Allsup built his brand on base, reactionary conservative tropes, appealing to Donald Trump's supporters, and creating "triggering" videos, before fully descending into the white nationalist politics of the alt-right.

Allsup has spoken at alt-right events such as Richard Spencer’s Free Speech Rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in June 2017. He also attended the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he marched with members of white supremacist organizations. Allsup frequently appears on alt-right radio programs, allowing his hosts to articulate the most extreme positions while he attempts to mask his own racism behind irony. He advocates for advancing white nationalism through the infiltration of the Republican Party rather than by the radical, revolutionary action favored by vanguardist groups on the extreme fringe. His interest in shifting the political and cultural landscape in order to normalize his own racist views led Allsup to join Identity Evropa, a white nationalist organization focused on preserving “European heritage,” in early 2018.

In his own words

"Racist is not a real word. Racist is a word that the left uses to demonize somebody that says something that they find to be politically inconvenient. You say you want to get rid of illegals. What are you a racist? They use it to attack and demonize people and it doesn't mean anything."

— Free Speech Rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., June 25, 2017

"Even people who are apolitical, who just want to fulfill this American dream of having a family and being left alone by everybody, as soon as they realize that they're not going to be able to be left alone by these hordes of third worlders and 'squatamalans' that we're bringing in ... These people hate them. These people hate their way of life. These people will kill them for their things and will kill them for their lifestyle. These apolitical actors and citizens are going to have to pick a side here. They're going to have to either pick the side that wants to defend them and their way of life and wants to allow this country to remain the country that their grandparents and forefathers and decedents built or their ancestors built or are we going to be fundamentally changed and throw all of that way and allow our hard work and our ancestors hard work be ruined."

— “Fash the Nation” episode 89: “Stranged and Confused,” September 2017

“If you really want diversity, just move to South Africa and you’ll get all the diversity that you want. You’ll also get raped and beaten and murdered with a power drill, but hey, it’s diverse!”

— Unite the Right rally footage, YouTube, Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2017

Background

James Allsup attended Bothell High School, in Bothell, Washington, until 2014. Upon graduation, Allsup enrolled at Washington State University (WSU) where he studied political science.

Allsup served as president of the WSU College Republicans from 2015 until 2017 when the organization’s national committee called for the resignation of white nationalists from its ranks following the chaotic, and ultimately deadly, "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017. Allsup attended the rally and participated in a torchlit march the previous evening that featured hundreds of white nationalists brandishing tiki torches and chanting slogans such as, “Jews will not replace us.”

Allsup was also the chairman of the Washington College Republican Federation, an organization that works with the Washington Republican Party and the College Republican National Committee to help establish College Republican clubs at Washington schools. He served in the role from April 23, 2016 until April 29, 2017.

As a 16-year-old, Allsup, who made the well-worn journey through libertarianism into the alt-right, volunteered for Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign. Allsup served as Washington state director and WSU chapter president of Students for Rand, the official youth organization in support of Rand Paul for president, in 2016. He began openly identifying as a nationalist during the 2016 presidential election. While appearing as a guest on an August 2017 episode of “Exodus Americanus,” a white supremacist radio program hosted on the Right Stuff, Allsup explained, “I have been pretty openly nationalistic since early on in the Trump candidacy. I was working, actually, as an intern for Rand Paul. … I moved from more of the centrist libertarianism to more of the hard right kind of Rothbardian, helicopter libertarianism in 2015 through 16.”

“Essentially, what really red-pilled me … I was watching videos of the migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016 when I realized that this kind of Rand Paul libertarianism is great when your country isn’t being faced with an existential threat — when the west isn’t being faced with an existential threat, which then led me to more of a closed borders nationalism type of stuff,” Allsup continued. “Videos from Jared Taylor were massively influential. Molyneux stuff about race and IQ has been very eye opening as well.”

Several months later while appearing on an October 2017 episode of the “Third Rail,” another white supremacist radio program hosted by the Right Stuff, Allsup further explained his radicalization:

I grew up in this 80+-percent white town and then I went off to college. And the college I went to is where I got my first experience with the real diversity. … I didn’t really care about race at all until I was off to college and the whole Michael Brown thing, the Trayvon Martin thing started to happen and I was forced to care about it because I was confronted by it. That is, I think, the experience that a lot of people who come over to our politics have. They grow up not wanting to care about race or identity or any of these things but then, when it’s shoved in their face and weaponized against them, they’re forced to choose a side. Either choose to stand up for yourself and your family and your country and your identity etc. or to c---.

During the 2016 presidential election, Allsup served as the campus ambassador program director and senior advisor for Students for Trump, a student-led organization that worked to elect Trump as president of the United States.

Allsup was a frequent topic and voice in the WSU student newspaper The Daily Evergreen. In an April 20, 2016 letter to the editor titled, “College Republicans are not hateful,” Allsup wrote, “It is not hateful to defend our borders. It is not hateful to want to protect American interests first, nor to refuse to bend over backward for open-borders globalism and allow illegal immigrants to flood our labor market, putting Americans out of work. I challenge you to demonstrate how defending American sovereignty is ‘hateful.’”

