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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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The remarkable predictive accuracy of Nick Fuentes on the Israel Conflict

I'm sure most here have heard of Nick Fuentes, maybe seen clips where he's said something funny or outrageous. I do not consider myself a follower of Fuentes, I have my criticisms of him and his movement, but I have to give credit to Fuentes for churning out consistently correct predictions.

When it came to the Israeli-Gaza war, Nick Fuentes registered these predictions in this short clip, in summary from just the first 60 seconds:

  • The Oct. 7 attack is going to be the tripwire that enables Israel to finally solve the Gaza Question with ethnic cleansing.
  • Israel is going to conduct a "brutal campaign against Gaza" which they "know Iran has to respond to."
  • In doing so, their retaliation against Gaza will knowingly provoke a retaliation from Iranian-backed militias against Israel.
  • This will give Israel an excuse to widen the conflict and "to do what they always wanted to do, which is bomb Iran's nuclear program".
  • This will initiate war between Iran and Israel, and Israel will draw the United States into the war with Iran- Israel brings in the United States to "put Iran in check."
  • This will culminate in an end to the regime in Syria and an end to the regime in Iran.
  • This is the big play Israel is making.

Nick Fuentes registered these predictions on October 8th, less than 24 hours after the Hamas attack on Israel. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Fuentes may have registered the best predictions out of anyone in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7th (feel free to keep me honest here if you think someone else was even more on the money).

Hindsight bias being what it is, the accuracy of Fuente's predictions may seem less impressive than they actually are. But I still remember the huge amount of uncertainty leading up to the Gaza campaign, including a high degree of uncertainty over the strength of Israel's retaliation against Gaza- whether they would show restraint or even put boots on the ground in the first place, and even if they put boots on the ground would it be a relatively short and mostly symbolic campaign. Certainly at the time "Israel is going to ethnically cleans Gaza, provoke escalations from Iranian militias, and widen the conflict to try to draw the US into war with Iran" was a prediction registered by not very many people.

Fuentes drew a huge amount of criticism for vocally opposing Trump's campaign due to his belief that Israel would draw Trump into war with Iran. A lot of that criticism comes from the "Bronze Age Pervert" sphere, and BAP is a sharp critic of Fuentes for Fuente's low-IQ obsession with da Joos. But we can contrast Fuente's sober-minded and accurate predictions with BAP's own incoherent analysis of the conflict he published last week, chalking it up to some old-man syndrome while remaining baffled as to why Israel is pursuing the strategy it has engaged in since the beginning of the conflict.

Nick Fuente's live-stream on Rumble in the aftermath of the US bombing campaign against Iran had something like 66,000 live viewers, with overall viewers on that VOD now around 530k, putting his viewership on par with Ben Shapiro despite the fact Fuentes is banned from YouTube so his content is relegated to a much less mainstream platform.

One of the most remarkable parts of the Ted Cruz / Tucker Carlson debate was that Ted Cruz:

  • Said one of his primary motivations to become Senator was to be Israel's greatest defender.
  • AIPAC is not a strong enough lobby.
  • Said that his support for Israel is personally motivated by God's command in Genesis that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.

And then, just a few minutes later, Ted Cruz accused Tucker Carlson of being "obsessed with Israel" for Carlson's pointed questions on AIPAC as a foreign lobby. The turnaround of why are you so obsessed coming from someone who just said God has commanded him to support Israel is just a discredited attempt to derail the conversation.

Fuente's obsession with Israel appeared to result in what is perhaps the most accurate prediction of the series of events following Oct. 7th among anyone else.

I think what's actually going on with Fuentes is that he's alienated with what he sees as the low-class nature of modern conservatism. Here for instance he attacks conservatives for being "openly hostile to all the good things about liberals" and being "low-IQ hillbillies who take pride in being simple and hate the rich:"

https://x.com/FuentesUpdates/status/1908187813117411525

The problem with populist political movements is that the people who rise to the top tend to have psychological traits more characteristic of elites, intelligence, drive, and ambition, which wind up alienating them from the populist masses.

Ah, yes, notoriously high class… Nick Fuentes?