I Was Maced by Nick Fuentes

It’s been a big week for fans of misogyny and ugly social resentment exploding into the open.

Donald Trump‘s victory in the November 5th presidential election—aided by key figures and influencers from ‘the manosphere’—has been heralded by most of his supporters as a sign that US history is about to shift decisively in their direction. This idea isn’t universally popular, and has poured petrol on a culture war that was already raging. The most vivid example of the rancor this has led to occurred this weekend, when white supremacist streamer Nick Fuentes was doxed, leading to him macing a 57-year-old feminist on his doorstep.

Until earlier this year, Fuentes, aged 26, was largely confined to the internet’s dark fringes, having been banned from most platforms for hate-speech. However, in May his account was reinstated on Elon Musk‘s X, and he has since amassed in excess of 440,000 followers. Fuentes is a leader in the ‘Groyper’ movement—an online clan of far-right and neo-Nazi trolls aiming to drive their politics into the mainstream.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the extremity of his views, Fuentes has rubbed shoulders with the powerful. In 2022, Kanye West took him along to a dinner with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump has since claimed that he did not know who Fuentes was and that West had “unexpectedly showed up” with him (somehow bypassing secret service protocols?), describing the meeting as “quick and uneventful.”

On the day the election results were announced, a slogan Fuentes posted—”Your body, my choice”—spread across X, becoming a symbol of the growing political divide between young men and women in the US, and the emboldened attitude of online far-right figures like Fuentes. While his fans gleefully shared his post, it also caused mass outrage.

News outlets across the US began reporting on it, and a TikTok trend took hold where young women would film themselves reacting to the audio from a Fuentes stream, in which he says mockingly: “It’s not a glass ceiling, it’s a ceiling made of fucking bricks. There will never be a female President. Never.” Fuentes was promptly doxed, with left-wing accounts sharing his home address on Twitter. People on social media began to joke about pranking Fuentes, or in some cases, confronting him with violence.

It was this national outrage that led to 57-year-old Marla Rose turning up at Fuentes’ home on Sunday, November 10th. I spoke to her about what happened, and Marla began the call by showing me the bruises across her right arm and wrist, now two days after the incident.

VICE: How did you feel when you first saw his tweet, “your body, my choice?”
Marla Rose: A very good percentage of the women that you talk to are rape survivors. So it resonated with me on that level, as a woman myself. We were still kind of reeling from the bad news of the election, you know, so it was just another cherry on top of a sundae of despair.

It was kind of unremarkable because we know who these individuals are, we know that they try to inflame, but we also know that this reveals their mentality as well. It’s not just trolling, not that that’s justifiable. So, I guess what I thought was, ‘Well, he’s a douchebag, and what do you expect?’ I can’t say I was surprised or anything like that. Angry, but not livid, you know? It’s just kind of just another disgusting thing.

How did you find out about where Fuentes lived? 
Well, once he got doxed and his address was out there… he’s very atypical of Berwyn. Berwyn is a multicultural inner-ring suburb of Chicago, ten minutes from the city border. It’s very atypical for someone like that [to live there]. So I think people were surprised. 

And then I was seeing a lot of chatter of people saying, ‘Well, I’m going to send him dirty diapers, and I’m going to send him dog poo, and I’m going to send him used menstrual products,’ or whatever it was. I also probably got at least, I don’t know, eight to a dozen messages from friends going, ‘Did you know he lives in your town?’

There was a curiosity among my friends—and admittedly my own curiosity—to see, was he getting these deliveries? Were there protesters outside of his house? Was there any kind of, like, hubbub around his environment? There was also chatter that it wasn’t really his house, that he just owned it and was renting it [out].

I don’t know, I’m naive… I thought maybe he would look through a window, or you’d see him exiting, or he’d have a mailbox with his name, or that I might see from the public sidewalk if I could confirm it was his address. So I recorded a short video. It wasn’t Facebook Live. It was a video that I was going to post to my friends on Facebook. Just basically, this may be his house. There are no deliveries of diapers that I see on the front porch.

And I had just finished the video. But as I finished and was taking like, a parting picture or two, A woman pulled up in her car and she was kind of… You could tell she was checking addresses. A blonde woman, probably around my age, just kind of looking out her window. And we kind of shared, you know, eye contact.

And she said, “Is this where that douchebag lives?” Something to that effect. “Is that where Nick Fuentes lives?” And I said, “I’m not positive, but I think so. You know, it’s possible.”

So, she said something to the effect of, “You should ring his doorbell and find out.”

It’s not probably the most mature, enlightened, smart thing that I’ve ever done, but I cannot walk away from a dare. And… it kind of felt like a dare. So I walked up to the front door. There are no laws in our state, at least, [against] doing that.

There were no “no trespassers” signs, no “no solicitors” signs. There was no gate that wasn’t open, no fence you know, [I had to] clear or anything like that. I am a canvasser as well; I’ve canvassed for different politicians in the past. If there is a “no soliciting” sign, I respect that and keep it moving. And there wasn’t. 

So, I walked up and as I was pressing—I hadn’t touched the doorbell yet—he flung the door open in that same move, sprayed me with pepper spray or mace or whatever. And as I was kind of reacting like, “What…!?” Like, I was just shocked. I didn’t think he was actually going to answer the door or be home or any of that. 

Then what I recall is he put two hands on my shoulders and pushed me down the steps. It may have just been one hand, but it was definitely a push. I fell. It was just three steps, but onto the sidewalk.

