LTHS Grad Pushes White Nationalism, Gains National Spotlight

LA GRANGE, IL — Few Lyons Township High School graduates can claim as much attention as Nicholas Fuentes. He was just featured in Time magazine. He boasts more than 100,000 Twitter followers, and he has a Wikipedia entry. And it's only a little more than four years after he graduated.

Fuentes, who livestreams on DLive, holds political views far outside the mainstream. For instance, he has entered the realm of Holocaust denial — a favorite of white supremacists. He is on video comparing the Nazi killing of millions of Jews with cookie-baking.

The 22-year-old argues segregation in the South was better for African Americans. And, according to Time, he wrote the First Amendment was "not written for Muslims." In 2017, he attended the notorious rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.

After the rally, he tweeted, "You can call us racists, white supremacists, Nazis, & bigots. But you will not replace us. The rootless transnational elite knows that a tidal wave of white identity is coming. And they know that once the word gets out, they will not be able to stop us. The fire rises!"

"You will not replace us" is a known white supremacist slogan, used in chants at the Charlottesville rally. This is where a racist participant killed a counterprotester by ramming a car into her and others.

Fuentes lived in La Grange Park when he attended high school, but his Twitter page now lists his residence in Chicago. Despite his white nationalism, Fuentes calls himself an "Afro-Latino" on his Twitter page. He also lists himself as a "respected" Boston alum, a gamer, a Catholic and a comedian. His Facebook cover photo is of him and nine other 20-somethings smiling for a photo. Some are people of color; a photo of boxer Muhammad Ali hangs in the background.

According to Time's Aug. 31 story, "The Wages of Hate," Fuentes appears to have made more than $140,000 off his DLive streams. The magazine says a livestreaming analyst's calculations show Fuentes' account the most viewed on DLive.

At Lyons Township, Fuentes was the student council president. He told the student newspaper, Lion Online, in 2017 that he strengthened his interest in politics in high school in Model UN, his political talk show on the school's radio station WLTL and his creation of "The Nicholas J. Fuentes Show" through the school's TV station LTTV. He told the newspaper these forums brought his views to the attention of students.

“It was much more civil in high school (than in college), and I think that owed to that fact that I was much more moderate on many issues,” Fuentes told Lion Online. “Since then, I’ve gone much farther to the right and many more people are upset by that.”

Fuentes told the newspaper that he did not ally with the alt-right or neo-Nazis.

“I am a Christian, and I think that if anybody is a Christian, they have to believe in the Devil,” he told Lion Online. “What we’ve seen in the past 20 years are very evil, sinister forces taking control over our government. And if you don’t stand for what’s right, and are complicit in this hostile takeover of our country by very evil, horrible people, I think you’re just as guilty as they are. And that’s why I’m doing this.”

The Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist groups, states on its website that Fuentes co-hosted the "Nationalist Review" radio program with white nationalist James Allsup. And it said he was slated to speak at the American Renaissance, or AmRen, conference. According to the center, AmRen was founded by Jared Taylor, one of the most prominent white nationalists of the past quarter century. AmRen, the center said, supports "pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites."

Patch couldn't reach Fuentes for comment.