Bulwark Takes - Charlie Kirk’s Alt-Right Pivot is a Bad Omen

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Will Sommer and Sonny Bunch break down Charlie Kirk’s sharp turn on immigration, how far-right figures like Nick Fuentes are driving the conversation, and what it says about the radicalization of the conservative movement. Read "How the Groypers Won" in The Bulwark

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All right, welcome back to The Bullwork. We are here again with Will Sommer talking about his false flag newsletter. We got a big one today. This is a really kind of fascinating piece about the evolution of the right in general and the kind of right media landscape in particular and how certain forces have really hushed, I don't know, what would we even call it? What would we call Charlie Kirk? The mainstream right at this point? Into the arms of the, into the arms of the Groypers. What's going on out there? Yeah, I mean, so this week, sir, the latest false flag is about, I was thinking, you know,

as the amid the immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, a lot of right-wing figures, including Charlie Kirk, who's sort of like the avatar of like what it means to be a young Republican, they called for a ban on all third world immigration, even legally. And so basically they're saying, you know, non-white immigration. And so it got me thinking and I thought about how Charlie Kirk did not always used to be this way, that he was once one of these guys who would say, I just want people to come in the right way. And in fact, we need a lot more people to immigrate here. And then Nick Fuentes, who's this white nationalist leader who's a sort of a great enemy of Charlie Kirk's,

he said, you know what? Look at what Charlie Kirk's saying. Look at what Matt Walsh at the Daily Wire is saying. We won. You know, basically the racists won and now they've adopted what we believe. You know, he said the Groypers, who are kind of like, if people remember Pepe the Frog,

they've kind of adopted this really fat Pepe, they call Groyper. He said the Groypers, who are kind of like if people remember Pepe the Frog, they've kind of adopted this really fat Pepe they call Groyper. He said the Groypers won. And I thought about it and I thought, you know what, I think he's making a point here. And so I kind of went back and looked at the interplay between these two guys who are both kind of two sides of the same coin in terms of young Republicans, young Trump supporters, and how Nick Fuentes really pulled Charlie Kirk in his direction. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because, as you say, you know, Charlie Kirk used to take – what was the Clinton line on abortion, right?

Safe, legal, and rare? He used to take that basic attitude towards immigration, right? Safe, we want legal immigrants, and we actually want more of them. We've got all this empty country here. We've got all this – look at all this empty country we have. We can bring these people over. We'll bring the best and the brightest. And something has shifted pretty radically on the right over the last three or four years here. I mean, is this real? You know, it's always hard to pinpoint any one place where this happens, but is this the influence

of the kind of online, griper, anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish right? Is that what's going on here? I think that's right. I mean, what's interesting here, as you said, is Charlie Kirk, you know, this is 2018, 2019, so this was not that long ago. I mean, this was the first Trump administration. He was not just saying, oh, you know, grudgingly, I guess we could let some immigrants in.

He was saying, let's double the amount of immigrants we have in the country. Let's bring in 50 million people. We have so much land in this country, we don't know what to do with it. If we wanted to actually grow as much food as we could possibly produce, we could feed the world 10 times over.

We pay our farmers not to grow. The United States of America is an incubator for great ideas. I think we could take another 50 million highly qualified people in the next 10 years and not even feel the hit. And he was talking about it so lovingly about these immigrant communities in Dayton, Ohio and saying they're the richest people in Dayton. I've been to Dayton, Ohio, where they have a highly functional immigrant community from Armenia. And some are Muslim and some are Christian. They came with all the resources and they fled. Some fled, some came here legally, and they are the highest per capita neighborhoods

in Dayton. They've assimilated beautifully. I see that as a great success story that could happen all across the country. You know, and he said specifically the government should be putting in financial incentives to direct immigrants towards these kind of depopulated Midwestern communities. So imagine now that some Republican figure said, you know, I think the government should actually be sending more Asian immigrants to Springfield, Ohio, something along those lines. And I think it's great that they're making so much more money than the native-born workers.

I mean, that is just crazy to imagine. And so what happened? Well, in Charlie Kirk's case, Nick Fuentes really seized on this idea, and particularly Charlie Kirk saying, you know, we should staple a green card on every diploma. So if you earn a valuable degree in the US, you should just get the right to live here permanently. And so he, him and his friends started harassing Turning Point USA events and saying, you know, Charlie Kirk's trying to, you know, he's trying to do great replacement to white people in the United States, essentially. And after a few months of that, Charlie Kirk basically said, all right, and he tacked far to the right. And so now I think you're right.

I mean, it is this way that the anti-semitic, that the racist right has been able to outmaneuver a more mainstream Trumpism really at every turn and basically force them to surrender and adopt their ideas. Do we think that the actual critical mass of public opinion on the right has shifted this far against legal immigration. Because even, I don't know, as of a couple years ago, legal immigration still polled very well amongst Republicans. People were still pretty supportive of it.

And then you mentioned showing up at the TPUSA events, trying to shout down Dan Crenshaw for being too open-borders or whatever. And this is a shift, but I can't tell if it's just a shift in tactics to make it feel like this is a verboten issue for Charlie Kirk to take in support, or if it's an actual shift in the public opinion of the kind of young conservative set? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a genuine shift. I think, you know, that phrase people always say, say, you know, I'm not against immigration. I just want people to come the right way.

