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I haven’t talked about movement drama in a while. That’s because there hasn’t been much drama in a while. But when it rains, it pours. Over the last month, there has been a series of scandals and controversies that kept the conversations lively around the White Nationalist water cooler. Among them:

• Eric Striker leaves The Right Stuff.


• Nick Fuentes does a stream with Richard Spencer.


• Andrew Anglin withdraws his support for Nick Fuentes.


• The National Justice Party folds.

Some of these probably deserve their own article, and others don’t. But I will be combining them all into one article, because if you take all these stories together, there is a thread running through them. It appears that in December 2023, the Optics War, an issue which in many ways defined the American dissident Right over the past six years, has come to an end.

It started as a feud between The Daily Stormer and the Traditionalist Workers’ Party about the utility of public rallies, but then later expanded into a broader philosophical debate on strategy encompassing a range of issues, including how to tailor the message, who the target audience is, populism versus vanguardism, infiltration versus outsiderism, and what to do about unstable personalities and anti-social elements within our ranks.

The Optics War

What was the “Optics War”? That depends on who you ask, because everyone has their own version of the story. I can only give you the story as I saw it. Feel free to give your own version in the comments.

The Optics War proper began in late 2017, in the aftermath of Charlottesville. A main criticism of Charlottesville was that it was “trying to do the Internet in real life,” and a lot of it did not translate well. Many of the habits that had developed within the Alt Right when it was still an underground phenomenon became untenable once the scene entered the national spotlight. The culture of ironic fedposting that one could get away with before 2015, when no one was paying attention to us, led to some people being criminally charged once the Alt Right went under ZOG’s microscope. Charlottesville is now universally accepted as a disaster, but for a time, there were still a lot of people clamoring for another one. There were also those who claimed that if swastika flags had been a problem there, it was because there hadn’t been enough of them. For the dissident Right to get to the next level, something had to change.

More than anyone else, Ricky Vaughn and The Daily Stormer (Nick Fuentes was still a minor figure at this time) stepped forward and demanded a rebrand. Their proposal was American Nationalism. To understand their rationale, you must recall a major news story from the time: the National Football League’s (NFL) national anthem protests. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick protested what he considered to be a white supremacist police force by kneeling in front of the American flag during the national anthem. It sparked a national debate, many white Americans stopped going to NFL games, and matches began to be played in stadiums that were half-full. The American Nationalist argument was that the American flag is already seen as a symbol of white supremacy, and that since white Americans have a strong emotional attachment to it, we should drop all the Nazi imagery and replace it with Americanism.

People who agreed with this position were called “AmNats,” or by the more derogative term “optics cucks.” People who opposed this rebrand and preferred to draw inspiration from European fascism were the “NatSocs” (National Socialists), or the more derogative term “wignat.”

Ricky Vaughn and The Daily Stormer crew demanded that certain anti-social and bad-optic personalities should be shunned and marginalized. At first, this list of people was relatively small: Chris Cantwell, Paul Nehlen, Patrick Little, and a handful of Siege readers. But the biggest and most controversial of those on their list was the Traditionalist Workers’ Party. A feud between them and The Daily Stormer broke out on The Right Stuff’s message board and raged for weeks. Vaughn was also doxed during this period. Just as things were reaching a boiling point, the infamous “cuckbox incident” happened — if you know, you know — which resulted in an AmNat victory.

This resulted in what I like to call The Treaty of Cuckbox, wherein AmNat demands were met. One of the terms was that those who had participated in and/or condoned Vaughn’s doxing would be banished from the movement forever. The optics question then died down for a time as the Alt Right’s attention shifted to the ongoing Internet Bloodsports fad that had emerged on YouTube.

The Optics War picked up again in mid-2019, when relations between The Daily Stormer and The Right Stuff (TRS) broke down over TRS violating the terms of The Treaty of Cuckbox. A bizarre audio recording of a TRS guy talking about trannies also came to light. Stormer than threw its support behind America First as the anti-TRS. At this point the Optics War became movement-wide, with nearly everyone being forced to choose a side if for no other reason than because engaging with one camp would result in being shunned by the other. In the end, the resulting sides were roughly The Daily Stormer and America First and its associates on the AmNat side, versus The Right Stuff, Richard Spencer, and later Patriot Front on the NatSoc side.

I have skipped over a lot for the sake of brevity. The full story of the Optics War would be longer than War and Peace. If it were a movie, it would have a cast of thousands and star Chalton Heston. But that is the gist of it.

