(UPDATE 2025-09-16 1817 PST: Somewhere in the last six days I heard that Ben Shapiro was chosen to replace Charlie Kirk as head of Turning Point. Today I was challenged on this, and after a brief inspection, I was utterly wrong. This is a big enough goof I think I will write about the cognitive issue of “anchoring”. I have been considering looking at the Trump succession stuff, and having found out that it’s begun in a smaller way with TPUSA, maybe it’s time to graph some things.)
Come with me, constant reader, and let’s explore what awaits Nick Fuentes as we enter his personal Find Out phase of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Someone in the business asked what I knew about Fuentes and the Groypers. Once they had reviewed that material they asked if I were willing to update. I agreed, someone else heard, I asked if I could just make it public, and that was deemed acceptable. And as usual, not one thin dime in compensation, I’m supposed to enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done, and apparently I need to learn to photosynthesize.
I will first present my bona fides, such as they are, because there are new people, and then go on at ridiculous length about this topic.
This turned out to be 3,800 words and it ate my Sunday, to say nothing of the five years of research behind my MAGA graph. All three new things that I am doing are struggling in this economy, so if you appreciate this work, and if you’ve got something to spare, you can send it to Paypal: nrauhauser. I’d greatly appreciate it.
Attention Conservation Notice:
My LinkedIn profile header image says “Intelligence Team Lead”. No organization ever bestowed that on me, I self trained into the role. There is a LOT of information here, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Preeminent Qualities:
If you read Buddhist texts (I do) you will recognize the section header. Every teaching begins with the nature of the Author and Text. That being said, here are mine:
Look at my Past & Future bookshelf, and see if you can make out which third of the authors I’ve actually spoken to over the years.
Look at my Tradecraft bookshelf, where I have less direct entree than I do with historians, but if you accept that working with people who know (or knew) these authors, I’m equally well connected.
Look at my MAGA World bookshelf, again roughly a third here.
One of the reporters described me as a “cybercrime & disinformation researcher”.
One of those P&F authors refers to me as a “practitioner”, which is perhaps the best professional compliment I’ve ever received.
I read weighty works in the field of counter-insurgency and influence, and in general I’m a little fish in this large pond.
There are 693 PDFs in a folder on my desktop called Slideshare. I used to read peer reviewed papers, then send the authors LinkedIn connect requests, which has much to do with why I’m a functional recluse with 2,500+ contacts. I think roughly half of them are topical for this area
The first sense making venture I ever participated in was Project VIGILANT back in 2009. During the intervening years I had something to do with supporting the following movements.
Iran’s Green Revolution (2009)
Arab Spring (2011)
Occupy Wall Street (2011-2012)
Black Lives Matter (2014)
ISIS Wild Hunt (2015)
Indivisible (2017)
NAFO (2022)
2019 was an inflection point for me, I began capturing Twitter streaming data at scale, and operating clusters of Open Semantic Search systems. My transition from actor/collector to analyst accelerated.
So I am a careful observer with nuanced views tempered by both many years of direct experience, as well as a lot of academic work.
Cybermilitia Structures:
You will need to be aware of the various cybermiltia structures. I’ve long quietly advocated that the U.S. do something like Küberkaitseliit, the Estonian cybermilitia which arose in response to the Russian attack they faced in 2007. I’ve been interested enough in this that I got 90 minutes to talk to Tomas Hendrik Ilves about it back in 2019.
I was a member of Infragard from 2009 to 2012, when I quit in disgust over the things I had seen. I spent eighteen months nominally responsible for counter-intel work within the Military Cyber Professionals Association, one of just two civilians attached at the HQ level. The first time they had an actual problem my presence frightened the pants off a chickenshit with some sort of bird emblem on his shoulder boards, and that was the end of that.
Following the trend of decreasing dwell time, I think I spent all of ninety days with the Information Professionals Association before some dipshit with a Ph.D. and a RAND email thought he was going to educate me regarding online conflict. I was expressly forbidden to provide him any experiential learning on the topic, which still annoys me, now that I think of it.
As with my time supporting social movements, when I say the United States has NO FUCKING CLUE about what to do, I’m not just echoing Paul Cobaugh and John Robb. That is direct personal experience within the cogs of the machine speaking.
