Alison Sullivan
During the first presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked very directly if he renounced white supremacists, most specifically the notorious Proud Boys. The Proud Boys were founded by Vice co-founder Gavin McInness. They were initially a “fraternity” who swore never to masturbate and did weird publicity stunts of themselves laying in dumpsters, to represent the plight of the forgotten straight white male.
They’ve since organized into something much more dangerous, causing violence at protests and in various cities and aligning more and more deeply with the explicit beliefs of white supremacists.
Donald Trump at one point during the debate told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” which sounds more like an order than a condemnation. That’s pretty much how they took it, celebrating the President’s seeming endorsement and becoming even more emboldened.
This group manages to be both pathetic and dangerous. There is one group choosing to organize against the Proud Boys in a more absurd manner than meeting them on the streets. The PB hashtag is naturally #ProudBoys. Gay men have started using it to celebrate their sweet love by using it, flooding the hashtag with their own images:
The pictures are often sweet, funny, or really dang sexy. Gay love is a rainbow:
But not everybody thinks this is the most useful way to spend time organizing against white supremacists:
For that matter, Forbes reports that the Proud Boys does not have an official platform on Twitter, because they were banned in 2018. There were plenty of bigoted people angered by the hashtag takeover, of course, because they tend to stay mad. Was anything ultimately accomplished? No, not really, but the Proud Boys pretty much only respond to violence or trolling, so these are the options.