Why Does Nick Fuentes Dislike Charlie Kirk So Much? Their Conservative Beef Explained

One of the great equalizers of the world is the idea that we can never really escape high school. No organization is safe from infighting, and that includes the MAGA movement. The day before conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated, The New York Times profiled white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes.

It was merely a coincidence that one of Kirk's biggest critics was highlighted hours before his death.

Fuentes always felt that Kirk wasn't far right enough, and eventually got himself banned from Turning Point USA events, the organization founded by Kirk. In the interview, Fuentes maintained to The Times that he was still very much underground and unlike Kirk, who was more mainstream, was not buddies with anyone in Trump's White House.

What happened between these two conservatives? Here's what we know about the Fuentes and Kirk beef.

At the end of the day, Fuentes's biggest problem with Kirk was that the Turning Point USA founder simply wasn't conservative enough for his liking, especially when it came to Kirk's views on Israel.

In March 2019, the Israeli group Im Tirtzu invited Kirk to Jerusalem for a public speaking engagement. "I was very pro-Israel before this trip," said Kirk in a YouTube video, "but I'm just on fire to continue to advocate for this moral and Godly country."

Fuentes, who is anti-Israel as well as anti-immigrant, anti-transgender, and anti-civil rights, is a self-described Holocaust-denier. His podcast, America First, is named after a movement from the 1940s whose spokesperson, Charles Lindbergh, blamed Jewish people in America for its involvement in World War 2, per the American Jewish Committee.

Things came to a head in 2019 when Fuentes's followers, known as Groypers, launched what they called The Groyper Wars. They showed up at Turning Point USA events in order to heckle Kirk and those in attendance. As per usual they focused on the belief that Kirk was a member of the establishment and as such, was too soft.

This is what ultimately led to Fuentes and the Groypers being banned from Turning Point USA events.

The day after Kirk was killed, Fuentes spoke about his late nemesis in an episode of his podcast. Fuentes said he was "devastated" and "legitimately struck, viscerally" by the images of Kirk's assassination.

"It's such an unspeakable, horrible tragedy that I literally had to take a day to collect myself." Later, some people theorized that Kirk's killer might have been a Groyper, but that has since been debunked.

On the day of Kirk's memorial, Fuentes took to X (formerly Twitter) to address what he said was a "top-down campaign" to frame him and his followers for Kirk's murder. He went on to say that none of his opinions about Kirk have changed.

Fuentes still believed Kirk was a "shill" for Israel and the GOP. On his podcast, Fuentes said Kirk's death felt like a nightmare we'll never wake up from, adding that he said this as an adversary and a foe.