RadixJournal - May 04, 2023


The Ironic Trajectory of The Proud Boys

Hosted by
Richard Spencer
Mentioned
Gavin Donald Trump Liz Cheney Stonewall Jackson Tucker Carlson Peter Brimelow Enrico Tario Stuart Rhodes Jason Kessler Jared Taylor Mike Pence Proud Boys Joe Biden Joe Rogan Charlottesville McGinnis Antifa Nixon Jane
Spy vs. Spy ＂They Let You Do It＂

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

140.83

Word count

3,051

Sentence count

172

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

14

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Proud Boys have been convicted of sedition for their role in the January 6th attack on the offices of the US Capitol. In this episode, I discuss the implications for the future of the case, and what it means for the alt-right movement as a whole.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, this is Richard, and I am going to talk about the Proud Boys and the more general trajectory of the alt-right or dissident right or alternative politics or whatever you want to call it over the past five to seven years.
00:00:20.840 So, as you probably have heard, the Proud Boys leadership was convicted of sedition today for their role in the January 6th attack.
00:00:37.520 Uh, this comes after the Oath Keepers, a similar group, uh, maybe a little bit older, maybe more of the 90s militia types than the Proud Boys, uh, but they also faced these same charges and they also are going to prison.
00:00:59.060 Now that these charges have stuck, and I presume they will stick, although the Proud Boys will surely, uh, appeal this, but these charges will stick.
00:01:11.580 And, uh, it's going to do two things.
00:01:14.300 First off, it might open up prosecutions of other people involved in the, let's say, planning or kind of middle management of January 6th.
00:01:27.200 Um, and it's also going to obviously affect how we think about that event and the narrative that will eventually win out.
00:01:38.400 Um, with regard to the first point, one thing that I have found rather troubling about the prosecution of January 6th is that some 1,000 people have been prosecuted, sentenced, or faced jail time.
00:01:56.520 There have been quite a bit of, um, law enforcement with regard to this matter, as there should be.
00:02:06.220 Uh, but what I've noticed, and, and, and this is something I've talked a lot about in, in my discussion podcast with the group,
00:02:15.440 is the, the, the fact that they, they seem to go for a kind of high, low enforcement of the law against people involved in January 6th.
00:02:26.440 And I think the January 6th commission was actually integral in this.
00:02:32.600 So, what I mean by that is that all of the people, more or less, who entered the Capitol, broke a window, punched a cop in the face,
00:02:45.200 pooped in the corridors of power, whatever, have been prosecuted and have served time to some extent.
00:02:54.600 And the, you know, again, this is hundreds of people at this point.
00:02:59.920 I, I think the, the arrest total is over a thousand actually.
00:03:04.460 On the other hand, uh, the January 6th commission seemed to focus like a laser beam on Donald Trump.
00:03:13.320 Now, they, they certainly talked about all sorts of people.
00:03:17.820 They showed images of the violence and mayhem, but it was, in effect, a show trial to convict Donald Trump.
00:03:26.860 And I don't say show trial in the sense that it was meaningless, um, or corrupt.
00:03:32.240 Uh, I, I say show trial in the sense that it's not an actual trial, although it seems like one.
00:03:37.420 It has all the trappings and the mechanism of the trial, but no one is actually convicted.
00:03:43.840 But it, it was a show trial in order to convict Donald Trump, which is fair enough.
00:03:48.780 But to be honest, um, I don't feel that sorry for Trump, but I do actually feel sorry for the hundreds of people who have been arrested
00:03:59.500 and who are, have FaceTime already served it or may be facing something worse and had their lives, uh, upended at the very least by the whole process.
00:04:12.640 And, and by the whole stop the steal movement and by the whole Trump movement, to be honest.
00:04:18.300 Uh, if I were Joe Biden, I actually would have seriously considered pardoning all of these people.
00:04:26.020 And basically just said, listen, you did something really wrong and you need to face that reality.
00:04:33.840 However, I'm not sure spending some time in jail is going to help you break out of that reality.
00:04:42.440 Um, and in a way you were a victim of this thing just as much as the police at the Capitol were.
00:04:53.920 Now, obviously it's different.
00:04:56.320 These people were the aggressors, of course, but they were also victims in the sense that they were progressively brainwashed over the course of years by QAnon propaganda,
00:05:07.500 by stop the steal nonsense, by Trump himself through his tweets, uh, through his call for a wild rally on January 6th and all this stuff.