That being said, there are three major forms for cybermilitias.
Forums - watering holes full of would-be actors, where those with in context clout can trigger cascades of activity.
Nodes - small groups of motivated players, forming around either a capability (doxing, denial of service, etc), or a specific support mission (Gaza, Ukraine).
Hybrids - when a corporation or nation state takes an interest, forums get skewed to serve their purposes and nodes receive funding and tasking.
The graph I kept on MAGA world from 2020 to 2024, which is now being updated due to the Kirk assassination, is based on citations - court documents, news articles, Congressional investigation material. There are 183 tweets among the 1,600 citations, and they’re pretty uniformly “connective tissue” from a core of ten accounts. They typically contain information to bridge two episodes that got news coverage, but of which only an intent observer would be aware.
That being said, there aren’t any nodes in the graph, and you would need stuff that seldom makes the news to confirm the existence of hybrids. I spent some time with a scratch copy of the big graph and I found what I always find when I do this - I don’t have good discipline on the entity types I use to represent such groups. Is it a forum? A political movement? A gang? What if the correct answer to all three is “yes”?
And that being said, there are a couple well known long running things that at least seem like they will continue to be important as we learn more.
There are some subreddits that may have been frequented by the shooter’s room mate, this remains up in the air for the moment. (UPDATE 2025-09-15: The Groyper’s Girlfriend contains the particulars.)
Groypers - they have a Discord server and I’m sure there are a number of other venues. If I take the time to dig into this it will be a “callout” - a placeholder entity will contain the name of a separate graph with those details. It’s simply too much for Maltego, the big one is 8,600 nodes and my license is limited to 10k.
Kiwi Farms - odious anti-trans cybersewer owned by Josh Moon aka null. If the U.S. ever declares war on accelerationists, the first JDAM will have his name chalked on the side.
8chan/8kun - one of the Fuentes supporters called on the Groypers to get after these guys, so that’s hot forum on forum action.
Identity Evropa - I am not sure what’s going on with this bunch, haven’t seen them mentioned in years, but there are nontrivial connections to Fuentes, so watch for that name.
Kirk Assassination:
Here are the things I have written about the Kirk assassination.
Charlie Kirk Shot (2025-09-10)
Who Killed Charlie Kirk? (2025-09-11)
Charlie Kirk Murder Weapon (2025-09-12)
Did A Groyper Kill Charlie Kirk? (2025-09-12)
A Preference For Peace (2025-09-14)
The Groyper’s Girlfriend (2025-09-15)
SitRep Today:
Because my life can’t not be a Black Mirror episode, Kirk’s world intersects in a nontrivial fashion with the one hinted at in Red Sparrow Reality back on July 17th. What was a nuisance last Tuesday became a viable news story the day after that. I have only been credited once previously, in MIOS: Iran’s PressTV. This will be a similar situation. While I do want credit for hunting foreign influence ops, I cringe that this one happens to be at the intersection of more than one cult with a history of lethal violence.
Charlie Kirk was a rising star in the right wing hierarchy. I’ve been having an exchange with a very old friend about this today, his words are germane.
If Fuentes was murdered in public by a rainbow flag waving cross dresser, there would NOT be candlelight vigils for him across the country. Fuentes is a horsefly biting the ass of the conservative draft horse, nothing more. Fuentes … is seen as an annoying jackass we all wish would go away.
That’s a fellow Gen-X elder speaking. While I agree with the biting part, the dismissiveness I do not. Charlie Kirk is dead, and Nick Fuentes is frantically backpedaling to avoid what is coming. He will not be successful, but the Millennial/Zoomer network threat he’s been cultivating since 2019 will remain.
You must continue to forge ahead if you want the prognostication, it’ll be at the end, where it belongs.
Groypers:
Fuentes has been in the business of biting the conservative movement’s behind since no later than 2019, when the first of the Groyper Wars began. I periodically roll my big MAGA graph and this is what I knew about Kirk, Fuentes, and the Groypers on June 6th. There were enough changes that I moved to using the 2025-08-26 file as the base, and this was mostly driven by the red sparrow hunt. There’s no effect on the Groyper vicinity, but I went back to the old file to be sure nothing from current work slipped into the mix.
