wiggins, brandt groyper
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/turning-point-usa-has-a-groyper-problem/">https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/turning-point-usa-has-a-groyper-problem/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NO LNX many twt vid
Turning Point USA Has a Groyper Problem
By Kristen Doerer | March 22, 2023
The
right-wing get out the vote youth organization TPUSA, led by Charlie
Kirk, has long had to fend off the followers of white nationalist Nick
Fuentes, who call themselves groypers, from infiltrating their ranks.
But they haven’t always been successful at keeping racists and groypers
at arm’s length and have at times have even employed them.
A
groyper appears to have slipped through the cracks most recently at the
University of Alabama. Brandt Wiggins is a follower of Fuentes’ white
nationalist America First movement, and this January, the TPUSA chapter
at University of Alabama announced that Wiggins had assumed the role of
vice president.
Wiggins has peddled the great replacement
theory and urged white people to “HAVE WHITE BABIES!!!” He’s advocated
for men to beat their wives if they try to obtain a divorce. And he has
joined white nationalists as a guest on their show and used antisemitic
language.
Right Wing Watch reached out to Wiggins, TPUSA, TPUSA
chapter president Judson Christopher, and the chapter’s academic adviser
Tuesday. A spokesman for TPUSA responded Tuesday that “Brandt Wiggins
is no longer affiliated with TPUSA.”
The chapter’s academic
adviser, politics professor George Hawley, replied that he “never
personally met Brandt Wiggins and [knows] nothing more about him and his
activities than what is available online.” In an email with the
chapter’s TPUSA president on March 3, Hawley says he was informed “that
they had already gone through the process of formally removing Mr.
Wiggins from his position.”
Neither Wiggins nor the chapter
president replied to our inquiry by publication. Right Wing Watch will
update this story should either provide comment.
<b>Wiggins
streams on Cozy.tv, an explicitly “anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-Black,
antisemitic” platform founded by Fuentes, under the name Based Brandt. </b>While
his videos cannot be seen on there—the platform automatically deletes
livestreams after two days—in a livestream captured by an antifascist
activist, Wiggins encouraged men to “always make women emotionally
dependent on you” and advocated for domestic violence.
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
“Do
whatever it takes, gaslight, all that. Make them dependent on you
unironically. Be a little schemer if you have to,” Wiggins said.
Wiggins
went on to discuss marriage, which he called “more of a necessity for
the children,” and provided his take on what men should do if their
wives want a divorce.
“People are like, ‘Oh if you don’t choose
the right one, she might divorce you.’ She might divorce me? Are you
kidding me?” Wiggins scoffed. “What if I just don’t let her? What if I
gaslight her, what if I make her emotionally dependent? Stop letting
your wives be so independent and they won’t divorce you or they can’t
even attempt to divorce you. Any discussion of that, and you back hand
her. You’re like, ‘No, no, you need me.’ Make her sign the prenup.”</span>
Wiggins
attended last year’s white nationalist America First Political Action
Conference, where speakers like radical conspiracy theorist Stew Peters
called for the hanging of their political enemies and the appearances of
far-right politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Paul
Gosar emboldened the white nationalists in attendance. Wiggins took a
photo with Fuentes, publishing it on Twitter with the caption “we can’t
be stopped.” He wrote:
I had the absolute pleasure of meeting
@realnickjfuentes at AFPAC! He was extremely cordial and even asked me
about my content! The energy in the air was ecstatic last night and it
goes to show that we can’t be stopped. We have now gone mainstream
thanks to backing from politicians and other important political
figures.
Fuentes—who made headlines last fall when he dined with
former President Donald Trump and Ye—has compared himself to Hitler,
said that “We need to go back to burning women alive more,” and called
for Christian fascism. He’s also attempted to recruit incels and
misogynists to his movement of young, mostly white men and has been
accused of running his organization like a cult.
<b>Earlier this month, Wiggins also attended the Conservative Political Action Conference with Fuentes and other groypers. </b>Though
Fuentes was kicked out of CPAC, he held an America First white
nationalist rally following the conference’s conclusion at which Fuentes
called for the eradication of “transgenderism,” feminism, liberalism,
democracy, and “Talmudic Judaism” from public life. Wiggins was
photographed waiting in line for Fuentes’ rally.
