city journal

somali fraud see rufo manhattN

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Historian Quinn Slobodian Misrepresents Ludwig von Mises

Eye on the News / Arts and Culture, Education, Politics and Law

Jun 23 2026

Academic works on “neoliberalism” almost invariably share three characteristics. First, they portray neoliberalism as the dominant paradigm of the global economy since the mid-twentieth century. Second, they treat that development as harmful, attributing a long list of social ills to its rise. Third, they rarely explain what “neoliberalism” actually means. Nevertheless, the term has become one of academia’s favorite buzzwords, generating tens of thousands of books and journal articles purporting to document its corrosive effects on society.

Boston University Professor of International History Quinn Slobodian ranks among the most visible figures in this burgeoning genre of “neoliberalism studies.” His 2025 book Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. He holds various elite academic honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, visiting stints at Harvard and Brown, and six-figure grants from a Hewlett Foundation program, which funds research opposing neoliberalism. All evince a strong adversarial stance toward the subject of his research.

Hayek’s Bastards has gained high cachet on the political Left, as it purports to uncover a “neoliberal” origin of MAGA populism, especially its far-right underbelly of race theorist and conspiracist types. As his title suggests, Slobodian portrays these elements as intellectual offspring born out-of-wedlock from the free-market-oriented Austrian School of Economics, particularly its two great twentieth-century expositors: Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.

The central claim of Slobodian’s thesis is that, while Mises and Hayek were not racists themselves, they left a “parenthetical opening” to racial pseudoscience in their writings, which later bigots and cranks exploited. These ideological descendants, he argues, include figures associated with the “Alt-Right,” such as Curtis Yarvin and Richard Spencer, who have shaped political discourse through white identity politics and movements like the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. According to Slobodian, their worldview is fundamentally an outgrowth of neoliberalism, albeit a distorted one. As Hayek’s Bastards puts it, they are “less of a backlash against global capitalism than a frontlash within it.” Slobodian casts himself as the physician providing the genealogical “X-rays” needed to expose the neoliberal project’s deeper intentions....

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[### Phillip W. Magness

Google Scholar

https://scholar.google.com › citations](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XdyCdHoAAAAJ&hl=en)

Phillip W. Magness. The Independent Institute. Verified email at independent.org - Homepage · Economic HistorySlaveryAmerican Civil WarTrade ...Read more

[### #190 Sidebar Conversation: Phil Magness on The 1619 ...

The History of the Americans Podcast

https://thehistoryoftheamericans.com › sidebar-conversa...](https://thehistoryoftheamericans.com/sidebar-conversation-phil-magness-on-the-1619-project/)

Dr. Phillip W. Magness is an economic historian and the David J. Theroux Chair in Political Economy at the Independent Institute. Magness' research has appeared ...Read more

[### Phillip Magness

CFG Foundation

https://clubforgrowthfoundation.org › Fellow](https://clubforgrowthfoundation.org/fellow/phillip-magness/)

Dr. Phillip W. Magness is an economic historian specializing in the United States. He currently holds the David J. Theroux Chair in Political Economy at the ...Read more

[### Phillip W. Magness

AIER

https://aier.org › people › phillip-w-magness](https://aier.org/people/phillip-w-magness/)

Phillip W. Magness works at the Independent Institute. He was formerly the Senior Research Faculty and FA Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History.Read more

[### Phillip W. Magness: books, biography, latest update

Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com › stores › author](https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B004IA7HBI)

Phil Magness is a political and economic historian of the "long" 19th century US (1787-1920). His work aims to foster our understanding what Tocqueville and ...Read more

[### Phillip W. Magness

Reason Magazine

https://reason.com › people › philip-magness](https://reason.com/people/philip-magness/)

Phillip W. Magness is the David J. Theroux Chair in Political Economy at the Independent Institute.Read more

[### Phillip W. Magness | C-SPAN.org

C-SPAN

https://www.c-span.org › person › phillip-w-magness](https://www.c-span.org/person/phillip-w-magness/64830/)

On the C-SPAN Networks: Phillip W. Magness is a Senior Fellow for the Independent Institute with five videos in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance ...Read more

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christopherrufo.com

https://christopherrufo.com › p › its-not-racist-to-notice-somali-fraud

It's Not "Racist" to Notice Somali Fraud - christopherrufo.com

Nov 28, 2025Last week, my colleague Ryan Thorpe and I broke a story about widespread fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota. Members of the state's Somali community allegedly participated in complex schemes related to autism services, food programs, and housing, which prosecutors estimate have stolen billions of taxpayer dollars.

PAYWALL

Last week, my colleague Ryan Thorpe and I broke a story about widespread fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota. Members of the state’s Somali community allegedly participated in complex schemes related to autism services, food programs, and housing, which prosecutors estimate have stolen billions of taxpayer dollars. Even worse, some of the cash has e…

TheBlaze

https://www.theblaze.com › shows › rufo-lomez › exclusive-bessent-rufo-minnesota-fraudsters-face-justice

Exclusive: Bessent tells Rufo — 'When the bear trap snaps,' Minnesota ...

Jan 12, 2026Christopher Rufo's bombshell reporting on Minnesota's Somali fraud schemes ignited a massive federal crackdown — now, in this exclusive interview, he sits down with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for the latest on the escalating investigations.

City Journal

https://www.city-journal.org › article › fraud-minnesota-somali-feeding-our-future

Minnesota's Somali Fraud Problem - city-journal.org

Nov 26, 2025Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo are to be congratulated for the attention they have drawn to the issue of fraud committed by a large cast of Minnesota Somalis. I have devoted attention to the issue over the past eight years, including in a 2018 article I wrote for City Journal headlined "Mogadishu, Minnesota," and in daily coverage of the two federal trials conducted so far in the massive ...

Scott W. Johnson

Minnesota’s Somali Fraud Problem

It’s about greed, not terrorism.

/ Eye on the News / Politics and Law, States and Cities

Nov 26 2025/ Share

Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo are to be congratulated for the attention they have drawn to the issue of fraud committed by a large cast of Minnesota Somalis. I have devoted attention to the issue over the past eight years, including in a 2018 article I wrote for City Journal headlined “Mogadishu, Minnesota,” and in daily coverage of the two federal trials conducted so far in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud for Power Line.

The Feeding Our Future case involves some $300 million obtained by blatant, gross, and widespread fraud featuring a cast of mostly Somali perpetrators. Driven manifestly by greed, they wanted to get rich fast. The motive of greed permeates these cases.

When the second trial resulted in guilty verdicts that nailed the white ringleader of the fraud and one of her main co-conspirators, I sought to bring the Feeding Our Future case to the attention of a national audience in a Washington Free Beacon a**rticle, “From Feeding the Kids to Fleecing the Government: Inside the Country’s Largest Covid Fraud.” What I sought to do in that piece Thorpe and Rufo have done a thousand times over.

President Trump has responded by announcing termination of the Temporary Protected Status of Somali immigrants in the U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has expressed his disgust. Senator Cruz has devoted a podcast to the subject. Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth has called on United States Attorney Daniel Rosen to investigate.

I would like to add context to the Thorpe–Rufo story based on my coverage of the Feeding Our Future case and emerging fraud cases related to it. Indictments in the Feeding Our Future case have now been brought against 78 defendants. The newest of the 78 cases was charged on November 24. The 78 indictments have resulted in seven guilty verdicts, two acquittals, 50 guilty pleas, and five fugitives, with one deceased defendant. Thirteen unresolved cases await trial.

Investigation of the cases commenced in April 2021 when a frustrated Minnesota Department of Education bureaucrat tipped the FBI to her suspicions that the federal child nutrition program was being defrauded by the Feeding Our Future nonprofit and the many “sites” it sponsored. FBI forensic accountant Pauline Roase followed up in the ensuing months by compiling relevant bank records and charting the flow of funds. FBI special agents Jared Kary and Travis Wilmer investigated in the field. On January 20, 2022, the investigation “went overt” when federal authorities raided sites around the Twin Cities in the largest such operation ever conducted in Minnesota. The following September, then-United States Attorney Andrew Luger announced the first set of indictments handed up in the case with a promise of more to come.

Joe Thompson is now the First Assistant United States Attorney in the Minnesota Office of the United States Attorney. Thompson leads a team of three other prosecutors in these cases. A Minnesota native, he formerly served as Assistant United States Attorney prosecuting public corruption cases in Chicago. With 16 years of experience, he has investigated and prosecuted hundreds of cases. Having watched him in action in the two Feeding Our Future trials, I regard him as one of the best and smartest trial attorneys I’ve ever seen.

Thompson has left no stone unturned in the prosecution of these cases. Homes have been searched. Phones and documents have been seized. Witnesses have been interviewed. The FBI forensic accountants have traced the millions of dollars stolen to the extent possible. Their reconstruction of the flow of funds has been introduced into evidence that is now public record. These records show that the defendants sent millions of dollars to Kenya and China. They also sent money to Somalia—mostly in cash.

Al-Shabaab controls large portions of Somalia and collects a mafia-style street tax on all financial transactions in areas under its control. In this way, some of the Feeding Our Future and other fraud proceeds likely ended up in the hands of Al-Shabaab. That, of course, is outrageous, though there is no evidence that the perpetrators in these cases intentionally directed money to Al-Shabaab or any other terrorist organization. The defendants were not looking to fund terrorism but to enrich themselves and fund their extravagant lifestyles.

The Feeding Our Future case has opened a window on a panoply of scams committed on Minnesota Medicaid programs (so-called “waivered” programs) that appear to have been designed to facilitate fraud: Housing Stabilization Services, Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention autism services, and 12 other such programs that Governor Tim Walz has now temporarily suspended for review. Thompson himself has asserted repeatedly that the frauds altogether will amount to “BILLIONS” (as President Trump put it).

Somali community, religious, and political leaders have largely maintained their silence in the face of the fraud committed in vast disproportion by their community. State Senator and former mayoral candidate Omar Fateh is a good example. He formulaically condemned the fraud when he returned a campaign contribution from one of the perpetrators, but that’s it.

This is the larger point. Feeding Our Future and the follow-on cases represent a phenomenon that may be even more damaging than incidental support for a foreign terrorist organization: the element of pervasive public corruption.

All these frauds have occurred under the auspices of the administration of Governor Tim Walz. He has denied fault and deflected blame, going so far as to attribute responsibility to a local judge who handled a case brought by Feeding Our Future challenging the Department of Education’s temporary refusal to process (i.e., approve or deny) “site” applications that it had submitted. The judge issued an unusual public statement demonstrating the falsity of Walz’s attribution of blame.

