Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

The GENIUS Act is Anything But

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On October 5, 2025

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

This post is meant to piggy-back on Ian’s recent post, “The Next Big Crash Is On Its Way.” There has been little coverage in the legacy media of the GENIUS Act. This recent legislation, passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by President Trump is about “regulating” the crypto-economy. The GENIUS Act is an acronym for “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins.” Why Congress is so addicted to these stupid acronyms is beyond me. I prefer the old Roman way, naming a law after the legislator who initiated it, such as the Nunn-Lugar Act of 1991, or the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002. The acronym of this act is also antithetical to what it is. It’s a fools act of financial deregulation, which in my opinion will accelerate and exacerbate the coming financial crisis.

But first, the legislative highlights:

  • Stablecoins to be pegged 1:1 to the dollar. Tokens must be backed with cash or short-term treasuries. Issuers cannot offer interest. There is a loophole, however, and I will discuss it later.
  • Establishing rules for stablecoin issuers to segregate of reserves, undergo monthly audits and establish minimum liquid capital requirements.
  • Developing anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist processes.
  • Designating which parties are permitted to issue stablecoins.
  • Giving the Department of Treasury, Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and FDIC greater regulatory power.
  • Classifying stablecoin owners when a custodian or issuer files for bankruptcy.

The main idea behind the act is to make stablecoins a reliable crypto-currency to invest in. So what are some of the potential negative consequences of the act? The Kansas Fed notes, “Funds flowing into stablecoins have to flow out of another source. If stablecoins are purchased out of checking accounts, for example, then these purchases represent a shift of funds from banks (as deposits) to issuers (as stablecoins) . . . . This potential flow of funds from bank deposits into stablecoins could increase Treasury demand but also could reduce the supply of loans in the economy.”

In fact, the Treasury warns that $6.6 trillion of assets could be lost by the banks into stablecoins. Stablecoins have the potential to decrease the money supply, create a chilling effect on banks issuing loans, which would drive up interest rates. Moreover, issuers of stablecoins will be able to examine every single purchase you make. As far as I can tell there is no privacy provision in the act, nothing preventing issuers from selling stablecoins owners data.

Who is going to regulate Stablecoins? The SEC has no investigative or enforcement budget. The IRS has been effectively neutered. The FDIC will have no role in stablecoins so long as they are not FDIC insured. With no real oversight issuers can simply put any kind of triple-A rated assets to back them—even when the ratings of the triple-A rated assets are fraudulently obtained–like the CDOs that caused the 2008 financial crisis. That’s what Bear Stearns tried to get away with in late July 2007, when two hedge funds filed for bankruptcy. It was always my understanding that these were money market funds. Perhaps the real story has gone down the memory hole. Nonetheless, who is to say stablecoins, without real oversight and constant audits—seriously, as I just said, the regulatory agencies have no enforcement budgets—won’t be backed by treasuries? This is also a serious workaround of the Fed. It will without any doubt reduce its ability to manage interest rates and fight inflation, which is its legal remit, at present.

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The largest issuer of stablecoins is Tether, having issued $155 billion so far. Tether is registered in El Salvador, has 150 employees and claims to hold the “majority” of its reserves in cash and short-term treasuries. The company has done its best to avoid audits and remains opaque. Morgan Stanley writes that in “2021, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined Tether for misleading disclosures on its reserves.” My question to Ether management (and regulators) is what constitutes a majority? 50.1%? 75%? 95%? And what assets are in the minority? Are there derivatives that leverage Tether’s holdings? What kind of leverage? 10:1? More? This question goes right to my next concern.

Just who can issue stablecoins? Anyone. Amazon is exploring issuing them. So is Walmart. So are the big banks. Maybe even Palantir? My great fear is that it will allow a complete takeover of our financial system by Big Tech companies. Even the states can issue stablecoins. What’s worse, no amendments were passed to make sure that crypto companies absorb losses, instead of a Federal bailout. When this metastasizes it will make 2008 and 1929 look like picnics.