These are the key figures on the graph. When a name is followed by “Actual” that means I have enough articles about them that it’s hard to find their entity when I do a search of the graph.
Charlie Kirk Actual
Nick Fuentes Actual
Michelle Malkin
Patrick Casey Actual
Jaden McNeil
Laura Loomer
Tim Gionet
I started on an update and got this nest of snakes. It overlaps with my duties as Brand Defense Strategist for Cicada 3301. Not all of the 65 people on here are involved (yet) and not all of them are bad guys in this context.
Here are the more notable names I see in key positions.
Kyle Rittenhouse - business development meetings with Fuentes.
Josh Moon - Kiwi Farms & related sites operator, former 8chan developer.
Ron Watkins - 8chan/8kun owner.
James Allsup - political mentor to Fuentes, Identity Evropa figure.
Paul Gosar - Congressman close to Fuentes, Ali Akbar, etc.
Wendy Rogers - Arizona state house member close to Fuentes.
Susie Wiles - White House Chief of Staff, Fuentes foe.
Files:
There are going to be a lot of graphs as this progresses. This Dropbox link is TRANSIENT. It will continue to accumulate files until the cascade of events set off by Kirk’s assassination run their course. I think that will take years, but there will come a point where the action moves on, and then those files will be gone. Given how notable this event is there will probably be a notification of imminent removal post. You’ll have maybe a week after that to save yourself a copy, then you’ll be reduced to begging in email and hoping there’s a zip file somewhere I can send you.
Groypers
Graphs & Citations:
These graphs are in the Dropbox. The DeepDive is the main graph I am updating as I go, the rest are snapshots at a moment in time, often done so I have a neat image to show here. As the DeepDive evolves I periodically select all, copy, and paste the result back into the main graph.
2025-09-13-GroypersDeepDive.mtgl
2025-09-12-Fuentes-Kirk.mtgl
2025-09-12-NickFuentes.mtgl
2025-09-13-LauraLoomer-NickFuentes.mtgl
2025-09-14-Groypers-June.mtgl
These are the URLs that appear in the main graph. The two Salon pieces labeled Catholics & Groypers are a fundamental read if you want to understand any of this. There are a cluster of good articles on Arizona Mirror. Both of the Texas site stories are important as you expand away from the Groyper-centric core. None of the rest of it made a really big impression on me as I’ve been reviewing, but that could change.
Note: I sicced ChatGPT on this problem and it comes back with both statements about things AND the URLs so one can ensure it’s not telling tall tales. I started digging, but then forced myself to stop. There is SO MUCH that has happened since late 2024 and this area was NOT my focus, the only way Fuentes et. al. got in there was because they were turning up in mainstream news articles.
Once I’m sure my revenues are solid, I will probably get asked to come back and take this further. ChatGPT is going to make that both easier and far more difficult.
https://adl.org/resources/profiles/identity-evropaamerican-identity-movement
https://azmirror.com/2022/02/22/the-groyper-army-is-looking-to-make-white-nationalism-mainstream-it-has-key-allies-in-arizona-politics/
https://azmirror.com/blog/biggs-and-gosar-sought-pardons-for-capitol-riot-but-wont-get-them-report/
https://bellingcat.com/news/americas/2021/02/24/woman-accused-of-stealing-nancy-pelosis-laptop-appears-in-video-making-nazi-salute/
https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/capitol-riot-bitcoin-donation-alt-right-domestic-extremism
https://cryptobriefing.com/unmasking-deceased-programmer-donated-bitcoin-capitol-hill-rioters/
https://dailydot.com/debug/ali-alexander-epik-hack-web-domains-capitol-riot/
https://dailydot.com/debug/nick-fuentes-patrick-casey-groypers-afpac/
https://dailydot.com/debug/truth-social-poast-donald-trump/
https://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/384/202301309575173384/202301309575173384.pdf
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/06/politics/republican-paul-gosar-white-nationalists-kfile/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groypers
https://heavy.com/news/2017/06/laura-loomer-jack-posobiec-julius-caesar-protesters-donald-trump/
