Origins
In September 2019, Ashley St. Clair, a "brand ambassador" for the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was photographed at an event featuring several allegedly white nationalist and alt-right figures, including Fuentes, Jacob Wohl, and Anthime Gionet, better known as "Baked Alaska". After Right Wing Watch brought the photographs to its attention, TPUSA issued a statement that it had severed ties with St. Clair and condemned white nationalism as "abhorrent and un-American".[36][37]
At the 2019 Politicon convention, Fuentes tried to attend several Turning Point events featuring Charlie Kirk, including waiting in line to take photos with Kirk and attempting to attend Kirk's debate with Kyle Kulinski of The Young Turks. Security repeatedly prevented him from approaching Kirk, and Fuentes accused Kirk of suppressing him to avoid a confrontation, as Fuentes had grown critical of Kirk's positions, which he said were too weak.[38]
In the fall of 2019, Kirk launched a college speaking tour with TPUSA titled "Culture War", featuring himself and guests such as Rand Paul, Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, Lara Trump, and Dan Crenshaw.[3] In retaliation for St. Clair's firing and the Politicon incident, Fuentes began organizing a social media campaign asking his followers to go to Kirk's events and ask provocative and controversial leading questions about his stances on immigration, Israel, and LGBT rights to expose Kirk as a "fake conservative".
At a Culture War event hosted by Ohio State University on October 29, 11 out of 14 questions were asked by Groypers.[39] They included "Can you prove that our white European ideals will be maintained if the country is no longer made up of white European descendants?" They asked Kirk's co-host Rob Smith, a gay, black Iraq War veteran, "How does anal sex help us win the culture war?"[40] Fuentes's social media campaign against Kirk became known as the "Groyper Wars".[8][41] Kirk, Smith, and others at TPUSA, including Benny Johnson, began calling the questioners white supremacists and antisemites.[38][42]
Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin wrote an article for American Greatness attacking Kirk's immigration policies, particularly his stance that immigrants who graduate from U.S. universities should receive green cards.[43] After defending Fuentes and his followers, Malkin was fired as a speaker for Young America's Foundation, a rival organization to Turning Point whose events Groypers had also targeted.[44] Malkin later called herself a mother figure to and leader of the Groypers.[45][46][47]
UCLA incident
Another Turning Point USA event the Groypers targeted was a promotional event for Donald Trump Jr.'s book Triggered, featuring Trump, Kirk, and Guilfoyle at the University of California, Los Angeles in November 2019. Anticipating further questions from Fuentes's followers, it was announced that the event's Q&A portion had been canceled, which led to heckling and boos from the mostly pro-Trump audience.[48] The disruptions forced the event, originally scheduled to last two hours, to end after 30 minutes.[49][50][33]
The Groyper Wars earned widespread media attention after the UCLA incident with Trump Jr. Chadwick Moore of Spectator USA commented that the ordeal revealed deep divisions within the American right among young voters, particularly Generation Z. Moore claimed this divide was due to the Groypers' viewing Kirk and others in the mainstream conservative movement as "snatching the baton and appointing themselves the guardians of 2016's spoils", despite holding beliefs that Fuentes and his followers believe conflict with Trump's "
Targeting of mainstream conservatives
Groypers' targets for heckling quickly expanded beyond Kirk and TPUSA[41] to other mainstream conservative groups and individuals, which they sometimes collectively call "Conservative Inc.", including Young America's Foundation and its student outreach branch Young Americans for Freedom, which included such speakers as Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire and Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch.[5] In December 2019, outside a venue where a TPUSA event was being held, Fuentes crossed paths with Shapiro, who was on his way to the event with his wife and children. Fuentes confronted him over his past public speaking comments. Shapiro refused to acknowledge him.[53] Fuentes faced widespread condemnation from politicians and various pundits—including Nikki Haley, Meghan McCain, Sebastian Gorka, Megyn Kelly, and Michael Avenatti—for confronting Shapiro while he was with his family.[54]
Groyper Leadership Conference
In December 2019, Fuentes held the Groyper Leadership Summit in Florida. A small group attended in person, and others joined via livestream. The event was held at the same time and in the same city as TPUSA's Student Action Summit (SAS); Groypers argued with SAS attendees outside their venue, and Fuentes, Patrick Casey, and some Groypers were removed from the SAS venue after attempting to enter. At the Groyper Leadership Summit, Fuentes, Casey, and former InfoWars contributor Jake Lloyd spoke about the Groypers' strategy and ideology.
In January 2020, Groyper and former leader of Kansas State University's TPUSA chapter Jaden McNeil formed the KSU organization America First Students. The group, which shares a name with Fuentes's America First podcast, was conceived at the Groyper Leadership Summit, and Groyper leaders have helped promote it. The America First Students organization, which says it formed "in defense of Christian values, strong families, closed borders, and the American worker", is considered to promote the Groyper movement.[58][59]
In February 2020, Fuentes spoke at several events held as rival events to the Conservative Political Action Conference. One of these, hosted by the online publication National File, featured Fuentes, Alex Jones of InfoWars, and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes.[60]