More questions than answers, it seems: “Do we want our payments system managed by Walmart?” asks Barry Eichengreen. I’d also ask if we want Silicon Valley to gain power over our financial system? Do you want Palantir, X, Meta or Google to issue legal tender? As Barry Eichengreen warns, “do we want X to know every detail about our every transaction, which they would if we used their stablecoin, or would we prefer the Fed to be the entity that issues the digital money that we use?” Me? I’m flat out opposed to digital money. I want to continue to use cash for one simple reason: anonymity, which is the same thing as saying, privacy.

And about that loophole: while stablecoin issuers cannot offer interest on the tokens, they can issue rewards. Some companies are already giving away annual awards that equal 5.5%. What this means is that the companies issuing rewards are juicing their own returns somehow, and there is no way that the coins are 1:1 100% backed by cash and short-term treasuries. One month treasuries are paying 4.26%. How do you make money paying 5.5% when you’re only getting 4.26%. You see the problem? They absolutely must have other higher interest paying investments in their portfolio. Otherwise they’d go broke. It’s just not possible to sustain. That leads to fraud and fraud is a direct line to corruption. Like this corruption on an epic scale: The Trump family’s investment in World Liberty Financial has increased their wealth by $5 billion. 

Hillary Allen summarizes the risks:

By opening the floodgates for “stablecoins,” Congress has made the US financial system more vulnerable to crises, increased the chances of government bailouts for tech platforms, and further entrenched Silicon Valley’s political power. In fact, such outcomes seem to be exactly what some techno-boosters want.

I hope to write more on this as I more fully comprehend the risks. But what I can say knowing what I now know, this is far from genius: more like mass stupidity and it will not end well.

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Open Thread

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On October 4, 2025

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

David Petraeus’ Disgusting Dialogue With Syria’s al-Julani

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On October 3, 2025

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By Nat Wilson Turner

Last week at the 2025 Concordia Annual Summit in New York City, Ahmed al-Sharaa, President of the Syrian Arab Republic, appeared as one of the speakers.

The summit bills itself as “the largest and most inclusive nonpartisan forum alongside the UN General Assembly” where “top movers and shakers of today’s world to spark dialogue, promote collaboration, and collectively pave the path toward a more equitable, sustainable future.”

Al-Sharaa, is perhaps better known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani (or Al-Jawlani), the al-Qaeda veteran who formed the al-Nusra Front in 2012 to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

Here is what the U.S. State Department had to say about him when they designated him a terrorist in 2013:

Al-Jawlani is considered the leader of al-Nusrah. …

Under al-Jawlani’s leadership, al-Nusrah Front has carried out multiple suicide attacks throughout Syria. These attacks have been primarily in Damascus but the group has targeted other areas of the country as well. Many of these attacks have killed innocent Syrian civilians. Al-Nusrah’s claimed operations since the group’s December 2012 designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization have included a January 26, 2013 suicide attack on a military base in Syria’s Quneitra Province, near the Golan Heights; a February 15, 2013 statement claiming responsibility for early February suicide attacks on regime targets in Damascus and the nearby town of al-Shadadi; and a March 20, 2013 statement claiming responsibility for two separate suicide attacks that targeted a bridge and bunker near the city of Homs on March 6, 2013.

Let’s contrast that with what former U.S. CIA director General David Petraeus had to say to al-Julani in New York. It should be noted that when Petraeus was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, al-Julani was arrested and jailed for five years for his al-Qaeda activities.