Minnesota citizens want to know how and why this vast wasteland of scandal has come to be. This is how Thompson put it to the Star Tribune this past July: “This fraud crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the result of widespread failure across nearly every level of leadership in Minnesota: Politicians who turned a blind eye. Agencies that failed to act. Prosecutors and law enforcement who didn’t push hard enough. Reporters who ignored the story. Community leaders who stayed silent. And a public that wanted to believe it couldn’t happen here. This isn’t just a few criminals exploiting the system, this is a system that’s been begging to be exploited. We left the door wide open, and now our state has been ransacked. If we keep ignoring the truth, we’re going to lose something far more important than money. We’re going to lose the Minnesota we know and love.”

Doubt and cynicism are the order of the day in a state that once prided itself on good government.

*Scott W. Johnson is a retired Minneapolis attorney and contributor toPower Line.

Photo by Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images

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The Daily Caller

https://dailycaller.com › 2025 › 11 › 20 › somali-minnesota-al-shabaab-city-journal-chris-rufo-medicaid-housing-autism-feeding-our-future

Somalis Reportedly Scamming Minnesota Blind - The Daily Caller

Nov 20, 2025Thorpe and Rufo cite an anonymous source who alleges, "The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer." City Journal cites reports that about 40% of households in Somalia receive remittances from abroad, totaling $1.7 billion in remittances in 2023.

Imprimis

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu › learning-from-minnesotas-somali-fraud-scandal

Learning From Minnesota's Somali Fraud Scandal - Imprimis

The massive public programs fraud committed almost entirely by Somali perpetrators has recently exploded in the national news. The controversy is centered in Minnesota, where the amount of money bilked from American taxpayers could prove to be as high as $9 billion. But the scandal is spreading to other states as well. When Ryan Thorpe and Chris Rufo published an article in the November 2025 ...

[

WORLD

wng Sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth

https://wng.org › roundups › whats-the-deal-with-somali-fraud-in-minnesota-1764976022

What's up with the Somali fraud in Minnesota? | WORLD

Dec 8, 2025Somalis in Minnesota had stolen billions of dollars, the president claimed, adding that such people shouldn't even be in the United States. Earlier in November, Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe at City Journal released a report with the provocative headline "The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer."

what’s up with the Somali fraud in Minnesota?

National attention turns to a problem the state has reckoned with for years

The day before Thanksgiving, President Donald Trump declared that “hundreds of thousands of Somalians” were “ripping off our country.” Somalis in Minnesota had stolen billions of dollars, the president claimed, adding that such people shouldn’t even be in the United States.

Earlier in November, Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe at City Journal released a report with the provocative headline “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer.” The article asserted that some of the funds that individuals of Somali ethnicity had defrauded from Minnesota’s welfare programs wound up thousands of miles away in the hands of an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia.

And on Nov. 29, an X account claiming to represent nearly 500 employees of Minnesota’s government issued a statement asserting that large-scale fraud had taken place in the state and that Gov. Tim Walz was responsible for letting it happen.

The remarks by Trump and others about fraud in Minnesota have brought attention to an issue locals have raised concerns about for years.

What are the fraud claims all about?

The U.S. Department of Justice last month announced that it had charged the 78th person in connection with a scheme to defraud a COVID-era Minnesota welfare program called Feeding Our Future. The DOJ alleged that the latest defendant, Abdirashid Bixi Dool, had received more than $1 million in funds from the state of Minnesota to run a food assistance program for children. But Dool and a co-conspirator spent most of that money on enriching themselves and their families, the DOJ said. Roughly $250 million was stolen from the program altogether, Minnesota’s Legislative Auditor reported in 2024.

“It’s the simplest scam you can possibly conceive of. The fraudsters were just sending invoices and based on services that were not rendered, products that were not delivered, and they were collecting money from the state, pretty much no questions asked,” said Bill Glahn, a senior fellow at Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank. “They were basically delivering meals to children—poor, low-income children—but when they sent the invoices, they were adding an extra zero so they would serve one meal and they would bill for 10.”

But Feeding Our Future was only one of the Minnesota programs that have seen a fraud problem in the past few years.

The Department of Justice in September alleged that, as part of a $14 million enterprise milking a Minnesota autism assistance program, fraud ringleaders paid kickbacks to Somali parents in return for permission to register their children as autistic. The leaders then received payments from the state for supposedly providing therapy services. Some of the parents left the defendant’s fraud program so they could register their children with other fraudulent autism assistance programs that offered higher kickbacks, the DOJ claimed.

And earlier this year, federal prosecutors charged eight individuals with defrauding a housing stabilization program in the state. The defendants made millions of dollars off the program, causing the program’s budget to balloon significantly.

Were Somalis mainly responsible for the fraud?

Yes. Nearly all of the defendants in the Feeding Our Future and other welfare fraud schemes were Somali, according to Kayseh Magan, a Somali-American former investigator in the Medicaid Fraud Division of the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, and according to prosecutors.

Nearly 80,000 people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, and most of them are naturalized U.S. citizens. But Glahn cautions against painting with too broad of a brush: He points out that even if the number of Somali fraudsters in question substantially exceeds the current number of arrests, it would still represent only a tiny fraction of the state’s overall Somali American population.

“Were the majority of the people involved in these fraud scams of Somali ethnicity? Yes,” noted Glahn. “Those are fairly, I would think at this point, non-controversial facts. But people try to turn them into value judgments, you know? We have a Somali fraud problem in Minnesota. Do we have a Somali problem in Minnesota? I don’t think so.”

So why is this fraud centered on Somalis?

