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- Republican Rep. Paul Gosar is teaming up with far-right commentator Nick Fuentes.
- A flier featuring the pair was distributed on Monday evening.
- Fuentes has been banned from multiple social media platforms for his extremist views.
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GOP Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona is set to host a fundraiser with Nick Fuentes, a far-right political commentator and streamer who was identified as a white supremacist by the FBI and is seen as the leader of a nationalist movement called the "Groyper Army."
A flier featuring the pair was distributed Monday evening on the Telegram channel America First Updates, which supports Fuentes' political live stream "America First." The date, time, and location of the event will be announced on July 1, said the flier.
Gosar has continually backed former President Donald Trump's debunked claims of a "rigged election" in 2020. He previously came under fire for referring to Covid-19 as the "Wuhan virus," which critics said was racist and xenophobic.
His fundraising partner-to-be, Fuentes, is a former YouTuber with a history of voicing extremist views while saying that he was joking, giving him the means to deflect criticism. Fuentes' use of irony was "important for giving a lot of cover and plausible deniability" for his views, he once said in a 2020 video.
In one YouTube livestream, he compared the Holocaust to baking cookies, but later claimed this was a "lampoon." Another video shows him saying that information and education on the Holocaust, racism, and genocide are part of a movement to make white Americans feel guilty.
He is also a leading voice in the groyper movement, whose name references the Pepe the Frog meme.
The far-right group reportedly heckled Donald Trump Jr. at a promotion for his book "Triggered" in 2019, forcing the event to be cut short. They were also one of the groups filmed storming the Capitol with a flag that carried Fuentes' America First logo.
Fuentes' YouTube channel was terminated last February for violating Google's hate speech policies, and he has since lost access to most social media platforms including Facebook, TikTok, Clubhouse, and another streaming platform called DLive.
This is not the first time Gosar has worked with Fuentes.
He previously spoke in February at the America First Political Action conference, a far-right event led and attended by Fuentes.
Among the attendees at the conference was former Iowa Representative Steve King, who lost his seat after attaining a track record of making controversial comments on race and immigration, which fellow Republican Rep. Steve Strivers called "white supremacy and hate."
In March, Gosar tweeted Fuentes' motto, #AmericaFirst, with a meme of a man instructing a sex worker to "tell everyone that America First is inevitable."
-Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) March 7, 2021