00:05:18.020 They, they, they, they acted almost like automatons, uh, an army of robots, uh, if you will, um, in order to achieve a political objective of Donald Trump and his team.
00:05:33.520 So in a way they are victims and in a way I feel sorry for them.
00:05:38.120 And if I were in a position of power, I might very well have pardoned them.
00:05:41.660 It would have been a, an interesting gesture, a kind of Nixon goes to China gesture, which I think is, are usually the most successful ones.
00:05:49.560 Now, what has frustrated me, what I find troubling is that the middle management of January 6th hasn't really been held to account.
00:06:02.280 So we have all of these loons and goons who have been arrested properly and we have this, you know, specter of a prosecution against Donald Trump, but for January 6th to take place, there's a whole middle group of people who in effect have gotten off scot-free.
00:06:25.040 And I think in so many ways, Jane, the January 6th committee was an attempt to whitewash the conservative movement.
00:06:34.920 You know, in a way, the January 6th committee was the exact opposite of what Tucker Carlson depicted it as.
00:06:41.960 He depicted it as a partisan witch hunt along with Donald Trump.
00:06:46.300 It was actually something else.
00:06:47.880 It was a, it was a partisan whitewash.
00:06:50.200 It was Liz Cheney's attempt to, you know, like whitewash all of her friends, the good Republicans who weren't exactly MAGA, including Mike Pence, to demonize Trump, deservedly in many ways, and to basically demonstrate that there were violent actors. 1.00
00:07:09.600 The fact is, the entire conservative movement was kind of headed in this direction, and that includes many people who Liz Cheney likes and admires and wants to work with in the future.
00:07:21.220 So anyway, that's my take on it.
00:07:23.140 But let's, that's the background, I guess.
00:07:25.220 Let's, let's start to focus on the Proud Boys themselves.
00:07:28.600 Uh, so, um, four members, including Enrico Terrio, who became a leader of the Proud Boys, are going to prison.
00:07:41.900 And, uh, in fact, uh, looking at this case, we haven't gone through sentencing yet, of course, but looking at this, I mean, they, they are in a whole heap of trouble.
00:07:51.480 Uh, this is, according to the New York Times, the Sedition, the Sedition Charge, which is rarely used and harks back to the Union's effort to protect the federal government against secessionist rebels during the Civil War, was also used in two separate trials against nine members of another far-right group, the Oath Keeper, the Militia.
00:08:10.100 Six of those defendants, including Stuart Rhodes, the organization's founder and leader, were convicted of sedition.
00:08:15.420 Each of the others were found guilty of different serious felonies.
00:08:19.800 On the conspiracy counts alone, the men could face a maximum of nearly 50 years in prison, and they were found guilty of other felonies as well, as well.
00:08:28.140 So, this is, uh, very bad.
00:08:31.520 You know, there was so much talk about a civil war, uh, on the grift right, you know, the Tim Pool-type programming.
00:08:40.900 Uh, civil war, civil war, civil war is coming.
00:08:43.640 And in many ways, it depicted conservatives as kind of victims in the Civil War.
00:08:47.320 Well, the Civil War didn't come exactly.
00:08:51.220 There was this insurrectionist, seditious event.
00:08:54.960 But, uh, it seems like we've gone straight to Reconstruction and we're convicting people of sedition.
00:09:01.960 Uh, so it came and went.
00:09:04.380 Um, I think it's worth revisiting the Proud Boys because they're a unique group.
00:09:10.420 I think if, in, in the public's imagination, and here I'm talking about the broader public, I, I think if they hear Proud Boys at this point, they probably think of them as a violent white supremacist gang.
00:09:24.000 Um, that meme has been inculcated and, in many ways, it's accurate. 1.00
00:09:33.260 Um, in some ways, not.
00:09:36.180 But I think some of the history of all of this has gotten lost.
00:09:40.220 So, I first heard about the Proud Boys, uh, in 2016, uh, along with many others.
00:09:50.980 And, um, I actually heard about them before the election of Donald Trump.
00:09:56.160 And, uh, when I first heard the name, I assumed that it was a gay conservative group.
00:10:02.880 Um, I guess that word proud has been, uh, kind of commandeered by, uh, by the gays, uh, over the past, uh, 10 years. 0.99
00:10:11.040 But, anyway, uh, but it wasn't.
00:10:13.720 And Gavin actually sent me an email.
00:10:15.500 So, this is an email that I received on the evening of September 20th, 2016.
00:10:22.400 This email was sent to Jared Taylor, myself, and Peter Brimelow.
00:10:26.100 So, uh, my sense is that Gavin was trying to kind of, like, curry favor, get a little cred from the white nationalist leadership.
00:10:37.780 Uh, do you guys know about my new organization?