https://huffpost.com/entry/paul-gosar-far-right-protest-arizona_n_5fada218c5b6370e7e311861
https://insider.com/jacob-wohl-police-report-death-threat-fake-twitter-account-2019-3
https://leftcoastrightwatch.org/2021/02/americas-nazi-youth-movement-controls-college-republican-spaces/
https://littlesis.org/org/37180-Council_for_National_Policy
https://mediamatters.org/donald-trump/here-are-extremist-figures-going-white-house-social-media-summit
https://motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/joe-kent-tulsi-gabbard-national-counterterrorism-center-first-amendment-praetorian-robert-patrick-lewis/
https://newrepublic.com/article/161200/alt-right-comedy-gavin-mcinnes-problem
https://newsweek.com/laura-loomer-hostile-takeover-republican-party-video-1953640
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/is-ginni-thomas-a-threat-to-the-supreme-court
https://nytimes.com/2021/01/29/us/republicans-trump-capitol-riot.html
https://nytimes.com/2022/02/19/technology/qanon-messages-authors.html
https://propublica.org/article/new-details-suggest-senior-trump-aides-knew-jan-6-rally-could-get-chaotic
https://propublica.org/article/oath-keepers-in-the-state-house-how-a-militia-movement-took-root-in-the-republican-mainstream
https://rawstory.com/raw-investigates/stop-the-steal-donald-trump/
https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/exclusive-jan-6-organizers-met-congress-white-house-1245289/
https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/lin-wood-sidney-powell-stop-steal-scam-1263665/
https://salon.com/2022/05/12/nationalists-get-religion-on-the-far-right-fringe-catholics-and-forge-a-movement/
https://salon.com/2022/05/13/trad-catholics-and-nationalist-groypers-forge-a-new-far-right-youth-movement/
https://texasmonthly.com/news-politics/billionaire-tim-dunn-runs-texas/
https://texastribune.org/2023/10/08/nick-fuentes-kyle-rittenhouse-jonathan-stickland/
https://thedailybeast.com/fbi-informant-panic-is-ruining-friendships-all-over-the-far-right-proud-boys-and-america-firsters?ref=author
https://thedailybeast.com/lauren-boeberts-ex-manager-sherronna-bishop-also-targeted-in-fbi-raid-on-maga-election-clerk-tina-peters
https://thedailybeast.com/rep-paul-gosar-staffer-is-a-loyal-nick-fuentes-follower-report
https://theguardian.com/technology/2021/jan/15/8kun-8chan-capitol-breach-violence-isp
https://theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/07/roger-stone-ali-alexander-film-jan-6-stop-the-steal
https://timesofisrael.com/laura-loomer-jewish-activist-close-to-trump-downplays-ties-to-antisemites/
https://twitter.com/BrentAllpress/status/1325244753911296000
https://twitter.com/COSAntiFascists/status/1387943214439600129
https://twitter.com/CullenHoback/status/1378935533301194761
https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1465147804108537858
https://twitter.com/visionsurreal/status/1470456537730723847
https://twitter.com/ZTPetrizzo/status/1365477988280721409
https://usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/12/donald-trump-susie-wiles-campaign-manager/74098026007/
https://vice.com/en/article/groyper-young-christian-nationalists-movement/
https://washingtonpost.com/investigations/capitol-rally-organizers-before-riots/2021/01/16/c5b40250-552d-11eb-a931-5b162d0d033d_story.html
https://washingtonpost.com/investigations/council-national-policy-video/2020/10/14/367f24c2-f793-11ea-a510-f57d8ce76e11_story.html
https://washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/14/kimberly-guilfoyle-turning-point-action-jan-6/
https://washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/12/10/michael-flynn-roger-stone-activists/
https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/18/austin-smith-turning-point-action-election-fraud/
Wider Context:
Zooming back out to LEO there are a number of related issues that must be at least considered.
Trump is dying. Technically we all are, but he’s seventy nine and we can guess the manner of his impending demise based on public photos.
There are Six Republican Factions and the fault lines revealed in this article are split wide open by Kirk’s assassination.
The Epstein files have not been released and that will land at least as hard as Kirk’s assassination. Notice there’s no Israel firster category in the WaPo piece?
