What exactly makes the Proud Boys far right? Don't they mostly just show up to fight Antifa? Antifa are fascists, despite their name and rhetoric, they're normal blackshirts. Someone needs to stand up to them, and it isn't the Portland Police.
They literally do all those things. They support protests by people who are often under threat. They counter protest against known violent extremists. I'm not saying they're perfect but your questions are disingenuous.
Dressing in black (blackshirts), marching down the streets, beating the perceivably "wrong" thinking civilians, demanding end of democracy, suppressing free speech, etc.
When half of America sees a fascist under every rock, but doesn't even know anything about real fascist and fascism from history books.
They aren't, but Americans have such limited metaphors for understanding the world that they call anything they disagree with fascist. It's the same reason proud boys are described as such.
I think you're listening to what they say they they do as opposed to what they actually do.
The Proud Boys have been declared a terrorist organization by the Canadian government.
This was specifically based on their role in organizing and planning for violence at at the Washington DC insurrection.
No matter what your feelings are about the Canadian government, that isn't something they'd do lightly.
While the prod boys official line "we just show up fight anti-fascists" is belied by their actions like "planning and participation in an attempt to violently overthrow the us government"
Protesting what you believe to be a corrupt system isn't overthrowing the government, else BLM are also guilty. Illegally protesting inside the capitol isn't overthrowing the government, else AOC would be in prison for leading protesters into it in 2018.
This protest was far less violent and less destructive than those that Americans have been made to accept as peaceful throughout the preceding year. This wasn't an insurrection, and none of your gaslighting will make it so.
By what metrics do we call it an insurrection? Since only 5 people died did we need 50 to die before it is an insurrection? 1000?
For the "protestors" who shouted "hang Mike Pence", did they need to shout "hang all of congress" for it to be an insurrection? "Hang all democrats"? "White power"? Which is it?
I hate to break it to you, but I can cherry-pick examples of left-leaning protesters calling for deaths of Trump, Republicans, cops, white people, etc. When people are emotional, they are hyperbolic. Unlike those in the Chaz, for example, these didn't even attempt to seize power. They marched in, made some noise, and left.
And as for deaths, we've seen far more of those over the previous year. The only one provably murdered in this case was a protester.
>This wasn't an insurrection, and none of your gaslighting will make it so.
They literally discussed their plans for violent revolution openly on various social media platforms for months beforehand. Who is gaslighting whom, here?
They literally never did this. They didn't believe that the election was fair, and fought tooth and nail to make sure the results weren't certified. Even the whackiest of Q-believers, stupidly believed (and still do) that it would be the government that would step in to prevent a coup.
I think it is fair to say that no matter how much we go back and forth on this, we are never going to agree.
The gulf between what you perceive and what I saw is far too great a chasm to cross.
If we carried on, it'd probably get heated or it'd end up being a massive wasted effort.
I've been through this rodeo too many times before. I spend the effort to go find objective sources that prove the claims I make only to be met with shifting goal posts and denialism.
For example the link literally describing the PB getting declared a terrorist organization. We're just hand waving that one away are we?
Anyways ... That was a rhetorical question. I've seen the way this all goes.
In order to preserve my own sanity and respect the sanctity of hackernews' no flamewars policy I'm just going to tell you that I disagree and wish you a peaceful day.
> I think it is fair to say that no matter how much we go back and forth on this, we are never going to agree.
The gulf between what you perceive and what I saw is far too great a chasm to cross.
If we carried on, it'd probably get heated or it'd end up being a massive wasted effort.
I've been through this rodeo too many times before. I spend the effort to go find objective sources that prove the claims I make only to be met with shifting goal posts and denialism.
I feel the same. That song and dance gets old. My goal wasn't to come to an agreement, but to introduce a different perspective in a largely one-sided discussion.
> For example the link literally describing the PB getting declared a terrorist organization. We're just hand waving that one away are we?
It's kind of downstream from this discussion, no? That designation is contingent on the facts that we were directly debating.