The End of the Optics War

The “Optics War” started winding down about a year ago, but not for the reasons people hoped. There was no epiphany where everyone said, “This infighting is pointless! Us pro-whites should all be on the same side!” What actually happened was that the rank-and-file on both sides became progressively disillusioned with their leadership. After both America First and the TRS-associated National Justice Party underwent a series of scandals, many loyalists began to wonder if their side really had as much moral superiority over the opposing camp as they had thought. In 2022, Fuentes lieutenant Jaden McNeil broke with America First (AF) and became AF’s leading critic, and a few months later, OG TRS personality Johnny Monoxide left and became a similar thorn in their side. Several Fuentes loyalists likewise left in the wake of the Ali Alexander scandal. These people might not have dropped out of the dissident Right, but they dropped out of the Optics War.

It should also be said that there are some people who never took a side. The British dissident Right in particular remained neutral, and some, such as Mark Colett and Ed Dutton, engaged with those on both sides. Keith Woods notably never chose a side, and even today supports both America First and Patriot Front. The Optics War was thus a distinctly American phenomenon.

The Breakup of the AmNat Alliance

Nick Fuentes announced earlier this month that he would be doing a livestream with Richard Spencer. This was in flagrant violation of The Treaty of Cuckbox. Spencer’s name was on the list of banned people, along with Matt Heimbach and Al Capone. Spencer wasn’t even allowed into the parking lot.

A wise man once told me, “A movement that is unable to shun bad actors is like a movement with AIDS.” At times, what constitutes a “bad actor” might be a matter of opinion. But the only thing harder than defining what a “bad actor” is, is explaining how Richard Spencer is not one. Spencer destroys everything he touches and has done more harm to the pro-white movement than Tim Wise could ever dream of. The Overton window shift we saw in 2023 could have happened five years earlier were it not for Richard Spencer.

Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer responded to the news of the Spencer-Fuentes stream by withdrawing his support for Fuentes. You can read Anglin’s official statement on it here. Anglin stated that he had been having some misgivings about Fuentes for some time, and that the Spencer stream was merely the last straw. Other issues cited were Fuentes’ inability to maintain the support of loyalists and Fuentes’ promotion of certain unsavory characters into positions of prominence, with predicably disastrous result. Anglin stressed that he does not consider Fuentes an enemy, but that Fuentes’ missteps, which have been increasing in both frequency and severity, makes America First something that he is unwilling to invest any more in.

For many years, the Daily Stormer-America First axis was the driving forces behind one side of the Optics War — and now it has been dissolved. With that, the dream of “centralizing” the dissident Right is dead. This dream goes back to the 2015 Alt Right movement, which aspired to become a unified front. Then came the Optics War, where there were two movements competing for preeminence. Now we are returning to our roots, where we are a collection of independent outlets that engage with some people and not with others based on our own particular criteria.

The Collapse of the National Justice Party

I don’t know all of TRS’ inner workings and what their rationales were, but my reading of the National Justice Party was that it was a response to America First’s political action conferences. It was a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. Starting in 2019, Fuentes was beginning to expand his operation from the Internet into the real-world space, and so there was intense pressure for the NatSoc side to do the same. In other words, it was a product of the Optics War.

Signs that there were major problems within the NJP began to become visible about a year ago, when NJP founder Greg Conte had a massive and messy falling out with the rest of the NJP leadership and made many bold accusations of mismanagement. I didn’t follow the story all that closely, but from what I understand, Conte did not come off particularly well, and many were willing to give NJP the benefit of the doubt that Conte was simply unhinged or bitter.

But then more of the NJP’s top guys started leaving. One of them was apparently kicked out for having a threesome with two chicks from the party’s female wing. My first reaction to this was, “Finally! A dissident Right sex scandal that is actually heterosexual in nature!” Although upon further thought, the scandal is still potentially gay from the perspective of the two women.

The Tony Hovator scandal was a bit like the Ali Alexander scandal in the sense that he had displayed a number of red flags even before they brought him on board. One thing we have seen in Nick Fuentes’ loyalty and purity tests is that when those in an organization are made to take such tests, bad actors will simply memorize the answers beforehand. One of the initial reasons for the Optics War was the issue of how to marginalize unstable personalities in the movement. The NJP chose purity tests, but in the end were brought down by those unstable personalities that they failed to weed out and who were allowed to gain far too much power.

