Trump’s disciples celebrate a new battle cry: “Your body, my choice”

This article first appeared at ntv.de

When Nick Fuentes opened his front door on Sunday after the US election, he was prepared. In a few seconds he covers the woman on his landing in pepper spray. “Fuck off!” he shouts. Then he pushes her to the ground and slams the door. “It’s probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done,” Marla Rose later said in an interview with the US magazine “Vice.” “But I can’t avoid a challenge.” The 57-year-old wanted to confront Fuentes with his political views.

Nicholas Fuentes is an influencer, right-wing extremist and known for misogynistic and anti-Semitic statements. The 26-year-old was banned from many social platforms for violating bans on hate speech. He repeatedly praised Hitler, spoke out in favor of “rule by the Catholic Taliban” in America and against abortion rights. In 2022, Fuentes was invited to dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. On election night he wrote on

The phrase is an inversion of the slogan “My body, my choice”. This has stood for female self-determination and the right to abortion since the 1960s. Fuentes’ Mantra unites two other messages: it denies women the right to decide about pregnancy and at the same time threatens violence. In the days after the election, rape fantasies related to the quote were openly spread on social media. Regarding those announced by women, influencer Jon Miller wrote: “As if you had a choice.”

“There has been a significant increase in misogynistic posts on X, Tiktok and Instagram,” says Jiore Craig. She works for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which studies the spread of disinformation and extremism online. Fuentes’ Original post went viral, shared thousands of times and clicked more than 96 million times. Use of the slogan increased by more than 4,000 percent within the first 24 hours after the election, Craig said. In addition, more sexist slogans flooded the Internet: “Women back to the stove!” became a trend on TikTok, as did calls to revoke the 19th Amendment, which guarantees women’s right to vote in the United States.

Such slogans not only find imitators on social media, they also create reality. “‘Your body, my choice’ has found its way into the classroom,” says Craig. On TikTok, parents report verbal attacks on their daughters. At Texas State University, male Trump supporters celebrated their election victory with posters that declared women to be male property. Shortly after Fuentes’ Post, T-shirts with “Your body, my choice” printed on them were for sale on Amazon.

The sexist power fantasies significantly intensify Trump’s campaign rhetoric. The president-elect, himself convicted of rape and accused of sexual harassment in more than a dozen cases, portrayed himself as an advocate of male dominance. He would protect women from attacks by illegal immigrants, “whether they like it or not,” Trump said at a rally in October.

“Unlike four years ago, there was a clear strategy in Trump’s campaign this year,” says Craig. A misogynistic and fascist framework was chosen for many of his messages, which was aimed at a specific group of voters: young men. The approach was apparently successful; according to surveys, Trump made a significant increase in the percentage of male voters under 30 compared to the last election.

Open misogyny is facing headwinds. After Trump’s re-election, the “4B Movement”, a radical feminist movement from South Korea, spilled over into the USA. Female followers vow to abstain from dating, sex, marriage and having children as long as men interfere in the affairs of their bodies.

Fuentes’ post also sparked a wave of protest. Rumors circulated about his residence, then his private address was published on X. Women then announced that they would send him used tampons or dildos, and fantasies of violence became loud. A little later, Marla Rose appeared at his door.

“Never show up unannounced at a stranger’s door to cause trouble,” Fuentes told the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper.. On In it, Tate warns: If you have an uninvited visitor, you could shoot.