Magan, writing for the Minnesota Reformer, discussed how Somali culture in many ways can serve as a force multiplier for fraudsters.

Many Somalis are the sole providers for relatives back in Somalia who rely on remittances from their American-earned dollars, Magan explained. But the Minnesota bureaucracy provided an easy way to fraudulently boost how much they sent home. “The systems intended to catch fraud are mostly designed to root out recipient fraud,” Magan wrote. “It is exceedingly difficult to guard against providers who collude with recipients, which is the type of fraud most pervasive in the Somali community.”

And providers can easily collude with recipients because Somalis in Minnesota—like many immigration communities—are tight-knit and trusting.

“This creates a vast opening for fraudsters,” Magan wrote. “The conduit for fraud in publicly funded programs are the recipients, who require services. Somali recipients face language and cultural barriers. In an unfamiliar country, they lean heavily on other Somalis. Somali providers are in a position of trust, and some have taken advantage.”

Has money really gone to terrorists?

The Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank focusing on international policy, estimated earlier this year that in 2023, Somalis around the world sent back home approximately $1.7 billion.

“Probably the vast majority of what came from Minnesota was from legitimate people sending money back home that they earned,” Glahn said. But some of the money flowing from Minnesota to Somalia did come from fraud, he added.

When Somalis in Minnesota send money back to Somalia, the terror group al-Shabaab—which is the default authority in parts of the country—takes a cut.

“There’s no evidence that these fraudsters were trying to support al-Shabaab,” Glahn said. “But these folks are fairly sophisticated adults and you know they were probably aware on the front end, ‘I’m going to send money back to my relatives, and yeah, some of it’s going to get siphoned off along the way.’”

Magan, writing again for the Minnesota Reformer, argued the allegations about fraud money making its way into the war chests of terrorists are overblown.

“The story, especially in all its sensationalism, appears to be little more than an effort by the right-wing propaganda machine to whip up hatred against Somali Americans,” he wrote. “If federal prosecutors had any inkling that the ill-gotten gains were going to a terrorist organization, don’t you think they’d have brought charges?”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that he’d ordered an investigation into whether Minnesotans’ taxpayer dollars got into the hands of terrorists. He promised the agency would share its findings as the investigation continued.

Has the government of Minnesota turned a blind eye to this?

Minnesota’s Legislative Auditor Judy Randall published a report last year that found the Minnesota Department of Education ignored early warning signs of fraud in the Feeding Our Future program.

The program faced racial discrimination lawsuits when the department threatened to withhold funding from Somali-run programs that seemed likely to have a fraud problem. The department then chose to fund the programs rather than face the public relations fiasco that the lawsuits threatened. Randall’s report noted that the department also failed to provide proper oversight of the program.

But an X account claiming to represent the voices of former Minnesota government employees said last month that many government workers did know about the fraud, raised concerns about it, and were told to keep quiet. The social media post, which has been viewed about 40 million times, blamed Walz’s administration for shutting down reports about widespread fraud.

Walz’s office did not respond to WORLD’s request for comment about those accusations. In September, Walz issued an executive order that his office claimed ordered state government agencies to take stronger action against fraud.

How can Minnesota prevent similar instances of fraud in the future?

State agencies need to do a better job of talking to each other about when they notice fraud, Glahn said. If an individual commits fraud while serving as a provider for one state program, the government should prevent that person from serving as a provider in all other programs run by the state, he said. The state also needs to beef up its internal auditing at the state government level, he said.

State lawmakers proposed a bill during the Minnesota Legislature’s last session that would have created a state inspector general’s office to conduct enterprise-wide audits of multiple agencies to better prevent multi-agency fraud.

Minnesota senators passed it by a vote of 60-7 in May. “You almost never get anything through our evenly divided state Senate on a lopsided vote like that,” Glahn said.

But the bill didn’t make it to the floor of the House.

“Maybe it’ll come back next year with all this attention to fraud,” Glahn said.

Josh Schumacher

Josh is a WORLD reporter and a graduate of the World Journalism Institute and Patrick Henry College. He resides with his wife in Washington, D.C.

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manhattan.institute

https://manhattan.institute › article › somalis-in-minnesota-can-cultures-adapt

Somalis in Minnesota: Can Cultures Adapt? - manhattan.institute

Dec 4, 2025The Somali Fraud Story Busts Liberal Myths By Christopher F. Rufo | City Journal "Though this story was particular to Minnesota, disruptive mass immigration is a national phenomenon. During the four years of the Biden administration, America imported millions of foreigners, many illegally.

MSN

https://www.msn.com › en-us › news › us › how-has-the-somali-community-shaped-the-workforce-in-minnesota › ar-AA1Wu80J

How has the Somali community shaped the workforce in Minnesota? - MSN

The Somali community has been a focus of a large immigration crackdown in Minnesota. WCCO spoke with an economist to analyze the group's specific contributions to the state's workforce.

Star Tribune

https://www.startribune.com › trump-calls-somali-community-pirates-prompting-shouts-from-rep-ilhan-omar-during-state-of-the-union › 601588100

Trump calls Somali community 'pirates,' prompting shouts from Rep ...

TodayThe president said members of the Somali community have stolen $19 billion. Minnesota prosecutors have put estimates at half that.

CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com › news › what-to-know-about-minnesota-fraud-allegations-as-trump-levels-attacks-on-walz

What to know about Minnesota fraud allegations, as Trump ... - CBS News

Dec 5, 2025President Trump has recently attacked Gov. Tim Walz over the fraud cases, calling Minnesota a "hub of fraudulent money laundering activity" and lashing out against the state's Somali community.