Let’s hear how Petraeus characterized their history on stage last week:

It is obviously my privilege to interview His Excellency Ahmed al-Sharaa, president of the Syrian Arab Republic since January 2025. Born in Riyadh in 1982 and raised in Damascus, President Al-Shar rose to prominence as a rebel commander during the Syrian civil war and ultimately built and then led the force that toppled the Assad government in late 2024. His trajectory from insurgent leader to head of state has been one of the most dramatic political transformations in recent Middle Eastern history. Today he presides over nearly 25 million people in a country at a crossroads, navigating the demands of establishing security and governance and also overseeing reconstruction, the return of displaced Syrians and the challenges of reconciling deeply divided communities.
…
The fact is that we were on different sides when I was commanding the surge in Iraq. You were, of course detained by US forces for some five years including again, when I was the fourstar there.
…
Your skills again in organizing and then leading that force are hugely impressive. But despite all that you have achieved as a military leader, and it is extraordinary and now as a statesman, there are understandably some who are skeptical.
…

Mr. President, I have some sense of how tough your job is right now. How much is riding on you personally and I know you have to be keenly aware of that. The pressure has to be enormous.

When people ask me what was it like to command the surge in Iraq, I would respond by saying it was the most grinding experience of my life, but it was also the most important one. So, this next one is about you personally. How are you holding up under all this pressure? Are you getting time to do some thinking? Are you getting enough sleep at night? Again, I’ve been there and it is so very, very hard. And your many fans, and I am one of them, we do have worries.

I’m ignoring al-Julani’s answers because who cares what that monster has to say?

I’m just here to document Petraeus’ nauseating sycophancy and to provide a little more history on al-Julani and his relationship with the United States government.

It’s Ian’s annual fundraiser. We cover a lot of ground on this blog and those who read it regularly know what is going to happen before most who don’t: the end of American Empire, the end of dollar hegemony, that Russia was going to win the war, the new Hegemon China, and even minor things like Tesla’s oncoming collapse. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact me at ian-at-fdl-at-gmail-dot-com if mail or another method would be better. (Most US cash apps do not work in Canada.)

Human Rights Watch chronicled some of al-Julani’s work in 2013 in their report “You Can Still See Their Blood” Executions, Indiscriminate Shootings, and Hostage Taking by Opposition Forces in Latakia Countryside.”

Johannes Stern summed up that report for WSWS thusly, “organised massacres in rural areas of the Syrian governorate of Latakia between 4 and 18 August 2013, killing at least 190 civilians and taking more than 200 hostages. At least 67 were allegedly executed in the operation near villages of the Alawite religious sect.”

Amnesty International took a turn with their 2016 report titled “Syria: Abductions, torture and summary killings at the hands of armed groups.”

I’ll allow Stern to sum that one up, too: “Amnesty International accused al-Nusra of torture, child abduction and summary executions. In December 2014, for example, al-Nusra fighters executed a woman on charges of adultery and stoned to death women accused of extramarital relationships. Overall, they had “strictly interpreted Sharia law and imposed punishments for alleged violations that amount to torture…”

And in case you think al-Julani has changed his stripes since taking power, please see “Syrians describe terror as Alawite families killed in their homes” (BBC) and “Hundreds massacred in Syria, casting doubt on new government’s ability to rule” (France 24).

In 2022, Aaron Mate documented the long relationship between al-Julani and the Obama/Biden regime in the U.S. for Real Clear Investigations. Some highlights:

In waging a multi-billion dollar covert war in support of the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, top Obama officials who now serve under Biden made it American policy to enable and arm terrorist groups that attracted jihadi fighters from across the globe. This regime change campaign, undertaken one decade after Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11, helped a sworn U.S. enemy…

A concise articulation came from Jake Sullivan to his then-State Department boss Hillary Clinton in a February 2012 email: “AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”

Sullivan, the current national security adviser, is one of many officials who oversaw the Syria proxy war under Obama to now occupy a senior post under Biden. This group includes Secretary of State Antony Blinken, climate envoy John Kerry, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, NSC Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, and State Department Counselor Derek Chollet.