His tone while discussing his activism with open white nationalists after his resignation as president of the College Republicans was notably less self-righteous. During the August 2017 episode of “Exodus Americanus,” Allsup described his ascension within the student group as a “take over” during which he was, “pretty openly nationalistic, pretty openly waging war against the GOP establishment c----.” He went on to characterize the political views of his fellow members — that he claims grew from three to around 35 to 40 under his leadership — as ranging from “nationalist to further right than nationalist.” Allsup also detailed meetings in which the chapter would screen the white nationalist comedy series “Murdoch Murdoch.”

Allsup’s infiltration and subversion of the WSU College Republicans are emblematic of his larger strategy to promote white nationalism that he outlined during a September 2017 episode of “Fash the Nation,” one of the most popular white nationalist radio programs.

There’s this kind of fedora tipping narrative on the right that going out and engaging in politics is for losers. … The Republican Party has its problems and has its c----, but the only way that we’re going to replace these people is by accumulating political power and then forcing them out. The fact is that if you are a college guy, or a college girl, and you are on a college campus, if you have three or four fashy goy friends, you can take over your school's College Republicans group and move it to essentially being an alt-right club. You can easily do that and that it gives you access to so many more resources. It gives you political credibility. It gives you all of these things that come along with the name of being a Republican.

On May 9, 2016, Allsup was among around a dozen members of UW Students for Trump who erected a “Trump wall” at the University of Washington. The demonstration, which featured a large piece of plywood painted to look like a brick wall, only lasted around two hours and was met by around 100 counter-protesters.

Several months later, in a guest column titled “College Republicans strive to make WSU great again” published in the WSU student newspaper, Allsup decried “SJW [social justice warrior] culture,” announced that the College Republicans would host the former Breitbart provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on campus and issued an invitation to his classmates stating, “If you are a conservative, a nationalist, a libertarian, an independent, or just someone looking for a good time with good people who are unafraid to be a little bit politically incorrect, you know where to look. College Republicans is here, and we welcome everyone who wants to help ‘Make WSU Great Again.’”

Allsup attended the January 2017 “Deploraball,” an inauguration party in Washington, D.C., organized by provocateurs who flirted with the alt-right throughout the 2016 election such as Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, Lauren Southern and Gavin McInnes. The event, hosted at the National Press Club, was protested heavily and resulted in several skirmishes outside. Allsup was allegedly punched in the face and later struck in the head by a flagpole, resulting in seven stitches.

Six months later, Allsup was back in Washington, D.C., to appear on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with some of the far right’s largest stars, including Richard Spencer, Mike Peinovich, Christopher Cantwell, Nathan Damigo, Augustus Invictus, Jason Kessler and others, for a Free Speech Rally. Allsup told a crowd that, “Racist is not a real word. Racist is a word that the left uses to demonize somebody that says something that they find to be politically inconvenient. You say you want to get rid of illegals. What are you a racist? They use it to attack and demonize people and it doesn't mean anything."

On August 13, 2017, Allsup was identified in photos taken at a torchlit march on the University of Virginia’s Charlottesville campus. A video uploaded and then quickly deleted by Allsup shows him marching with members of Identity Evropa, the Traditionalist Worker Party and other hate groups. He also exclaims, “Holy shit, that was Richard Spencer!” and thanks the event’s headliner as he drives by in an SUV leaving the event. Following Allsup being identified, several of his alleged classmates unearthed posts on his personal Facebook account featuring antisemitic and sexist tropes.

Allsup alleges that he was invited to speak at the August 12, 2017, event.

The next day, Allsup stepped down as president of the WSU College Republicans. He was reelected the following December but was blocked from assuming the position by the chapter’s advisor because of his impending graduation.

Allsup formerly wrote for The Liberty Conservative, a rightwing publication that bills itself as, “An online political magazine devoted to the vision of less government and more liberty in achieving true prosperity for all.” Allsup wrote 30 articles for the publication, primarily about the 2016 Trump campaign, immigration, and globalists.

He also co-founded America First Media and co-hosted the “Nationalist Review” with Nick Fuentes, a program that bills itself as a “weekly podcast about American nationalism, traditionalism, and alternative right-wing politics.” In January 2018, the two had a public falling out with each host accusing the other of laziness, impropriety and a variety of petty slights.

Allsup has since shifted his attention to his personal YouTube channel, which has over 300,000 subscribers and has been viewed more than 54 million times. His videos tend to focus on denigrating “SJWs” and often feature Allsup confronting students and protesters in an attempt to “trigger” them.

Since breaking with Fuentes, Allsup has descended further into the alt-right. In early 2018 he announced that he was a member of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. The organization consists of “identitarians” who want to raise white racial consciousness and fight against multiculturalism, immigration and other policies they believe amount to other “anti-white” discrimination. Members are heavily vetted in order to ensure they can maintain the group’s polished image.

Allsup gave a talk on “the pathway from identity to institutions” at Identity Evropa’s national conference in March 2018, where he encouraged other members to get involved with their local Republican parties in order to “share nationalist ideas with people who may implicitly agree with us, although they don’t know it yet.”

“The movement benefits as a whole,” he continued, “by gaining hard political power and further proving the fact that, yes, we are in fact pretty normal people with pretty normal concerns.”

In June 2018, Allsup took his own advice and became a precinct committee officer in Whitman County, Washington, in an uncontested election. From his post, Allsup will conduct voter outreach and elect local party leadership.