Generate answer for rufo somali minnesota

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POST TUCKER HERITAGE SCHISM?

Ryan Thorpe and **:{Christopher F. Rufo @ City Journal: The Freak World of Nicholas J. Fuentes}:

Beneath the spectacle, the right-wing influencer has created a heap of human wreckage.

HUH?

Whatever else may be said about him, one fact cannot be denied: Nicholas J. Fuentes, the 27-year-old racialist influencer, is on the run of his life.

That’s a remarkable shift from 2017, when Fuentes was a little-known university freshman who hosted a political talk show. Over time, he developed a fanatical, cultlike following known as the “Groypers.” His digital following soon crossed over into the real world: first, with his involvement in the 2017 Unite the Right rally; then, with his long-running feud with conservative activist Charlie Kirk; and finally, with his role in “Stop the Steal,” which culminated outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Fuentes has cultivated a reputation as the most provocative and controversial figure on the Right. He has done this by embracing taboos, praising Hitler, and opposing interracial marriage. In turn, he has ridden a wave of spectacle and outrage to new heights, with an appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show, and garnering frequent coverage in outlets such as the New York Times and The Atlantic.

Attempting to undercut his growing influence, the media and Fuentes’s right-leaning critics both tend to focus on Fuentes’s record of offensive remarks. Take Fuentes’s appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored. During the two-hour interview, Morgan played a litany of clips from Fuentes’s talk show, highlighting bigoted comments he’s made over the years.

But this line of attack merely plays into Fuentes’s hands. As one of us has previously noted, Fuentes is best understood as an actor in what postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard called “hyperreality.” Under conditions of hyperreality, symbols of past phenomena lose their meaning and circulate as hollowed-out images through the digital landscape, where they drive discourse and spark emotional reactions.

This is the framework through which Fuentes, with his professed admiration for Hitler and Stalin, and his embrace of anti-Semitism, should be understood. Above all, he is engaged in a performative demand for attention, cynically harnessing transgression to drive clicks, sow chaos, and gain notoriety.

By contrast, this City Journal investigation—which draws on livestreams, a review of public records, and interviews with key associates—focuses not on Fuentes’s words but on his actions. (Fuentes did not return a detailed request for comment for this article.) It looks beneath the spectacle of outrage and the self-mythology he has curated and reveals a shocking heap of human wreckage that has accumulated within Fuentes’s political universe: betrayal, pedophilia, suicide, murder.

Welcome to the freak world of Nicholas J. Fuentes.

Nicholas Joseph Fuentes was born in Chicago in 1998. He grew up in the suburb of La Grange Park. In high school, he served as student council president. After graduation, he briefly attended Boston University before dropping out. Fuentes then moved back to the Chicago area, where, every weeknight, he livestreams his talk show, America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes.

With a greenscreen backdrop, Fuentes sits behind a wooden desk, typically in a suit and tie, pontificating on political and cultural events. Frequently, he launches into expletive- and slur-laced rants. Fuentes presents himself as a dissident truthteller in a world of lies; the ringmaster of a revitalized Right; and a spokesman for young, patriotic men sold out by the elites.

The reality behind the scenes, however, is quite different from this public-facing mythology. The world that has surrounded Fuentes over the past decade is one of paranoia, intrigue, drama, and betrayals. Several of his associates have broken from his movement over the years, spilling dirt on his operation in the process, with allegations and counter-allegations following in the wake of their apostasy. At the same time, Fuentes has developed a fanatical, cultlike following, with many Groypers—at his insistence—swearing a public oath to “rape, kill, and die for Nicholas J. Fuentes.”

One of these young men is Dalton Clodfelter, a 25-year-old Fuentes follower who spoke to City Journal. Clodfelter says he first encountered Fuentes through viral video clips and eventually connected with him through an online group chat. There, he says, the two “hit it off.” At the time, Clodfelter was young, religious, and serving in the U.S. Army.

“I was pretty naïve at the time,” he recalled. “I wanted to be a commentator. I started out on radio when I was 16. I wanted to be a guy that talked and [Fuentes] was more than happy to help me along.”

In the years that followed, Clodfelter pursued a career as an online commentator, attempting to follow in Fuentes’s footsteps. Clodfelter posted openly extreme, racist, and anti-Semitic rants; he often used racial slurs. As a result, Clodfelter claims, mainstream platforms banned his accounts. Seeking an alternative, he moved over to cozy.tv, which Fuentes created to host his own show after being banned from other platforms.

“I was making really great money streaming,” Clodfelter said. “[Then] all of a sudden, like, these income sources are being taken away. . . . Now, I’ve got to figure out a new way to generate this income and supplement these things, and that really did suck on top of all the social media banning. The good thing was, Nick offered me a platform.”

Clodfelter’s association with Fuentes and his own language—including a pledge to “rape, kill, and die”—pushed him further and further from the real world. As he got deeper into the Groyper cult, Clodfelter underwent a period of dramatic disintegration: he was kicked out of the military and saw income streams dried up, and his first marriage ended in divorce, he claims; his online comments grew more extreme, erratic, and disturbed.

The end result was predictable. In a livestream, Clodfelter admitted he’d become unemployable. “I’m really untouchable,” he said. “I can’t go work for a congressman, that’s not going to happen. I can’t go get a job even at, like, a McDonald’s . . . . You look me up—look my name up . . . see what you find, and let me know if you’d hire me.”