00:10:40.880 It's going very well.
00:10:42.300 We are a multiracial.
00:10:44.560 Uh, we are multiracial.
00:10:46.000 But recognize the West is the best.
00:10:48.940 And that was predominant, and that was predominantly white men.
00:10:53.680 Okay, not great grammar here.
00:10:54.900 But, um, so, he's basically saying we are multiracial.
00:10:59.620 Anyone can join.
00:11:00.640 But, you know, we're Western chauvinist.
00:11:03.320 And, well, you know, you know when we say the West.
00:11:05.420 We just basically mean whites. 0.99
00:11:06.960 The blacks on board don't blame whitey for nuttin'. 0.99
00:11:10.460 Okay. 0.99
00:11:11.340 Uh, I think it's a reasonable solution to the mess we're in.
00:11:14.460 And then he links to an article at Talkies Magazine.
00:11:17.980 Uh, I invited you guys to the Facebook page.
00:11:20.640 It's private and a wealth of great links and dank memes.
00:11:26.420 Woo! 0.99
00:11:27.180 Blast from the past from 2016.
00:11:29.260 So, Gavin, at the beginning, was currying favor with white nationalists, basically telling us that, ah, it's more or less white nationalism.
00:11:40.420 You know, but America is a diverse place, so we're going to let some based African Americans and Hispanics on board, etc.
00:11:48.760 That was Gavin's image of the thing as it began.
00:11:52.300 Now, I was on Gavin's show many times during 2016 and even into 2017.
00:11:59.560 Uh, it was pretty fun.
00:12:02.220 Uh, I don't remember what we talked about exactly, but it was, you know, fair enough.
00:12:07.000 And then things started to change by kind of mid to late 2017.
00:12:12.640 And I should mention this.
00:12:13.720 Gavin and I have a history.
00:12:14.940 So, I used to be the editor of Talkies Magazine in 2008 and 2009.
00:12:22.400 I think it was up until 2010 that I left and founded AlternativeRight.com in 2010.
00:12:28.240 And, um, Gavin had been around.
00:12:31.160 I mean, I think he had written an article for the American Conservative or something at some point in, like, 2005, let's say.
00:12:40.060 And I actually recruited him, and that recruiting meant meeting him at various coffee shops in Williamsburg, going full hipster, you know, embedding myself in hipsterville in order to get him to be a writer, kind of a columnist.
00:12:57.440 So, he wrote a number of articles for me while I was editor, and then he became a kind of regular columnist after that.
00:13:07.180 And I don't know what his status is at the moment.
00:13:10.060 So, I think he moved on and kind of focused on doing talk shows.
00:13:17.260 But anyway, by 2017, Gavin was basically denouncing the alt-right.
00:13:25.140 So, he had gone from, in 2016, you know, being like, hey, guys, listen, we're on your side.
00:13:31.820 Just let us do our thing, and so on, which, of course, I was fine with.
00:13:36.260 And then he moved to, we're not white supremacist, we're not the alt-right.
00:13:42.480 I can't believe they call you, call us the alt-right.
00:13:46.040 It's so rude. 0.99
00:13:47.360 Look, our leaders have black wives, and look at this Hispanic guy, and blah, blah, blah. 1.00
00:13:53.540 So, they thought that they could gain something by basically claiming they're not racist. 0.96
00:14:02.360 Now, this is something that's very typical.
00:14:05.420 This is something you see among almost every conservative group for the past 50 years.
00:14:10.780 But, again, the trajectory of the Proud Boys proved to be quite ironic in this regard, because I would say that even today, I bet if you found someone who's still a member of the Proud Boys, they're still going to be saying that line.
00:14:30.780 Just as they're convicted of sedition against the government, they're still going to be saying, well, but we're not anti-Semitic, or we ain't white supremacists, you know, we're just American patriots.
00:14:42.220 They're going to still say that line as their leadership goes to prison for 50 years.
00:14:47.500 Well, they got into hot water in 2018 as well, and there was a violent altercation in New York City, and Gavin made a rather cagey and strategic decision to step away from leadership of the Proud Boys.
00:15:10.160 He was, of course, the founder, and he said,
00:15:13.220 As of today, I'm officially dissociating myself from the Proud Boys.
00:15:19.400 And I'm reading here from an article in The Guardian, referencing the New York group as the NYC-9, McGinnis said,
00:15:27.760 I am told by my legal team and law enforcement that this gesture could help alleviate their sentencing.
00:15:34.020 He added, fine.
00:15:35.480 At the very least, this will show jurors they are not dealing with a gang, and there is no head of operations. 0.98
00:15:41.560 Well, that's a ridiculous statement, and it's so ridiculous, I think it really must be a lie. 0.91
00:15:49.660 First off, you can't, if you commit a crime, you can't then dissolve the gang a week later and say, 0.98
