‘America First’ is more about making America like the EU

The high-low dichotomy is seen in the MAGA vs Fuentes split. The idea is that in every political movement, there is a split between language and believes that are coded as high status, versus low status. Or how there is a class split between competing factions of the same broad ideology.

Although the usual framing by the media is that Trump is the voice of a huge white underclass, as far as online is concerned, this isn’t really true. What I have dubbed the ‘normcore right‘, those are who are the most consistently loyal to the ‘MAGA movement’ or conservative policies in general, tend to have good careers, families, and high social status. The irony is that Trump positions himself or is branded by the media as anti-establishment, but many of his biggest supporters (at least online) are fully assimilated in society, and thriving too.

Conversely, the typical Fuentes supporter, online, is much more likely to meet the stereotype of the ‘anon basement dweller’ archetype, compared to the typical Trump supporter online. I emphasize online, because offline, the dynamics tend to be reversed, in which high-status people with good careers tend to be centrist or liberal. The same high-low split is seen with wokeness vs centrism/neoliberalism. Of course, there are many successful people with woke politics, but many in 2025 pivoted or renounced wokeness, as seen in tech, whereas the lower status people dug in.

Low-status people will choose populist movements and gravitate towards figures where their relative status is increased and their grievances are heard. But it’s not so much about finding practical political solutions, but a desire to see society collapse or reset to a more equitable state. This is seen on both extremes of the left-right spectrum. This makes sense: if your status is low, you have much less to lose from a reshuffling of the deck brought about by societal collapse, but much more potential upside under the new regime. The payoff, in mathematical or finance parlance, is convex.

So what motivates Fuentes himself? Considering his show is ranked #2 on Rumble and his tweets are read by arguably millions of people everyday, including by some of the most powerful and influential people in the world, obviously he’s not low status. But as I argue in “Nick Fuentes – the Firestarter of the Right,” he wants disorder because it helps his brand and raises his relative status. Right now, his influence is overshadowed by the likes of Trump and Elon, compared to the leadership void in 2021-2023 when DeSantis was considered a viable presidential contender and Trump faced a very real risk of going to prison, and Elon hadn’t bought Twitter, where Trump’s account was still suspended.

There is also the irony of his calling the show America First while, both aesthetically and in policy terms, he appropriates a scaled-down, EU-style political and social aesthetic–especially when contrasted with Trump’s bombast and overconfidence, or the consumerist excesses traditionally associated with America. This explains Fuentes’ fondness for Gavin Newsom, whose politics and carefully maintained youthful appearance resemble those of Emmanuel Macron-especially in contrast to Trump’s crudeness, suit and tie notwithstanding, or what Fuentes perceives as the slovenliness of J.D. Vance.

Much as the EU comprises 27 member states, the Groypers represent a diverse, global community–again inconsistent with the idea of an “America First” nationalist movement. Like the EU, Nick’s audience has a sub-replacement fertility rate. Some call it ‘3rd worldism,’ but this seems inaccurate. The literal third world is the Congo or Somalia; no one wants that, not even the most nihilistic black pilled of his audience. Rather, they appear to want a downscaled but more nationalistic America–one less liberal socially, yet broadly in keeping with the EU’s cultural rejection of consumerism, interventionism, and capitalist excess. It’s like ‘America, minus everything that makes America what it is’.

Consistent with the theme of downsizing, Fuentes praises the CIA and the functional agility and leanness of CIA agents and MMA fighters, compared to cumbersome bodybuilders, arguing that “building muscle mass is pure cope.”

This further aligns with Fuentes’ European idealization of leadership and attire, much like Clavicular or James Bond, who epitomize brains or charisma over force. He imagines himself surrounded by his dapper looksmaxxer friends and MI6 agents, while sipping tea at Buckingham Palace. Instead of lifted trucks and SUVs, it’s VW Beetles and those tiny Fiat 500 cars. The theme again is downsizing and minimalism of living standards of America, except for a for a based nobility who are somehow able to preserve their livestreaming careers as the rest of the country are effectively frozen in a Cold War-era 1970s or 1980s stasis.

In Fuentes’ America, a based newscaster bearing a resemblance to Tucker rebroadcasts clips from Clavicular or Fuentes livestreams to the ‘goyim’, who watch in rapt attention on their 12-inch black-and-white TVs. After signing off, broadcast then cuts immediately to test signals, as there’s no other programming sufficiently based to follow it. But more seriously, Nick is not averse to a technocratic government, in contrast to Trump’s shotgun or ‘might makes right’ approach to policy, but towards illiberal ends.

In 2020, I argued that Biden was America’s first “European president,” as his protectionist trade policies (such as Biden’s significant restrictions on semiconductor exports to China) and modesty stood in contrast to the flamboyance and charisma of Obama or Bill Clinton, the latter whose free market orthodoxy he appropriated from Reagan. Similarly, the EU has imposed heavy restrictions on American tech companies–particularly around data use and collection–while levying substantial fines on violators, a regulatory posture that Fuentes and his audience would like to see adopted in the United States.

More broadly speaking, a shared skepticism towards ‘liberal democracy’, modernity, and new technology–which today often means AI–is a recurring theme across both left-wing and right-wing podcasts, and the intelligentsia elite. A similar attitude can be seen among EU leadership, which tends to be far more cautious about creative disruption and AI than leaders in the United States or China. The latter are effectively locked in a technological arms race, whether over semiconductors or artificial intelligence, as the EU seeks to regulate tech companies with fines. By contrast, Trump has gone all-in on boosting American competitiveness in AI and has executed a near-180 in his embrace of “big tech.”

In this respect, there is little fundamental difference between Hasan Piker, Destiny, Red Scare, Breaking Points, or even Fuentes. In the end, it’s all rooted in a desire to see the United States become more like the European Union (or like Switzerland–a bystander in global affairs). If you’ve listened to one counterculture podcast, you’ve heard them all, so to speak. If anything, being it’s more transgressive to be pro-AI or pro-modernity, than the skepticism that otherwise dominates discourse.

But doesn’t the aesthetic of Western Europe, with its cathedrals and (mostly) intact society, contradict the part his listeners wanting society to collapse? Not really, because if collapse leads to America becoming more like the EU, that would be seen as a win. The “burn it all down” sentiment among his audience, when juxtaposed with “America First,” is really about dismantling America’s hegemonic power and consumerist excesses, not about literal anarchy. A crisis, as seen during ’08 or Covid, can serve as a catalyst for this, but in either case, America only solidified its power and economic lead.

Today we’re in something of a ‘permanent status quo’ where America, with Trump at the helm, reigns. AI valuations, home prices and stock prices rise forever. For now, the Groypers’ and Fuentes’ hoped-for ‘downsizing of America’ will have to wait—perhaps forever.