…
The outbreak of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011, coupled with the fall of Gaddafi, offered the U.S. a historic opportunity to exploit Syria’s vulnerabilities. While the Arab Spring sparked peaceful Syrian protests against the ruling Ba’ath party’s cronyism and repression, it also triggered a largely Sunni, rural-based revolt that took a sectarian and violent turn. The U.S. and its allies, namely Qatar and Turkey, capitalized by tapping the massive arsenal of the newly ousted Libyan government.
…
Although the Obama administration claimed that the weapons funneled to Syria were intended for “moderate rebels,” they ultimately ended up in the hands of a jihadi-dominated insurgency. Just one month after the Benghazi attack, the New York Times reported that “hard-line Islamic jihadists,” including groups “with ties or affiliations with Al Qaeda,” have received “the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition.”

….designating al-Nusra as a terror organization allowed the Obama administration to publicly claim that it opposed Al Qaeda’s Syria branch while continuing to covertly arm the insurgency that it dominated. Three months after adding al-Nusra to the terrorism list, the U.S. and its allies “dramatically stepped up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels” to help “rebels to try and seize Damascus,” the Associated Press reported in March 2013.

…
Obama administration officials continued to publicly insist that the U.S. was only supporting Syria’s “moderate opposition,” as then-Deputy National Security Adviser Antony Blinken described it in September 2014. But speaking to a Harvard audience days later, then-Vice President Biden blurted out the concealed reality. In the Syrian insurgency, “there was no moderate middle,” Biden admitted. Instead, U.S. “allies” in Syria “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.” Those weapons were supplied, Biden said, to “al-Nusra, and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” Biden quickly apologized for his comments, which appeared to fit the classic definition of the Kinsley gaffe: a politician inadvertently telling the truth. Biden’s only error was omitting his administration’s critical role in helping its allies arm the jihadis.

PressTV had more on al-Julani’s journey, and how Petraeus, in particular, has played a long-running part in the new President’s journey:

Released in 2009, he became the Emir of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in Mosul, before moving to Syria in 2011 to create the Nusra Front on orders from the ringleader of the Daesh (ISIS) terrorist group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. A year later, al-Nusra joined other groups to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Although the US State Department listed al-Jolani as a terrorist in 2012 and placed a $10 million bounty on him, the CIA covertly supplied weapons and funds to the HTS.

Journalist Seymour Hersh has reported that Petraeus created a “rat line” from Libya to Syria to move weapons to the HTS and other militants seeking to overthrow the former Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

The CIA program, called Timber Sycamore, had an annual budget of more than $1 billion. It ultimately enabled al-Jolani to oust Assad and set up an extremist regime in Syria in December.

Former French intelligence officer and analyst Thierry Meyssan stated that Petraeus continued supporting Al-Qaeda groups, including the HTS, even after resigning from the CIA in 2012 following a sex scandal.

Petraeus later joined private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), led by billionaire Henry Kravis, which Meyssan said financed HTS for the CIA through unofficial channels.

So I guess it’s fitting that the General and the terrorist turned President are having an on-stage love-in. Al-Julani is a creation of the American state, it’s only right that he should be publicly celebrated by others of his ilk.

Other things I’m reading and watching:

 

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Hegseth’s Speech and Fitness Standards For Soldiers

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On October 2, 2025

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I took the time to read a transcript of Secretary of War Hegseth’s speech to the gathered generals and admirals. To my surprise, I agreed with a lot of it, though not all. The crazy bits, especially combined with Trump’s statements, are the talk of domestic enemies and using the military against them.

But most of the speech is about standards. No beards, no slobs, and most of all, fitness standards:

Because war does not care if you’re a man or a woman. Neither does the enemy, nor does the weight of your rucksack, the size of an artillery round or the body weight of a casualty on the battlefield who must be carried. This — and I want to be very clear about this. This is not about preventing women from serving. We very much value the impact of female troops. Our female officers and NCOs are the absolute best in the world.

But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result. So be it. It will also mean that weak men won’t qualify because we’re not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death.

And the thing is, I more or less agree with this.

But. (You knew there’d be a but.)

What fitness standards are really required?