I want them to come legally. You don't hear that a lot anymore. What you hear is this idea of, you know, there are these third world hoards that are waiting to break into our country. The caravans, you know, the people who are with, you know, even down to, you know, Matt Walsh at the Daily Wire, who's been one of these big advocates of a third world immigration ban, saying, you know, Mexican food is so gross, whatever. I mean, it's basically saying people bring nothing to our country. And so I do think there's been a genuine shift. And you know, a thing we've been looking at, especially when you look at young Republicans, I mean, so much of the energy, at least in sort of the activist operative class, is at

that gripper level. I mean, there aren't a huge amount of people. I mean, this is why, you know, so many of these Trump administration appointees, these Doge people turn out to have these crazy racist tweets in their backgrounds because that's really where so much of the energy is for young Republicans. Yeah, it's not great. That's not great. One thing that was interesting, and you highlighted this in our Slack, and I think you mentioned it in your newsletter too, is the fact that the language of these tweets from Walsh and Pizzagate Jack and the rest of these guys are very similar.

It was like somebody sent down talking points saying, we're done with legal immigration. Was there a sense of coordination here or is it just kind of one of these coincidences, weird coincidences just in the water? You know, it's hard to know. I mean, there definitely does see, on one hand, you know, at maybe the most benign level is there a group chat, you know, where someone's saying, you know, we should push for a ban on third world immigration. I would believe that.

On the other, you know, I think people are maybe seeing their competitors or their friendly rivals tweet something and they say, wow, he's getting a lot of engagement off of that. I should ask ChatGPT to reword that, and I'll post it myself. Or I don't think it's a paid effort or anything. These guys, I think, are quite happy to support those ideas on their own. But I think it just shows really the ways that... I mean, it's certainly a lot of group think. I think that these guys are all thinking alike. And actually, you know, I didn't get into this in the newsletter, but in many ways

these guys have tacked further right than Nick Fuentes, who's saying, you know, well, I like, you know, and setting aside the fact that his last name is Fuentes, I mean, that's, who knows what's going on there, but the, you know, he's saying, well, you know, these Latino immigrants, they're churchgoing, They're conservative I actually like them more than a lot of American white people perhaps And and so these guys in some ways are further to his right. Yeah, that is that is interesting And you know and it's interesting too because there is this almost Schizophrenic vibe to Donald Trump's truth posts the last couple days on immigration

I don't know if you if you saw this but again, we were discussing it in the Slack. This morning, he puts out a truth. He truths. We're arresting too many of the good, hardworking farmers and the people in the hotel and leisure industry, and criminals are rushing in and taking all of those jobs. leisure industry and criminals are rushing in and taking all of those jobs. All of the criminals are coming in and taking those jobs. And then a couple hours later, it feels like Stephen Miller, his anti-immigration advisor,

gets control of the mic again and is like, actually, Biden opened the doors to millions upon millions of rapists and murderers and they let them all into the country. We got to get rid of all these guys. And there is, my point here, my question here is, does it feel like there is a real kind of fight intention at the heart of the party right now? Or is the energy just fully against immigrants, immigrants legal and illegal? Like everybody's got to go. On one hand, I think there are like certainly business interests that we see reflected in that Trump tweet post about saying, you know, essentially I didn't mean for my bloodlust or to get in the way of your business operations, your farming or your hotels. On the other

hand, I think in terms of like the ideological messaging of the party and in terms of really what the voters, what the activists want, I think it's very much the hardest possible turn, certainly getting anyone who is here undocumented out, but then also more efforts to restrict legal immigration or to even try various ways to kick out people who are here legally. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty crazy out there. Do we think that the protests and the riots and the police actions out in California, now kind of spreading around the world, around the country anyway, are driving any of this? Is this why we may be seeing kind of an uptick in the rhetoric on this point from these voices on the right? Yeah, I mean, I think what we're seeing is the protests in Los Angeles and the ICE raids there are giving sort of a news peg, as we say in the business, for these people to talk about it and to talk so much about immigration. And to say, you know, look how ungrateful they are. Here's one shot of a guy on a motorcycle with a Mexican flag that we're

going to show endlessly in right-wing media. And so I do think that's the kind of jumping off point. You know, I think that the other thing I would add here is, you know, as Charlie Kirk tax right, figures like him go, the reason this was so easy for me to write, you know, I was aware of Charlie's kind of back and forth on this issue, but a bunch of Gropers had, you know, they had their seats and they said, well, you know, six years ago, Charlie was saying, let's bring 50 million immigrants to Ohio and places like that. And they're saying, you know, to quote them, they were like, Charlie is not based. Don't think Charlie's based. And so, you know, how much does this actually appeal or does it show that Nick Fuentes and figures like him, more extreme figures have really captured

a good amount of the GOP base? I think it would show the latter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that's not great. Thanks for keeping an eye on all this, Will. This has been, as always, an eye-opening edition of False Flag. Make sure you go sign up for it. Go to thebullwork.com, read his story, sign up for it, sign up for Bullwork Plus, get everything in your inbox. It's great. You want to read it all. And make sure of course you subscribe to the YouTube channel for the Bullwork. Hit like, hit subscribe, send this to people. You know, you want them, you want everybody to be watching the bulwark and we are always happy to have

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