Boogaloos and Proud Boys

Noman asked me to condemn the Boogaloos and the Proud Boys. I know next to nothing about them, except for some vague references to Hawaiian shirts and … is it “no fapping”? But I’ve taken a few minutes to get barely acquainted with them. Here are my thoughts.

The Boogaloos. It’s said they want to start a civil war. Pigweed and I have wondered if they’re too late, and we’re already in one, but if they want to start a civil war that involves slinging lead at one another, I’m against that. At least as things stand now. Obviously there is a point at which armed conflict is justified and necessary, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near that.

There are a lot of opposing sides in the culture right now, and I want those sides to have it out — with words, not bullets.

Parts of the left have this weird idea that too much speech is going to lead to armed conflict. As with so many things, they have it exactly backwards. Too little speech will lead to conflict. If the left keeps shutting down conservative speech, unhinged parts of the right will reply with violence.

I’m not condoning that in any way, I’m just saying I think it’s true.

And if it comes to armed conflict between the right and the left, the right has more guns, so the left needs to wise up.

I very strongly suspect that the Boogaloos encompass a range of views, from neo-Nazis and racists on the one side and just John Birch types who want limited government and like guns on the other. Still … they sound like they could be trouble, and I hope the government is keeping a close watch on them.

Proud Boys. These guys seem a little different. If you can believe their website and their tenets, they’re proud of the west and sick of apologizing for it. That sounds generally reasonable to me.

On the other hand, they seem a little too eager to fight.

Men should be able and willing to fight. But not eager.

Wikipedia calls them neo-fascists, and I do not support fascism of any stripe.

While the group officially rejects racism, several members have been affiliated with white supremacy and the Proud Boys has been described by US intelligence organisations as “a dangerous white supremacist group.”

This is the kind of language you get when liberals discuss conservative groups, but they somehow switch the rules when they’re talking about liberal groups.

So, for example, the Proud Boys “officially reject racism,” but some of their people are racists. Any group that rejects racism could be described that way — especially when every day we learn how some new thing is racist. By next week, peanut butter will probably be racist.

Black Lives Matter, however, can explicitly endorse Marxism, but we’re not supposed to notice that.

Still, if US intelligence thinks they could be trouble, that’s worth noting, and … again, we should keep an eye on them.

I want to stress that this post is based on about ten minutes of reading, so it’s very possible I’m completely off on this. Those are just my first impressions.