Who Are The Proud Boys?

[Carl-Richard]

9 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

I think these people have some serious psychological issues and personality disorders that get compounded by their lifestyles like alcohol or drugs or their not-so-happy lives. 

...or it's just a particular expression of a normal stage of development.

 

9 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

Then they start forming and joining some toxic hate group like this to have a fake toxic life purpose or a false sense of identity and validation from their local community. 

Why else would someone spent their entire days roiding in some toxic identitarian philosophy and pumping up their aggression to attack someone some day. 

They want a false sense of power like some teens scoring brownie points in call of duty. 

It's the same reason why some people join Antifa: for community and purpose, but again, just at another stage of development where the toxic aspects are less obvious.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Carl-Richard

[Preety_India]

 

Just now, Carl-Richard said:

...or it's just a particular expression of a normal stage of development.

 

It's the same reason why some people join Antifa, but again, just at another stage of development where the toxic aspecs are less obvious.

 

I do agree with you. But there is a slight difference here. I wouldn't lump everyone in the same box. 

Here I'd like to talk about unprovoked anger and provoked anger. 

Provoked anger is not a psychiatric issue. 

If someone killed your grandma (don't take personal, just an example), you would be filled with outrage and rightly so and if you went into the streets looking for the killer with a gun in your hands, I wouldn't blame you for seeking revenge. 

Your revenge is coming from a place of love for your gran. 

However if you're boozing with your friends and they're flexing muscles and telling you to join a group to spread fear or tension, this behavior is reflective of bully behavior or sociopathic tendencies and is not similar to the first example. 

So a distinction must be drawn between the two. 

Now. I agree that antifa is a violent group as well and a lot of people miss their toxic aspects but if it is genuinely (which it is not) fighting against fascism, I wouldn't say that they have personality or psychological disorders, I would say that they are genuinely inspired by outrage to act against injustice out of empathy. 

However that's not the case with Antifa as we know so they are obviously a militia group just like the Proud Boys. 

But a distinction should always be drawn between the agendas of different groups. You can say survival is the agenda. But survival as an agenda looks a tad selfish in comparison to the agenda of "fighting oppression or fascism" 

[Leo Gura]

Fascists always think that stage Green folk are the real fascists.

[Carl-Richard]

33 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

However if you're boozing with your friends and they're flexing muscles and telling you to join a group to spread fear or tension, this behavior is reflective of bully behavior or sociopathic tendencies and is not similar to the first example. 

It's not impossible to use that description on how some people are being recruited to Antifa aswell. I mean, they do want to spread fear in the hearts of facists when they turn up to a protest with provocative displays and/or violent intent. This is not me defending the proud boys though (just to be clear).

 

33 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

Now. I agree that antifa is a violent group as well and a lot of people miss their toxic aspects but if it is genuinely (which it is not) fighting against fascism, I wouldn't say that they have personality or psychological disorders, I would say that they are genuinely inspired by outrage to act against injustice out of empathy. 

Then you have some of the people from the proud boys' perspective who believe that their beliefs and values are under attack, and that they are genuinely concerned about protecting them. In both scenarios, you have people who are convinced that they're fighting for a noble cause, only the values are different. The definition of injustice is relative. Empathy requires a higher level of development, and a lack of empathy is therefore not necessarily indicative of psychological issues (only low development).

You seem to be saying that being in favor of fascism is in some way indicative of psychological issues, however I would instead say it is indicative of a lower stage of development. To make a point on that though, I think it's more right to say that the moment when psychological issues step into the picture, then in the case of fascism, it becomes a more visible problem than with higher levels of thought, and therefore that factor of the equation can be perceived as more problematic.

Regardless, I just don't feel like terms like "personality disorder" or "psychologically disorder" is necessary to describe the bulk of these movements. Both movements experience the influence of those forces on the fringes, although I would concede that it does skew more towards the conservative side, just not very significantly.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Carl-Richard

[dyslexicCnut]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Not a good way to label them given that their leader is Hispanic.

