by Adam Johnson
As FAIR noted last year, the rise of Trump has lead to a corollary rise in softball profiles of the most vulgar, racist extremes of the American far right. For some reason, news managers feel the need to highlight, with little if any criticism or context, pro-Trump extremists who’ve been emboldened by his campaign and subsequent election. The most recent iteration of this genre was by NBC News (11/2/17), which ran a four-minute-58-second segment on a racist men’s movement calling itself “Proud Boys”:
Meet the Proud Boys, America’s Self-Proclaimed Chauvinists
The segment—part of Left Field, NBC‘s video documentary vertical—is a gratuitous piece of embedded journalism that does little to challenge the claims made by Proud Boy talking heads, such as “there’s a mainstream societal attack on being hetero cis white men.” The piece allowed multiple Proud Boys to spout off their brand of racist and sexist talking points with zero context; arguments that Muslims are uniquely sinister and women should go back to being housewives were advanced with no pushback from other sources or NBC itself.
Introducing Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes (also co-founder of Vice and a documented racist), correspondent Aurora Almendral insisted, “He may be a hip New Yorker, but he’s also the founder of this men-centric group that’s caught on across America.” Oh, so he’s “hip,” just like white supremacist Richard Spencer is “dapper.” What, one is compelled to ask, is the point of calling him this?
The segment couldn’t bring itself to call the Proud Boys “racist,” “sexist,” “misogynist” or even “hateful,” much less bother mentioning a member of the group, Kyle Chapman, was arrested in August for allegedly attacking a leftist protester with a lead-filled stick in Berkeley, California. McInnes’ history of trafficking in white supremacist canards like “white genocide,” circulating in white nationalist spaces, promoting the overt white supremacist “unite the right” rally in Charlottesville—where one anti-racist protester was killed—also didn’t merit mention. The substance of the Proud Boys hate is barely commented on by the reporter; the viewer is simply left with a bunch of reasons (offered by members) why they are not Nazis.
They were presented, as Hill editor Will Sommer later tweeted, as “a drinking club with a few un-PC opinions.” NBC‘s naive online copy for the program explained the group “argues they are not white supremacist and are only speaking up for a new class of minority—the disenfranchised young white male,” without noting this as a white supremacist talking point as old as white supremacist organizing. KKK leader David Duke has been trying out the “I’m not anti-black, but pro-white” line for decades.
Additionally, “men-centric” is a delightful euphemism for a woman-hating rape apologist (“If women couldn’t claim rape after inviting a man into their bedroom, they would be a lot more careful about who they invited into their bedroom.”—McInnes in Taki’s Magazine, 8/23/16). As are other marketing labels NBC spread uncritically throughout the piece, like “pro-masculinity,” “male angst” and “Western chauvinist”—all terms the Proud Boys use to rebrand sexist hate. Time and again, hate speech was couched in activist terms, as if there may actually exist an oppressed white male class in need of protection.
That McInnes is Islamophobic was only touched on because he proudly declared it in the interview. But his history of antisemitism is glaringly omitted. Obviously, a five-minute report can’t contain the entirety of McInnes’s ideology, but certainly they could have brought up the time he went to Israel and did a segment called “10 Things I Hate About Jews.”
After allowing her interviewees to explain why their brand of hate is somehow different and not racist, Almendral offered up tortured prose: “So fair enough, the lines between racism, xenophobia and chauvinism may exist, but they can be hard to understand.” What does this even mean?
The segment ended on an equally fatuous pontification that borders on outright promotion for McInnes and Co.:
So that’s all to say the Proud Boys are not alt-right, they’re not neo-Nazis, but some of their opinions no longer represent the minority.
It’s not “they aren’t alt-right or neo-Nazi, but many of their views align with those groups” (a debatable but defensible statement), it’s “they may not be alt-right or neo-Nazis, but they’re also very popular!” This isn’t a “but” formulation; the latter clause doesn’t contradict the former, it’s a non sequitur presumably inserted because she didn’t have the constitution to call a racist a racist or a sexist a sexist—much less a hipster-revamped white supremacist a hipster-revamped white supremacist.
This isn’t to say, of course, that neo-Nazis, the “alt-right” or the so-called “alt-light” aren’t worth covering at all. But one can do so without giving them a platform, without letting them spout their genocidal ideology with little or no context. An alternative to NBC’s glossy approach is media upstart Unicorn Riot, which was recently profiled in the Columbia Journalism Review (11/1/17):
Unicorn Riot’s structure has enabled members to publish dozens of stories on the alt-right without turning their subjects into stars or even normalizing them. While other organizations wrote celebrity profiles that marveled at the sartorial sense of fashion-conscious fascists, Unicorn Riot revealed what the alt-right was talking about when they thought no one was listening.