00:15:56.840 See, we're no longer a gang, and so we weren't, it doesn't work that way.
00:16:01.280 It's like out of sequence.
00:16:02.320 Secondly, I don't think it really, I don't know, you know, whether there's a top guy or not, the question is whether it's a gang or is it not.
00:16:16.540 If you act like a gang, you are a gang.
00:16:18.480 Like, if you walk like a duck and you quack and walk like a duck, you are a duck, effectively.
00:16:22.940 So it was basically a way of Gavin getting out from this group and avoiding any kind of criminal prosecution while claiming that he's doing it in support of the boys, you know, kind of thing.
00:16:37.440 And from 2018 on, the group basically became one mini Charlottesville after another in Portland, Oregon.
00:16:50.180 And they were kind of having these battles over nothing, in effect.
00:16:58.220 The Charlottesville protest was inspired by a defense of the Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues.
00:17:07.560 On some level, by 2018 and 2019, the Proud Boys were just the Proud Boys.
00:17:12.960 They were going to fight Antifa basically over nothing.
00:17:16.180 Now, Gavin also bragged about avoiding Charlottesville and not wanting to be involved with those white supremacists there.
00:17:26.620 As it turns out, Jason Kessler, who organized Charlottesville, was a member of the Proud Boys.
00:17:31.300 But, you know, what can we say?
00:17:34.840 And yet, again, the ironic trajectory of this group is that they continue to denounce white supremacism as if that's going to gain them favor in the media, while they increasingly become an actual violent gang and eventually involve themselves in an insurrection against the U.S. government. 0.91
00:18:01.060 Now, it was a buffoonish, clownish insurrection, there's no doubt, but that doesn't mean it's not an insurrection. 0.85
00:18:07.740 I think there's also this kind of, like, weird quality to the alt-right of the past five years, where they want to present themselves as kind of ostensibly ridiculous, as if that will change the essence of who they are. 0.90
00:18:24.240 So, you know, Gavin will say, like, we're Western chauvinists, we're, you know, the West is the best, and, you know, we invented the modern world and all this kind of stuff.
00:18:37.300 And then they'll also, you have initiation rituals where you have to name five cereals while people are punching you.
00:18:44.320 The Proud Boys themselves isn't named after gay pride, as I first thought, it's actually named after a song from Aladdin called Proud of Your Boy or something like that.
00:18:55.700 So there's just this kind of ironic absurdity to the whole thing.
00:19:00.460 And it's presented as a face on a group as if that changes the essence of what they're about.
00:19:05.840 This is something you definitely saw in the alt-right in 2016.
00:19:10.880 And I think the Proud Boys, which were clearly inspired by the alt-right, just kind of continued it.
00:19:16.600 And they kept feeling like this game would work.
00:19:21.440 This relates as well to the optics matter of post-Charlottesville 2017 and 2018,
00:19:28.980 where it's all about, oh, if we just wave a flag, then, you know, this is the one weird trick that allows us into the corridors of power or something.
00:19:38.920 It's this weird kind of, like, obvious deception attempt.
00:19:44.900 And it just doesn't work.
00:19:48.000 You have to be who you are.
00:19:50.980 And you can't just come up with one weird trick that's going to lead you out of this.
00:19:56.960 So, again, the ironic trajectory of the Proud Boys is that they continue to be politically correct in their rhetoric, of course,
00:20:07.500 while they continue to get increasingly violent and increasingly engaged in actual sedition against the government.
00:20:15.960 And it's also not wrong to say that Gavin wanted this and was directly calling for it.
00:20:23.900 Now, I would, just to be honest and fair here, I'm not sure I'm quite innocent in this regard.
00:20:31.120 You can certainly find tweets of mine from 2017 where it's like, yeah, you know, be a badass, be a tough guy, all that kind of stuff.
00:20:41.280 That vibe was in the air.
00:20:43.820 There's no doubt.
00:20:45.300 Gavin took that to a whole new level.
00:20:48.140 There are super cuts of Gavin on Joe Rogan, on other podcasts, or on his own show, just directly calling for violence and directly calling for non-defensive violence. 0.97
00:21:03.880 Just saying, if you see someone who looks like Antifa, punch them in the face. 0.99
00:21:07.460 He said that and things like that all the time. 0.80
00:21:11.200 So, again, you have this weird, like, dichotomy between, you know, thinking that you're going to get off scot-free by claiming you're not the alt-right,
00:21:23.480 while you're directly calling for violence at the same time.
00:21:28.180 And it just becomes ridiculous, and it ends up in a situation like this,
00:21:35.520 where the leadership of the group are going to spend 50 years in prison.