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Debate Gives Fresh Notoriety to Vice Co-Founder’s Proud Boys

Debate Gives Fresh Notoriety to Vice Co-Founder’s Proud Boys

President Donald Trump elevated the stature of the Proud Boys during Tuesday’s debate when he urged the hard-right group to “stand back and stand by” ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

He also capped the unlikely journey of founder Gavin McInnes from scrappy punk-rock entrepreneur to extremist political provocateur.

McInnes helped found the magazine that is the cornerstone of closely held Vice Media Inc., once valued as high as $5.7 billion. He since has become a divisive figure living in an affluent New York City suburb even as those he inspired brawl with antifa groups around the U.S. in increasingly violent confrontations.

The organization McInnes began four years ago, which combines bare-knuckle violence with fraternity-like initiation rites and abstinence from pornography and masturbation, joins a constellation of groups that some say threaten the 2020 vote. The possibility alone could accomplish their goal.

“There are some people worried about Election Day and what they might be experiencing at the hands of some of these extreme groups, and I think that’s by design,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. “This is something that we need to be prepared for and have a plan for, but my hope is that voters are not deterred, because I think that’s what these groups want.”

Debate Gives Fresh Notoriety to Vice Co-Founder’s Proud Boys

On Wednesday, authorities announced the indictment of a 50-year-old member of the Proud Boys, Alan Swinney, on assault and other charges for pointing a revolver at someone and firing a paintball gun during recent protests in Portland, Oregon.

The buildup to such violence began decades ago. McInnes, 50, in 1994 co-founded Vice magazine, which was originally called “Voice of Montreal.” It covered punk rock music and the city’s burgeoning counterculture and became notorious for its scabrous features.

The company later relocated to Brooklyn and expanded rapidly by offering corporations the chance to look hip by allying with it. By 2017, Vice had raised money from some of the largest media companies in the world. Walt Disney Co. and 21st Century Fox Inc. both owned stakes, though Disney wrote off its investment last year as the media and news business flagged broadly.

Vice produced not only print journalism but a weekly news magazine for HBO, an award-winning documentary about the Islamic State terrorist group and online videos.

By then, McInnes had been gone from Vice for a decade, citing “creative differences” when he left. But McInnes was well established in New York media circles, cultivating a hipster beard and a lumberjack appearance -- and he increasingly became a fixture on right-wing outlets.

He made appearances on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News. In 2014, he published a transphobic essay in the publication Thought Catalog. After the essay, the ad agency Rooster cut ties with McInnes, who was its chief creative officer. He currently hosts a podcast called “Get Off My Lawn.”

Violent Rites

In 2016, he founded the Proud Boys, who say their goal is fighting political correctness and “anti-white guilt.” Members are required to declare themselves as “Western chauvinists.” Their rituals involve tattoos and being beaten by a crowd of Proud Boys until naming five breakfast cereals.

To reach the “fourth degree” of membership, Proud Boys must engage in street violence that furthers the group’s cause.

Proud Boys members and its leaders “regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which designates them as a hate group. McInnes “has ties to the racist right and has contributed to hate sites,” the center says.

Efforts to reach McInnes on Wednesday were unsuccessful.

McInnes stepped down as official leader of the group in 2018; it is currently headed by Enrique Tarrio, a Cuban-American who once ran as a Republican to represent a Florida district in the U.S. House of Representatives. But McInnes remains the group’s central figure, according to Megan Squire, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina who studies far-right extremism.

“Ostensibly Gavin is no longer the leader, but in practice that is not true,” she said. “He designed the initiation rituals -- he made up all of it.”

Non Grata

McInnes has described himself as “Islamophobic” and been quoted as saying, “I love being white and I think it’s something to be very proud of. I don’t want our culture diluted.”

He has been banned from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for violating their policies.

Under the guise of a men’s group that likes to get together to drink, the Proud Boys hold gatherings and events that can erupt in violence. Two years ago, a crowd of Proud Boys got in a street brawl with protesters in New York City. Afterward, the conservative outlet Blaze Media severed ties with McInnes, who was scheduled to host a show on its channel.

The fight, which resulted in the conviction of two members, also sparked controversy in the New York City suburb of Larchmont, where McInnes lives. Many of McInnes’s neighbors grew uncomfortable living near him, according to the Huffington Post. Some put up lawn signs that said “Hate Has No Home Here.”

Trump’s Troops

The project he began four years reached its zenith of attention at the Tuesday debate, when moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump whether he was willing to condemn white supremacists and armed groups. Trump asked for an example, and Democratic nominee Joe Biden suggested, “Proud Boys.”

“Proud Boys?” replied Trump. “Stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what -- somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem.”

Unlike McInnes, most Proud Boys members are working- or middle-class, according to Squire. In McInnes, they saw a still more profane version of Trump -- someone able to make outlandish and hateful comments without real consequences, she said.

The rise of the Proud Boys and other extremist organizations helped lead the International Crisis Group two weeks ago to allocate resources toward studying the potential for election violence. The Washington-based organization typically focuses on countries such as Sierra Leone and Myanmar.

“We’re on an urgent timeline,” said Rob Malley, the group’s chief executive officer and a former diplomat in the Obama administration. “We’re not predicting the kind of civil unrest that we’ve seen in other countries, but we’ve seen enough to make us worried.”

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