A listener asks Nick Fuentes in writing what he would do if his wife “crossed the line.” He repeats the question for his America First podcast audience and responds, “Why don’t you smack him right in the face, his ignorant face? Why don’t you give him a forceful slap with your knuckles, make it hurt?..” Then the guy laughs and says that he was “joking”. That he would never lay a hand on a woman… “Unless she deserved it. And so…”. And then he gesticulates and makes noises to describe the beating he would give that woman. Really.

This is a sample of the personal attitude of the young neo-fascist leader whom Donald Trump invited to dinner on Tuesday, November 4, at his house in Mar-a-Lago, together with the also ultra Ye or Kanye West, the rapper and designer expelled yesterday himself from Twitter in an umpteenth punishment in the networks – and in companies like Adidas or Balenciaga – for their incitement to hatred.

Nick Fuentes left his message about the treatment of rebellious wives last April. His political attitudes had been clearly and repeatedly made clear long before. In this sense, the neo-Nazi puppy, born in Illinois 24 years ago, was particularly eloquent in the podcast that he dedicated to the Holocaust in October 2019. The thesis was that this could not happen. And to try to prove it, through tricky and sinister calculations of times in the genocidal action, he had no better idea than to compare the extermination camps with a cookie oven. “Cookie Monster”, he said between laughs and teasing, he couldn’t make so many cookies in such a short time. Again, it was all a joke, he later assured, for the possible purpose of avoiding legal trouble.

But Fuentes does not usually apply filters to his statements. In various public interventions, he has compared himself to Hitler and has said he expected “a total Aryan victory”; he has argued that Jews “are not Europeans or part of Western civilization because they are not Christians”; and, referring to the freedoms of belief, expression and assembly established in the US Constitution, he has stated that “the first amendment was not written for Muslims.”

The young super-ultra, whom Trump said he didn’t know when he went home with Ye, but avoided criticizing when he found out in the wake of the dinner scandal, unapologetically despises blacks, sees gays as “disgusting” and trans people, and does not tolerate immigrants. That is why he defends the total closure of borders.

His priority battle is to find an alternative to the party that Trump leads today, for whom he has always expressed his admiration except as leader of a formation that he considers soft and excessively tolerant. “The new Republican Party is the party of climate change, universal health care and black lives matter,” he opines, as if the conservative formation had gone out of its way to support the Black Lives Matter movement.

Nick Fuentes became infamous when he participated in the violent supremacist and neo-Nazi demonstration in August 2017 in Charlottesville (Virginia), which resulted in the death of 32-year-old activist Heather Heyer and some twenty injured. Trump claimed that there were “very good people on both sides” at the march. And, two years later, Joe Biden announced that he would run for president in 2020 precisely to fight against the violent hatred of protesters of that ilk and to fight tolerance of them on the part of the then president and candidate for reelection: the man to who would defeat and who has now just reaffirmed his sympathy with 21st century fascism through the homely invitation of two of its most notorious representatives.

Nick Fuentes left Boston University after claiming he had received death threats for his participation in the Charlottesville protest. He then dedicated himself to spreading his messages through his podcast, with which he soon managed to raise generous donations.

The meeting with Fuentes cost Trump a barrage of criticism from all sides. The majority of Republican leaders joined the reproaches. Even accepting that the former president did not know who his guest was because Kayne West had not told him, which is a lot to accept, why did Trump, once informed, refuse to condemn Fuentes’ abhorrent postulates? Many wondered.

Is it because you agree with him, in whole or in part?