Nick Fuentes and Brandt Wiggins pose for a photo at AFPAC in 2022.
In
December 2022, Wiggins participated in a livestream with white
nationalist America First influencers Tyler Russell and Dalton
Clodfelter, who pronounced his love of Hitler during the stream. When
Russell gleefully noted that “every two weeks, antisemitism is up, it’s
up,” Wiggins put both thumbs up in response.
<b>The trio also applauded Trump’s dinner with Fuentes and Ye</b>,
which followed the rappers’ antisemitic outbursts. After voicing his
support for Ye’s campaign for president—which Fuentes was
advising—Wiggins said that the older generation of Americans had been
“totally zogged” into not believing trans people were a big deal. The
term “zog” is an antisemitic term regularly used by white supremacists.
The
following month, the “Ye Is Right” campaign came to the University of
Alabama. Russell and Clodfelter had organized the “road trip” to hit
different college campuses to lift Ye’s 2024 presidential campaign,
defend the rapper turned presidential candidate’s antisemitic remarks,
and spread Holocaust denial conspiracy theories.
They day before
their official arrival on campus, on Jan. 26, someone drew graffiti on
the sidewalk that read “YEisRight” and “America First,” alongside
references to the date Jan. 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Student
organizations, including University of Alabama’s TPUSA chapter,
condemned the graffiti. In a post on Instagram, the TPUSA chapter
claimed to “stand with the UA Jewish community.” The chapter was,
however, following Russell on Instagram and had planned on hosting
Russell and another America First activist Kai Schwemmer in October.
(The event was later canceled, and the chapter’s Instagram account is
now private.) Wiggins had not only appeared on Russell and Clodfelter’s
show but also defended their “Ye Is Right” campaign earlier in the
month, and he was in a celebratory mood when the campaign arrived at
University of Alabama.
The campaign around Ye has always been
about pushing the right further to the right, and white nationalists
have used Ye as a meme for recruitment to do just that. As Daniel
Schmidt, chairman of “Students For Ye,” told Russell in the beginning of
January, one of the groups’ top priorities is “taking over” TPUSA
chapters all over the country. “If it’s not pro-Ye, we’ll send our guys
down there, and we’ll do whatever it takes to put leaders in, put pro-Ye
people in,” he told Russell. It would come as no surprise then that
Fuentes has aggressively pushed Schmidt and “Students For Ye,” according
to Vice News.
Ben Lorber, a researcher at Political Research
Associates who was the first to identify Wiggins as a follower of
Fuentes, describes Wiggins as “a minor player within the groyper
movement, one of the many figures who have emerged from the depths of
the Gen-Z far-right internet over the last year or so to hitch their
wagon to Fuentes and the America First brand.”
But Wiggins’
ascent to vice president of Alabama’s TPUSA chapter is indicative of one
strategy the white nationalist America First movement has taken in
respect to TPUSA: using it as fertile recruiting ground.
“America
First has long viewed TPUSA as symbolic of the out-of-touch,
ineffectual, and politically compromised conservative establishment,”
Lorber told Right Wing Watch. “At various points, Fuentes and the
groypers have advocated pressuring TPUSA from the outside, infiltrating
it from within, or ignoring it entirely and building parallel structures
that, they hope, will grow in popularity and come to supplant their
competitors.”
And TPUSA, along with the entire conservative
movement, has moved further to the right—a shift that Fuentes and
groypers have taken credit for. As Kirk and TPUSA have come to embrace
Christian nationalists, election denialism, the racist great replacement
theory, and fearmongering about Black Lives Matter and critical race
theory, groypers have struggled to stay relevant, using ploys like “Ye
Is Right” to position themselves as an edgy alternative.
Update:
This article has been updated with a clarification from George Hawley
about when he was informed Wiggins was removed from his position at the
University of Alabama TPUSA chapter.
Tags: Brandt Wiggins Charlie
Kirk Dalton Clodfelter Nick Fuentes Tyler Russell America First
Political Action Conference groypers white nationalism America First
Turning Point USA
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