Groypers
The Groypers, or the Groyper Army, are a far-right group loosely defined as the followers, fans, or supporters of political activist and online streamer Nick Fuentes. They are named after a variant of Pepe the Frog, an Internet meme.
Groypers have attempted to introduce their politics into mainstream conservatism in the United States by various means, and participated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack as well as the protests leading up to it. They also have targeted other conservative groups and individuals whose agendas they view as contrary to the concept of "America First," mainly those who are Pro-Israel. The Groyper movement has been described as racist, nativist, fascist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic, Islamophobic and an attempt to rebrand the alt-right movement. It has also been called accelerationist.
What was later dubbed "The Groyper War" began in the fall of 2019, when Fuentes launched a social media campaign targeting Turning Point USA's "Culture War" college tour, led by Charlie Kirk. Enraged by the firing of a Fuentes ally as well as other political conflicts, Groypers disrupted college events by asking provocative questions about immigration, Israel, and LGBT rights, in an attempt to challenge mainstream conservative figures like Kirk, Donald Trump Jr., and Ben Shapiro, whom they labeled "Conservative Inc." The war gained traction after a November 2019 UCLA event where Trump Jr. was cut short by Groyper heckling. Fuentes expanded the movement by forming America First Students in January 2020.
In February 2021, the Groyper movement splintered between Fuentes and Patrick Casey over fears of infiltration by federal informants and doxing at the 2021 America First Political Action Conference. America First Students founder Jaden McNeil joined in support of Fuentes and accused Casey of disloyalty, but later broke ties with Fuentes himself. In August 2024, Fuentes initiated "Groyper War 2", a digital campaign pressuring Donald Trump's presidential campaign to adopt his stances, mainly by using memes as a form of trolling or edgelording.
Background and ideology
Origins and symbolism of Groyper meme
Nick Fuentes's followers, initially known as "Nickers", began to be known as Groypers by 2019. Groypers are named after a cartoon amphibian named "Groyper", a variant of the Internet meme Pepe the Frog. Groyper is a rotund, green, frog-like creature often depicted sitting with its chin resting on interlocked fingers. Groyper is variously said to be a depiction of Pepe, a different character from Pepe but of the same species, or a toad. The Groyper meme was used as early as 2015 and became popular in 2017.In 2018, a group of computer scientists studying hateful speech on Twitter observed the Groyper image being used frequently in account avatars among accounts identified as "hateful" in their dataset. The researchers observed that the profiles tended to be anonymous and collectively tweeted primarily about politics, race, and religion. They also found that the users were not "lone wolves" and could be identified as a community with a high network centrality. The same year, Right Wing Watch reported that Massachusetts congressional hopeful Shiva Ayyadurai had created a campaign pin featuring a variation of the Groyper image, which RWW described as an attempt to appeal to far-right activists on 4chan, Gab, and Twitter who had adopted the meme.
Social media engagement
Groypers are very active online, particularly on Twitter, and have engaged in targeted harassment. Financial Times has reported that many Groypers use "deceptively anodyne" Twitter biographies, describing themselves in terms that downplay their extremism, like "Christian conservative".In April 2020, The Daily Dot reported that Fuentes and other Groypers had begun to move to TikTok, where they streamed live and used the "duet" feature to respond to Trump supporters. Groypers particularly targeted one left-wing teenage girl for harassment, first on TikTok and then on other platforms. Fuentes and some other Groyper accounts were banned from TikTok shortly after the Daily Dot article was published.
Relationship with mainstream conservatism
Groypers present themselves as defenders of "traditional values", American nationalism and Christian conservatism shaped by Catholicism. Their ideology diverges sharply from mainstream American conservatives, including the Republican Party. Rather than conserving inherited institutions or practicing prudence and incremental reform, Groypers advance a racialized politics that appeal to xenophobia and resentment. They criticize mainstream conservative organizations as insufficiently nationalist and pro-white, and employ tactics of entryism and radicalization such as gradually introducing their targets to increasingly extreme ideas.Fuentes has said, "We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party". He has summarized his political ambitions by saying, "We have got to be on the right, dragging kicking and screaming into the future... Into a truly reactionary party". In 2022, Fuentes advocated a "white uprising" to bring Donald Trump back to power and "never leave" and for the U.S. to "stop having elections" and abolish Congress. But less than a year after Trump was reelected, Fuentes said "Trump 2.0 has been a disappointment in literally every way but nobody wants to admit it." He criticized Trump's support of Israel, failure to release the Epstein Files, and offer of student visas to Chinese nationals, among other things.
