How did the Groyper movement influence mainstream conservative events like CPAC and AFPAC?
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Executive summary
The Groyper movement, organized around Nick Fuentes, influenced mainstream conservative events chiefly by creating a parallel space (AFPAC) that explicitly challenged CPAC’s big‑tent conservatism and by using confrontational tactics—online harassment, disruption, and visible presence at CPAC—to push a harder, identity‑centered agenda into the right‑wing ecosystem [1] [2] [3]. That influence is ambivalent: it normalized certain far‑right figures and rhetoric around AFPAC while also producing public disavowals, expulsions, and a countervailing effort by mainstream conservatives to police the movement’s boundary [4] [3].
1. The creation of AFPAC as a direct challenge to CPAC
Nick Fuentes founded the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) in 2020 expressly to serve as a counterweight to CPAC, building an event that rejected CPAC’s corporate sponsors and big‑tent messaging and instead showcased far‑right, “America First” and white‑nationalist speakers and activists eager to set the terms of conservative orthodoxy [5] [3] [1]. AFPAC’s staging — often held alongside CPAC in Orlando or in adjacent spaces — was deliberate: it was an attempt to offer a purer, uncensored alternative and to claim ownership of an “America First” brand that Groypers argued CPAC and mainstream conservatives had abandoned [2] [6].
2. Tactical pressure: raids, protests, and in‑crowd disruption at CPAC
Beyond running a rival conference, Groypers have sought to influence CPAC and the broader conservative movement by staging protests, showing up inside CPAC crowds, and trying to bait mainstream figures into confrontations — tactics cataloged by reporters who saw AFPAC proximate to CPAC and Groypers “in the crowd” at conservative gatherings [2] [5]. The Daily Beast and Rolling Stone reported episodes of AFPAC organizers and Groypers attempting to embarrass Turning Point USA and other mainstream right‑wing institutions, including staged events and attempts to lure activists away from those groups [5] [2]. These visible disruptions forced conservative organizers to respond with denials, removals, or security actions, thereby amplifying the Groypers’ publicity even when CPAC rejected them [2] [4].
3. Pushing the agenda: identity‑centered questions and the colonization of language
Groypers concentrated their attacks on themes like immigration restriction, skepticism of U.S.–Israel policy, and opposition to LGBTQ inclusion, using provocative questions and online dog whistles to shift the conversation within conservative venues toward ethnonationalist priorities; observers and watchdogs documented these recurring question topics and antisemitic and nativist signals used by the movement [4] [3]. Some reporting and analysis argue the movement’s goal was less electoral victory than “colonizing the party’s vocabulary,” forcing politicians to either adopt America‑First language or be accused of betrayal — a pressure strategy that helps explain AFPAC’s rhetorical appeal even when its organizers lacked broad party control [7] [6].
4. Limited institutional success but outsized cultural effect
Multiple sources conclude that the Groyper movement has “mostly failed to gain political traction” in terms of institutional power; prominent politicians who appeared at AFPAC sometimes immediately distanced themselves, and many mainstream conservative organizations expelled or refused to platform Groypers and some of their allies [4] [3]. Nevertheless, the movement has had outsized cultural impact by normalizing certain far‑right personalities, creating a circulation of viral clips and memes that pull extreme positions into mainstream debates, and by recruiting a young, online base that feeds both AFPAC and CPAC audiences in overlapping ways [7] [1].
5. Contested legacy: normalization versus repudiation within conservatism
The effect of the Groypers on CPAC and broader conservatism remains contested: watchdogs and journalists warn AFPAC helped normalize white‑nationalist actors and rhetoric by providing a stage and networking space [3] [2], while other reporting emphasizes repeated political disavowals and failures to translate attendance into mainstream office‑building power, framing the movement as a disruptive fringe rather than a takeover force [4] [8]. Both dynamics are visible in the record: AFPAC established a rival institutional node and successfully drew sympathetic speakers and voters, yet mainstream institutions have also publicly repudiated and excluded Groypers, producing a push‑and‑pull that continues to shape how conservative events manage extremism and spectacle [5] [4].