The "America First" Jihad Against Nick Fuentes
The four-day Fuentes purge that exposed how Islamist organizing and "America First" influencer politics now share infrastructure.
On May 10, 2026, the X analyst MaxNordau asked a sharp question: “Can someone explain what the hell Daniel Haqiqatjou and Hassan Shibly have to do with putting America First? Because this looks an awful lot like an Islamic supremacist scheme.”
He was reacting to a four-day cascade in which Nick Fuentes accused congressional candidate Dan Bilzerian of asking him how to assassinate Israeli ministers; Bilzerian called Fuentes a federal informant; ex-CAIR-Florida director Hassan Shibly intervened to defend Bilzerian and confirmed joint travel through France, Romania, and Dubai; and Visegrád 24 published video of Bilzerian on the ground in Doha wrapped in a khaffiyeh.
The question MaxNordau raised is the right one. The answer requires a fourth name — Daniel Haqiqatjou, the Harvard-educated polemicist behind The Muslim Skeptic — and an honest reading of why the entire network turned on Fuentes the same week.
What happened
The sequence began on May 7, 2026, when Fuentes announced on X that he was “switching sides and voting Democrat in 2026 to punish” the GOP, citing what he called the Trump administration’s broken promises on Iran and Israel. Bilzerian responded within hours, posting that “Nick Fuentes is a fed” and accusing him of “constant division, endless infighting, defending Epstein, then attacking a Christian man only to endorse a Jewish Democrat woman.”
On May 8, Fuentes counter-attacked, claiming that during their first meeting Bilzerian had ordered guests to put their phones in another room and asked him “how difficult it would be to assassinate Israeli government ministers.” Fuentes added that Bilzerian then invited him to Dubai and Qatar in late 2024, that he declined, and that Bilzerian was “ambushed by the FBI” on the way. Lucas Gage, a separate influencer, made a similar allegation, saying Bilzerian had asked him about killing Ben Shapiro under comparable conditions.
Bilzerian denied the assassination claim but conceded — under direct pressure from Fuentes — that he had been served a federal subpoena on the tarmac, that the trip included Corsica, Dubai, and Qatar, and that the destination involved discussions of “golden visa” status with Gulf governments while his father, convicted securities fraudster Paul Bilzerian, faced renewed federal scrutiny.
On May 9, two things happened. Hassan Shibly, ex-director of CAIR-Florida, posted a video from inside Bilzerian’s home, declaring Fuentes’ allegations “utter and complete lies,” and confirmed that he had personally traveled with Bilzerian and MMA fighter Jake Shields through France, Romania, and Dubai — the same itinerary Fuentes described as Bilzerian’s “flight.” Hours later, Visegrád 24 published a 23-second video of Bilzerian on the ground in Doha, Qatar, viewed 1.4 million times within hours and corroborating the destination both men had been arguing about.
By May 10, the network around Bilzerian had visibly closed ranks against Fuentes — Shibly, Shields, and Daniel Haqiqatjou’s Muslim Skeptic audience all moving in the same direction within seventy-two hours of Fuentes’ Democrat announcement. That synchronicity is what triggered MaxNordau’s question, and it is the actual story.
The Architect
Haqiqatjou is not a fringe cleric. He is a Harvard physics graduate with a Tufts philosophy master’s whose intellectual lineage, as he himself lists it, runs through Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Ruhollah Khomeini, and Ali Khamenei.
He praised the October 7 massacre as a “religious obligation,” denied the Nova Festival rapes, calls Judaism “as hostile to Christianity and Islam” as any religion on earth, and frames Israel and the Mossad as the hidden hand behind 9/11, ISIS, and Jeffrey Epstein. His audience is not Muslim only: his Haqiqat Show has hosted Bilzerian and hosted Jake Shields — Bilzerian’s Romania-Dubai travel companion alongside Shibly.
The Bridge Thesis — The Islamists and the Far-Right
Haqiqatjou’s strategic argument, repeated across his platform, is that traditional Muslims and traditionalist Western dissidents share one adversary: liberal modernity, feminism, LGBT rights, secular governance, and what he calls “Zionist” influence.
Shibly operationalizes the same argument inside U.S. civil-rights infrastructure, appearing on Russia Today to claim “extremist Jewish Zionist funders and billionaires have bought out the U.S. government” and casting detained British activist Sami Hamdi as a victim of opposing “America First” values. Shields and Bilzerian provide reach: Shields hosts joint streams with Shibly, and Bilzerian’s 30 million Instagram followers carry the message into the masculinity-influencer ecosystem.
Bilzerian Runs for Office
Bilzerian filed in April 2026 to challenge AIPAC-backed Rep. Randy Fine in Florida’s 6th District, calling him “the fat jew Randy Fine.” His campaign treasurer previously ran Kanye West’s presidential committee. Shibly endorsed the bid. The FL-6 race is the network’s first electoral test — and it depends entirely on Republican primary mechanics.
Why the purge of Fuentes
Whatever the merits of Fuentes’ complaints about Iran policy, his vote-Democrat move made him useless to a coalition whose entire vehicle is a Republican primary in Florida. Bilzerian needs GOP voters; Shibly needs an anti-Fine outcome; Haqiqatjou needs the coalition coherent. The “fed” smear is the cover; strategic excommunication is the substance. Fuentes’ assassination allegation against Bilzerian is the counterpunch — credible-enough-to-hurt, unverifiable enough to deny, and conveniently corroborated by the Doha footage and the federal subpoena Bilzerian himself confirms was served on the tarmac.
“America-First” Aligns with the Islamists
The American post-liberal right has long flirted with the idea that “the enemy of my enemy” is a coalition partner. Haqiqatjou has been building exactly that coalition — explicitly, on camera — for years. His intellectual lineage is Brotherhood and Khomeinist; his strategic frame is shared adversary; his tactical tools are influencer reach, civil-rights legalism, and now a congressional candidacy.
The figures involved are not hiding any of it. They are documenting it themselves on YouTube, X, and Instagram, in real time. The question is no longer whether the convergence is real. The question is whether anyone on the American right is willing to see it before FL-6 votes.