The conservative political movement has been replaced with harshly Catholic philosophies
May 01, 2026
To the average conservative, “America First” might sound like a decent concept. Donald Trump ran on the idea as his pseudo-slogan, centering his 2016 campaign speech around the phrase. For Trump voters, America First likely means securing the border, finding peace through strength, and draining the swamp. To more “traditional” conservatives, America First might refer to isolationist policies, like George Washington’s warning to avoid permanent alliances with foreign Nations.
The “America First” movement was recently popularized by young political commentator Nick Fuentes, what some refer to as the original “groyper”. Fuentes changed Trump’s definition of “America First” by insisting that it also meant a pride in our national identity as mainly white westerners. Fuentes consistently instills extreme skepticism and hostility toward immigration and other races that are not “white”. A key component of a groyper’s testimony is intense criticism of Israel, the Zionist movement, and Jews as a racial group. Most recently and concerningly, Fuentes vouches for forced (Catholic) morality, similar to that in Muslim countries.
Currently, many “groyper’s” want nothing to do with Donald Trump, or even the Republican party, mainly due to historical support of Israel. “America First” no longer means what it meant in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign speech. This is no surprise, as Woodrow Wilson, the founder of the League of Nations, used the phrase in a speech in 1915 to argue for neutrality during WWI. Wilson was a globalist — and a proud supporter of the Klu Klux Klan. The “America First” term was used a few years later by William Randolph Hearst, an actual isolationist, who saw “the gravest possible menace” facing the country (Franklin D. Roosevelt) as “the constantly increasing tendency toward socialism and communism”. Of course, The Atlantic wrote a hit piece on both the “America First” phrase and Hearst, claiming it encapsulated “admiration for Hitler’s governing style”.
“America First” can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, and likely both liberals and some conservatives wouldn’t mind if the movement was permanently tied to Hitler-ism — the most legitimate and educated blow to anyone: “you’re just like Hitler!”
While some groypers are even self-identified Hitler-ites (it’s a joke to them — maybe?), this article isn’t intended to make the same-old straw-man connections between the world’s favorite dictator and any detestable political position. It’s intended to brief the vaguely-informed conservative reader that their political movement has been replaced with harshly Catholic philosophies, and to perhaps convince many lukewarm groypers that their reactionary jokes-not-jokes are promoting a Marxist idea of government — the very type they claim to oppose.
Fuentes advocates for a semi-soft Catholic theocracy in the United States. The movement broadly called Christian Nationalism and specifically called Integralism has become increasingly popular in just the past year. It first took hold in fringe academia, and its “founders” are likely unknown to most of the world. But as it has increased in popularity, many well-known politicians like JD Vance (who is Catholic) dabble in “America First” meanings different from what Trump first proposed.
The details of a Christian theocracy in the United States are consistently unclear, but one Harvard scholar outlines how it might occur in his essay Integration from Within. He suggests that “the nonliberal state that emerges will have to be born from within the frame of the old order.” Once this new “nonliberal state” or Catholic theocracy emerges it can be run by “elite administrators” like the successful rulers of the Old Testament. These “agents with administrative control over default rules may nudge whole populations in desirable directions.” He, and other scholars like him, envision a government run by Catholic actors instead of the state.
Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September, Candace Owens (a Catholic convert as of April 2024) began an investigation into who really killed Charlie Kirk. She claims God guided her in this investigation and that she “sees God” in this work. “I can tell you factually… Charlie was praying the rosary… Charlie was attending mass,” she said at the beginning of her investigation. “You are,” she supposedly told Charlie before he died, “specifically too smart to be a protestant. Just make the last step.”
Candace concludes her spiritual impressions of Charlie with a stunner: “And typically when those steps start taking place” — praying the rosary, she means — “you stop referring to yourself as I did, as a Judeo-Christian.” In other words, Candace Owens rejects more than half (if you count her dig against protestants) of what many conservatives consider to be the foundation of America. Remove the Judeo, and remove all “unintelligent” Christian protestants — all you’re left with is Catholics. This is now what “America First” means.
A recent Turning Point USA moment that went viral, where a little boy is praised by the audience, Matt Walsh, and Michael Knowles for wanting to be a priest when he grows up.
Many people, particularly young men living on the East Coast, are converting to Catholicism. Both of us (the authors of this article) worked and currently work in conservative circles on the East Coast, and most of our associates were staunch Catholics. In April, videos of a Catholic mass in NYC went viral, resulting in an article with the headline: NYC’s Hottest Club Is Catholic Mass. Even Tucker Carlson, a well-known Protestant, has said that he’s “not Catholic,” but that he’s “interested.”
