Gavin McInnes’s hate machine

Authors

  • Robert Tynes Bard College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i2.11424

Keywords:

Gavin McInnes, Proud Boys, fascist politics, online talk show

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.

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Published

2021-01-20

How to Cite

Tynes, R. (2021). Gavin McInnes’s hate machine. First Monday, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i2.11424