Flash Report: Claims of Nick Fuentes’ Growing Popularity Are Unsupported by Data

TLDR

Nick Fuentes, an online personality known for his racist and antisemitic views, has elicited renewed interest from national news publications and political figures in recent months, exemplified by a series of his appearances on podcasts popular with right-wing audiences and the conflicts that ensued among Republican elites as a result. While Fuentes has received more attention from mainstream sources recently, our analysis raises doubts about how much Fuentes’ audience is actually growing.

Context

Nick Fuentes is a white nationalist activist known for promoting extreme racist and antisemitic beliefs online. Despite facing widespread deplatforming from online services and explicit condemnations from prominent Republicans for his hateful rhetoric, Fuentes has managed to cultivate a loyalist following of younger fans (who call themselves “groypers” online) and mobilize them towards his efforts to reshape mainstream conservative politics. On more than one occasion, his efforts have succeeded. 

In the months following the Sept. 10 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Fuentes’ profile in mainstream political discourse has grown. He has appeared on popular podcasts catering to pro-Trump audiences, elicited renewed interest from mainstream news outlets, and sparked feuds between Republican elites. Fuentes’ X account, which Elon Musk reinstated in May 2024, recently surpassed a million followers. Likewise, after October 2025 news reports exposing the private, hateful beliefs of young Republican leaders, Fuentes declared that his sympathizers were “all over the government.”

The media’s increased focus on Fuentes comes at a time of heightened concern over reports of rising antisemitism in the United States. Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in 2023, the US has seen increased reports of antisemitic hate crimes, multiple violent attacks targeting Jews, and cross-ideological adoption of antisemitic attitudes.

Given this context, Open Measures sought to determine whether data analysis would support notions that Fuentes’ audience is growing, as writers some news outlets have suggested. 

Our Approach

Using tools available through our platform, our researchers looked for posts mentioning Fuentes or his followers (“groypers”) across all platforms monitored by Open Measures using the following search string: 

"nick fuentes" OR "Nicholas fuentes" OR "nicholas j fuentes" OR "nick j fuentes" OR groyper* OR #nickfuentes OR #groyper OR #groypers

From preliminary results, our researchers chose to focus on platforms that Fuentes used while deplatformed from other mainstream services (like Gab), that catered to far-right communities that seemed potentially sympathetic to Fuentes (like 4chan), or that have recently been used by younger Republican audiences (like TikTok).

Ultimately, the results presented below, collected from the six-month search period spanning May 10 to Nov. 9, are from 10 platforms: 4chan, Fediverse, Gab, Gettr, Minds, Rumble, Telegram, TikTok, Truth Social, and Scored.

Our Findings

Open Measures identified more than 77,600 explicit mentions of Fuentes across the platforms mentioned above during the six-month search period we selected. The highest number of results came from 4chan, followed by Rumble and Fediverse platforms.

Daily mentions of Fuentes across all platforms appeared relatively stable until Sept. 10, when conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated. In the two weeks that followed, the terms “Fuentes” and “groypers” were mentioned in more than 22,700 posts across all platforms,  making up about 29% of all posts identified in the six-month period. It’s also crucial to note that in the two weeks after Kirk’s death, all platforms also saw posts with unfounded speculations that Kirk’s killer was a Fuentes fan.

Our researchers observed a smaller surge of posts after Tucker Carlson — historically, one of the most influential media figures among vocal, pro-Trump media commentators — released a sympathetic interview with Fuentes on his podcast, “The Tucker Carlson Show.” Carlson’s decision to platform Fuentes ignited feuds among conservative elites, which resulted in a minor, recent media feud with Trump and propelled more discourse about Fuentes over the weeks that followed.

Caption: A timeline showing the daily number of posts across 10 platforms that mentioned Nick Fuentes or his fans, who call themselves “groypers” online, between May 10 and Nov. 9, 2025. (Graphic made with Flourish using Open Measures data)

Though the spike of posts mentioning Fuentes after Kirk’s death does illustrate a sudden and increased awareness of Fuentes on the 10 platforms we analyzed, it does not show that the volume of mentions was sustained (which one might expect, if Fuentes’ popularity truly is growing among online right-wing audiences). More pointedly, the two surge periods in our data seemed to reflect increased interest in what other people had to say about Fuentes — which included miscellaneous users’ suggesting Fuentes bore responsibility for Kirk’s murder as well as conservative media figures debating whether those with hateful beliefs could coexist with others in their political movements.

The only exception to this pattern our researchers observed was on Rumble, one of few (if not only) alternative video platforms that has not deplatformed Fuentes. On Rumble, the increased volume of daily posts mentioning Fuentes or his followers since Kirk’s death has been sustained.

What We’re Watching

As Open Measures is dedicated to investigating the broader spread of extremist ideologies on platforms we monitor, we intend to continue to follow the discourse about Fuentes and his fan base for any shifting trends. Our findings above raise doubts about whether Fuentes is a uniquely ascendant political figure; in the context of our data, we understand Fuentes as one of many in a growing chorus of online voices who are using their influence to promote hate speech and target vulnerable minority populations in the US.

Our platform was developed in part to assist those who investigate, track, and respond to the various online harms that hate movements inflict on their victims. We hope that richer analysis on these issues can empower a better understanding of these issues and inform decision makers looking to protect vulnerable groups.