Groypers

Based on Wikipedia: Groypers

The Frog That Stormed the Capitol

On January 6, 2021, as rioters breached the United States Capitol, one participant unfurled a peculiar flag. It bore the image of a rotund green frog, chin resting on interlocked fingers, staring outward with an expression somewhere between smugness and boredom. This was Groyper, and the flag marked its bearer as a follower of Nick Fuentes, a twenty-something livestreamer who had built a movement by asking uncomfortable questions at college campus events.

The Groypers represent something new and strange in American politics: a far-right faction that weaponized internet irony, cartoon frogs, and guerrilla questioning tactics to wage war not primarily against liberals, but against mainstream conservatives they deemed insufficiently radical.

The Frog Comes First

To understand the Groypers, you need to understand their namesake. Groyper is a variant of Pepe the Frog, an internet meme that traveled a remarkable journey from a stoner comic character in 2005 to a symbol co-opted by various online political movements by the mid-2010s. Where the original Pepe was often depicted in motion or expressing emotions, Groyper sits perfectly still, fingers interlaced beneath its chin, projecting an air of knowing condescension.

The image began circulating around 2015 and gained popularity in 2017. By 2018, computer scientists studying hateful speech on Twitter noticed something interesting: accounts using Groyper avatars clustered together in a tight network, posting primarily about politics, race, and religion. These weren't isolated trolls. They formed a community with unusually high network centrality, meaning they were densely interconnected and influential within their sphere.

The accounts tended to be anonymous and, according to later reporting by the Financial Times, often used "deceptively anodyne" biographies. A Groyper might describe himself simply as a "Christian conservative," a phrase that obscures more than it reveals.

Nick Fuentes and the Birth of a Movement

The Groypers coalesced around Nick Fuentes, a young activist who hosts a podcast called "America First." Fuentes had emerged from the same online spaces that produced the alt-right movement of 2016, but he positioned himself differently. Where the alt-right had been openly confrontational with mainstream society, Fuentes aimed his fire at mainstream conservatism itself.

He summarized his political ambitions bluntly: "We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party. We have got to be on the right, dragging them kicking and screaming into the future... Into a truly reactionary party."

This is an important distinction. Fuentes wasn't trying to convert liberals. He wanted to radicalize the right from within.

The movement that carries his banner has been described by researchers and watchdog organizations as white nationalist, antisemitic, homophobic, nativist, and fascist. The Anti-Defamation League reports that Groypers blame both mainstream conservatives and the political left for what they view as "destroying white America." They oppose immigration and globalism while supporting what they call "traditional" values and Christianity, and they oppose feminism and LGBTQ rights.

Fuentes himself has made his views explicit. He has claimed to be "oppressed" by "the Jews" and blamed the Jewish community for antisemitism against itself. In 2022, he advocated for a "white uprising" to restore Donald Trump to power and suggested the United States should "stop having elections" and abolish Congress.

The Groyper Wars

In the fall of 2019, something unusual happened on the American conservative speaking circuit. Turning Point USA, a prominent right-leaning student organization, was running a college tour called "Culture War," featuring its founder Charlie Kirk alongside guests like Donald Trump Jr., Senator Rand Paul, and various conservative media personalities.

Then the questions started.

At an Ohio State University event on October 29, eleven of fourteen audience questions came from Groypers. One asked Kirk's co-host Rob Smith, a gay Black Iraq War veteran, "How does anal sex help us win the culture war?" Another asked, "Can you prove that our white European ideals will be maintained if the country is no longer made up of white European descendants?"

This was the opening salvo of what became known as the "Groyper Wars."

The trigger had been the firing of Ashley St. Clair, a Turning Point "brand ambassador" who had been photographed at an event with Fuentes and other far-right figures. When Turning Point severed ties with her and condemned white nationalism as "abhorrent and un-American," Fuentes treated it as a declaration of war.