> In order to preserve my own sanity and respect the sanctity of hackernews' no flamewars policy I'm just going to tell you that I disagree and wish you a peaceful day.
Thank you, you too. I know we aren't able to reconcile, but I do appreciate engaging with the other side on a more civil forum.
They believed they were acting under the direct orders of the President of the United States, and that the military and police were on their side. If you refuse to believe the words of the people involved, watch some of the videos[0] from the scene - that crowd wasn't all there to protest, a lot of them were out for blood and vengeance.
Can you point to a specific video? I watched livestreams as it was happening, and have seen a lot of the Parler videos.
My impression both from the videos and from right-wing twitter in the lead-up to this event, is that some q believers thought that various government and military leaders were going to step in, expose, and arrest members of the "deep state". Some of the more out there ones thought that the "deep state" leaders would be executed for treason. They're insane, as is par for the course in American politics, but weren't attempting a violent revolution. The rhetoric of "stop the steal" was wholly consistent with that of "the resistance".
"It's just a prank bro" doesn't really hold a lot of water when the actions taken at the event look indistinguishable from what the "real" version would look like.
There's just so much actual, verifiable evidence of what happened that it is stunning to me that anyone would come along and say "no they were just upset at what they think was unfair"
But also why I don't really get involved in discussions with them anymore. If we can't come to terms around the existence of objective reality then anything further is a total waste of time.
Rhetoric about civil war was on everyone's lips in 2020. Both conservatives and liberals increasingly expected one. Conservatives were more 'ready' for one, being opposed to the status quo. Stating that you're prepared to fight for your beliefs in an extremely heated and increasingly repressive political environment doesn't make you responsible for that environment. This is a lot like the whining about Trump's 'fight' rhetoric which his defense skewered with their mashup of more extreme rhetoric from his detractors.
FWIW revolution was never going to happen though. Americans have no revolutionary potential.
A handful of edgy shirts at a massive protest does not an insurrection make.
> "It's just a prank bro" doesn't really hold a lot of water when the actions taken at the event look indistinguishable from what the "real" version would look like.
I don't think you know much about what a "real" one looks like.
It shouldn't be a surprise. It didn't just spring into existence. They got here by being subjected to a long campaign of ignoring actual, verifiable evidence. Decades long, if not longer.
There was a battle over basic epistemology, and objective reality lost. Everything else has followed on from that.
From that link: In early February 2021, the Canadian government designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist entity, citing the role the group played in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
They are not only "far-right", but also "neo-fascist, chauvinist, and exclusively male white nationalist", as the Wikipedia entry begins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys.
Neither SPLC nor Wikipedia are authoritative sources, it is quite possible that the article on the latter is written and (to use a term which has become popular recently) "colonised" by people associated with the former. SPLC had their purpose when they fought the KKK but they lost track when that enemy was defeated. Now they are just like a label printer run amok, calling people like Maajid Nawaz (muslim, founder of Quilliam, wants to reform islam to get rid of its autocratic and violent tendencies) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali an "islamophobe" while raking in money.
Do you have a better source for calling the Proud Boys "right-wing extremists"? I realise it is hard to find an objective source on this subject but such a source is needed and a definition of what exactly is meant with "right-wing extremism" is needed as well. These terms are bandied about just like they don't mean anything, in the same way as "white ___" (fill in the blanks) and the terms "__-phobe" and "___ist" are used.
So, what makes the Proud Boys "right-wing extremists"? The fact that they mostly show up to fight "anarchist/left-wing extremists" like Antifa? That is not a good reason, Antifa uses the same tactics as the Italian black shirts and the SA (Sturmabteilung) - in other words, as the real fascists and fascism-inspired national socialists. Their political ideology may differ (they claim to be anarchists but they behave more like syndicalists) but that does not mean they should be allowed to roam free.
SPLC and Wikipedia are not authoritative. Your rambling comment devoid of sources, on the other hand, is academic material on the matter. It really makes you think to see so many accounts created a few minutes ago suddenly appearing to defend a neo-fascist movement.
Holy non sequitur, Batman! Are you really claiming that Proud Boys are fascist because felle_realist's account was recently created?
Or do I misread your post?
Even if I misread that point, you didn't answer the question. The question was, do you have evidence beyond SPLC and Wikipedia. And you responded with... something that certainly wasn't evidence.
Note well: I don't have a dog in this fight. Proud Boys may well be fascist, far right, alt-right, or whatever. All I'm saying is, the request was for evidence, and you assumed the conclusion, but didn't supply evidence.
Consider the following: the person who questioned the authority of my sources provided no evidence for doing so, but you, that don't have a dog in this fight, are specifically asking me to defend against this baseless criticism?
My question for you is: why aren't you, renowned dog non-haver in this fight, asking for evidence for the only person in this conversation who provided none?
As to the first part of your comment, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how you misinterpreted my observation like that.
The top post in this thread was someone asking what made Proud Boys far right. You responded with an accusation of bad faith, and supplied SPLC and Wikipedia as evidence. Then someone said that those sources weren't solid, and asked if you had better sources. You responded by criticizing both accounts for being new, and for not supplying sources themselves, but with no better evidence. (I note with some irony how new your own account is.)
The original article made a claim. I don't think, in discussing such an article, that it's fair to immediately assume that it's bad faith to ask for evidence for the claim. Nor do I think that, when someone points out that your evidence is shoddy, and asks if you have any better evidence, that the correct answer is "you didn't supply any". (The actual answer to the question would appear to be "No, I don't".)
So I don't like your style of argument here. You're awfully quick to accuse the other side; that's not a good attitude to bring to HN. (They may in fact have been "just asking questions", but that shouldn't have been your assumption right out of the gate. "Assume good faith", as the HN guidelines say.)
> As to the first part of your comment, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how you misinterpreted my observation like that.
Well, then we're even, because I couldn't figure out what
>> Your rambling comment devoid of sources, on the other hand, is academic material on the matter.
was trying to say. I made a guess - apparently a wrong one. But even knowing that the guess was wrong, I don't know what you were actually trying to say.
I don’t think you understood my position: I categorically refuse to waste time looking for more sources for someone who critised the first ones I used without providing sources themselves to back up that criticism. It just boils down to having self-respect. If you ever find yourself in my situation I advise you to do the same (I still find your position of asking me instead of them for more evidence to be weird, but I won’t try to understand it on account of the aforementioned not wanting to waste my time).
This cannot be a good faith question, but for international readers who may not follow politics in the US, the proud boys are without a doubt far right.
They emerged from the alt right movement in the states, eventually calling themselves "alt lite". They were participants in the disastrous Unite the Right rally.
Their beliefs include the idea that men and western culture are under siege. They believe there is a white genocide occurring. They are often seen sporting clothing with "six million wasn't enough", a reference to the holocaust. They are an exclusively male organization that values chauvinism.
They are designated a terrorist group but the Canadian government. Several members have been charged with terrorism related to the Capitol attacks on January sixth.
There's a bunch more. Please take the parent posters comments with a giant grain of salt.
"Alt-right" was a catchall label used during the 2016 election for those who were rightish, but didn't see themselves represented by the Republican party. Eventually, media found that Richard Spencer had originally used the term some time before, and attempted to tie all "alt-right" groups to neofascism. They were fairly successful, and the real, Spencerian "alt-right" began disparagingly referring to the fake "alt-right" as "alt-light". By and large, the proudboys and other "alt-light" groups caved to the pressure and abandoned the alt-right label.
> They were participants in the disastrous Unite the Right rally.
So what? They went to a political rally and did nothing wrong.
> Their beliefs include the idea that men and western culture are under siege.
True.
> They believe there is a white genocide occurring.
Some, sure. Race has never been the focus of the proud-boys. Me, personally, I tend to agree with this. "Replacement migration" certainly meets the UN's definition of genocide.
> They are often seen sporting clothing with "six million wasn't enough", a reference to the holocaust.
No they aren't. This is based on a photo of one dude standing around the Proud Boys wearing a "6MWE" shirt, which others likely wouldn't even have known the meaning of (I didn't, and I spend a lot of time keeping up with right-leaning groups).
> They are an exclusively male organization that values chauvinism.
I don't know the details here but just throwing this out; activists in Sweden managed to do a lot of damage to neo-nazi groups by attacking their finances.
Apparently there were discrepancies that the tax office needed to know, and also the services used to gather tithe from their members did not want to be associated with neo-nazis.
These types of articles give me the creeps. It’s fashionable now to dox people as long as they’re on the outside, presuming you can use enough “labels” to justify it, such as “nazi” etc.
American politics is now one big tribal crap show.
I’ve seen this a few times on the net and it’s weird quote to me, because the nazis did incrementally come after more groups; Jews, gay, Gypsies, disabled, etc.
Is my takeaway that it didn’t happen or something else?
You don't get the joke? Ok. The poem by Martin Niemoller is often used by far-right apologists to draw a false equivalence between themselves and their opponents, implying that anyone who would fight right-wing extremism is just as much of an evil as the Nazis, doing so under false pretenses, and will simply by virtue of their opposition act as the Nazis themselves did.
And yet, in reality, the people who want to "come after" Jews, gays, gypsies, etc are those extremists, not the people opposing them. The slope is in reality only slippery in one direction.
> The slope is in reality only slippery in one direction.
OK, how about:
- first they came after the white men but I did not speak up for I am not a white man,
- then they came after the heterosexual men but I did not speak up for I am not a heterosexual man,
- then they came after the asian men but I did not speak up for I am not an asian man,
- ... many identity categories elided ...
. they they came after me and there was nobody left to speak up for me...
For sure it is not those "right-wing extremists" who are doing those things I outlined and with that the slippery slope seems to apply to others as well?
Better not to bring up that whole slippery slope thing since it cuts all ways and as such does not add anything to the conversation.
"At first they came for the people that wanted everyone to have health care, then they came for the people who wanted LGBT people to be treated fairly"...
Only one side intends for it to be slippery, yes, and it isn't the side that doesn't like nazis.
Because, you see, we've already been through this and fighting nazis and fascists and racists the first time hasn't led to the dystopian nightmare anyone is warning about now.
You don't think a similar thing could be written about Communist Russia from 1918 to 1920, say? Do you think that didn't happen? Or do you think they and the Nazis were the same side?
They were extremists - I'm with you there - but more than one side has had extremists.
>I’ve seen this a few times on the net and it’s weird quote to me, because the nazis did incrementally come after more groups; Jews, gay, Gypsies, disabled, etc.
>Is my takeaway that it didn’t happen or something else?
If Proud Boys are considered far-right neo-nazis, can anybody tell me of a not-far-right political advocacy group that’s allowed to protest without having them labeled as such?
I mean... given that this very article shows their leader and several large donors are not white.
You are asking for one example. A recent one that comes to mind are peaceful anti mask protesters.
I don't think they are labeled neonazis. I happen to disagree with them strongly and hold their views in low regard and believe they are directly contributing to the pandemic, but I haven't seen them widely labeled neonazis.
In normal political times, I think your example with disprove my premise, but here you have the SPLC lumping in the anti-maskers with nazis, murders and racists in their Year of Hate and Extremism.
Upon reflection, I think there’s two problems here: The left labeling everything they don’t like as being Nazi, and the right who is unable to police their own members from real jerks.
Here’s an example - when the Tea Party first started I sws a mildly-right group of people that had all sorts of people: Asians tired of taxes, pro-2nd amendment Blacks and quite a free people who were liberal but were tired of government waste. Even granola types who thought that the government was too big and too federal and thought that policy decisions should be more local.
Then the crazies showed up and within a month it became a group that I didn’t want to be associated with - we didn’t have the guts to tell them to leave and that was our fault.
I don’t like telling that story, because based on the evidence, their was barely any time at all when the Tea Party wasn’t nuts.
The link you posted mentions anti maskers once, and only calls some of them antigovernment.
But yeah, your broader point is worth exploring. People coopting movements is definitely a thing. Should the original groups do more to exclude the (your words) crazies?
Yes unless they're ok with being lumped together with them. If I like cars and so do nazis, I'm not gonna accept them into my club just because we share one thing in common. They're nazis.
The SPLC is describing anti-government groups among the anti-mask movement, not anti-maskers as a whole, but the Venn diagram of "anti-maskers", "right-wing militias", "conspiracy theorists" and "white supremacists" does overlap. Not perfectly, but also not inconsequentially.
The phenomenon you described as having happened within the Tea Party has happened everywhere among the right end of the American political spectrum over the last decade. Rhetoric which was once confined to the lunatic fringe of talk radio and forums is now mainstream. QAnon emerged from the bowels of 4chan, exploded and became popular enough to win elections, and now the Republican Party enthusiastically stands behind a Congresswoman who believes in Pizzagate and Jewish space lasers. The former president of the United States retweeting nazi memes was not even a story, it was just another Tuesday.
And yes, this has happened somewhat among the left, but not nearly to the same degree, and mostly as a reaction to what's happened on the right.
But can you really blame the left for seeing nazis everywhere when nazis keep showing up everywhere?
Depending on your definition of “protests” and “demonstrations”, go to almost any Planned Parenthood or any other clinic that proactively offers abortions and you’ll likely find a group of folks who show up with some regularity to protest against abortion. I’ve not heard those folks labeled as neo-nazis.
Good observation, but they’re not united based on being politically right of center - there’s many people in the Pro Life Movement who are left of center in many policies like government-run health care, government monopoly on schooling, and quotas for disadvantaged minorities.
I find your framing to be really curious, considering there's evidence pointing precisely the other way:
My own research analyzed about 1,500 protest-related news stories published throughout 2014 in mainstream, alternative, partisan and online news publications. Articles about conservative protests — like protests opposed to immigration or LGBT rights, or protests supporting Trump and gun rights — are less likely to be negatively framed as “riots” than other types of protests. In contrast, Black Lives Matter protests are more likely to be framed as riots, as news coverage focuses more on violence, property damage and confrontations with police.
If you read the article it explains its methodology and that it is not limited to the year 2014, which should be evidenced by the reference to Trump supporters, which presumably didn't exist in 2014 because he had not yet announced his candidacy.
Trump had talked about running long before the initial announcement. My mistake for thinking that the quote I was replying to, which specifically limited the scope to 2014, was accurate.
> A week ago, a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of Joe Biden as the next president. Even though some Capitol Police officers tried to hold back the mob and protect members of Congress, many observers wondered why the rioters did not experience the tear gas and rubber bullets used against the people protesting the killing of George Floyd. As the NAACP tweeted Wednesday, “They’ve killed us for less.”
They literally killed one of the protesters, and not with rubber bullets.
Anyway, the methodology is obviously flawed. They include alternative and mainstream news sources. Only one of these categories is granted "legitimacy", and that one skews far in the other direction.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadJust another American tribe that sees itself as some sort of savior to the oppressed and who thinks their end justify their means.
2021 America craves the proud boys and antifa.
The Proud Boys have been declared a terrorist organization by the Canadian government.
This was specifically based on their role in organizing and planning for violence at at the Washington DC insurrection.
No matter what your feelings are about the Canadian government, that isn't something they'd do lightly.
While the prod boys official line "we just show up fight anti-fascists" is belied by their actions like "planning and participation in an attempt to violently overthrow the us government"
edit: Here's a reference for the claim WRT being declared an actual terrorist org https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/02/03/canada-...
This protest was far less violent and less destructive than those that Americans have been made to accept as peaceful throughout the preceding year. This wasn't an insurrection, and none of your gaslighting will make it so.
For the "protestors" who shouted "hang Mike Pence", did they need to shout "hang all of congress" for it to be an insurrection? "Hang all democrats"? "White power"? Which is it?
And as for deaths, we've seen far more of those over the previous year. The only one provably murdered in this case was a protester.
