A timeline of former K-State student Jaden McNeil’s white nationalist controversies
Controversy is nothing new for Jaden McNeil.
While a political science major at Kansas State University in 2019, he served as president of the campus chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth activist network. The organization became the subject of protests by the KSU Young Democrats, which said it was associated with hateful rhetoric and called for the group to be removed from campus.
The controversies only grew from there:
October 2019: McNeil resigned from the Turning Point USA K-State chapter. He said in an Oct. 31 tweet that he was parting ways with the organization because “TPUSA constantly cedes cultural ground to the Left.”
Early 2020: McNeil formed an America First Students chapter on the K-State campus in Manhattan. The group was aligned with America First, a far-right organization founded by white nationalist livestreamer Nick Fuentes.
February 2020: The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, an organization that monitors extremists, issued a report saying McNeil’s new group was part of an effort by white nationalists to repackage their bigotry through a mainstreaming strategy that focused on college campuses and Trump supporters.
McNeil denied he was a white nationalist, saying America First Students was a conservative organization that stood for “strong borders, traditional families, the American worker, and Christian values.” But two weeks after the report was issued, he attended a gathering outside Washington, D.C., posing in pictures with well-known white nationalists.
June 2020: McNeil was in the spotlight again, this time over an insensitive tweet about George Floyd, who had died a month earlier.
The tweet — “Congratulations to George Floyd on being drug free for an entire month!” — elicited a flood of responses from across the country. Many supported McNeil’s right to free speech, but most denounced the tweet. K-State students, alumni and others called for him to be expelled.
Ultimately, then-university president Richard Myers said that “while these messages are disrespectful and abhorrent, we cannot violate the law.” Myers issued a list of action steps the university would take, and the K-State athletic department announced that it would create a more diverse atmosphere and help its athletes combat racism.
Late 2020: McNeil left K-State and moved to Chicago to work with Fuentes, becoming treasurer of the America First Foundation. McNeil became a serious livestreamer, developing a following of supporters who played video games with him on several streaming platforms. Many made online donations as they played.
January 6, 2021: McNeil and Fuentes rallied with supporters on the Capitol grounds during the insurrection but didn’t go inside.
Later that month, the government froze Fuentes’ bank account as part of an investigation into reports that he received $250,000 in bitcoin from a French computer programmer a month before the insurrection.
January 19, 2022: Fuentes and a former America First leader, Patrick Casey, were subpoenaed by the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol attack.
April 30, 2022: McNeil posted on the messaging app Telegram that he was stepping down as treasurer of America First Foundation. On a livestream program Friday, he said he had nothing to do with the group’s finances and that Fuentes and an assistant handled all the transactions.
Fuentes responded on his America First livestream Tuesday night, saying McNeil had betrayed him and that he had never misused any foundation money.
McNeil said that those who believe what Fuentes is now saying about him “really just goes to show how deep Nick has brainwashed these young men.”
“And I was one of them, obviously.”