His strategy was elegant in its simplicity: attend mainstream conservative events, get in line for the Q&A session, and ask questions designed to expose the speakers as insufficiently nationalist, insufficiently opposed to immigration, or too supportive of Israel and LGBTQ rights. The questions employed what researchers call "antisemitic dog whistles," including references to the USS Liberty incident (a 1967 attack on a U.S. Navy ship by Israeli forces that conspiracy theorists claim was deliberate) and the "dancing Israelis" conspiracy theory alleging Israeli foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks.

The UCLA Incident

The Groyper Wars exploded into mainstream attention at the University of California, Los Angeles in November 2019. Donald Trump Jr. was there to promote his book "Triggered," appearing alongside Kirk and Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Anticipating another wave of hostile questions, organizers announced that the Q&A portion had been canceled. The audience, largely pro-Trump, erupted in boos and heckling. The disruption was so severe that an event scheduled for two hours ended after thirty minutes.

The irony was rich: Trump supporters were booing a Trump.

Conservative commentators took notice of the internal fracture. Chadwick Moore of Spectator USA observed that the incident revealed deep divisions within the American right among young voters, particularly Generation Z. Ben Sixsmith, another Spectator writer, noted Turning Point's hypocrisy: an organization that had "promoted themselves as the debate guys" was now refusing to debate.

The Tactics of Entryism

What the Groypers practice has a name in political science: entryism. It's a strategy where members of one organization or movement join another, not to participate sincerely, but to shift its ideology from within. The term originated with Trotskyist groups in the mid-twentieth century who would join larger socialist parties to radicalize them.

The Groyper version has several distinctive features. First, they target conservative organizations specifically, not liberal ones. Their enemies are people like Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and Jonah Goldberg, whom they collectively dismiss as "Conservative Inc." Second, they use what researchers describe as "gradual radicalization," slowly introducing targets to increasingly extreme ideas rather than leading with their most inflammatory positions. Third, they maintain plausible deniability through humor, irony, and meme culture, allowing them to retreat behind claims of "just joking" when confronted.

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin illustrated how this strategy could succeed. After she wrote an article for American Greatness attacking Kirk's immigration positions and defending Fuentes and his followers, she was fired as a speaker for Young America's Foundation. Rather than recanting, she embraced the Groypers, later calling herself their "mother figure" and leader.

From Online to the Capitol

The Groypers were not merely an online phenomenon. They organized in person, held conferences, and eventually participated in real-world political violence.

In December 2019, Fuentes held the Groyper Leadership Summit in Florida, timed to coincide with Turning Point's Student Action Summit. Groypers argued with Summit attendees outside their venue, and Fuentes and several associates were removed after attempting to enter. In January 2020, a former Kansas State University Turning Point chapter leader named Jaden McNeil founded America First Students, a group designed to bring Groyper ideology onto college campuses.

In February 2020, Fuentes spoke at events held as rivals to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, the largest annual gathering of American conservatives. He appeared alongside Alex Jones of InfoWars and Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys. He also launched the first America First Political Action Conference, creating a parallel infrastructure to mainstream conservatism.

Then came January 6, 2021.

The Anti-Defamation League identified at least ten Groypers or related white supremacists involved in the Capitol riot. Fuentes and Patrick Casey, another prominent figure in the movement, were present on the Capitol steps and celebrated the temporary disruption of Congress, though neither has been charged. Both were later subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the attack.

Several Groypers faced more serious consequences. Riley Williams of Pennsylvania was convicted on six charges, including a felony count of civil disorder, for invading Nancy Pelosi's office and stealing her laptop. She received three years in prison. Christian Secor of California, who allegedly flew the Groyper flag at the Capitol, was convicted of obstruction, civil disorder, assault, and resisting arrest, and sentenced to forty-two months. Joseph Brody of Virginia was convicted of assaulting a police officer after helping use a metal barricade against Capitol Police.

The Fracturing

Like many extremist movements, the Groypers proved unstable.

