Trash left behind by Patriot Prayer after rally,

Portland, OR, 9 December 2017

In the Proud Boys I see a lot of middle class Blacks and Latinx. They don’t consider themselves to be a part of the disenfranchised Blacks over there. They consider themselves to be a part of “America.”

--Daryle Lamont Jenkins

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =DLJ: I guess it's basically the closest thing to an Alt Right that you can say exists. What makes it alternative from what we have seen on the Right is the incorporation of people of color into ideas that we have always considered to be antithetical to people of color. White supremacist ideas are being parroted by Black people, by Latinx, by Jews even. That’s a new phenomenon. At least large numbers of people flocking to it is the new phenomenon. We try to make the point that it makes sense because as we come along in our development in this society, naturally there are going to be folks that consider themselves conservative. And to that end, there are going to be folks receptive to a far right version of conservatism. It makes sense. The more we become a part of society, the more we are going to find folks on the fringe like that.CC: In the article Daryle and I wrote, we mostly focus on the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer -- two system-loyal organizations loosely associated with the Alt Right. Defending notions of “western chauvinism” and traditional gender roles are not a major departure from the far right’s playbook, but the degree of participation and leadership of people of color within their ranks seems new. While many of the overtly White supremacist groups receded from public spaces after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer continued to attract a base in the streets, including people of color. As the authors Daniel Ho-Sang and Joe Lowndes explore in their newly released book, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity , shifts in racial inclusion in the far right may be a result of economic factors. While racial categories were once legally bound more tightly with class, with the end of de jure segregation and then globalization, that has shifted. I think some people of color are attracted to Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer for their libertarian leanings. In interviews, members of color of the Proud Boys have mentioned the idea that government handouts to people of color is keeping them oppressed.DLJ: Yes, I do. Absolutely. But, it’s different than what we had seen amongst Black conservatives 30 years ago. Black conservatism 30 years ago back then seemed out of place. It looked like it was a grift. Even more so when you talk about Jessie Lee Peterson or that Diamond and Silk crowd, it looks even more like a grift. But today when you see Black conservatives, it doesn’t seem as out of place as it did 30 years ago because of what I was talking about earlier. We are becoming a part of the mainstream. You see more of us adopt a conservative principle. We’ve had them in the community to begin with, but it was within our communities. I went to a conference just a couple of days after the OJ trial in 1995. Pat Buchanan was invited to speak. He spoke there and it was ridiculous, but the main thing they focused on was how to grow Black commerce. They weren’t so focused on political power. They were focused on commercial power, economic power. That speaks to what we see in Black conservatism today. When we start dealing with far right crowd, then it really stops making sense. It starts looking again, out of place. Now, they are adopting ideas that are a threat to Black people. These are folks that want to make America great again. What they think makes America great is a threat to Black people and yet we have people of color and others simply saying we are going to give it a shot anyway.DLJ: Again, I do see folks in disenfranchised neighborhoods, you do see some conservatism there. But when it comes to the Proud Boys for example, I see a lot of middle class Blacks and Latinx. They don’t consider themselves to be a part of the disenfranchised Blacks over there. They consider themselves to be a part of “America.” I would say that is exactly what we see. You have more people of color in the mainstream and middle class settings and that’s where we see what we see.DLJ: I would say it gets expressed as though it’s not so much race that matters, but maintaining traditions that gave rise to the middle class. That’s the best way to put it. Protecting the economic status of the middle class section of society is a lot of what drives these folks. Yes, racism is a backdrop, mostly anti-Muslim sentiment. That is all still there, but they pretend that it isn’t.DLJ: I don’t think as much. It may be a concern of theirs. Insofar as conservatism goes that route, it is. But, I don’t think it’s anything extra special. I think they focus on the socioeconomic standing of their class.DLJ: You have Joey Gibson, the founder of Patriot Prayer, coming out of Patriot Movement circles. He considers himself half Japanese. If we are talking about the difference of the western chauvinism of the Proud Boys, and the color blindness of the Oath Keepers (and the Proud Boys works closely with Patriot Prayer in Oregon), I think the fact that they marry themselves to each other so much, they most certainly don’t find too many differences between them. When you talk about Patriot Prayer, you are talking about something being faith based. Whenparticular crowd talks about faith based, they are talking about western chauvinism.CC: We were trying to understand the glue that holds these groups together. Opposing abortion, refugee resettlement and Islam are pillars of their program, but they are also motivated by a defense of traditional gender roles and a defense of “western chauvinism.” While western chauvinism is partially a code word for “White,” it also is a defense of a society in which Christian values are dominant. In some ways, Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer seem to reflect a contemporary fusion of the Christian and xenophobic Right. I think it’s interesting that Steve Bannon embraced a Christian traditionalism in his defense of the West and of nationalism as well.DLJ: That is the bind -- they believe more or less Christianity is a positive force in the world. Every time you see Joey Gibson, he has the Jesus fish on his hat. Proud Boys on the other hand is definitely secular. Even if Proud Boys don’t express a certain faith -- remember, some of the Proud Boys are Jewish -- they respect each other’s beliefs, even though they are going about it in somewhat different ways in that regard.CC: Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer are not advocating for a revolution. They are very supportive of the Trump administration. That said, they are engaged in a sort of three way fight in Portland. The fact that Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys have gone after Mayor Ted Wheeler publicly, and pushed right wing pundits across the US to denounce Wheeler as an antifa sympathizer, points to their role in attempting to divide local government. But, ultimately, rather than some White nationalists who are fighting for another society and form of government all together, Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer are flanking the Republican Party. While communities of color joined right-wing militia in the 90s precisely in support of the anti-government stance, this appears to be something different.DLJ: I would say the Unite the Right rally was an attempt at that. Enrique Tarrio, the current head of the Proud Boys, was in Charlottesville, joining the Three Percenter line. They are trying to blur the line just to make themselves relevant. Ironically, I think what they are doing is dangerous in the sense that, if you give rise to these movements, it’s only a matter of time before those circles turn on you. When we see it happening at Unite the Right at the levels they were happening there, it shows it could turn into something that is really nefarious. That was one hell of a slippery slope there.DLJ: Here’s where I would make it personal. When you talk about those far rights, those straight up neo-nazis and White supremacists. Even our group had an infiltrator. He was a Black Dominican but a National Socialist. He infiltrated us and provided whatever information he could gather to the National Socialist Movement, one of the groups that initiated all of the violence in Charlottesville.DLJ: I think one thing we need to take away, is to start thinking outside of the box for dealing with the neofascists. That’s why I don’t call them White supremacists anymore because we are dealing with a different set of politics. It avoids us being caught in the gaslight. They repeatedly use people of color to say, “How can I be a racist, I have people of color saying the same thing as me.” When I was in DC (during the July 6 free speech rally put on by the Proud Boys), I got that all day long. I think my line has been, you still are holding the same beliefs I have been fighting for 30 years or so. Once you make it clear you are not going to fall for that gaslight, that neutralizes them. That’s what we are going to have to do as we go forward. We have to look at how they damage disenfranchised people. We can’t allow them to use people from those hurt groups to advance themselves because as they try to do with Andy Ngo, where they hurled allegations, “how can you go after Andy Ngo, he is a protected class.” No, he’s not a protected class, he’s one of them. I just responded, we are looking at the content of his character, like we are supposed to, not the color of his skin. We have to school people on it.CC: Older categories that we’ve used to understand far right and neofascist movements are not going to be the same categories that will help us counter them today. Some of the features of the multiracial far right are new and some are not. I wish I had a better sense of what categories could help counter and build alternatives to these forces. For now, I can say I think we need to come up with better chants than, “No racists, No KKK, No Fascist USA.” We need to develop wider and yet more distinct categories. When Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer or any new far right formation attacks abortion providers, LGBTQ people, immigrants of color and/or people who appear Muslim, we need a better framework than simply calling them racist, especially if the folks leading are people of color. Moreover, developing a deeper understanding, as you suggest, whether groups are system loyal and what aspects of government groups are trying to align with, will be critical to our ability to disrupt their organizing and build alternatives.CC: I think it is going to be interesting to see if there does become in the future a multiracial far right that is more revolutionary. On the other side, there’s been whole areas of research looking in to the New Chinese Right and the influence of Hindu Nationalists. A lot of this is pushing forward an important conversation around assimilation. But folks are also examining right-wing factions within communities of color, and how clumping communities of color into a category often associated with the Left needs to be further interrogated. On the other hand, clearly it’s not like White supremacy is over in this country. I think it’s just being reconfigured in some way.DLJ: Absolutely not, but that has always been a staple with right-wing politics: The more things change, the more things stay the same. As society evolves, the right wing evolves along with it, if only to keep themselves relevant in that society as they work to undermine it. Not only that but because of the Internet, we see a lot more of how things work in other parts of the world than past generations did, and both the right and the left have been able to network around the world more effectively. That just means that the eternal vigilance against neo-fascist ideals is that much more challenging.Old White Truck,