It appears white nationalist media figure Nick Fuentes isn’t quite as popular as his supporters would have us believe.
While the media pretends that the young bigot is the new avatar for the right, the numbers tell a different story. To sum it up, Fuentes' popularity is about as real as Jasmine Crockett's chances of winning Texas' Senate race.
The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) dropped a report on Monday showing that Fuentes’ recent surge in popularity did not come from organic grassroots support, but a coordinated campaign among his followers, foreign engagement farms, anonymous bot networks, and targeted “raid” tactics aimed at gaming the algorithms on X.
The report, titled “America Last: How Fuentes’ Coordinated Raids and Foreign Fake-Speech Networks Inflate His Influence,’ documents how Fuentes—a 27-year-old online personality known for bigoted statements about racial minorities and women inflated his popularity through a series of channels.
The authors’ most telling findings center on the geographic sources of Fuentes’ online engagement. Researchers found that about half of all reposts of Fuentes’ content before the assassination of Charlie Kirk came from foreign accounts.
A cursory review of the numbers reveals several red flags. A significant chunk of Fuentes’ foreign engagement comes from Western nations such as the United Kingdom (12 percent) and Canada (10 percent). However, an enormous portion of his engagement comes from other nations such as India (seven percent), Pakistan (seven percent), Nigeria (four percent), Malaysia (three percent), and Indonesia (three percent).
“There is no organic explanation for this pattern," the report concludes.
The authors noted that these countries “have no organic link to Fuentes’s politics but do match the known geographic footprint of low-cost engagement farms, making the pattern consistent with bot-farm amplification rather than genuine foreign audiences.”
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To establish that Fuentes’ engagement patterns were not organic, researchers compared his X activity to other high-profile influencers such as Elon Musk, Hasan Piker, Ian Carroll, and Steven “Destiny” Bonnell.
They found some significant disparities.
"Fuentes received dramatically higher early retweet velocity than any comparator, including Elon Musk (the platform's most-followed user),” the report noted. “Within the critical first 30 minutes, Fuentes routinely outperformed accounts with 10-100× more followers.”
When researchers accounted for follower count, Fuentes’ early engagement rate became even more suspect. “This disproportionate surge cannot plausibly be explained by organic enthusiasm alone: the speed, volume, and consistency of the engagement strongly suggest algorithmic manipulation through coordinated, rapid-fire retweeting designed to catapult his posts into wider visibility,” the authors wrote.
But it’s not just about the foreign influence. The report identified an organized domestic network driving Fuentes’ early engagement. To put it simply, there is a coordinated network dedicated to pushing Fuentes’ content by gaming the system on X. Much of this is driven by bots and his followers, known as “groypers.”
"In a sample of 20 recent posts, 61% of Fuentes's first-30-minute retweets came from accounts that retweeted multiple of these 20 posts within that same ultra-short window – behavior highly suggestive of coordination or automation,” the report explained.
The plot thickened when researchers took a closer look at those who retweeted Fuentes’ content.
"92% of repeat early-retweeters were fully anonymous (no real name, no real photo, no location, no contact info) and the majority are openly or functionally single-purpose 'Groyper' / 'America First' accounts whose primary activity is boosting Nick Fuentes and related fringextremist messaging,” the report noted.
The researchers further explained that most of the accounts sharing Fuentes’ posts “do not attempt to hide the fact that they are dedicated Groypers, utterly anonymous, and/or attempting to game the X algorithm to increase Nick Fuentes’ reach.”
Fuentes received a significant boost after Charlie Kirk’s death. Podcaster Tucker Carlson conducted a two-hour interview with Fuentes in which he appeared to promote the white nationalist rather than challenge him on his beliefs.
"Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, mainstream media coverage of Fuentes increased sharply, with peak article volume more than tripling compared to the prior period,” the report stated.
Fuentes has long been viewed as a fringe figure on the far right. But his popularity appears to have skyrocketed over recent months.
Now, we know why.
Fuentes is part of a larger trend of far-right influencers gaining popularity — especially among young men. Yet, he is far from being a conservative.
Fuentes has repeatedly expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. “Hitler is awesome. Hitler was right. And the Holocaust didn’t happen,” he said during a broadcast. During his Tucker Carlson interview, he said he was a “big fan” of Stalin.
Fuentes has a long history of making bigoted remarks. “I’m not living around blacks,” he said in a video. “Sorry. I want white kids, and I don’t want my white kids bringing home black people to marry. It’s racial for me.”
He has spoken out against “organized Jewry” and has repeatedly blamed Jews for society’s problems.
Despite being one-quarter Mexican, Fuentes has pushed the theory that Hispanic immigrants are essentially erasing the white race in America.
Fuentes also has a penchant for demeaning women. He has said that “bullying women works” and that women need to “shut the f**k up.” The YouTuber argued that a rape within marriage is impossible because a wife’s body “belongs” to her husband.
His hatred of women isn’t too surprising, given what happened during a May 2024 livestream when viewers saw his stream switch to gay porn. He later claimed that pro-Israel actors hacked his computer, which is about as believable as a shifty-eyed shyster trying to sell you prime oceanfront property in Idaho.
Nick Fuentes’ ascendance has been mostly an online phenomenon. The fact that he relies on foreign actors and coordinated campaigns to get his content in front of the people shows he’s not as popular as the chattering class would claim.
This does not mean he is not dangerous — especially for the right.
If you consider yourself a conservative, Nick Fuentes is your enemy just as the left is. He does not want limited government. He wants a larger government that can impose his authoritarian beliefs on the rest of the population. His movement is mostly popular with the younger generation, which does not bode well for the future if he manages to influence enough young minds.
Now then, can NCRI do Candace Owens next?
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