Nick Fuentes, identified as a “white supremacist” in Justice Department filings, made headlines last week for hosting a white nationalist conference in Florida. His father is also half Mexican American.
The big picture: Fuentes is part of a small but increasingly visible number of far-right provocateurs with Hispanic backgrounds who spread racist, antisemitic messages.
Driving the news: Cuban American Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, a group the Anti-Defamation League calls an extremist group with a violent agenda, was arrested Tuesday and charged with conspiracy in connection to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
What they’re saying: Experts tell Axios far-right extremism within the Latino community stems from three sources: Hispanic Americans who identify as white; the spread of online misinformation; and lingering anti-Black, antisemitic views among U.S. Latinos that are rarely openly discussed.
Between the lines: The U.S. trend, fueled over the course of Donald Trump’s presidency and the pandemic, extends beyond movement leaders to a broader network of participants, some of whom have faced hate crimes charges.
- Last month, Jose Gomez III, 21, of Midland, Texas, pleaded guilty in federal court to three counts of committing a hate crime for attacking an Asian American family, including two children, he believed to be responsible for the pandemic.
- In 2018, Alex Michael Ramos, a Puerto Rican resident of Georgia, was sentenced by a Virginia District Court to six years in prison for his role in a beating of a Black man in Charlottesville, Virginia, following the “Unite the Right” rally.
- Christopher Rey Monzon, a Cuban American man and member of the neo-Confederate group League of the South, was arrested in 2017 for attempting to assault anti-racist protesters in Hollywood, Fla. He later resigned from the group and said he regretted using slurs for Black and Jewish people.
Context: At the conference in Orlando, which made headlines because U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accepted an invitation to speak, Fuentes drew attention for comments of his own: