The Proud Boys and other so-called alt-right have often maintained that they aren’t Nazis. For instance, in 2017 before, during, and after the Charlottesville travesty where the Proud Boys and their allies and fellow travelers shouted “Jews will not replace us!” they also insisted to the media that they were neither anti-semitic nor Nazis.
Well, apparently not so much. I know. You’re shocked.
There is, apparently, a power struggle going on inside the Proud Boys, and their violent, paramilitary arm, which some contend is actually distinguishable from the Proud Boys’ other arms, was founded by one of the players in this struggle. That man is Kyle Chapman, and just recently he sent out a message on an encrypted messaging app. The message was targeted at only other Proud Boys, which is why they thought encryption might actually be effective, yet somehow it ended up in the hands of Newsweek.com. Now they have published it.
To be sure, Chapman does not say, “I am a Nazi” in exactly those words, but listen to what he does say and judge for yourself whether or not these are the words of a Nazi:
Due to the recent failure of Proud Boy Chairman Enrique Tarrio … it has been decided that I Kyle Chapman [sic] reassume my post as President of Proud Boys effective immediately. Our logo will forthwith be changed to reflect the core beliefs of Proud Boy members.
We will no longer cuck to the left by appointing token negroes as our leaders. We will no longer allow homosexuals or other ‘undesirables’ into our ranks. We will confront the Zionist criminals who wish to destroy our civilization.
We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race.
Coming from the president of the Proud Boys, or hell, any president of the Proud Boys past, present, or future, I have to say it’s absolutely what one would expect.
Seriously, you have to wonder why they bother to encrypt this stuff when they’re just going to go out and chant it to the media next weekend. The only advantage to having this out in the public eye, really, is that their denials of racism, anti-semitism, and Nazism will be a lot less enraging and a lot more ridiculous. Which is good, of course, since the rallies will make us so vomitously ill we could use a laugh afterwards.
That man is Kyle Chapman, and just recently he sent out a message on an encrypted messaging app. The message was targeted at only other Proud Boys, which is why they thought encryption might actually be effective, yet somehow it ended up in the hands of Newsweek.com. Now they have published it.
That just means that someone is inside of their encryption horizon; i.e.: someone in that select group of nazis is deliberately there to leak.
Getting inside of movements is a hobby for some infosec people. I used to know a guy whose hobby was joining jihadi groups – he had an elaborate network of sock puppets and personas that he sold to the US government for a whole lot of money. It turned out that his hobby was profitable. He realized he was dealing with FBI/CIA when one of the people he was talking to started pointedly telling him “I can get get you explosives if you want.” Uh, hi, special agent dipshit.
I think that penetrating organization is an essential journalism skill. The FBI’s doing it, too. So one of the fun things you can do is troll FBI agents. The only problem is they’re not funny.
I am from Charlottesville. There was a subtle “tell” in the 2017 Unite the Right rally that indicated they were Nazis: some of them were carrying fucking Nazi flags.
That’s what I figured, although I wasn’t familiar with the technical term “encryption horizon”.
@bruce
IK, R? This is why I found it so enraging that the media treated their Nazism as an open question.
brucegee1962 @2: There was also the chanting of “blood and soil“. But maybe they were just encouraging the wearing of gloves to prevent gardening accidents…
You just know next they’ll change their name to “Proud Goys” to reflect their trollish sense of humor* and their increased focus on antisemitism on the side of toxic masculinity and general white chauvinism.
* Neonazis love to pretend they’re reclaiming “goy”, as if it’s been commonly used as a slur against whites by Jews. (CD undoubtedly knows this, but I wrote this clarification for the other reader here.)