In February 2021, the movement splintered. Patrick Casey broke with Fuentes over fears of infiltration by federal informants and concerns about "doxing," the practice of revealing anonymous participants' real identities. Jaden McNeil, the founder of America First Students, initially sided with Fuentes and accused Casey of disloyalty. But McNeil himself later broke with Fuentes.

This pattern reflects something Katherine Dee, a researcher who studies online political movements, has observed about the Groypers. For them, she argues, "fealty" to Fuentes personally matters more than ideological consistency. The movement is "fairly loose" and lacks "clear ideological" boundaries. "I think that Nick Fuentes is among the best examples of 'politics as fandom' that exists," she said.

This helps explain both the movement's appeal and its fragility. Fuentes offers his followers a sense of belonging and purpose, but that belonging depends on personal loyalty to him rather than commitment to a coherent program. When that loyalty fractures, there's nothing else holding the group together.

Groyper War 2 and the Trump Disappointment

In August 2024, Fuentes announced "Groyper War 2," a digital campaign pressuring Donald Trump's presidential campaign to adopt his positions, primarily through memes and what online culture calls "trolling" or "edgelording," which means posting provocative content designed to elicit reactions.

Trump won that election. But less than a year into Trump's second term, Fuentes pronounced himself disappointed.

"Trump 2.0 has been a disappointment in literally every way but nobody wants to admit it," he said. He criticized Trump's support for Israel, his failure to release documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, and his offer of student visas to Chinese nationals.

This disappointment illuminates the Groypers' fundamental problem. They want to "drag" the Republican Party toward ethnonationalism, but the party they're trying to capture keeps refusing to go where they want. Trump, despite his inflammatory rhetoric and willingness to court controversy, proved too moderate for the Groypers' taste. The man they once saw as their vehicle to power became, in their view, another member of "Conservative Inc."

The Assassination and Its Aftermath

In 2025, Charlie Kirk, Fuentes's original target in the Groyper Wars, was assassinated. Various online conspiracy theories immediately attempted to connect the Groypers to the killing.

Fuentes condemned the shooting and asked his supporters not to "take up arms," saying the situation felt "like a nightmare."

The reaction was revealing. Whatever else Fuentes may be, he appeared genuinely horrified by real-world violence against his declared enemy. The Groyper Wars had been a battle of questions and memes, of campus disruptions and social media campaigns. Murder was something else entirely.

What the Groypers Tell Us

The Groypers matter not because of their numbers, which remain relatively small, but because of what they reveal about the porousness of political movements in the internet age.

They emerged from the same online spaces that produced the alt-right but learned from that movement's failures. Where the alt-right had been easy to identify and marginalize, the Groypers adopted camouflage: "deceptively anodyne" biographies, questions that sounded almost reasonable if you didn't know the context, memes that could be dismissed as jokes. They positioned themselves not as opponents of conservatism but as its truest believers, exposing mainstream conservatives as frauds.

Their tactics exploited a genuine vulnerability. Organizations like Turning Point USA had built their brands on debate and open discourse. When confronted with questions designed to embarrass rather than inform, they had no good options. Answer the questions seriously, and you give oxygen to extremist talking points. Refuse to answer, and you look like a hypocrite who can't defend your own positions.

The Groypers also demonstrated how easily online communities can translate into real-world organization. The computer scientists who studied Groyper accounts in 2018 noted their high network centrality. These weren't disconnected individuals; they were a community. When Fuentes called them to attend campus events, they showed up. When he organized conferences, they came. When he marched on the Capitol, some of them followed.

Most disturbingly, the Groypers showed how a movement built on irony, humor, and plausible deniability could serve as a gateway to genuine radicalization. The frog-posting and the edgy questions created a space where white nationalism, antisemitism, and calls for ending democracy could be introduced gradually, under cover of irreverent internet culture. By the time participants understood what they'd joined, some were already marching on the Capitol.

The rotund green frog still sits there, chin on interlocked fingers, watching with that same expression of knowing condescension. It's just a cartoon, of course. Just a meme. Just a joke.

Until it isn't.