Turning Point’s selection of Ben Shapiro (Jewish) to replace Charlie Kirk is mystifying, given the imminent anti-Semitic wave that will follow the Epstein files release, and the fundamentally anti-Semitic nature of the Groypers.
This situation has Laura Loomer right in the middle of it, but in opposition to the White House’s wishes. I put no stock in the rumor that this person is actually Mossad agent Larry Loomer, sent to infiltrate and destroy MAGA, and the cosmetic surgery is just part of his disguise.
American is just STARTING to get a taste of what Trump’s tariffs mean in a concrete fashion. I would hate to be staffing a member of the House trying to do town halls in this environment.
I would personally rather be checking out @MattPPea’s W.O.P.R. AI to see how it’s doing predicting events related to Russia’s Zapad 2025 exercise. We might be factoring in a hot war atop all this domestic stuff.
Gaza isn’t going away and the pressure is rising. Not directly going to affect the Groypers, except as maybe fostering more Islamophobia, it matters elsewhere.
Pope Leo XIV is not keen on Opus Dei, which is tied into the traditional Republicans, and if this were six hundred years ago Fuentes would be promptly excommunicated. His Holiness no doubt already wanted to do something about this, now we wait to see what solution he will bring.
#4 really puzzles me. Like, I would welcome an email on this, go ahead and make liberal use of the industry term “dumbass” in place of my name, as long as you can provide a coherent, non-ideological explanation of the calculus that doesn’t leave a bunch of loose ends flapping around. Maybe the plan is crushing the Groypers so they can’t further antagonize the Israel firsters?
Future Fuentes Findings:
Go back and reread my bona fides. One of the books is Mike German’s Disrupt, Discredit & Divide. I get along fine with military and intel, don’t have a lot of use for our law enforcement. They see any social movement as something to be destroyed, which creates openings for bad actors, and fuels the conditions that led to our current mess. Had we managed some reform during Occupy Wall Street, we might not have the full spectrum populist economic crisis we face today.
Things like this play right into the hands of our enemies. Given the internet’s action at a distance we get situations like what we saw in MIOS: Iran’s PressTV. You behead the network, the command & control moves offshore, then things here become harder to predict, and thusly real trouble is much harder to stop. I’ve seen this play out half a dozen times since 2009. That machine is now coming for the Groypers.
Fuentes is not culpable for Kirk’s murder, at least not under any interpretation of the law before the current administration. The boundaries on incitement were set down in the case law from Brandenburg v. Ohio, which was decided 143 days before the first internet connection went live, back on Halloween of 1969. This sclerotic worldview is in dire need of an update for social media, but we’ve never been able to maneuver something around the 1st Amendment and CDA section 230.
Given the reaction to Kirk’s assassination, I’m delighted to be a disinterested observer here. Something WILL happen to Fuentes, that is absolutely certain. I don’t think it’s out of bounds to imagine some plot against him proceeding due to indifference on the part of those who are supposed to get ahead of such things. I would not want to be the FBI agent who saved Darling Nicky from what Charlie Kirk stans would view as justice in its most raw, immediate form.
Even if he avoids that outcome, there will be a deep inspection of his environment, and even if there’s no cause for direct charges, he will catch some sort of conspiracy thing. As he is the kingpin, he’s got nothing (read: no one else) to trade, I presume everyone around him got the memo, and they’re making themselves scarce. That world already got plumbed by the FBI after the J6 attack and now those sources and informants are going to get put to work. Maybe … just maybe … this could be a RICO thing. That’s what is happening with the 764 Network.
I don’t have a read on Fuentes’ character. He might be a true believer, but he seems more like an opportunist Dark Triad psychopath. He behaved badly, that got him attention, so he behaved worse. If this is the case, once he gets through a couple wake/sleep cycles, the need for that narcissist supply will have him back out there, howling about free speech. There is no one in this country who needs the Epstein files to be released worse than Nick, but I don’t think he’ll get that relief. The heat will be on him till he’s done, and only then does a window open for the full force of society to come back to Epstein. As long as he’s the piñata, there will be a thriving market for sticks of any length.
Groyper Grief:
What are Groypers? How many ways are there to answer that? Let’s see ..
Groypers are …
Young, male, white, maybe Hispanic, natives.