The only major army, at war, to use a lot of women was the USSR. They weren’t allowed in all roles, but they were in some. Particularly famous were the snipers:

Roza was one of more than 2,000 female snipers trained and employed by the Soviets to put fear in the hearts of the invaders by striking thousands from the Germans’ “rations list.” Other women were even more deadly and more famous. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, for example, had 309 confirmed kills and was selected to go on a wartime goodwill tour of Allied countries that included a visit to Franklin Roosevelt’s White House.

The initial female snipers were individuals like Nina Petrova, who served as a nurse on the front, although she had been a physical education instructor who had trained marksmen before the war. At first, the Soviets had been reluctant to employ her as a sniper because of her sex and the fact that she was 48 years old.

But the nurse was persistent, got her hands on a sniper rifle, and eventually was given permission to “go hunting” in her free time. As her official kill tally mounted, she gained the go-ahead for further outings, and she began to teach frontline sniper courses.

Other units also set up similar frontline programs, and in March 1942, a Central School for Sniper Instructors was established in Veshnyaki near Moscow. Petrova, Pavlichenko, and other women on the front lines had already demonstrated their abilities and coolness under fire, so it was a fairly logical follow-through when the Soviet high command established a separate three-month-long women’s training program there in December 1942.

The Soviets thought that women made excellent snipers because they could handle cold better than men, and they were more patient and willing to wait for the right opportunities. The confirmed kill numbers on many of them were very high, in the hundreds, and there’s little question that unconfirmed kills were much higher.

That and other “decamping” events to the front lines led to further sanctions and an angry fit when a political commander refused to let her go on additional excursions. She was an adrenaline junkie who begged to go back on the front lines. “Some force draws me to the front lines,” she wrote. “I’m bored in the back. Some people say I just want to get back to the boys, but I don’t have anyone I know there. I want to see real war.”

In one frontline attack alone, Roza reportedly killed 54 Germans and captured three others. Those figures were not included in her official sniper tally but resulted in a front-page feature in a Moscow magazine. Her action prompted Soviet writer-propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg to “thank her 57 times over. She has saved the lives of thousands of Soviet people.”

I don’t have a strong view on this. I just suspect that there’s a sort of generalized misogyny at the heart of the MAGA movement, a resentment of women who “took our jobs” that will lead to the standards not actually reflecting the requirements of the field. Hell, I’m not even a fan of women in war (some latent chivalry from my upbringing, I suspect.)

It’s my annual fundraiser. We cover a lot of ground on this blog and those who read it regularly know what is going to happen before most who don’t: the end of American Empire, the end of dollar hegemony, that Russia was going to win the war, the new Hegemon China, and even minor things like Tesla’s oncoming collapse. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact me at ian-at-fdl-at-gmail-dot-com if mail or another method would be better. (Most US cash apps do not work in Canada.)

The snipers carried two grenades. One was to be used against the enemy, the second to avoid capture by killing themselves and hopefully taking some Germans with them. If captured they could expect rape and torture. (Many looted a German pistol and saved the last bullet for themselves instead.)

That said, fairness requires that those who can do the job and want to, be allowed to. The only thing that matters in war is if you can do what needs to be done. How many air force technicians are going to be separated because they’re a bit too fat, say? Does it really matter if they are? With widespread recruitment issues, can you replace them? The US military letting in more women and so on wasn’t just about “woke” it was about fairly consistent problems meeting recruitment goals with people who weren’t criminals or morons or who have serious health issues. Is it better to have American women serving, or to offer non-citizens a route to citizenship in exchange for service? (Hire mercenaries, in effect?)

Not, of course, that the US military being high functioning is in almost anyone’s interest, including most Americans. After all, Trump has deployed troops against Americans and wants to deploy more, against his domestic enemies. Nor has America been “the good guys” in many wars. America losing its wars, historically would have been good nine times out of ten. (Fortunately Americans have become better and better at losing wars.) Hell, America’s currently helping the Israelis commit genocide and a carrier task force is currently steaming thru the Med, perhaps to attack Iran again.

So perhaps Hegseth’s reforms will just make America’s military even crappier. Let’s hope so.

