THE PROUD BOYS

I grew up not understanding how they had let it happen. How had Germany let something as criminally malignant as Nazism take over their country?

“People just didn’t think it could happen” is the basic answer. And yet it did. We should get very clear about what happened there then, so we can wipe all that dust out of our eyes and look at what’s happening here now.

America’s Proud Boy phenomenon today is as potentially dangerous as the Nazi Brown Shirts and every American should know what that means.

Several years ago, I think it was 2018, I was having coffee with a gay friend in New York City. He was telling me about a disturbing incident that had happened the night before. He and another man had been at a coffee shop in Brooklyn, simply talking, when a group of men came in and told them that it was time for them to leave.

My friend looked around and saw that several people were still sitting at the restaurant, so he told the men that they would leave when they were done talking. Several minutes later, the men came back and violently dragged the gay couple off their chairs and out of the coffee shop. Obviously, they were shaken. “It’s these people called the Proud Boys,” my friend told me. He had already told the police, but when I urged him the tell the New York Times he was hesitant because of his job.

When I began to see more reports about the activities of the Proud Boys, I started to realize that this is an actual thing. This is not just a bunch of one offs - guys attacking gay people at a bar in Brooklyn here, the US Capitol there, a library in San Lorenzo here. These are people who see themselves as a militia come to “reclaim America.”

And you realize who they’re claiming it for, right? This truly is no different than the brown shirts. To the Nazis, no Jews, no gays, no blacks, no gypsies, no disabled people, none of those “weeds” in the garden of the great Aryan race were to be allowed in Germany. The country did not belong to them. That is literally how they saw it. They needed to weed people out who in their minds did not belong.

This is happening. The alt right movement is only gaining steam and power in the US today, and it is beyond heartbreaking that a major political party will not disavow them. You can look back at my interview with Stephen Marche to hear more about what’s been going on. The nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center is a good place to check out information and keep track of developments; you can also send them donations if you want to support their work.

Years ago the FBI reported that the greatest terrorist threat in the United States was from far right wing domestic terrorists, and I remember how Republicans in Congress became outraged and tried to shut that down. Many people will still come up with what-about-isms like “What about BLM and Antifa, HUH!?” but we need to be seriously committed to facts right now. Still trying to find those “whole city blocks they burned down.” Can’t do it because they don’t exist.

No one who knows me or my work thinks I’m excited about the Democratic Party or the Biden Administration these days. I certainly have my criticisms, and I’m far from a partisan cheerleader for the corporatist wing of the Democratic establishment. But what’s happening on the alt right today - particularly its infiltration of the Republican Party - is terrifying. Some of those people are even running for office! There should not be a red wave in November. It should be as blue as blue can be.

Watching the January 6 hearings on TV the other night, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “My God, what if they came back with AR 15s? “ After all….it would be legal.