Nick Fuentes, a young far-Right influencer and Holocaust denier, attended the 2017 Unite the Right Rally as well as the January 6 attack on the Capitol. In the days before the latter event he said: “Our Founding Fathers would get in the streets, and they would take this country back by force if necessary. And that is what we must be prepared to do.”

Three years later, Fuentes has become critical of Trump and is waging what he calls a “new Groyper war” against the Republican campaign. “We support Trump, but his campaign has been hijacked by the same consultants, lobbyists, & donors that he defeated in 2016, and they’re blowing it. Without serious changes we are headed for a catastrophic loss,” he has said. Fuentes has been calling for a return to the rhetoric of the 2016 campaign, and took credit when Trump brought his 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski back into the fold last week. He argued that the far–Right commentators who began criticising the campaign earlier this month were a result of the “Groyper war”.

Fuentes had a falling-out with onetime ally Milo Yiannopoulos, the provocateur who, alongside Steve Bannon, turned Breitbart into the “platform for the alt-right”. Yiannopoulos has accused Fuentes, who was subpoenaed by the House January 6 committee, of turning over his own supporters’ names and private information to the federal government in exchange for leniency and being taken off the no-fly list. He also claimed Fuentes encouraged protesters to enter the Capitol building in January 2021, the implication being that he either did so at the request of the federal government, or that he received leniency for those actions in exchange for informing on others.

Yiannopoulos has turned against many of his former fellow travellers on the Right, and attacked Candace Owens following the commentator’s alleged antisemitism and departure from the Daily Wire, expressing that she had “poor judgement”. Remaining conspiratorial, he recently speculated that Harris running mate Tim Walz’s son had been molested and that Owens’s husband is secretly gay.

Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theory enthusiast, provocateur and longtime Trump supporter, was banned from most social media platforms, along with Lyft and Uber Eats, for her comments on Islam during the mid-2010s. She’s remained a staunch supporter of the former president in the years since, but more recently has expressed criticism of the Trump campaign in a similar vein to Fuentes, urging more aggression.

While the ex-president’s inner circle views Loomer as a liability, Trump himself has often shared her posts on social media and been friendly with her at public events. His loose ties to these influencers have landed him in hot water on several occasions, such as when rapper Kanye West brought Fuentes to what was meant to be a private dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 2022.

Trump has since said he didn’t know who Fuentes was, and Yiannopoulos, who was an advisor to West at the time, has taken credit for the stunt. Trump similarly has never granted Loomer a role in his administration or campaign, despite her publicly vying for one, and he condemned Spencer and his supporters following the “Hail Trump incident”. It seems, then, that the frustration alt-Right influencers feel toward Trump and his campaign may be mutual.

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is UnHerd’s US correspondent.

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