The most shocking departure from the NJP was Eric Striker, who was not only one of its founders but also a fan favorite on the TRS network. Whatever one may think of Striker, his personality and influence on TRS was undeniably profound.

In many ways, the history of TRS can be divided into pre- and post-Eric Striker. Before Eric Striker, the most persistent criticism of TRS was that it was not taking White Nationalism seriously, being more concerned with juvenile pranks and treating everything like a big joke. It was TRS guys who started doing the Roman salute during the infamous Hailgate incident in November 2016, for example. A few weeks later, TRS published an article advocating for the global extermination of all non-whites. Many were left thinking, “Bro, can you at least try to take this a little seriously?”

Eric Striker was an odd choice for TRS because he possessed none of the spirit of mischievous fun which, for better or worse, defined them in their early days. Striker was many things, but he’s not funny and doesn’t claim to be. He’s anti-whimsy. After Striker’s departure, however, TRS went from being the guys who used to piss people off by being unserious to taking themselves way too seriously. The tone became angrier and more confrontational. Humor was deemphasized in favor of serious deep dives. Part of this may have counter-branding in order to set themselves apart from Nick Fuentes’ middlebrow populist approach. Either way, TRS drifted further away from the spirit that made it popular in the first place.

Striker was also extremely divisive. People either love him or hold him up as an example of everything wrong with wignatism. He’s humorless, angry (he frequently loses his temper in debates), and has a penchant for unironic LARPing. His loss might be a short-term blow for TRS, but it also makes a course correction more likely.

Interestingly, one of the other pieces of gossip this month is that America First’s AFPAC4 conference, originally scheduled for December 18, was cancelled. Once the crown jewel of the America First movement, the future of AFPAC is uncertain. AFPAC 2 and 3 were major coups because Fuentes was able to bring in elected officials from the national stage, a feat unlikely to be repeated post-Kanye. He might still be able to do an impressive all-e-celeb AFPAC where he gets Alex Jones and other big-name Internet personalities, but it would still be seen as a step down in prestige from the days when he had sitting Congressmen. It’s also notable that Patriot Front has not held a march since May. It may be that real-world activism in general is not as cost-effective as it was in the immediate post-Elon era.

Therefore, if NJP existed as a NatSoc response to AFPAC, there might not in fact need to be any response any longer if we have in fact seen the last AFPAC.

Some say TRS is finished, but I’m uncertain. What I will say is that I don’t see a path forward for them that does not involve them making peace with Elon-Twitter/X. If they do, who knows? We’re in an era where anything can happen. There have been some stunning overnight successes on Elon-Twitter/X. Also, the Internet is a big place. I had come to think a while ago that Nick Fuentes had no more bridges left to burn, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t keep winning over new admirers. It’s almost become trendy to virtue-signal your support for free speech by saying, “I support free speech . . . even for Nick Fuentes!” Many of these new admirers come from adjacent spheres. One might think that they only like him because they don’t know his history, but such people are not particularly invested in the internal dynamics and drama of the White Nationalist scene, besides the fact that dissident Right scandals are rather tame compared to those elsewhere on the Internet.

TRS could attempt the Autumn Groyper method of creating an anonymous account and then letting it filter through word of mouth that it’s you. Elon does not seem to be cracking down on such ban evasion, even when an account is held by Nick Fuentes. It could be that TRS is higher on his blacklist than Fuentes, and thus they would still get banned, but it would be worth a try — and I don’t see any alternative.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that now that the Optics War is over, the wignats and optics cucks are going to come together and become one big, happy family. Grudges will still be held and old criticisms will still ring true. Disagreements will also persist. All I am saying is that the Optics War as a saga has run its course. Elon Musk buying Twitter was a black-swan event that completely changed the paradigm. Under intense censorship and stagnant audience growth, there was an incentive to fight over the scraps, but on Elon Musk Twitter/X, there’s enough room for everyone, and thus there’s no need to fight.

Musk has effectively taken the issue of optics out of our hands, and going forward, he will be the one who decides what optics you can get away with on the most important platform in the world.

I see the role of the dissident Right for the foreseeable future as that of the think tank which more mainstream Rightists steal their ideas from. And I’m fine with that. For years, people have longed to see the dissident Right “go mainstream” and have /OurGuys/ out there, all over the national media, but I’ve come to think that it might be better to just let purple-pilled folks such as Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, and Tucker Carlson soak up the brunt of the establishment’s ire while the dissident Right flies under the radar as a steadily growing word-of-mouth phenomenon.