Culture

Twitter Users Are Flooding #ProudBoys With Pictures Of LGBTIQ+ Men In Love

"Our community and allies answered hate with love, and what could be better than that."

by Jared Richards  5 October 2020
Twitter is overwhelming #ProudBoys with photos of LGBTIQ+ men in love

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A week after US President Donald Trump told the male-only white supremacist group Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his televised debate with Joe Biden, LGBTIQ+ Twitters users have targeted the group by ‘hijacking’ the #ProudBoys hashtag with photos of gay and queer men in love.

In case you need a refresher, Proud Boys were formed by Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes in 2016 in the lead up to that year’s US presidential election. The group aims to defend “western values” and “western chauvinism”,  aka whiteness, and are neo-fascists against immigration, Islam, feminism, marriage equality and a non-existent ‘white genocide’ and war on masculinity.

Reminiscent of Fight Club, there are four stages to being inducted into the Proud Boys. First, you make a proclamation: “I am a proud western chauvinist, I refuse to apologise for creating the modern world”. Then, you are beaten by group members while reciting cereal names (no, really);  thirdly, you must get a ‘PB’ tattoo, and finally, you must start a physical fight for the movement.

Proud Boys also tend to avoid masturbating or watching porn, believing that by only doing so once a month, they are reserving their testosterone rather than wasting it.

The group has attacked left-wing protestors and threatened many left-wing public figures over the years, with several accounts of real-world violence. Most notably, members populated the white-supremacist Unite The Right rally in 2017, where a 20-year-old white-supremacist drove his car into peaceful protestors, killing Heather Hayer. Trump then refused to denounce the supremacists, saying there were “very good people on both sides”.

McInnes began to distance himself from the group in 2018, though it continues to grow (and McInnes continues to espouse PB viewpoints, anyway).

Amid growing criticism last week after the Proud Boys began to embrace his “stand back and stand by” comments, President Trump denounced the group and ‘all white supremacists’. He had repeatedly been asked to do so during the debate, but did not — Biden then specifically mentioned the Proud Boys by name, prompting Trump’s comments.

And now, the hashtag #ProudBoys has been flooded on Twitter with pictures of queer men in love, in an effort to drown out the group.

“Brad and I are #ProudBoys, legally married for 12 years now,” tweeted Star Trek actor George Takei alongside a photo of he and his husband. “And we’re proud of all of the gay folks who have stepped up to reclaim our pride in this campaign. Our community and allies answered hate with love, and what could be better than that.”

Many others followed suit, including the official Canadian Forces in America Twitter account. Sure!

Unfortunately, the push isn’t actually ‘drowning out’ Proud Boys’ posting, given the group don’t tend to use a hashtag.

With that in mind, there’s criticism swirling that posts of LGBTIQ+ couples on the hashtag could confuse the wider public as to what the group actually is. The photos also side-step that while the group is homophobic as a result of its promotion of ‘traditional masculinity’, the Proud Boys’ uniting creed is white supremacy.

The photos are cute, and will piss off a lot of homophobic Proud Boys — always a worthy cause. Unfortunately, de-platforming white supremacists is a much bigger task, especially when the sitting president is endorsed by David Duke.

Find more #ProudBoys below.