That's pretty dumb, my family is black, and I would easily call my own mom a white supremacist. There are tons of white supremacists that aren't white. Proud Boys are undoubtedly white supremacists, and even if we assume the leader isn't a white supremacist on the basis of his race, it's pretty myopic saying the leadership defines what the organization stands for as a whole.

 

Edit: The original founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McGInnes cut ties with the organization when it became obvious they were a bunch of neo-nazis, so tell me again how we should shy away from calling them white supremacists on the basis of their leadership. Not even his ideology but due to race. Lol, try again.

Edited October 4, 2020 by dyslexicCnut

[Preety_India]

 

 

5 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Then you have some of the people from the proud boys' perspective who believe that their beliefs and values are under attack and are genuinely concerned about protecting them.

Oppression and injustice is relevant in terms of people and not in terms of values. 

Values are held by individuals and those values can still be preserved by the systems. All values can be accomodated. 

Now this situation can be similar to the one in the middle ages where the Churches wanted to punish Galileo and throw him in jail because it went against their values. 

The difference is very real. 

When you fight against injustice, there is a victim who you are trying to protect. 

Whereas protection of principles is not seen the same way as protection of victim. 

Protection of principles can be seen as a theological war between who is right and who is wrong. 

It can also mean that those who strongly support their values object to the values that the opposite party holds. Now this can easily be seen as one group defending their values meanwhile attacking the values of the other group  

 

5 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

You seem to be saying that being in favor of fascism is in some way indicative of psychological issues, however I would instead say it is indicative of a lower stage of development.

In some ways what I'm saying is true. If you carefully observe such movements generally supported by people like Trump or Hitler or any fascist, these individuals are shown to have malignant narcissism which is an obvious psycho-pathological problem. One cannot be a stubborn fascist and believe in imposition of their will on millions of people without having a few loose screws in their head. 

These people have specific symptoms of grand delusions in which they see themselves as conquerors of the world. Fascism and narcissism have a very deep connection. Since most narcissists have a power hunger issue that rhymes very well with fascist sentiment. 

So I'm not far off the mark when I say that psychological issues are also behind such behaviors. 

 

[Carl-Richard]

5 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

When you fight against injustice, there is a victim who you are trying to protect. 

Whereas protection of principles is not seen the same way as protection of victim. 

When their principles are under attack, they perceive themselves as victims. See how that works?

 

4 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

In some ways what I'm saying is true. If you carefully observe such movements generally supported by people like Trump or Hitler or any fascist, these individuals are shown to have malignant narcissism which is an obvious psycho-pathological problem. One cannot be a stubborn fascist and believe in imposition of their will on millions of people without having a few loose screws in their head. 

What are we defining "support" to be in this case? In terms of votes in 2016, around half the country?  

[Lyubov]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

People in the intro look like they just escaped from Elliott Hulse's basement 

they look so much like his clients that go to his, uhh, "bootcamps"

[Preety_India]

18 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

When their principles are under attack, they perceive themselves as victims. See how that works?

Being a real victim versus perceiving oneself as a victim are vastly different things. 

Perceiving oneself as a victim can also happen because of brainwashing by others or by paranoid behavior of the self. 

This is where the difference lies 

For example I will talk about white supremacists. 

Now some of these people hold the belief that immigrants are a threat to their survival.. This may not be objectively true. Also these people are perceiving the immigrants as a threat in the future, not in the present, but in the future, the problem is that this a hypothetical threat. 

This is similar to you saying to me that I'm a threat to you just because you think so. You have already perceived me as a threat and created a future hypothetical scenario that I might attack you. However there is no proof that I'm a threat to you. 

This is similar to how police officers react to a potential suspect. They are already thinking or perceiving that he is a threat even if he has no weapons on him. This is a hypothetical threat and not a real one. The police is very happy to take action based on this hypocritical threat. 

Some of this behavior is not legit and in the DSM IV of psych manual, such behavior is called catastrophization which is normally seen in highly anxious and paranoid individuals. 

Perception of an illusory threat even when the possibility of such a threat is either minimal or illogical. 

