Ideas

Nick Fuentes’s Strategy Is Working

Viral clips of the far-right white supremacist are growing his audience.

First published in The Atlantic on March 28, 2026.

by Amogh Dimri, The Atlantic

April 2, 2026 | reading time: 10 Min.

Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old white-supremacist influencer, is notorious for a political outlook that he summarizes succinctly: “Jews are running society; women need to shut the fuck up; Blacks need to be imprisoned, for the most part.” For Ericson Contreras, a left-leaning 23-year-old Afro Hispanic man from New York, Fuentes is not a natural ideological guru. So when Contreras was scrolling Instagram at 3 a.m. recently, he was surprised to find himself served a clip of a Fuentes monologue. More surprising still, Contreras was nodding along.