The Proudboys [View all]

[JHan]

The Metropolitan Republican Club invited The Proud Boys to one of their gatherings, and of course, violence ensued:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211275374

This is a photo of them, all proud to be fucking idiots. Note that they're using, and ruining for sane people everywhere else, the A-okay hand gesture the alt-right has twisted into a symbol of supremacy to TrOlLtEhLiBz



There are also a few brown faces, which doesn't surprise me. Their presence doesn't change the fact this is a hate group. Ideas can unite people from different backgrounds, whether those ideas are anti-establishment, misogynistic, anti-immigrant or racist.

The Daily Beast looked into this about a month ago:

David Neiwert, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, says, “The ranks of people of color who show up to these right-wing events are totally dominated by males.” He says the alt-right targets white males between the ages of 15 and 30 with a message of male resentment, which ends up attracting black, Latino, and Asian men as well.

Neiwert says many young men of color in the far-right grew up on conservative traditions common in minority communities. Their journey to the far-right has been enabled by the ease of recruitment in the internet age and the endorsement of extremism by Trump.

Entry points to the far-right include male-dominated video-game culture, the anti-feminist gamergate, troll havens on 4chan and 8chan, and the conspiracism that flourishes on websites like Infowars. Libertarianism is another gateway.

“A lot of these young guys,” Neiwert says, “especially from the software world, who are being sucked into white nationalism, start out being worked up about Ayn Rand in high school.”

I mean, I just use Ayn Rand as a feeler for figuring out who not to date.

So who are The Proud Boys?

Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice, left Vice in 2008 because of "creative differences". Since then he's forged a far right/alt-right path culminating in the creation of The Proud Boys in 2016. He's the sort of Supremacist in the vein of Mike Cernovich and Stefan Molyneaux- rather than flaunt his anti-semitism and racism outright like most unapologetic white supremacists, he opts instead to veil his bigotry with coded language. When faced with accusations of racism, he uses his marriage to a woman with Indian Ancestry and their children as his get out of jail free card.

These are the core tenets at the heart of being a "Proud Boy", a mash-up of reactionary garbage.



"Minimum Government"
- this really means a rejection of social and economic justice and a rejection of checks and balances.

"maximum freedom"
- which exists nowhere, It's a pipe dream fueled by Libertarian delusions about what freedom actually means. Without checks and balances, the powerful will use their freedom to dominate with impunity. "Maximum freedom" allows those with more power to impose their will on the less powerful. Always. "Maximum freedom" isn't even feudalism, it's barbarism.

"Anti-racism" and "Anti-racial guilt"
- where "White guilt" is deliberately conflated with a collective responsibility we should all share to improve quality of life, so people are not targeted and discriminated against because of their immutable traits. "Anti-racial guilt" is a rejection of introspection. And the alt-right, which this group aligns itself to, cares about race a whole lot so "anti-racism" is also a lie. The politics they support are the politics of anti-immigrant rhetoric, poor shaming and race-baiting. It is the politics of voter suppression and undoing every bit of progress that was made to address racism in America.

"pro free speech" / "anti-political correctness"
- what they really mean is speech and behavior without consequence and without challenge.

"pro-2nd Amendment,"
- where they reveal their delusional fantasy of overthrowing the government. It also means intimidating those less powerful or those they hate with juvenile displays of machismo - like open carrying in a restaurant like a fucking moron.

"Glorifying the Entrepreneur"
Here's a spock gif addressing this very serious problem:


"Venerating the Housewife"
- a call to revert to traditionalism, where a woman's role in life is to be subservient to men. The only acceptable sort of woman for a Proudboy is a traditional woman who submits to them.

"Western Chauvinism"
- so let's be real. The reasons these people like "the west" have nothing to do with freedom, access to opportunity, or some of the liberal ideas which improved our quality of life - like the Civil Rights Act. The Proud Boys get to decide the Western Culture they like....... which they'll use as a cudgel against those they demonize. This is all about dominance.