They literally discussed their plans for violent revolution openly on various social media platforms for months beforehand. Who is gaslighting whom, here?
The gulf between what you perceive and what I saw is far too great a chasm to cross.
If we carried on, it'd probably get heated or it'd end up being a massive wasted effort.
I've been through this rodeo too many times before. I spend the effort to go find objective sources that prove the claims I make only to be met with shifting goal posts and denialism.
For example the link literally describing the PB getting declared a terrorist organization. We're just hand waving that one away are we?
Anyways ... That was a rhetorical question. I've seen the way this all goes.
In order to preserve my own sanity and respect the sanctity of hackernews' no flamewars policy I'm just going to tell you that I disagree and wish you a peaceful day.
I feel the same. That song and dance gets old. My goal wasn't to come to an agreement, but to introduce a different perspective in a largely one-sided discussion.
> For example the link literally describing the PB getting declared a terrorist organization. We're just hand waving that one away are we?
It's kind of downstream from this discussion, no? That designation is contingent on the facts that we were directly debating.
> In order to preserve my own sanity and respect the sanctity of hackernews' no flamewars policy I'm just going to tell you that I disagree and wish you a peaceful day.
Thank you, you too. I know we aren't able to reconcile, but I do appreciate engaging with the other side on a more civil forum.
[0]https://projects.propublica.org/parler-capitol-videos/
My impression both from the videos and from right-wing twitter in the lead-up to this event, is that some q believers thought that various government and military leaders were going to step in, expose, and arrest members of the "deep state". Some of the more out there ones thought that the "deep state" leaders would be executed for treason. They're insane, as is par for the course in American politics, but weren't attempting a violent revolution. The rhetoric of "stop the steal" was wholly consistent with that of "the resistance".
> MAGA > Civil War > Jan 6th
"It's just a prank bro" doesn't really hold a lot of water when the actions taken at the event look indistinguishable from what the "real" version would look like.
The shirts: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-go...
Violent chat in their private channels: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/capitol-ri...
An analysis and reporting of the Maga mob's garbage chats: https://idontspeakgerman.libsyn.com/77-capital-coup (audio)
There's just so much actual, verifiable evidence of what happened that it is stunning to me that anyone would come along and say "no they were just upset at what they think was unfair"
But also why I don't really get involved in discussions with them anymore. If we can't come to terms around the existence of objective reality then anything further is a total waste of time.
:)
Rhetoric about civil war was on everyone's lips in 2020. Both conservatives and liberals increasingly expected one. Conservatives were more 'ready' for one, being opposed to the status quo. Stating that you're prepared to fight for your beliefs in an extremely heated and increasingly repressive political environment doesn't make you responsible for that environment. This is a lot like the whining about Trump's 'fight' rhetoric which his defense skewered with their mashup of more extreme rhetoric from his detractors.
FWIW revolution was never going to happen though. Americans have no revolutionary potential.
> The shirts: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-go...
A handful of edgy shirts at a massive protest does not an insurrection make.
> "It's just a prank bro" doesn't really hold a lot of water when the actions taken at the event look indistinguishable from what the "real" version would look like.
I don't think you know much about what a "real" one looks like.
> Violent chat in their private channels: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/capitol-ri...
Again, a lot of empty hyperbole from a small minority, par for the course with 'the resistance', antifa, etc.
> An analysis and reporting of the Maga mob's garbage chats: https://idontspeakgerman.libsyn.com/77-capital-coup (audio)
I've had to sit through I Don't Speak German before. Garbage, unsubstantive regurgitation of bourgeois talking-points. No thank you.
There was a battle over basic epistemology, and objective reality lost. Everything else has followed on from that.
From that link: In early February 2021, the Canadian government designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist entity, citing the role the group played in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
They are not only "far-right", but also "neo-fascist, chauvinist, and exclusively male white nationalist", as the Wikipedia entry begins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys.