And as I fell and landed, my phone flew out of my hand. I could hear the woman who had kind of dared me to ring his doorbell calling the cops. Just like, “He just pushed her down three steps, and he’s, like, standing over her.” She called the cops right away. 

He grabbed my phone, ran back inside, and dropped my phone on the floor. Shut his blinds and deadbolted. He stomped on my phone, and that was the last you could see of that recording. And the cops came, like, ten minutes later.

And the ambulance came, and as the ambulance arrived, he went over to talk to Fuentes, who told him no comment, and came back. I sat in the ambulance with the EMTs, and they checked my pulse and my blood pressure, looked at my eyes, and determined I was fine. 

[Laughing] It was weak spray, or I’m just used to cutting up ghost peppers and habaneros all summer, so I’m fine. I didn’t expect him to answer. And then as I was saying hi, the spray immediately started. I was going to ask him, ‘Why do you feel comfortable saying the things that you say?’ And it was obvious he’s very scared, probably extremely paranoid. I don’t know if you saw my post, but I’m 5 foot 1. He’s not a big man himself, but I’m 57, he’s 26.

He seemed like someone who had been barricaded in or something in that—he was very kind of sweaty, twitchy, bug eyed, you know; that is how I would characterize him. He didn’t seem calm. I was much more calm than he was, you know, even after getting sprayed.

And have you decided whether you’re going to press charges?
From what I can understand, I have a number of months to decide, and I’m still trying to decide. I don’t want to end up in a gulag now Trump’s elected! But I am going to be consulting with a lawyer. I am between people right now. I want to do something, but I don’t know if it’s going to be pressing charges. We’ll see.

There is freedom of speech, yes, but there is not freedom from consequences—and I want that to be very clear: I want there to be some kind of consequence. I want him to feel it on some level. 

How are you doing now? 
I haven’t had much time to slow down and just kind of assess. But yes, it’s sore [the arm] and I’m taking some kind of painkiller, Advil-type thing. I’m not sleeping because I’m so like, wired. But you know, a little bruised, a little battered, a little worse for wear, but generally here and ready to do battle, you know.

Have you seen much of the reaction to the incident on social media? 
So it [her social media feed] is probably not a good representation because it’s skewed toward progressive people. Because my friends, my people, are progressive. 

I’m not on TikTok, but I have seen occasional TikToks that people send me. I would say if I were to estimate from what I have seen—not in the right-wing sphere—I would say 80 percent has been really positive. You know—’Go, Marla, you’re my hero,’ whatever.

And about 20 percent has been divided between: ‘She’s so stupid and she brought this on herself’ and ‘She’s no better than him.’ And also, ‘She’s lucky she didn’t get shot.’

There’s been some really negative stuff I’ve seen. Right-wing influencers and social media accounts have referred to you as a ‘boomer shitlib woman’ and a ‘deranged leftist,’ and insinuated or outright claimed that Fuentes should have shot you, and would have been within his rights to do so. Does that worry you?
Okay, so first of all, I am Gen X. I’m not a boomer. So fuck off. Sorry! I’m proud Gen X.

It makes me feel sad for the world. I’m pretty thick skinned, these days. I used to be much more thin skinned. But it makes me sad to know they’re out there with such hostility and such violence and such a rhetoric of dehumanization. And, you know, part of my curiosity about him was being a Jewish person living in a town with an actual, proud Nazi.

You know, he doesn’t deny being a Nazi. The fact is, you know, my grandparents on my mother’s side came from [fleeing] pogroms, they were lucky to escape. And I feel a strong sense of connection to my Jewish heritage. Not in terms of religiosity or anything related to Israel or anything like that, just a connection to my culture.

So I identified myself in my initial post as Jewish because I think it is significant, the fact that, you know, he’s a Nazi. He is a Nazi. And I want him to know that there’s not a place for him to feel comfortable and safe around me. I don’t mean that in a threatening way. I just want him to know there are Jews around him and he shouldn’t feel confident with what he’s espousing. 

In your original post about the incident, which has since been deleted, you confirmed Fuentes’ doxed address. Do you see any issue with posting his address online? Would you do it again?
Yeah. Facebook took that down. Probably, if I were going to do it again—not for his sake, for my sake, and for the sake of being able to, you know, communicate freely and easily—I would have said ‘The address that is commonly attributed to him I can confirm is correct.’

Not that I don’t necessarily believe in doxing. I’m kind of, like, neutral on that, but just for the sake of smart communication on these different platforms.

And, yeah, they [Fuentes’ fans/online trolls] have got my address. They sent one thing of Mighty Meaty or something, Domino’s Pizza? We’re vegan, so we just sent it back. And I’ve seen a bunch of more emails from Domino’s telling me, “we’ve received your order,” “we canceled your order…”

And then this morning at around 7.30AM or so, we got swatted for the first time. They asked what our names were. They told us that these Latino names were listed as causing violence in our household. That was not us, obviously. There were three cops for that one. [Swatting is the act of calling the police to someone’s house, reporting there’s a serious crime taking place, requiring the urgent arrival of a SWAT team. It’s often done to live streamers—including Nick Fuentes—resulting in fans watching creators get raided by the police in real time.]

VICE reached out to Nick Fuentes for a response to the claims made in this interview. So far, he has failed to reply.

Follow Jamie on X @jamietahsin