The Next Big Crash Is On Its Way

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On October 1, 2025

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Ever since Greenspan took over the Fed and the 87 crash when they figured out their playbook, the US has only had unavoidable stock market crashes. The Fed is always there to juice markets higher and to jump in at the least sign of a normal (pre-Greenspan) market correction.

But sometimes the irrational stupidity overwhelms even the Fed, because they are both stupid and ideologically unwilling to ever force a correction. This happened twice: the dot-com boom and crash and the Mortgage backed security boom and crash (if we bundle shitty mortgages based on lies together, they become not shitty, because we’re pretending they aren’t all basically the same thing!)

Now we’re going to get the AI Boom crash. I’m well over 90% on this. The AI booms is in the “wildly stupid over-claiming” stage. It’s not that token based AI isn’t a real tech, or that it doesn’t have some uses, but the claims of it completely changing everything (replacing a third of the workforce, acting without human help to run things, being able to cure cancer and make huge theoretical breakthroughs) are obvious over-reaches. So far every academic study that comes in shows that AI isn’t even good at the one thing everyone anecdotally agreed it was good at: writing code. Right now it seems to mainly be a good way to cheat at university, to have a fake relationship, or to bypass Google’s shitty search (which is what I use it for.) It hallucinates, the hallucinations cannot be removed because they are integral to the tech, and the code it produces, even when it works, is a huge mess that will cause massive maintenance issues.

In addition:

  • Since it doesn’t actually mostly reason, it requires data sets bigger than all the data in the world if it is to keep improving;
  • If it uses the data it itself produces, it experiences model collapse.
  • None of the American AI companies make money per query. Every query costs more than they can charge.
  • It requires a vast build-out of energy and data centers, of the “over a trillion dollars” variety. There literally isn’t enough money to pay for OpenAI and Anthropic’s dreams, and there isn’t a product at the end of it that could pay back all that money.
  • About 40% of the US stock market is now based around NVidia and the AI companies.
  • NVidia has now invested in Open AI, so that they can turn around and buy more NVidia cards.
  • The Chinese offer an open source AI which is almost as good and with costs somewhere between one fifteenth and one-thirtieth as much, so that it might actually be profitable AND since it’s open source, Trump can’t have a mini-stroke and decide to cut you off at his whim.

It’s my annual fundraiser. This allows us to cover the changeover of hegemony from America to China, environmental collapse, internal US fascism, what a better society would look like, Gaza, AI, the coming stock market crash and various other issues. As of this writing we’ve raised about $2,700 out of a $12,500 goal, from over 25 people. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact me at admin-at-ianwelsh-dot-net if you need another way to donate (mail, usually. A lot of cash apps don’t work in Canada.)

Throwing all this money at AI if it really was the epochal “tech to end all techs, the singularity, dude” that the tech-bros claim it is might make sense. But I don’t see the evidence that this is the case, and even if it is, why not use the Open Source Chinese variety?

In fact, my guess is that this version of AI, based on this model and this generation of chips, is not even as big a deal as the internet was. Everyone was right that the internet was going to be HUGE, they just over-invested before it was and before people knew who the winners (Google, Facebook, Amazon) were going to be.

But so far AI doesn’t even look as important as the internet, but the spend is way larger than the internet build-out of the turn of the millennium.

But even if AI turns out to be a HUGE deal, it’s going to crash out of this bubble and we’ll find out later who can make money doing what.

The Fed will paper the AI market crash over, making hundreds of billions or even a trillion out of thin air to save the rich from their own stupidity and greed. Again. But this will be the LAST crash the Fed will be able to save the capitalists from. The one after will either wipe the capitalists out, wipe out America, or both.

If You Use A VPN, You May Need To Turn It Off To Subscribe or Donate

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On September 30, 2025

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What is says in the title!