Yet Clodfelter is unrepentant about his association with Fuentes and harbors no “resentment” for the personal cost he’s paid.

“I appreciate Nick and everything he’s done and what he’s built and everything he did for me,” he says. Fuentes might have led him down the path to personal ruin, but he was the one who took the final steps. “I decided to say the N-word. I decided to say I love Hitler . . . . And now I’m here.”

In the grand scheme of things, Clodfelter might have gotten off easy. Other Groypers have ended up in prison.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Fuentes was in Washington, D.C., where he joined crowds contesting the 2020 presidential election results. Near the Capitol, Fuentes urged the crowd onward.

“Keep moving towards the Capitol!” he into a bullhorn. “It appears we are taking the Capitol back from the police right now! Keep marching and don’t relent. Never relent! Break down the barriers and disregard the police!”

Numerous Groypers entered the Capitol that day. One rioter even carried an “America First” flag into the building. But after urging his followers toward the Capitol, Fuentes himself did not go inside. He was investigated but has not been arrested or charged in association with the day’s events.

This fact has raised eyebrows within far-right circles, particularly given the video evidence of him encouraging others to disobey the police. A former FBI agent, who spoke to City Journal on the condition of anonymity, said agents were instructed to “take down every person who was at January 6.” Fuentes, through his attorney, denied having been knowingly interviewed by federal law enforcement.

While Fuentes may have escaped the long arm of the law, other Groypers present that day weren’t so lucky. In the months that followed, at least seven were charged and sentenced for entering the Capitol on January 6. In the aftermath of their arrests, Fuentes disavowed the arrested Groypers, calling them “losers” and saying he did not “wish to be associated with” them. They may have pledged to “rape, kill, and die,” but in the Groyper movement, loyalty appears only to run in one direction.

One question has dogged Fuentes for years: How does he make his money and finance his political operation? During his livestreams, fans must pay a minimum of $20 to pose questions during his Q+A sessions. He has solicited donations and hawks America First merchandise and subscriptions to his $100-a-month private Telegram channel.

Fuentes’s largest known donor to date was a French computer programmer and cryptocurrency millionaire named Laurent Bachelier. In December 2020, as right-wing factions were organizing the “Stop the Steal” protest in Washington, D.C., Bachelier transferred roughly $522,000 in Bitcoin to a network of white nationalist and neo-Nazi activists. The largest recipient, by far, was Fuentes, who received roughly $250,000. Hours after initiating the Bitcoin transfers, Bachelier committed suicide at the age of 35.

Within three months, Bachelier’s donation to Fuentes had effectively doubled in value due to a significant spike in the price of Bitcoin.

After January 6, Fuentes’s finances appear to have been briefly imperiled. The Gray Zone, an investigative outlet edited by hard-left journalist Max Blumenthal, published a purported letter that the Department of Justice sent Fuentes, stating that the DOJ had frozen accounts belonging to Fuentes on January 23, 2021. By the summer of 2021, however, the purported letter claimed DOJ had withdrawn its request to freeze the account.

In spite of this, Fuentes allegedly continued to claim publicly that his funds remained frozen. That narrative unraveled when Jaden McNeil, a former close associate and the treasurer of Fuentes’s nonprofit, said on a livestream that Fuentes had regained access to the funds, a claim corroborated by the Gray Zone’s purported records.

“He’s had that [money] back from the feds for almost a year,” McNeil said on the livestream, accusing Fuentes of using the story to raise money while, at the same time, purchasing an expensive car. “He’s a total liar.”

Over the years, Fuentes has also sought money from at least one prominent right-wing benefactor, according to sources familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. One former associate claims that in January 2022, Fuentes was scouting real estate in Tampa Bay, where he was considering moving his political operation. During the trip, the associate claims, Fuentes drove four hours to Miami to meet a then-employee of Peter Thiel, the right-wing venture capitalist who has financially backed Republican causes, including the campaigns of President Donald Trump and then-Senate candidate J. D. Vance.

Armed with a presentation, Fuentes pitched Thiel’s employee on providing funding for his show and political operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Thiel, one source claimed, never replied to Fuentes’s request.

Soon after, Fuentes began launching a series of public attacks not only on Thiel, whom he called “the CIA,” but also on Trump and Vance. Fuentes also now bemoans the influence of Thiel funding in right-wing circles, despite having allegedly sought out the very Thiel funding he condemns. Multiple former Fuentes associates who spoke to City Journal claim that the Thiel story is telling, as it reveals Fuentes’s true motivations: not political grievances, but personal ones.

Conversations with multiple former associates paint a picture of Fuentes’s positions as not rooted in principle, but shifting with his perceptions of personal advantage and what he perceives as threats to his ego.

“[There’s an] extraordinary gap between the way he describes himself and presents himself to his followers . . . and his real life,” said former Fuentes ally Milo Yiannopoulos. “He’s somebody who doesn’t believe in anything at all.”

Perhaps the most sordid chapter in the Fuentes story involves his relationship with Ali Alexander, a political activist and key organizer of “Stop the Steal.” In 2023, Alexander was accused of asking teenage boys for sexual photographs.

Amid the fallout from the scandal, Fuentes initially “disavowed” Alexander’s actions, while lashing out at the accusers, saying the teenaged boys were guilty of “flirting” with Alexander. “The real victim in this entire saga is me,” Fuentes said.

