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The “Proud Boys” believe that white men and Western culture are threatened. Image: keystone
What’s trending today on Twitter won’t make the “Proud Boys” proud
Twitter: often annoying, sometimes beautiful. The hashtag #proudboys was trending over the weekend. Behind this, however, there was no rampant celebration of the American fascist militia that, in the television duel with Joe Biden, almost ordered US President Donald Trump to be ready for X-day with the phrase “back off and wait.” But quite the opposite.
More about the «Proud Boys»
In hundreds of thousands of tweets, Twitter users celebrated love between men of the same sex, who they referred to as “Proud Boys” (German for “proud boys”).
Other users took the opportunity of the hijacked hashtag and expressed their love for their partner in touching messages.
American music journalist Eric Alper tweeted a photo of a US Marine in a warm hug and kiss with his partner under the hashtag.
And ZDF journalist Dunja Hayali joined the anti-fascist chorus and tweeted: “I like to spoil games and participate too.
Hayali, who has been openly gay since 2008, also explained what exactly was (still) so beautiful about this Twitter trend: “The Proudboys are a purely male, far-right, homophobic group.” In other words, members of the military are unlikely to like what was posted on Twitter with their name on Sunday: a little love.
Who are the Proud Boys?
The group was launched in 2016 by co-founder and former Vice Media commentator Gavin McInnes as a joke in a far-right magazine. His name is derived from the song “Proud of Your Boy” from the Disney musical Aladdin. The Proud Boys believe that white men and Western culture are threatened. His ideology also refers to the myth of the conspiracy of genocide against whites.
Like many other right-wing groups, they officially rely less on overtly racist narratives than, say, the Ku Klux Klan, but rather on so-called “Western values.” As a result, however, this leads to the same enemy images as with classical racists and right-wing extremists: Muslims, immigrants, women.
The civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) classifies the group as a “hate group”, as anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, misogynistic and violent. According to The Guardian, various US intelligence agencies view the Proud Boys as a dangerous racist organization.
Members of the Proud Boys repeatedly share racist comments on the Internet and participate in marches by racist groups. For example, in the infamous right-wing extremist march in Charlottesville in 2017. In recent months, the Proud Boys, some of whom were armed, have repeatedly appeared on the sidelines of protests by the anti-racist movement Black Lives Matter. There were clashes with anti-fascist activists.
(pcl)