We’ve raised a little over $1,500 over the last day, from sixteen people, out of our goal of $12,500. This helps us cover the changeover of hegemony from America to China, environmental collapse, internal US fascism, what a better society would look like, Gaza, AI, the coming stock market crash and various other issues. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact me at admin-at-ianwelsh-dot-net if you need another way to donate (mail, usually. A lot of cash apps don’t work in Canada.)

The Mainstreaming of Nick Fuentes

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On September 30, 2025

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In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death, there is a frenzied competition to replace him as the face of the young American right.

Nick Fuentes, who largely built his following by trolling Charlie Kirk for his support of immigration and Israel, seems to be the biggest immediate beneficiary.

The Bulwark has a good backgrounder on the relationship between Kirk and Fuentes before September 10, 2025. It was called “How the Groypers Won: In the clash between Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes, the Pepe people prevailed” and was published in June:

“I’ve noticed people like Charlie Kirk and Matt Walsh are now calling for an immigration moratorium,” Fuentes said, in comments first noted by Media Matters. “That means they want to shut down all immigration. And suffice to say, the groypers have won. It’s just not even a question at this point.”

Fuentes has a point. After nearly a decade of being treated as the skunk at the Grand Old Party (so much so that even Trump had to claim not to know him after the two had dinner with Kanye), some of the Republicans’ leading thinkers have adopted his ideas.

No one better symbolizes the right’s surrender to Fuentes than Kirk.

The day before Kirk’s murder, Fuentes got the classic New York Times soft-focus feature article.

The Times featured some red-hot quotes from Fuentes bashing Trump:

“When I was a teenager, I thought he was a Caesar-like figure who was going to save Western civilization,” Mr. Fuentes, 27, said in an interview. “Now I view him as incompetent, corrupt and compromised.”

Specifically, he has criticized the president for showing solidarity with Israel over the war in Gaza, for refusing to release the Epstein files and for considering extending student visas to Chinese nationals. On Labor Day, Mr. Fuentes posted on social media, “Trump 2.0 has been a disappointment in literally every way but nobody wants to admit it.”

In the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s death, as I posted at Naked Capitalism, Fuentes reacted sharply to widespread allegations that Kirk’s accused killer, Tyler Robinson, was one of Fuentes’ groypers:

He seems to have bounced back, maybe this piece by Graeme Wood of The Atlantic calling the accusations of Kirk’s accused killer being a groyper “outlandish” turned things around.

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And things are on the up for Fuentes, as Wired reports:

In the aftermath of Kirk’s death, Fuentes struck a more conciliatory tone, urging followers not to pick up arms, but also repeated that he believes Kirk was “complicit in the Israeli capture of the right wing for a very long time.”
Rather than damaging Fuentes’ popularity, Kirk’s death has accelerated it. His X following has grown by almost 175,000 since Kirk’s death, and he has seen his following on Rumble increase by more than 100,000.

His livestream commemorating the death of Kirk was among his most watched by far, with over 2.5 million views. His livestream the following Monday discussing who was responsible for Kirk’s death also saw a higher-than-normal viewership. In the space of less than an hour, Fuentes earned over $5,500 from the top 50 Super Chat donations made by supporters…

Despite being suspended from most major social media platforms, last year Fuentes was reinstated on X by Musk, who wrote that he could stay on the platform “provided he does not violate the law, and let him be crushed by the comments and Community Notes.”

Rather than being crushed, Fuentes has seen his following skyrocket from 168,000 at the time his account was restored in May 2024, to almost 925,000 today.
…

Despite his growing influence within the GOP and the Trump administration, as well as his rapidly rising support among young white men in America, Fuentes has repeatedly said that in order for his movement to make an impact, it needs to operate in the shadows.

“No rallies, no protests, we don’t need to show everybody how many of us there are because the second that we do, they will identify, isolate, and destroy us,” Fuentes said on a recent livestream. “We want them to have no clue how many Groypers there are, where they are, who they are. We want them to be completely in the dark.”

