from their membership. His magazine,Social Justice, namedBenito Mussolini as man of the year in 1938 and defendedHitler's "persecution" of Jews, whom he linked with Communism. Major radio stations then refused to air his broadcasts and the Post Office bannedSocial Justice from the mails in 1942 after the U.S. entered World War II. The previous Catholic archbishop of Detroit had defended Coughlin but the new archbishop ordered him to cease his political activities and radio broadcasts. Coughlin did so and retired from political life.[65][66][67]
TheBlack Legion, which had a peak membership of 40,000 was formed by former Klansmen and operated inIndiana,Ohio andMichigan. Unlike the Klan, its members dressed in black and its organizational hierarchy was based on the organizational hierarchy of the military, not on the organizational hierarchy of fraternal organizations. Its members swore an oath to keep "the secrets of the order to support God, theUnited States Constitution, and the Black Legion in its holy war against Catholics, Jews, Communists, Negroes, and aliens". The organization went into decline after more than fifty members were convicted of various crimes in support of the organization. The typical member was from a small farm in the South, lacked a high school graduation diploma, was married with children and worked in unskilled labor.[68]
Gerald B. Winrod, a fundamentalist Christian minister who founded the Defenders of the Christian Faith revived theIlluminati conspiracy theory that was originally introduced into the United States in 1798. He claimed that theFrench and Russian Revolutions were both directed by the Illuminati and he also claimed that theProtocols of the Elders of Zion was an accurate expose of a Jewish conspiracy. He believed that the Jews, the Catholics, the communists and the bankers were all working together and plotting to destroy American Protestantism. Although Winrod's appeal was mainly limited to rural, poor, uneducated fundamentalist Christians, his magazineThe Defender reached a peak circulation of 100,000 in the late 1930s.[69]
William Dudley Pelley'sSilver Shirts movement was overtly modelled on European fascism and introduced a populist statist plan for economic organization. The United States would be reorganized as a corporation, with individuals paid according to their contributions, although African Americans, aboriginals and aliens would be treated as wards of the state and therefore hold a lower status. The organization blamed the Jews for the depression, communism, and the spread of immorality, but it openly accepted Catholics as members. Its membership was largely uneducated, poor and elderly, with a high proportion of neurotics, and it also had a large female membership. Its main base of support was in small communities in the Midwest and on the West Coast, and it had almost no presence in the Southern States.[70]
Although the United States emerged from the Second World War as the world's most powerful country economically and militarily, communism had also been strengthened. Communism had spread in Eastern Europe and southeast Asia, and there were numerous Communist insurgencies.[71] At the same time, Communist espionage had been found in the U.S. Responding to the fears the new enemy presented,Joe McCarthy, a Republican U.S. senator from Wisconsin, claimed in 1950 that there were 205 Communist spies in the State Department.[72] The main target of McCarthyism, however, was ideological nonconformism, and individuals were targeted for their beliefs. Black lists were established in many industries restricting the employment of suspected nonconformists, and libraries were pressured to remove books and periodicals that were considered suspect. McCarthy investigatedVoice of America and although no communists were found, 30 employees were fired as a result.[73] The strongest support for McCarthyism came from some of the German and Irish Catholics, who had been isolationist in both world wars, had an anti-British bias, and opposed socialism on ostensibly religious grounds. Catholic support was far from uniform, and many Catholics were actively opposed to McCarthy and his methods.[74] Much of the hostility was directed against the Eastern elites.[75] Following the GOP landslide in 1952, McCarthy continued his investigations into the new Republican administration until the Republican party turned against him.[76]
TheJohn Birch Society, which was created in 1958, combinedeconomic liberalism withanti-communism. The founder,Robert Welch Jr., believed that the greatest enemy of man was government, and the more extensive the government, the greater the enemy. To him, government was inherently corrupt and a threat to peace. He advocated private institutions, local government and rigid individualism.[77][78]
The 1968 presidential campaign ofGeorge Wallace created a new party called the American Independent Party (AIP) which in later years came under the control of Radical Right elements. In 1969, the party had split into two groups, the anti-communistAmerican Party under the leadership ofT. Coleman Andrews and another group under the AIP founderBill Shearer. Both groups opposed federal intervention into schools, favored police suppression of domestic disorder and victory in the Vietnam War. The two groups united under the American Party banner in order to support the 1972 presidential campaign of George Wallace, but after he withdrew they nominated U.S. RepresentativeJohn G. Schmitz.[79]
Although small militias had existed throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the groups became more popular during the early 1990s, after a series of standoffs between armed citizens and federal government agents, such as the 1992Ruby Ridge siege and 1993Waco Siege. These groups expressed concern for what they perceived as government tyranny within the United States and generally held libertarian and constitutionalist political views, with a strong focus on the Second Amendment gun rights and tax protest. They also embraced many of the same conspiracy theories as predecessor groups on the radical right, particularly the New World Order theory. Currently active examples of such groups are the3 Percenters and theOath Keepers. A minority of militia groups, such asPosse Comitatus and theAryan Nations, were white nationalists and saw militia and patriot movements as a form of white resistance against what they perceived to be a liberal and multiculturalist government. In the 21st century, militia and patriot organizations were notably involved in the 2014Bundy standoff, the 2016Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and in the2021 United States Capitol attack.
Paul Gottfried first coined the termpaleoconservatism in the 1980s. These conservatives stressed (post-Cold War)non-interventionist foreign policy, strict immigration law, anti-consumerism and traditional values and opposed theneoconservatives, who had more liberal views on these issues. The paleoconservatives used the surge in right-wing populism during the early 1990s to propel the presidential campaigns ofPat Buchanan in 1992, 1996 and 2000. They diminished in number after theSeptember 11 attacks, where they found themselves at odds with the vast majority of American conservatives on how to respond to the threat ofterrorism.
In theaftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001, theCounter-jihad movement, supported by groups such asStop Islamization of America and individuals such asFrank Gaffney andPamela Geller, began to gain traction among the American right. They were widely dubbed "islamophobic" for theirvocal condemnation of the Islamic religion and their belief that Muslims who were living in America posed a significant threat to it. They believed that the United States was under threat from "Islamic supremacism", accusing theCouncil on American-Islamic Relations and even accusing prominent conservatives likeSuhail A. Khan andGrover Norquist of supportingIslamist groups such as theMuslim Brotherhood.
Jim Gilchrist, a conservative Republican, founded theMinuteman Project in April 2005. The Minutemen, inspired by the earlier Patriot movement and the original revolutionary Minutemen, advocated greater restrictions onillegal immigration and in theSouthwestern United States, they engaged in volunteer activities and directed them against people who they believed were illegal immigrants. The group drew much criticism from people whose views on the immigration issues were more liberal, and PresidentGeorge W. Bush condemned them as "vigilantes". The Minuteman Project was similar to the earlierRanch Rescue organization, which played a very similar role.
Thealt-right emerged during the2016 U.S. presidential election cycle in support of theDonald Trump presidential campaign.[80] It draws influences frompaleoconservatism,paleolibertarianism,White nationalism, themanosphere, theDark Enlightenment,identitarianism, and theneoreactionary movement, and it differs from previous radical right-wing movements due to its heavy internet presence on sites such as4chan.[80]
Groypers, sometimes called the Groyper Army, are a group ofWhite nationalist andfar-right activists, who are notable for their attempts to introduce far-right politics into mainstreamconservatism in the United States. The group is led by the far-right political commentatorNick Fuentes.
