Far-Right Proud Boys’ Founder Called ‘Hatemonger’

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Soon after a member of the far-right Proud Boys, who is accused of attacking left-wing protesters last October, took the witness stand in his own defense last week, a prosecutor questioned him about the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes.

Wasn’t it true, the prosecutor asked the witness, Maxwell Hare, that he had been onstage with Mr. McInnes in 2018 when he spoke about assaulting people? Did he remember Mr. McInnes saying another time that there is “not enough violence” these days?

And was Mr. Hare familiar with Mr. McInnes’s belief that one is not a man until, among other things, he has beaten someone up and been beaten up?

On Wednesday, during closing arguments, a prosecutor was even more direct: “Gavin McInnes is not a harmless satirist. He is a hatemonger.”

Mr. McInnes, a co-founder of Vice Magazine, was not charged in connection with the brawl last October near the Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side, when 10 of his followers attacked a handful of masked left-wing protesters.

But during the trial of Mr. Hare and another member of the Proud Boys, John Kinsman, who are both charged with attempted assault and riot, Manhattan prosecutors have suggested some of the blame for the violence should land on Mr. McInnes.

During closing arguments on Wednesday, the defense said that Mr. McInnes was being “demonized.”

Video from the October incident shows that Mr. Hare and Mr. Kinsman, along with eight others, surrounded and beat four people believed to have been part of Antifa, a group of self-described anti-fascists whose members have fought far-right groups.

During the trial, which began in late July, Mr. Hare and Mr. Kinsman have said their actions were justified. Seven other defendants connected to the Proud Boys have pleaded guilty in the case; an eighth is awaiting trial.

Mr. McInnes, who started the Proud Boys in 2016, was not present during the fighting but the Manhattan district attorney’s office has still painted an unfavorable portrait of him.

Again and again, prosecutors have turned to his words to convince jurors that the Proud Boys, who describe themselves as patriots and “Western chauvinists” who reject political correctness, are prone to violence and tolerant of misogynistic, racist and xenophobic sentiments.

By repeatedly citing Mr. McInnes, prosecutors have also tied him to an organization that he has recently sought to distance himself from.

Last November, Mr. McInnes said he was reluctantly quitting the Proud Boys “in all capacities, forever,” because his lawyers had told him the gesture might help members who had been arrested after his talk.

At the time, Mr. McInnes said the Proud Boys were not extremists and had no ties to white nationalists, though he added, “This whole idea of white nationalists and white supremacy is a crock” and “such people don’t exist.”

Responding to an email on Monday, Mr. McInnes said he had only ever advocated self-defense. “I never suggested random acts of violence,” he wrote.

Mr. McInnes said his jokes and parodies of racism had been misconstrued. He added that many statements made about him during the trial by prosecutors had been inaccurate or misleading. That included the prosecution’s assertion that he had once referred to President Barack Obama as a “monkey,” which Mr. McInnes said was “100 percent false.”

“The left scrutinizes jokes and denies they’re jokes in order to crowbar some kind of malicious agenda within the joke,” he said in the email.

Mr. McInnes has not entirely abandoned all right-wing activism. In July, he appeared at a rally in Washington, described fighting Antifa and told the crowd — which appeared to include some members of the Proud Boys — “The truth is we don’t start fights. We finish them.”

The street violence on the Upper East Side took place on Oct. 12, after Mr. McInnes had appeared inside the Republican club and had reenacted the 1960 murder of a Japanese socialist leader by a teenage ultranationalist.

People had gathered outside to protest. The night before, hooded figures had broken windows at the club, sprayed anarchist symbols on its doors and promised future attacks in leaflets that also denounced Mr. McInnes as a “hipster-fascist clown.”

After his appearance, Mr. McInnes departed the club brandishing what he later said was a plastic sword. Later that night, members and associates of the Proud Boys ran at and attacked four people wearing black clothes and masks, who the police said had circled the block to intercept them.

The first witness in the trial, Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, challenged the notion that the Proud Boys fight only in self-defense. He listed incidents in Berkeley, Calif., and elsewhere where they were said to have attacked others.

He said Mr. McInnes had made violence one of the “core tenets” of the Proud Boys, promoting and glorifying the concept of attacking enemies, and himself punching a protester in Washington the night before Donald J. Trump’s presidential inauguration in 2017.

Beyond that, Mr. Segal said, Mr. McInnes had referred to the actress Jada Pinkett Smith, who is black, as a “monkey” and referred to the United States as a “white country.”

Although Mr. McInnes has often said his comments were satirical, Mr. Segal said that such remarks appeared to be tactically couched, adding that hate “is easier to digest, particularly for young people online,” when it is combined with humor.

Testimony by three members of the Proud Boys, including both defendants, opened the door during the trial to an examination of remarks attributed to Mr. McInnes.

Mr. Hare acknowledged he had heard some of the potentially inflammatory statements the prosecution cited but maintained he had not heard Mr. McInnes incite violence. He said Mr. McInnes’s comments that there is “not enough violence” and “fighting solves everything” were phrases related to “boxing.”

On Tuesday, the final defense witness, Mr. Kinsman, said Mr. McInnes was “just a regular conservative dude.”

When the lead prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, asked Mr. Kinsman’s opinion of negative remarks Mr. McInnes allegedly had made about gay people, Jews, Muslims, women and others, Mr. Kinsman said he thought they were presented out of context.

“I don’t agree with those quotes,” he said. “But when I hear Gavin defend it, it makes sense.”

Another Proud Boy who testified for the defense, Christopher Wright, had used his phone to record some of the fighting on Oct. 12 and celebrations afterward by Mr. Hare and others. He testified that he considered Mr. McInnes a “comedian” engaged in “political commentary.”

Responding to a question from Mr. Steinglass, Mr. Wright said he thought it could be funny, depending on context, when Mr. McInnes used slurs to refer to gay people and Asians.

Mr. Steinglass then asked whether it was funny for Mr. McInnes to call Mr. Obama “his favorite monkey.”

“Do I find that particular joke funny, no,” Mr. Wright, who is black, replied. “There are a lot of jokes I don’t find funny.”