…

Fuentes’ disdain for many of his supporters appears to have no impact on his popularity, but the 27-year-old is clear that what he refers to as the “grug-level” supporters are not what is needed in order for his movement to take control. Instead, Fuentes speaks about attracting “elite human capital,” supporters who will then become part of an “officer class” of “super intelligent, entrepreneurial” people.

“Once we get 1,000, 5,000 of those guys, those are going to be the party officials, party apparatics as an analogy,” Fuentes said. “I’m kind of interested in inspiring those people, indoctrinating those people. They watch a show, they get the ideas, they get the inspiration, they kind of take a project into their own hands.”
Great.

Fuentes certainly bears watching.

Other things I’m watching/reading:

2025 Fundraiser

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On September 29, 2025

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This blog runs on reader subscriptions and donations. Reading it is free, and always will be, but it does take money to run the site and keep myself fed and sheltered. Every year (except one time when I was sick and forgot) I do an annual fundraiser, and the funds raised are what make the blog viable.

Over the last few years I’ve been writing mostly about the hegemonic changeover from America to China. Long predicted, this is still a rare event, happening only every century or so, and it’s fascinating to be living thru it. I still plan on covering it, but I think regular readers get the point.

What I plan on writing more about is what the future looks like, and what it takes to run a “good” society. We don’t have a lot of those right now, and putting down the markers for what is required to create one is important. Equally, we need to understand how good societies fail. As an example FDR created a much better America for Americans, but he left open some “windows of wealth” like taxing capital gains at much less than income. It took a while for the rich to turn into oligarchs by driving a tank thru this opening, but they managed it.

China before Xi was in vast danger of turning into an oligarchy. Corruption was rampant, and China was minting billionaires, and they were using their wealth to buy influence and power. Xi shut that down, hard. China avoided a trap which would have turned its rise, at best, into a Chinese Gilded Age and might well have derailed it entirely.

Many such traps come along, and sometimes countries recover before the harm is insoluble.

Sometimes they don’t.

So I’ll be writing more about such issues, about the future effects of climate change on governance and general life and so on.

We have two new writers, Sean Paul Kelley and Nat Wilson Turner. They cover issues I only touch on, Sean Paul is a trained historian, and former institutional broker at Morgan Stanley who has visited more countries than not–65 and counting, and Nate is good at the “bloggy” stuff, as well as (though he hasn’t written about it yet for us) the principles of ideology and how it determines history.

We’ll also make some serious predictions. Most of the big picture events I predicted over the last twenty years have either come to pass, or are in process now, like the rise of China, the fall of America, the immiseration of Americans, the rise of authoritarianism, undeniable climate change, the fall of Crimea, the 2008 financial collapse and so on. We’re due for another financial collapse, and I’ll discuss why, how it will most likely play out, why it’ll be the last one which can be “papered over” and put it in the context of the US’s demotion to regional great power.

In terms of fundraising goals, for every two thousand dollars we raised, I’ll write a long article on one of the “Laws of Heaven”, the principles which create and sustain good societies, in Machiavelli style dictums.

One of these is the “Law of the Predator”.

Anyone who will take what they want from someone weaker than them cannot be allowed to have any power.

Rules such as these, and “keep the rich poor” are foundational. When we don’t follow them, usually without realizing we are, our societies inevitably rot and turn into something hellish for the majority of people.

Readership is up a fair bit this year, even after removing bots. People want to read what is written here. But to write, money is, alas, necessary. I hope you will subscribe or donate. The goal is $12,500, the same as last year. If you’re personally in financial trouble, if food or shelter is an issue, please don’t give. If not, and you value this blog, please do.

SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE TO IAN’S 2025 FUNDRAISER

(Afterword. If you had a subscription and think it’s still running, please check. When credit cards change, the subscription ends. I always let people know, but email messages don’t always get thru. If you can’t use paypal to donate, let me know. Snail mail still works or if you’re Canadian, an Interac transfer. (Most US cash apps do not work in Canada. You can reach me at admin-at-ianwelsh-dot-net, about this or anything else.)

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