[1]https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
The head of the Proud Boys is not white, so it's hard to imagine them being too serious about "white supremacy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_Tarrio
Do you have a better source for calling the Proud Boys "right-wing extremists"? I realise it is hard to find an objective source on this subject but such a source is needed and a definition of what exactly is meant with "right-wing extremism" is needed as well. These terms are bandied about just like they don't mean anything, in the same way as "white ___" (fill in the blanks) and the terms "__-phobe" and "___ist" are used.
So, what makes the Proud Boys "right-wing extremists"? The fact that they mostly show up to fight "anarchist/left-wing extremists" like Antifa? That is not a good reason, Antifa uses the same tactics as the Italian black shirts and the SA (Sturmabteilung) - in other words, as the real fascists and fascism-inspired national socialists. Their political ideology may differ (they claim to be anarchists but they behave more like syndicalists) but that does not mean they should be allowed to roam free.
Or do I misread your post?
Even if I misread that point, you didn't answer the question. The question was, do you have evidence beyond SPLC and Wikipedia. And you responded with... something that certainly wasn't evidence.
Note well: I don't have a dog in this fight. Proud Boys may well be fascist, far right, alt-right, or whatever. All I'm saying is, the request was for evidence, and you assumed the conclusion, but didn't supply evidence.
My question for you is: why aren't you, renowned dog non-haver in this fight, asking for evidence for the only person in this conversation who provided none?
As to the first part of your comment, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how you misinterpreted my observation like that.
The original article made a claim. I don't think, in discussing such an article, that it's fair to immediately assume that it's bad faith to ask for evidence for the claim. Nor do I think that, when someone points out that your evidence is shoddy, and asks if you have any better evidence, that the correct answer is "you didn't supply any". (The actual answer to the question would appear to be "No, I don't".)
So I don't like your style of argument here. You're awfully quick to accuse the other side; that's not a good attitude to bring to HN. (They may in fact have been "just asking questions", but that shouldn't have been your assumption right out of the gate. "Assume good faith", as the HN guidelines say.)
> As to the first part of your comment, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how you misinterpreted my observation like that.
Well, then we're even, because I couldn't figure out what
>> Your rambling comment devoid of sources, on the other hand, is academic material on the matter.
was trying to say. I made a guess - apparently a wrong one. But even knowing that the guess was wrong, I don't know what you were actually trying to say.
They emerged from the alt right movement in the states, eventually calling themselves "alt lite". They were participants in the disastrous Unite the Right rally.
Their beliefs include the idea that men and western culture are under siege. They believe there is a white genocide occurring. They are often seen sporting clothing with "six million wasn't enough", a reference to the holocaust. They are an exclusively male organization that values chauvinism.
They are designated a terrorist group but the Canadian government. Several members have been charged with terrorism related to the Capitol attacks on January sixth.
There's a bunch more. Please take the parent posters comments with a giant grain of salt.
"Alt-right" was a catchall label used during the 2016 election for those who were rightish, but didn't see themselves represented by the Republican party. Eventually, media found that Richard Spencer had originally used the term some time before, and attempted to tie all "alt-right" groups to neofascism. They were fairly successful, and the real, Spencerian "alt-right" began disparagingly referring to the fake "alt-right" as "alt-light". By and large, the proudboys and other "alt-light" groups caved to the pressure and abandoned the alt-right label.
> They were participants in the disastrous Unite the Right rally.
So what? They went to a political rally and did nothing wrong.
> Their beliefs include the idea that men and western culture are under siege.
True.
> They believe there is a white genocide occurring.
Some, sure. Race has never been the focus of the proud-boys. Me, personally, I tend to agree with this. "Replacement migration" certainly meets the UN's definition of genocide.
> They are often seen sporting clothing with "six million wasn't enough", a reference to the holocaust.
No they aren't. This is based on a photo of one dude standing around the Proud Boys wearing a "6MWE" shirt, which others likely wouldn't even have known the meaning of (I didn't, and I spend a lot of time keeping up with right-leaning groups).
> They are an exclusively male organization that values chauvinism.
True.
Apparently there were discrepancies that the tax office needed to know, and also the services used to gather tithe from their members did not want to be associated with neo-nazis.
