He is obviously a controversial figure. For some, the mere mention of Nick Fuentes’s name is enough to end the conversation: he is dismissed as hateful, dangerous, unserious, toxic and beyond the pale. Frankly, I do not agree. Or rather, I do not agree that his movement, or what he represents, ought to be dismissed with such haste.
The pure fact of the matter is that Fuentes is incredibly popular among young men. After every episode of his show, which runs for two hours or so every weekday, clips of him make their rounds on Instagram and X/Twitter, often garnering millions of views. He is frequently inflammatory, sometimes needlessly so. There are turns of phrase, jokes, provocations and rhetorical habits that many Catholics dislike, and some of those criticisms are reasonable. But the usual critique of Fuentes is lazy. If the purpose of denouncing him is to make him disappear, it clearly has not worked.