But if you look at immigrants and some of whom are placed in cages at the borders, these people are not perceiving a threat but actually facing a threat. 

So when it comes to priorities, the priority should be in protecting the real victims first and perceived victims later. 

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Preety_India

[Carl-Richard]

@Preety_India Yes, there is a distinction there, and I would call that distinction a higher vs. lower perspective on what counts as injustice: one is more inclusive and empathetic than the other. The psychiatric lens I'm still not fully onboard with.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Carl-Richard

[Abdelghafar]

@Preety_India 

2 hours ago, Preety_India said:

 

I think these people have some serious psychological issues and personality disorders that get compounded by their lifestyles like alcohol or drugs or their not-so-happy lives. 

Then they start forming and joining some toxic hate group like this to have a fake toxic life purpose or a false sense of identity and validation from their local community. 

Why else would someone spent their entire days roiding in some toxic identitarian philosophy and pumping up their aggression to attack someone some day. 

They want a false sense of power like some teens scoring brownie points in call of duty. 

 

 

Interesting description.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, dyslexicCnut said:

That's pretty dumb, my family is black, and I would easily call my own mom a white supremacist. There are tons of white supremacists that aren't white. Proud Boys are undoubtedly white supremacists, and even if we assume the leader isn't a white supremacist on the basis of his race, it's pretty myopic saying the leadership defines what the organization stands for as a whole.

You are conflating race and nationalism. These are different things.

The reason blacks, Hispanics, Hindus, Muslims, etc. can support stuff like Proud Boys is because nationalism is not so much about race as it is about preserving a local culture.

Nationalist movements exist in every country around the world. So it's obviously not white supremacy. White supremacy is a sub-set of the more universal impulse humans have for nationalism and ethnocentrism. Racism is a sub-set of that.

Japanese and Hindu nationalists exists. They are similar to the Proud Boys. And they obviously aren't white supremacist.

When you call Proud Boys white supremacist, this actually gives them an upper hand because they clearly see that you do not understand that philosophy and are strawmanning them. It's is similar to how a progressive reacts when he is called a communist by the right-wing.

Quote

Edit: The original founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McGInnes cut ties with the organization when it became obvious they were a bunch of neo-nazis

No, he cut ties because Gavin's rich neighbors did not want to associate with him and let him into their country club because he was associated with the Proud Boys. He cut ties because you can't circulate in the company of upper-class millionaires in America while associated with such a toxic group. So Gavin tries to clean up his image. Because what he cares about more than Proud Boy ideology is money, status, fame, and power.

[Preety_India]

 

Racism, ethnonationalism, nationalism, supremacy, nazism, fascism, toxic ideologies, identitarianism, hatriotism, dangerous mindsets, same devilry, different colors 

 

 

All against democracy 

 

[Apparition of Jack]

@Leo Gura Leo, American nationalism generally puts white people on top. The Proud Boys having black and hispanic people in it is the same thing as a racist misogynist redneck saying "I can't be racist I have black friends!"

It's entirely possible to have close connections with people of other races whilst still maintaining an internal sense of your own racial superiority. It's also possible to have friends of other races whilst still maintaining an sense of your racial inferiority. Anti-minority bias in minorities is a real thing. My family comes from a migrant background and yet my aunt was literally complaining about people from our culture a few months ago. It's internalised racism.

Watch the video again, you'll notice there's a part where they attack a reporter for being part of the "antifa media." WHen she says shes not antifa they just tell her "well you're still an Arab."

That's white supremacy and racialism in a nutshell. If they had an Arab member of the Proud Boys, that wouldn't somehow make their remarks against her OK. They're a racist, white supremacist organisation that accept minorities as a way to deflect from criticism.

[Matt Skinner]

Their name is derived from a song from Aladdin (seriously this is confirmed)

[hoodrow trillson]

Honestly?  This might be a toxic view but:

They’re unattractive, sexless men.  They remind me of guys who get into the extreme ends of politics to fill that void of getting zero pussy.  They also remind me of those ‘MGTOW’ guys who use the internet to feel a sense of camaraderie in their lives since they can’t get it through normal means.