American politics is now one big tribal crap show.
Then they came for the pedophiles, and I did nothing, because I was not a pedophile.
Then they didn't come for me, because the slippery-slope fallacy is bullshit.
Is my takeaway that it didn’t happen or something else?
And yet, in reality, the people who want to "come after" Jews, gays, gypsies, etc are those extremists, not the people opposing them. The slope is in reality only slippery in one direction.
OK, how about:
- first they came after the white men but I did not speak up for I am not a white man,
- then they came after the heterosexual men but I did not speak up for I am not a heterosexual man,
- then they came after the asian men but I did not speak up for I am not an asian man,
- ... many identity categories elided ...
. they they came after me and there was nobody left to speak up for me...
For sure it is not those "right-wing extremists" who are doing those things I outlined and with that the slippery slope seems to apply to others as well?
Better not to bring up that whole slippery slope thing since it cuts all ways and as such does not add anything to the conversation.
Because, you see, we've already been through this and fighting nazis and fascists and racists the first time hasn't led to the dystopian nightmare anyone is warning about now.
They were extremists - I'm with you there - but more than one side has had extremists.
>Is my takeaway that it didn’t happen or something else?
It's supposed to be a shibboleth
I mean... given that this very article shows their leader and several large donors are not white.
I don't think they are labeled neonazis. I happen to disagree with them strongly and hold their views in low regard and believe they are directly contributing to the pandemic, but I haven't seen them widely labeled neonazis.
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2021/02/01/year-hate-2020
Upon reflection, I think there’s two problems here: The left labeling everything they don’t like as being Nazi, and the right who is unable to police their own members from real jerks.
Here’s an example - when the Tea Party first started I sws a mildly-right group of people that had all sorts of people: Asians tired of taxes, pro-2nd amendment Blacks and quite a free people who were liberal but were tired of government waste. Even granola types who thought that the government was too big and too federal and thought that policy decisions should be more local.
Then the crazies showed up and within a month it became a group that I didn’t want to be associated with - we didn’t have the guts to tell them to leave and that was our fault.
I don’t like telling that story, because based on the evidence, their was barely any time at all when the Tea Party wasn’t nuts.
But yeah, your broader point is worth exploring. People coopting movements is definitely a thing. Should the original groups do more to exclude the (your words) crazies?
The phenomenon you described as having happened within the Tea Party has happened everywhere among the right end of the American political spectrum over the last decade. Rhetoric which was once confined to the lunatic fringe of talk radio and forums is now mainstream. QAnon emerged from the bowels of 4chan, exploded and became popular enough to win elections, and now the Republican Party enthusiastically stands behind a Congresswoman who believes in Pizzagate and Jewish space lasers. The former president of the United States retweeting nazi memes was not even a story, it was just another Tuesday.
And yes, this has happened somewhat among the left, but not nearly to the same degree, and mostly as a reaction to what's happened on the right.
But can you really blame the left for seeing nazis everywhere when nazis keep showing up everywhere?
My own research analyzed about 1,500 protest-related news stories published throughout 2014 in mainstream, alternative, partisan and online news publications. Articles about conservative protests — like protests opposed to immigration or LGBT rights, or protests supporting Trump and gun rights — are less likely to be negatively framed as “riots” than other types of protests. In contrast, Black Lives Matter protests are more likely to be framed as riots, as news coverage focuses more on violence, property damage and confrontations with police.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/13/theres-do....
> A week ago, a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of Joe Biden as the next president. Even though some Capitol Police officers tried to hold back the mob and protect members of Congress, many observers wondered why the rioters did not experience the tear gas and rubber bullets used against the people protesting the killing of George Floyd. As the NAACP tweeted Wednesday, “They’ve killed us for less.”
They literally killed one of the protesters, and not with rubber bullets.
Anyway, the methodology is obviously flawed. They include alternative and mainstream news sources. Only one of these categories is granted "legitimacy", and that one skews far in the other direction.
You could probably find a few that aren’t- these are what are called “useful idiots”