Wednesday, October 17, 2018


This will be an unpopular opinion, but I didn't think the New York Times profile of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was as bad as many people thought it was. I say that partly because it I approach any Times profile of a rabble-rousing hatemonger with abysmally low expectations. There are reasons to criticize the McInnes profile, but it has a long way to go before it reaches the standards set by the November 2017 Times profile of Ohio neo-Nazi Tony Horvater, who was portrayed as just an ordinary guy trying to get through the day in this vale of tears:
HUBER HEIGHTS, Ohio — Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall. They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.

Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.

But Mr. Hovater, in the days leading up to the wedding, was somewhat less anxious. There are times when it can feel toxic to openly identify as a far-right extremist in the Ohio of 2017. But not always. He said the election of President Trump helped open a space for people like him, demonstrating that it is not the end of the world to be attacked as the bigot he surely is: “You can just say, ‘Yeah, so?’ And move on.”

It was a weeknight at Applebee’s in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton, a few weeks before the wedding. The couple, who live in nearby New Carlisle, were shoulder to shoulder at a table, young and in love.
McInnes, of course, is a hatemonger of a certain level of celebrity rather than an everyman, so he was unlikely to get this treatment. But he might have gotten this treatment:

Measured against that standard, the McInnes profile is downright hard-hitting.

By which I mean it's moderately negative. Consider the opening paragraph:
For an hour or so, he railed about socialism and political correctness to an audience of New York establishment Republicans. As he often does, he took ugly swipes at Ivy Leaguers, left-wing snobs and lesbians with “geriatric crew cuts.”
The first sentence suggests that we're meant to take McInnes seriously as a cultural critic, but then there's that word "ugly" in the second sentence -- that's a signal that we ought to regard McInnes as not really a nice guy. And consider his targets -- not just "Ivy Leaguers" and "left-wing snobs," but "lesbians with 'geriatric crew cuts.'" Thirty-five years ago, the Times was regressive in matters of sexual orientation, but now it knows that its audience is overwhelmingly LGBT or LGBT-friendly. Including that in the opening paragraph is a sign that McInnes is not being treated as a lovable rogue. This vastly understates how offensive McInnes's talk was, but it's the Times, so, y'know, baby steps.

A subsequent passage understates McInnes's bigotry, but it's far from a total whitewash:
Mr. McInnes admits that he may be Islamaphobic (“It’s seen as xenophobic to be worried about Islam, but they appear to disproportionately allow intolerance to blossom in their communities,” he said.) He also acknowledged being something of a sexist. (“I’m an Archie Bunker sexist,” he said. “I don’t like Gloria Steinem, but I’d take a bullet for Edith.”)

Though he has repudiated racism and anti-Semitism in some of his writings and speeches, he has also made statements that have openly denigrated nonwhite cultures. Last year, he wrote of white men: “We brought roads and infrastructure to India and they are still using them as toilets. Our criminals built nice roads in Australia but Aboriginals keep using them as a bed.”
And anti-racists are quoted without offsetting quotes from apologists:
“Their disavowals of bigotry are belied by their actions,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization that tracks extremist groups, wrote in an online memo labeling the Proud Boys as a hate group. “Rank-and-file Proud Boys and leaders regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric.”

Daryle Lamont Jenkins, the founder of One People Project, an anti-racist organization, said Mr. McInnes has been allowed to tread a fine line, appearing as a political commentator on mainstream outlets like Fox News while being the founder of a group involved in violent clashes.

“They’ve utilized subterfuge and lies to keep that hate group tag from being applied to them,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Every time their members are seen doing things they’re not supposed to be doing, like showing up at Unite the Right, they claim that person left the Proud Boys.”
And while a Proud Boy tries to pretend that the group is just a harmless little fraternal organization, that argument is shot down:
The monthly meet-ups are largely “social events where people have fun and laugh and drink and share stories about their kids and businesses and stuff like that,” said Pawl Bazile, the editor of Proud Boy magazine. “It’s a celebration of the West, of America and of freedom and liberty.”

But in the last two years, members of the group have also had a second preoccupation, taking part in a string of violent street fights with their anti-fascist rivals in cities like Berkeley, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.

Sometimes accompanied by skinheads, neo-Nazis, modern-day Confederates and outfits like the Oath Keepers, an association of law-enforcement officers and military veterans, the Proud Boys have scuffled with the left at May Day rallies, so-called free-speech protests and at marches in support of President Trump.

While the Proud Boys accept minority members, they have at times joined forces with overtly racist organizations. Jason Kessler, who once attended Proud Boy meetings in Virginia, organized the violent rallies in Charlottesville, Va., last year that attracted neo-Nazi groups.

One former Proud Boy, Rich Black, was among the planners of two violent rallies in Berkeley in 2017 that were attended by white supremacist groups.
But the real evidence that the Times finds McInnes distasteful comes at the very end of the profile, when a former officer of the Republican club that hosted McInnes's speech is quoted:
Mr. McInnes’s confusion did little to win over Republicans like William F. B. O’Reilly, who was president of the club from 1998 to 2002.

“The Republican brand doesn’t need this,” Mr. O’Reilly said of Mr. McInnes and the Proud Boys. “It’s already got enough problems.”

He added, “There was no reason to invite that ilk to the Silk Stocking district in New York.”
That's the tell -- the typical Times reader is not expected to admire McInnes, or even feel he's misunderstood. He did this in the Silk Stocking District! He's not our kind, Muffy! That may not be a sufficient level of contempt, but it's more than the Times had for Horvater and Stone.

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