Maybe I’m projecting somehow or something but alas that’s what I am observing.

 

[Jacob Morres]

12 minutes ago, hoodrow trillson said:

Honestly?  This might be a toxic view but:

They’re unattractive, sexless men.  They remind me of guys who get into the extreme ends of politics to fill that void of getting zero pussy.  They also remind me of those ‘MGTOW’ guys who use the internet to feel a sense of camaraderie in their lives since they can’t get it through normal means.

Maybe I’m projecting somehow or something but alas that’s what I am observing.

 

hmm attraction is a complex topic though 

[hoodrow trillson]

1 minute ago, Jacob Morres said:

hmm attraction is a complex topic though 

100% agree but I can smell these guys from a mile away.  It’s not even like me trying to hate but I can see some of that being true.

IDK I’m probably wrong as hell 

[dyslexicCnut]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Nationalist movements exist in every country around the world. So it's obviously not white supremacy.

I disagree, as I'm sure you could have predicted, given how stubborn people tend to be regarding these matters and I wouldn't exclude myself from that characterization. 

The reason why it's still appropriate to call them "white supremacists" is because there's no race other than white people who the Proud Boys are making an overt appeal to. The culture you mention which they are trying to protect is a very specific subculture that rejects the likeness of foreign lifestyles to a degree that prevents them from being seen as anything but radicals. 

If we just use the definition of white supremacy, "The belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society " then it's pretty difficult to exclude the Proud Boys from this label. Are you really going to tell me that the Proud Boys don't believe black people to be inferior to whites?

The reason why I have no trouble calling my own black mother a white supremacist is because she quite obviously sees black people and other minorities as inferior to whites. It was easy to conclude after just a few questions.

"Why do you think negative attitudes and behaviors are prevalent in the black community?"

Her answer: "Because they refuse to take responsibility for their actions."

"Why do you think black people 'refuse to take responsibility' for themselves?"

Her answer: "Because the culture doesn't emphasize these values."

"Why do you think black culture fails to emphasize enough good values?"

Her answer: "I have no idea why they can't get it together."

"Is it possible that slavery and modern socio-economic factors are to blame?"

Her answer: "That's just a cop-out. People need to learn to be responsible at some point."

"So you reject the idea that issues in the black community stem from their environment as oppose to their own failing?"

Her answer: "Of course I reject that, it's a cop out."

There are only 2 possibilities. Black culture developed as it has due to environment, or genetics. The source of the issue is either internal, or external, and if you reject the issues stemming from external factors as my mom clearly has, obviously she ascribes these failings to the genetics of black people (interior). Are you, @Leo Gura, trying to tell me that the Proud Boys would answer these questions any differently? Of course they would not. They are white supremacists.

42 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Japanese and Hindu nationalists exists. They are similar to the Proud Boys. And they obviously aren't white supremacist.

But of course... They could be called Japanese or Hindu nationalists/supremacists. In this instance we are vastly talking about white people, so you haven't made a terrific argument here.

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

When you call Proud Boys white supremacist, this actually gives them an upper hand because they clearly see that you do not understand that philosophy and are strawmanning them. It's is similar to how a progressive reacts when he is called a communist by the right-wing.

Although it's the least substantive, this quote was the easiest to refute.

We can definitely agree that the Proud Boys are undoubtedly fascists. Do you really think the Proud Boys would perceive the term "fascist" as any less of a strawman towards them than the term "white supremacist"? Of course not, in fact it's rather obvious that they would take greater grievance with the term "fascist", despite it's obvious applicability. 

And of course it does not give them any conceivable "upper hand" by referring to them as white supremacists, just like progressives do not benefit from the false aspersions of being "communists". When progressives are dismissed as communists, people on the right are extremely prone to believing this falsely applied label, to such an effective extent that it does nothing but hurt progressives by emboldening right wing hysteria.

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

You are conflating race and nationalism. These are different things.

I suppose the accredited US agencies have conflated the terms as well?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/proud-boys-white-supremacist-group-law-enforcement-agencies

[Mr Being]