He had also previously downplayed the allegations on his show. “If we’re talking about rape and murder and things like that, okay, but we’re talking about flirting?” Fuentes said. “Give me a f***ing break.”

Fuentes has long been aware of Alexander’s alleged proclivities. On a livestream in 2017, Fuentes said there was “abundant evidence” that Alexander “would like to interact in a sexual way with young fashy white boys quite like myself, and like others.” In a video posted by hard-right journalist Dustin Nemos—which purportedly depicts events from November 2020, during the so-called Million MAGA March—a young-looking male, whom Nemos describes as a teenager, recounts to Fuentes a conversation in which the alleged teenager called Alexander a “pedo.” Fuentes responded: “How do people not know about it?”

Despite this history, Fuentes continued to associate with Alexander, appearing alongside him at various political events, including one Fuentes encouraged his supporters to attend. After the scandal broke, Fuentes reportedly pressured one of Alexander’s accusers to recant his allegation in exchange for securing him a job in politics. (Fuentes denied this at the time; he did not return a City Journal request for clarifying comment.) That year, Fuentes also acknowledged on a livestream that, during the Kanye West presidential campaign, he had remained in daily contact with Alexander despite the allegations. In 2024, a Colorado police department confirmed that it was working with “partner agencies” in Texas to investigate Alexander.

Alexander did not return a request for comment.

The Alexander scandal is not an aberration, but part of a broader culture within the Groyper movement. In 2022, Alejandro Richard Velasquez Gomez, a Fuentes fan who had been photographed with him at a political event, was charged with possession of child pornography and making interstate threats on a Turning Point USA event. In the aftermath of the arrest, Fuentes attempted to distance himself, saying Gomez had “nothing to do with me or America First.”

Fuentes’s own comments on sexual topics are equally disturbing. He has stated that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was “cool as f***”; has expressed skepticism about age of consent laws; and indicated he wants to marry a 16-year-old girl when he turns 30. For the Groypers, the transgression of political and sexual taboos is part of Fuentes’s appeal. The more furious the denunciations of Fuentes—racist, sexist, pedophile, Nazi—the deeper his audience digs in. “These labels don’t mean anything,” says Clodfelter, the Fuentes follower. “Those words are meaningless to us now . . . . It doesn’t affect us anymore. And Nick proves that.”

From one perspective, we might be tempted to dismiss Fuentes as a hyperreal spectacle. His Groyper movement relates to politics the same way pornography relates to sex: stripped of meaning, flattened into an image, sensationalized for personal gain.

But hyperreality does not mean unreal, and, like pornography, it can often intrude on reality in ugly and unexpected ways. Conservatives who care about the future of the movement should understand that Fuentes is corrosive. Despite his self-mythology as the most right-wing pundit in America, he is, in a real sense, a tool of the Left. Progressive activists have spent the past decade pushing the narrative that conservatives are Nazis and Donald Trump is Hitler. In Fuentes, they have finally found their man.

The spectacle moreover is not only politically corrosive, but personally corrosive to its participants. At heart, the Fuentes phenomenon is not about ideas, or ideology, or power; it is about an angry, broken young man leading other angry, broken young men down a digital trail that ends in ruin.

Fuentes might laugh about his command for his followers to “rape, kill, and die for Nicholas J. Fuentes,” explaining it away as irony or a morbid joke. But it was only a matter of time before one of his followers, lost in the cult atmosphere of the Groyper movement and unable distinguish reality from hyperreality, would take it seriously.

That is precisely what happened last January, when a black teenager named Solomon Henderson walked into Antioch High School, outside Nashville, with a 9mm pistol and fired 10 rounds into the cafeteria, killing a 16-year-old girl and injuring another student, before turning the gun on himself.

The purported manifesto Henderson left behind—a copy of which found online corresponded to contemporary news descriptions—revealed a fascination with mass shooters, including the neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, who killed dozens of children in Norway in 2011; and a pastiche of radical ideologies lifted from internet forums and imageboards. At the logical level, these ideologies, especially when set against Henderson’s racial identity, seem to make little sense. But in the freak world, populated by a rainbow of nihilists, a black teenager, drunk on the hyperreal spectacle, can murder a young girl in a school cafeteria while calling himself an “Involuntary N[*]gger” and a “Groyper Incel.”

In the manifesto, Henderson asked himself, “Is there a particular groups[sic]or people that radicalized you the most?” He weaves one answer into the subsequent list of irony-laden names—once in plain lettering, and later, in all caps: NICK FUENTES.

Ryan Thorpe](https://www.city-journal.org/person/ryan-thorpe) is an investigative reporter at the Manhattan Institute.Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor ofCity Journal, and the author of*America’s Cultural Revolution

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city Journal is a public policy magazine and website, published by the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, that covers a range of topics on urban affairs, such as policing, education, housing, and other issues.^[2]: 349 The magazine also publishes articles on arts and culture, urban architecture, family culture, and other topics.^[3][4] The magazine began publishing in 1990.^[1][5][6]

History

City Journal was founded in 1990 by William M. H. Hammett, who served as the head of the conservative Manhattan Institute.^[2]: 349 Hammett positioned City Journal as a more moderate and more cosmopolitan alternative to established right-wing institutions.^[2]: 349 The magazine initially published articles promotingprivatization, fiscal discipline, government downsizing, and educational vouchers.^[2]: 349 Other New York-related topics covered in the magazine included criticisms of open admissions at CUNY, and the promotion of broken-windows policing.^{[2]: 349–350}