More Catholic than a random sample but not exclusively so.
Anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynist, nativist and other insecure little boy traits.
Likely overlapping with ACG - Anime, Comics & Games, shorthand for the loose boys behaving badly criminal network that spawned things like the 764 Network.
Perhaps overlapping with the older, more familiar militia networks, but limited.
Groypers are …
Activated young men of the sort that Charlie Kirk so successfully reached with Turning Point USA.
Almost certainly economic populists worried about their prospects.
A hazard for any GOP campaign, no value to engaging them, just deplatform.
Anti-Semites who will react badly to Ben Shapiro taking over Turning Point.
Groypers are …
A headless or soon to be headless far right cybermilitia.
Second tier influencers will get the same treatment Fuentes does.
Already radicalized, relatively easily led.
Small amounts of money will go a long way.
Opposed to MAGA, but at an identity level, and unwanted by any polity.
So that’s a general definition, what a political campaigner would see, and what a hostile foreign influence operator would quickly conclude. U.S. law enforcement will have the same conclusion as the foreign spook, but they will seek to destroy, rather than direct.
Groypers are a network threat, an experienced influence operations insurgency, and they have almost no political home. We should watch to see if they start making inroads as the heat rises. My gut says … only a few pre-existing crazies like Gosar and Rogers, but the whole situation is doubleplus crazy, so I’m sure I am still missing key factors.
Groyper Girls:
I am not extremely online like I once was, so I’ve completely missed the nuances of Groyper sexuality. And I feel I’m a better man for that.
You better watch this because it’s gonna be THE issue in the coming weeks.
Didn’t watch, didja? BLUF: There is a closeted component of Groyperdom who favor femboys because they can’t even with girls, so a trans girlfriend is NOT an indication that Tyler James Robinson is some sort of leftist, it’s an even bigger confirmation that he’s a Groyper.
Query: Anyone else getting a “prison, but the bars are inside their minds” vibe from the Groypers? My career got me a couple days climbing on roofs in Nebraska’s maximum security lockup right at the turn of the century. When I read about these kids I can’t shake that feeling I got walking around the yard …
Conclusion:
OK, so that’s 3,800 words on what the future holds for Nick Fuentes and his Groyper goon squad. If you were on the edge of it, run until you drop, then look for something heavy to crawl behind before the blast wave hits.
This is MAGA’s Horst Wessel moment. They are desperate for that “Lance who became Luna” person to be the proof that Tyler James Robinson is a sort of lefty Satanist sniper, so they can initiate a civil war with a clean collective conscience. I’ll admit that it did worry me when I first heard the possibility that the room mate was trans, because I dread what is so obviously coming.
I was REALLY puzzled when I saw credible evidence that such a person does exist, but CultCollege was an FBI profiler before she began teaching about cults in college, and I find that her crystal ball is both large and clear. She’s on here as
, although she hasn’t started writing yet.I think the “TJR is a leftist” thing might stick for at least a portion of MAGA. Will we see them attack everyone non-MAGA … and ignore the actual threat? Will there be spin to foster the desired civil war, while a quiet campaign to eliminate the Groypers is launched? I think the latter is more likely, the spin doctors have to work with the time and materials they are given, and they have to handle this, all while keeping a weather eye on the Epstein files release campaign. The bureau will go all in, as it’s a white hot distraction from Epstein, albeit not the sort they wanted.
MAGA is coming apart. The Epstein list started it, Charlie Kirk’s assassination has made those Six Republican Factions start grappling, and when Trump dies, it’ll all blow to bits. They have begun the process to Change Partners.
This sort of thing interests me, the influence ops, the network analysis, I like being able to quickly explain the lay of the land when someone wants to know what might happen next. As I mentioned at the start, I began paying close attention to MAGA world five years ago, and this piece alone ate my entire Sunday. I would do more stuff like this, but it needs focus right now, and I’m trying to bootstrap a couple new commercial projects against serious economic headwinds.
So if you’ve got anything to spare, you can subscribe here, even the $5/monthly contributions are great, they always seem to pop up just when I need them most. And I just figured out how to create a Paypal: nrauhauser link, if that’s easier for you.
Really great thx
Bona fides