Even after the FBI has declared its extremist Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes's "hip" fascism retains its toxic appeal – US News



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"Luxury has used a million more than poor and odious pride." These are the words of a poem by Mandeville that Proud Boys' founder, Gavin McInnes, has been tattooed on the right arm.

The quote describes two themes – vice and pride – at the base of any good fall story. And McInnes, whose group has recently been clbadified by the FBI as "an extremist group linked to white nationalism," seems to have followed the same scenario – falling into a Hebrew trap.

McInnes broke away last week from the Proud Boys, an anti-left fraternal wrestling club, termed "western chauvinism" that he founded in 2016.

The exit was apparently based on a legal opinion that his resignation could help seven members of the group convicted of participating in a street fight in New York in October. At this brawl, McInnes appeared brandishing a sword.

In his farewell video of November 20, McInnes explained that his departure would help convince a jury that no formal gang-like structure exists within the Proud Boys. As early as June 2017, he had expressed his dismay at the prospect of being the subject of a RICO charge (related to membership in an ongoing criminal organization). He had signaled this move well in advance and the FBI decision was shaking his hand.

McInnes now insists that he has never led the group. However, its abandonment plunged the group into disarray, as the leaders struggled to claim the title of president.

McInnes himself has publicly portrayed the group as a "gang", and his official structure resembles the Knights of Columbus, the largest organization of Catholic fraternal services in the world, of which he would have been a victim of a demotion its bizarre orientation towards the Jews.

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Throughout 2017, the Proud Boys gained a reputation as ironic counter-cultural conservatives, but also fierce fighters against the fascists, alongside Nazi fighters like the Rise Above movement during the Berkeley riots and elsewhere. In early 2017, McInnes featured in the episodes of the far right Mike Cernovich and "Baked Alaska" an episode of his show called "Alt-Right and Alt-Light: Unite!".

Although they were determined to be discreet, the Proud Boys tried to attract the general public to a united far right.

Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right group Proud Boys, is surrounded by supporters after speaking at a rally in Berkeley, CA. April 27, 2017

Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP



McInnes denies the Proud Boys' ties to white nationalism in part by denying the very existence of white nationalism today – an unlikely badertion, given that one of Proud Boy's early leaders was Brien James (Indiana), a ex-Klansman and Hammerskin who founded the famous fascist skinhead group, Vinlanders Social Club.

Recognized for their use of YouTube to broadcast combat videos, the Vinlanders are largely seduced by concealing their fascist beliefs in the "heritage" language of "Western civilization" while using the idea of ​​a "social club" similar to McInnes' "brotherly order".

In addition, the Proud Boys produced the "official movie Miltary [sic] Arm of the Proud Boys "called the fraternal order of the Alt Knights, a name surprisingly similar to the KKK's White Brother Knights.

Under the leadership of Kyle Chapman and the so-called "American fascist", Augustus Sol Invictus, the group was eager to realize the proto-fascist fantasies of becoming an anti-left paramilitary group before dissolving, amidst the prosecutions by Chapman for badault with lead baton.

Some have suggested that McInnes had begun to lose control of the group's leadership, goals (and membership) at the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

Gavin McInnes discusses the Unite the Right rally as part of a program entitled: Who is REALLY blaming Charlottesville? August 2017

Screenshot of YouTube screen



Acting openly as the band's leader and spokesperson, McInnes has distanced himself from the Unite the Right group, while inviting rally organizer Jason Kessler to participate in his show as part of the show. promotion. McInnes is actually opposed to "disavowing" the rally and its organizer – until a participant, neo-Nazi, described himself as such, James Alex Fields, murdered the # 39, antifascist Heather Heyer and injured other people during an attack on the car.

In the months leading up to Unite the Right, McInnes wrote on the screen books of his former guest, David Duke, former president of KKK, on ​​"Jewish supremacism" and Kevin MacDonald – a psychologist renowned for his theories of Jewish manipulation and control, popular among Holocaust deniers. White supremacists and anti-Semites – before announcing his intention to visit Israel.

During his trip, he published "10 things I hate about the Jews," whose original title was, in McInnes' own words, "10 things I hate about the bading mutilated Jews," criticized the "Jews" from the paranoid fear of the Nazis "and the alleged Jewish responsibility of the Holodomor – the famine death of millions of Ukrainians under Stalin.

"I think it's ten million Ukrainians who were killed – it was Jews – it was Marxists, Stalinists, Leftists, Socialist Jews" (a position that was not the only one in the world). he then denied but not before David Duke gave him the thumbs up.

As 2018 progressed, the McInnes Proud Boys staged violent fights in the Pacific Northwest, attracting a number of fascists and badual predators. Since the Proud Boys have sought to maintain a discreet distance with the open fascists, the American Guard, the newly created White supremacist by Brien James, seems to have become a spillway for those who have been excessively racist for the Proud Boys.

>> In Portland, I've witnessed the violence of white pride in Trump's America

In October, the Fier Boys fought next the American Guard in Providence, Rhode Island, another example of direct collaboration. A few days later, when McInnes appeared in the Republican Club of New York, when a Nazi skinhead crew of Latin American origin joined Proud Boys in a beating of antifascists, the thin denials like paper were already in satire.

After the departure of McInnes, a prominent member of the American Guard, former leader of the "Alt Knights" and lecturer at Unite the Right, Augustus Sol Invictus, immediately tried to seize the reins of the Proud Boys. Ironically, Proud Boys' lawyer, J. L. Van Dyke, who propensity for uttering racist death threats online and being arrested for making a false report to police in a Dallas suburb a few months ago, also jumped on the occasion.

It would seem that the supposedly impotent message that McInnes lost is actually quite important.

And it is perhaps there that the story of Gavin McInnes stops – for now. It promotes the racial curve of the bell and racial pseudo-science and adheres to the theory of the far-right plot of "white genocide". He has been badociated with the white nationalist Jared Taylor since at least 2004, a year after writing for the right-wing American conservative, and got his job at Taki's Mag with the help of Richard Spencer five years later.

Over the past two years, he has helped organize anti-left violence with the help and support of the Trump consortium, Roger Stone, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has hosted McInness on his show several times. . McInnes may have fallen into a temporary purgatory, but one thing is certain: he will not go away. And the Fier Boys either.

The man who once proclaimed "the days of the West are numbered and I will be the impetus that destroys him", to become an autonomous champion of the West, has earned his living by being a political and social chameleon – of Riffing on how he made his money to Vice by "recognizing cool" to combine with hardcore anti-Semites.

The allure of McInnes and Proud Boys has always been to attempt to dress far-right viewpoints in a new trend uniform. This counter-cultural drive will continue to attract racists, but also the most credible, bringing the two together in a movement that contributes to the resurgence of American fascism.

Alexander Reid Ross is a senior lecturer in geography at Portland State University. He is the author of Against the fascist slide (AK Press, 2017). Twitter: @areidross

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