Gavin McInnes’s hate machine

Abstract

At first, the Proud Boys were a seemingly innocuous white boys club that sprouted from the banter and riffs of online talk show host, Gavin McInnes. But the far right group grew into a nation-wide white supremacist organization. The group came about, thanks to McInnes and his The Gavin McInnes Show (TGMS). The Proud Boys and Gavin McInnes are a prime case study of the problem of free speech and the Internet. Here we see hate speech hiding behind the protective cloak of free speech. The conundrum becomes: How do we deal with fascist politics in the democratic space of the internet? The study conducts a frame analysis of over 32 hours of TGMS, utilizing Stanley’s (2018) rubric of fascist politics. By analyzing McInnes’s online discourse — his hate machine — we obtain a deeper understanding of how fascist politics gently slides into the mainstream and becomes a threat to peaceful political action.

Chat Apps and Cascade Logic: A Multi-Platform Perspective on India, Mexico, and the United States

“…Chat apps in the US have recently drawn attention in the context of white supremacists or pro-Trump activists migrating toward platforms such as Telegram after having been deplatformed (Rogers, 2020; Tynes, 2021), as well as in the context of discussions around E2EE and corresponding government interests (Veen & Boeke, 2020). While WhatsApp enjoys some popularity in the country—hovering at about 10% of the population who use it—it is more popular among diaspora communities, in particular among Latino/Latinx Americans (Gursky et al, 2021), than within the general population.…”

“…Telegram’s recent growth has been linked to the banning of individuals on other social media platforms (Urman & Katz, 2020). The platform’s ability to provide some forms of encryption, public and private channels, and its lax moderation have made it a popular platform not just for the proud boys (Tynes, 2021), but also for other groups seeking to perpetuate violence and disinformation such as ISIS (Shehabat et al, 2017) or Atomwaffen (Walther & McCoy, 2021).…”