I remember when Gavin McInness was still making content for them. Their strength was always to have stories and bits that no where else would. Not sure how much they strayed from that in the last 5-10 years but they almost never showed up on my radar anymore
Yes, he left Vice over "creative differences" a couple of years before he founded Proud Boys. He wasn't as openly fascist while at Vice, though Vice definitely had to do some damage control over his comments.
I disagree with you here. Proud boys was originally created out of the need to protect people from the likes of Antifa, which is a facist group.
Most activists/hacktivists are fascists. If you don't agree with them, they cause issue, violence, and/or destruction until they get their way. Opposing groups like this does not make one fascist.
Lots of what Gavin does is satire...which many people apparently don't get or understand.
| McInnes, an avid boozer, has consistently maintained that he started the Proud Boys as an outlet for harmless fun: an Animal House-style drinking club for male buddies.
| "It’s a men’s organization, sort of like the Odd Fellows,” McInnes explained. “It mirrors the Knights of Columbus in many ways”–another organization that he belongs to. Only in this case,the Proud Boys subscribe to an ideology of “anti racial guilt,” that, to me, seemed to evoke white pride.
| Actually, McInnes wouldn’t describe it in explicit terms like “white pride” or “white supremacy.”
| “Our motto is that, we’re Western Chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world,” he said matter-of-factly. “That’s really the only tenet.”
I don't think it was started specifically for that, it was just a boozer group I think. But then Antifa started bashing grandma's and someone had to step up.
I would honestly really like to read a book (or New Yorker article, but I repeat myself) about this period. Was he fascist, just not openly, in the early days of Vice? Or was he radicalized later? If he was radicalized, how did that happen?
As loathsome as I find him, he also started two well-known organizations, with very different vibes, but also a through-line you can see if you squint. It must be an interesting story, maybe even an enlightening one.
Another interesting example if you're into that sort of thing is Baked Alaska, coincidentally also from Canada, that went from being a Bernie bro working for Buzzfeed to livestreaming Jan 6th inside the Capitol.
Yeah exactly. I think that must be part of the story. I can see how doing, like, countercultural grittiness as an act could lead to cognitive dissonance and a desire to "stop being a poser".
This is why I'm skeptical of dismissing radical rhetoric as "oh that's just talk". A lot of people have a strong desire to be "real", which will drive some of them to put their money where their mouth is, even if they started out with just some "harmless" rhetoric because it seemed fun to say edgy stuff.
