Rape threats and racism feature in this alarming encounter with white nationalists who spread hate online whilst denying that they’re fascists. Might this documentary do more harm than good?
Nick J Fuentes, the 23-year-old founder of the America First Foundation, wants there to be no more immigration to the US. “White men founded this country. It wouldn’t exist without white men and white men are done being bullied … Genocide is being perpetrated against the white man.” He thinks women should stay in the home. “They have been convinced it’s dignified to abandon your children – literally out of their womb – and go work in an office, go work for a corporation. How sick is that?” He thinks they shouldn’t have the vote either, “but that’s probably not going to land soon”. Articulate, charismatic and convincing, he has built a substantial following, beginning with the online gaming community, and now, spreading outward from there, holds his own rallies. He also wants to be president.
The most terrifying part of this opening episode of Louis Theroux’s new three-part documentary series, Forbidden America (BBC Two), is that by the end of it you can see no reason why he could not be. Theroux’s latest outing is – for all the compelling interviews that abound – really about the tentacular reach and spectacular, unprecedented power of the internet (alongside whatever else it has brought us); its ability to politicise, radicalise, give voice to would-be demagogues and hatemongers who would once have had their influence naturally curtailed by time and distance, encourage the worst in humanity and then unite people on that basis.