White nationalism, antisemitism, and social stances
Groypers are widely recognized as a white nationalist, antisemitic, and homophobic movement. According to Katherine Dee, for Groypers, "fealty" to Fuentes is more important than ideology, as Groypers are a "fairly loose" group lacking "clear ideological" boundaries. "I think that Nick Fuentes is among the best examples of 'politics as fandom' that exists", Dee said.Fuentes has said he has been "oppressed" by "the Jews" and blamed the Jewish community for antisemitism, claiming that matters "tend to go from zero to sixty" and that "the reason is them". He has said that matters would get "a lot uglier" for their community if they do not begin to support "people like us". According to the Anti-Defamation League, Groypers blame the mainstream conservative movement as well as the political left for what they view as "destroying white America". They oppose immigration and globalism. Groypers support "traditional" values and Christianity and oppose feminism and LGBTQ rights.
Groypers' questions often focus on United States–Israel relations, immigration policy, affirmative action, and LGBTQ conservatives. They regularly use antisemitic dog whistles, including questions about the USS Liberty incident and references to the "dancing Israelis" conspiracy theory alleging Israeli involvement in the September 11 attacks.
After the assassination of Charlie Kirk in 2025, various online conspiracy theories tied the Groypers to the assassination. Fuentes immediately condemned the shooting and asked his supporters not to "take up arms", saying the situation felt "like a nightmare".
Groyper War
Origins
In September 2019, Ashley St. Clair, a "brand ambassador" for the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was photographed at an event featuring several allegedly white nationalist and alt-right figures, including Fuentes, Jacob Wohl, and Anthime Gionet, better known as "Baked Alaska". After Right Wing Watch brought the photographs to its attention, TPUSA issued a statement that it had severed ties with St. Clair and condemned white nationalism as "abhorrent and un-American".At the 2019 Politicon convention, Fuentes tried to attend several Turning Point events featuring Charlie Kirk, including waiting in line to take photos with Kirk and attempting to attend Kirk's debate with Kyle Kulinski of The Young Turks. Security repeatedly prevented him from approaching Kirk, and Fuentes accused Kirk of suppressing him to avoid a confrontation, as Fuentes had grown critical of Kirk's positions, which he said were too weak.
In the fall of 2019, Kirk launched a college speaking tour with TPUSA titled "Culture War", featuring himself and guests such as Rand Paul, Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, Lara Trump, and Dan Crenshaw. In retaliation for St. Clair's firing and the Politicon incident, Fuentes began organizing a social media campaign asking his followers to go to Kirk's events and ask provocative and controversial leading questions about his stances on immigration, Israel, and LGBT rights to expose Kirk as a "fake conservative".
At a Culture War event hosted by Ohio State University on October 29, 11 out of 14 questions were asked by Groypers. They included "Can you prove that our white European ideals will be maintained if the country is no longer made up of white European descendants?" They asked Kirk's co-host Rob Smith, a gay, black Iraq War veteran, "How does anal sex help us win the culture war?" Fuentes's social media campaign against Kirk became known as the "Groyper Wars". Kirk, Smith, and others at TPUSA, including Benny Johnson, began calling the questioners white supremacists and antisemites.
Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin wrote an article for American Greatness attacking Kirk's immigration policies, particularly his stance that immigrants who graduate from U.S. universities should receive green cards. After defending Fuentes and his followers, Malkin was fired as a speaker for Young America's Foundation, a rival organization to Turning Point whose events Groypers had also targeted. Malkin later called herself a mother figure to and leader of the Groypers.
UCLA incident
Another Turning Point USA event the Groypers targeted was a promotional event for Donald Trump Jr.'s book Triggered, featuring Trump, Kirk, and Guilfoyle at the University of California, Los Angeles in November 2019. Anticipating further questions from Fuentes's followers, it was announced that the event's Q&A portion had been canceled, which led to heckling and boos from the mostly pro-Trump audience. The disruptions forced the event, originally scheduled to last two hours, to end after 30 minutes.The Groyper Wars earned widespread media attention after the UCLA incident with Trump Jr. Chadwick Moore of Spectator USA commented that the ordeal revealed deep divisions within the American right among young voters, particularly Generation Z. Moore claimed this divide was due to the Groypers' viewing Kirk and others in the mainstream conservative movement as "snatching the baton and appointing themselves the guardians of 2016's spoils", despite holding beliefs that Fuentes and his followers believe conflict with Trump's "Make America Great Again" agenda. Another Spectator author, Ben Sixsmith, claimed that Turning Point's unwillingness to respond to controversial questions and use of insults to dismiss its critics revealed the organization's hypocrisy after having "promoted themselves as the debate guys".