In fact, as Unicorn Riot’s reporting (8/16/17) reveals, one thing they talk about when no one else is listening is how to manipulate gullible reporters into boosting the movement by keeping genocidal opinions to yourself when you’re talking to them:
The purpose of this is to gain sympathy for pro-white advocacy as well as a general uniting of the right wing against these communists who are gonna come shut this down, OK…. Going up to, like, MSNBC and them interviewing you and you saying like, “Yeah, I actually think we should kill every non-white on the planet.”… I don’t necessarily like have an issue with listening to that on a podcast or whatever, but if you are gonna do something like that, even if it’s your true belief, that’s not the objective of this rally, so we should try to keep it with the objective of trying to gain sympathy for a pro-white rally.
A good way to gauge whether white supremacists think they’ve succeeded in spinning a news outlet into giving them a platform to “gain sympathy for pro-white advocacy” is to see whether the supremacists use their own media to promote the outlet’s coverage. That’s what McInnes did immediately after NBC published its report:
WTF? A fair piece about #ProudBoys from mainstream media? I’m confused. https://t.co/nI4sB7lUKq
— Gavin McInnes (@Gavin_McInnes) November 2, 2017
Doug Latimer
Perhaps not “naïve” or “gullible”
But simply appealing to a trending demographic?
WONDERing WOMAN
What a strange name…: Proud Boys,” most teenagers and up want to be MEN. Except-, Proud Boys — is awful and perfect at the same time! It reminded me of something—LOL, The LOST BOYS of Peter Pan….. and Neverland—-where there is no responsibility and the lone female tells them bedtime stories…..LOST Boys is a much better fit. Sad, but true.
Ken
“journalism that does little to challenge the claims made by Proud Boy talking heads”
you mean like you did this entire article Adam Johnson?
Or do you just believe that demonizing & slandering pro-whites is somehow “challenging” their views rather than reinforcing them?
DrZorn
How exactly is Adam not challenging but demonizing and slandering “pro-whites”? By quoting them verbatim and showing everything they did to further their agenda? If that’s the case then they’re only demonizing themselves, but I guess people like you would rather have everyone ignore that.
Craig
Not only is it NBC but all of mainstream media has become “Team White Supremacy”. No bones about it. At this point in the game they are going to stay on code.
Donald
However, don’t worry. Because it can’t happen here.
Fred Sanchez
Libelous trash. Fourth rate journalism. Check your sources before committing libel or make sure your readers know it’s an opinion piece.
DrZorn
I don’t know but from your butthurt reaction to this article, I’d say this journalist is a bit more than “fourth rate”.
Youri
wow! talk about normalizing the unthinkable. But quick correction Gavin is from Canada, I think Montreal but Canada nonetheless and its worthy of mention that he was also after he split with Vice a correspondent and host of the Sun News Network later Rebel Media which is basically The Canadian far-right version of The Young Turks. Very Pro-Israel, Anti-First Nations and border racist/genocide denialists of their egregious plight, climate change denying, and think Justin Trudeau is left-wing like Obama is left wing but are really neo-liberals and centrist right then anything. Their founder Ezra is Jewish so its funny how he employs anti-Semites when constantly railing against media/UN bias towards Israel and how Muslim/Middle East communities are anti-Semitic and keeps insisting Trump supporters aren’t racist and the racism displayed in Charlottesville was heavily exaggerated. Vice which tends to be pretty progressive or centre-left also played a part in normalizing these right-wing douchebags only later like Libya or their Israel coverage turn a slight 180 degree when their reporter was embedded with them in Charlottesville and the murder of the anti-racist/fascist activist took place.
Youri
PRoud Boys LOL Men’s right activist I find that hilarious especially since Gavin rails against Muslims child sex traffickers because in Holland we have a group of vile pimps called the Lover boys who groom young girls some even mentally diabled into prostitution and the way these misogynists are calling themselves Proud Boys reminds me soo much of them LOL
Patricia Sperti
Really ? Nothing racist or alt right ? What was NBC thinking ? N=No B=Boundries C=Crossed ? What kind of journalism is this ? Afraid to anger the Nazis ? Not me ! I’ve been at it since the 60’s !
Lawrence N. Allen
We are taking notes and main stream media will be held accountable for white supremacist extremism.
Gregory Kruse
I can’t understand why I was dropped from your email list. I didn’t do anything to stop them. I’m a recurring contributor and haven’t even made any inappropriate comments that I’m aware of.