There is nothing wrong with people coming closer to Christ by converting to Catholicism. Many Catholics are, as Carlson has also said “the most fervent, sincere, on-target Christians I know.” And not every Catholic wants to rejoin church and State. But, seeing only words and images coming from the east coast, many west coast-ers may not realize that “America First” is a movement deeply connected to integralism, the surge in Catholic conversion, and soon-to-be powerful Catholic actors in Washington DC and New York City.
Integralism is a movement defined by academics, and adopted by hip young kids who live stream from their parents’ basement. Unfortunately, both the Catholic PhDs and the Gen Z groypers agree on the direction the country ought to go. So long as you’re Catholic, have “Christ is King” in your bio, and belong to the “America First” movement, it doesn’t really matter what you call yourself.
The end of all these “America First” ideologies is to overthrow the Constitution of the United States and have Old Testament “elite administrators” rule the Nation. In an interview with Bradley Martyn, Fuentes claims the Founding Fathers did not devise a system with a “multiracial religiously pluralistic society” in mind. In other words: the constitution no longer fits our corrupt and racially diverse Nation. To the creators of this new movement, the only way to be truly America First is to eradicate any political or theological doctrine that does not align with Catholic doctrine.
Some Protestants may consider themselves groypers or borrow a lot of anti-Israel rhetoric. They are ensuring their own demise, as many America First-ers claim Protestantism is too Jewish and not Catholic enough. “Yeah, America was founded Protestant, look at how that’s going,” Fuentes has said himself. There are, of course, other Christian denominations, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, that integralists explicitly exclude from their movement for not being the right kind of “Christian.” The Daily Wire, Allie Beth Stuckey, and Tucker Carlson have all picked up on the fact that Latter-day Saints, just like Jews, are not allowed in their club.
The tagline “Christ is King” has become increasingly popular and many fail to understand its true meaning. In short, the phrase is meant to exclude Jewish people who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world. Somehow, this exclusion does not extend to Muslims. Fuentes recently commented on the allure of Middle Eastern countries. “A lot of people go there who are pretty secular and pretty liberal, but everybody knows when you go to Dubai, or Riyadh for that matter…everybody knows the rules. And the rules are you don’t disrespect Islam.” This is Fuentes, using the Christ-less dictatorships in the Middle East as a way to make integralism look more attractive. “They take their religion seriously,” he mentions. “For some reason in America, even the insinuation that you might have something like that for Christ, for a church, people say, ‘its the handmaid’s tale,’… ’what is this, the middle Ages?’” Fuentes concludes with conspicuous integralism: “But I think certainly the government needs to enforce some level of morality.”
President Donald Trump’s original “America First” political movement has been completely hijacked by a religious “America First” movement. Donald Trump, not totally unlike Middle Eastern countries, has enforced immigration laws, taken down terrorist regimes, and demanded to be respected as a great Nation of the western world. America First-ers, ever the lovers of force, pray for his designs to fail — because he’s only doing the work of Israel. The argument is hypocritical. Enforcing immigration laws is only legitimate and good when the enforcer despises Israel and subscribes to a Catholic theocracy.
Overall, the whole integralists argument is being used insincerely. Fuentes, Tucker, Owens, Megyn Kelly — they all claim, or perhaps once claimed, to be “conservatives” or at least capture a conservative audience. Their podcasts used to center around the “left” — how transgenderism is ruining children’s lives, how ridiculous it is for a congresswoman to wear a $3,700 dress with “tax the rich” draped across the back, the absolute failure of Obamacare, etc. About the only thing that united the “right” against the “left” was a preservation of America’s founding: men are prone to abuse power, and the best way to stop this is by ever limiting government’s expansion through strict adherence to the Constitution of the United States.
The integralist argument promotes a revolution. It is fundamentally reactionary. Things have gotten so bad, the left has become so godless, the right has become so tied up in perverted foreign affairs (translation: Jewish), that we need a reckoning. We need force. We need an expansion of government to compel everyone to find God again, or at least find morality again. These principles are the foundation of integralism, the ultimate end of all contemporary “America First” arguments.
The arguments are likely so attractive because they are as titillating as Karl Marx’s and equally anti-freedom. Instead of the bourgeoisie vs the proletariat, for integralists, it’s the righteous vs the unrighteous. For them, the unrighteous are ruling and need to be replaced with the righteous through revolution. The philosophy is not new; the actors are just different. They are fighting the “left’s” expansion of Marxian government with an expansion of Marxian government.
The argument is circular and contradictory, even under the assumption that these “elite administrators” won’t lose their souls beholden to ungodly amounts of power over the American people. The expansion of government and force — a liberal ideology — cannot be fought with the expansion of government force — integralism. To America First-ers everywhere we say: You cannot fight what your movement is attempting to implement.
Read on Substack here: https://ellamariedawson.substack.com/p/america-first-is-more-of-a-religious