2020s

During the early 2020s, City Journal has attracted widespread national attention for its role in elevating debates on critical race theory, LGBTQ+ topics in education, and similar issues in the United States.^[7][8][9] Contributor Christopher Rufo, in particular, has drawn attention for writing numerous pieces in the magazine that often focus on these matters. In articles published by City Journal, Rufo has accused Seattle's Office of Civil Rights of "endorsing principles of segregationism, group-based guilt, and race essentialism",^[7] highlighted Disney and Twitter workers who have been convicted of child sexual abuse,^[8] suggested that there were significant levels of "'grooming' in public schools",^[8] accused a California curriculum designer of wanting to make children "chant to the gods Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and Xipe Totek",^[9] compared the diversity training conducted by the city of Seattle to "cult programming",^[9] and accused an Oregon school district of promoting revolutionary Marxist ideas.^[9]

Publication

The magazine is published by the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research^[1][10] a national free-market think tank based in New York City. It was edited by Peter Salins and then Fred Siegel in the early 1990s. Myron Magnet, its editor from 1994 to 2006, is now editor-at-large. City Journal's current editor is Brian C. Anderson, who was appointed in late 2006 after serving as senior editor for 10 years.^[10]

The journal's contributors include experts such as Senior Fellow Heather Mac Donald, Edward Glaeser, Steven Malanga, Nicole Gelinas, Kay Hymowitz, John Tierney, and Joel Kotkin. Although City Journal is based in New York City, its scope is national and often international, through the contributions of writers including Theodore Dalrymple from Britain, Claire Berlinski and Guy Sorman from France, and Bruce Bawer in Norway.

The magazine was also notable as one of the first to link to blogs on its websitethat referenced it, and to engage directly with the blogosphere. City Journal has published several special issues, beginning in autumn 2009.^[11] Subsequently, City Journal has put out special issues in autumn 2013,^[12] summer 2016,^[13] and spring 2017.^[14] The 2009 and 2013 special issues were focused on policy agendas for New York State and City. In 2016, City Journal published a special issue on the state of Texas, called "Texas Rising",^[13] and in 2017, City Journal considered the future of work and labor in an increasingly automated world, in an issue titled "The Shape of Work to Come".^[14]

Website

All articles from the print magazine are eventually published online at City Journal's website, which also publishes original content (not from the magazine) daily, Mondays through Fridays.[citation ^needed] The first piece of new content for each week gets posted Sunday afternoon or evening.[citation ^needed] Original web pieces are generally shorter than the features in the print magazine, being typically about the length of an op-ed.[citation ^needed] They cover everything from public-policy issues and political developments to economics and popular culture.[citation ^needed]

Additionally, the website hosts City Journal's weekly podcast, 10 Blocks, which launched in February 2016.^[15][16][17] 10 Blocks features discussions on urban policy and culture with host Brian C. Anderson and City Journal editors, contributors, and special guests.^[15] Episodes cover topics such as: predictive policing; the Bronx renaissance; reform of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; homelessness in Portland, Oregon.[citation ^needed]

Reception

Much of the reception of City Journal over the years has been divided along political lines.

The magazine has received praise from the political right: the editorial board of the conservative New York Post described it as "the magazine that helped save New York City";^[6] conservative commentator Jay Nordlinger, writing in National Review, called City Journal "a beacon of civilization".^[5] In 2016, City Journal ranked second in The Global Grid's "Top 20 Urban Planning Websites",^[15] and again made the list in 2017, ranked fourth.^[16]

Alice O'Connor, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has written that City Journal is "hardly a model of ideological moderation", and that its contributors are "enmeshed in 1960s- and 1970s-era urbanology".^[2]: 349 She has criticized multiple writers for City Journal for reviving a "relentlessly negative image of black cultural pathology to call for tougher measures to crack down on out-of-wedlock births", following articles praising Daniel P. Moynihan's The Negro Family: The Case For National Action.^[2]: 349 Conservative author Sol Stern, a major contributor for the magazine since its inception,^[2]: 349 published a piece in liberal journal Democracy in 2020, accusing City Journal of removing contributors' editorial independence, and criticized the association of magazine trustee Rebekah Mercer with the alt-right outlet Breitbart.^[18]

Notable contributors

Brian C. Anderson, editor of City Journal
Steven Malanga, senior fellow and senior editor
Claire Berlinski, contributor
Coleman Hughes, contributing editor
Theodore Dalrymple, contributing editor
Edward Glaeser, senior fellow and contributing editor to City Journal
Victor Davis Hanson, contributing editor
Howard Husock, contributor
Kay Hymowitz, senior fellow and contributing editor to City Journal
Andrew Klavan, contributing editor
Joel Kotkin, contributor
John Leo, contributor
Heather Mac Donald, senior fellow and contributing editor
Myron Magnet, editor-at-large
John O. McGinnis, contributor
Judith Miller, adjunct fellow and contributing editor
Lance Morrow, contributor
Ian Penman, contributor
Fred Siegel, senior fellow and contributing editor to City Journal
Guy Sorman, contributing editor
Harry Stein, contributing editor
Sol Stern, adjunct fellow and contributing editor
John Tierney, contributing editor
Michael J. Totten, contributor
John Stossel, video contributor

city journal

Minnesota’s Somali Fraud Problem

what’s up with the Somali fraud in Minnesota?

National attention turns to a problem the state has reckoned with for years

History

2020s

Publication

Website

Reception

Notable contributors

See also