Trump Supporting Group Called Hate Group, Booted from Bar
A group of Trump Supporters called the Proud boys, a self described "Western Chauvinist" group, was removed from a bar after activists started chanting and an altercation broke out. Police were called and requested both groups leave due to the conflict.In response to this activists are attacking the bar accusing them of supporting a "hate group."Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
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A couple nights ago, the Proud Boys, a western chauvinist fraternity, was holding an impromptu meetup at a bar called The Griffin in Los Angeles.
Eventually some activists found out, rallied some of their friends, showed up, started chanting, arguing with bar staff.
Eventually an altercation broke out, police got called, and both groups were asked to leave.
Now, regardless of your opinion on the Proud Boys, what's worrying here is that activists are targeting the business.
The Proud Boys showed up on their own, and the business didn't plan their event.
But activists are saying that the Bar now supports white supremacy and hate groups.
In response, the Bar just agreed, doubled down, and apologized.
So what exactly did the activists do to get the Proud Boys kicked out?
Is it fair to say the Proud Boys are white nationalists and racist?
And what are the ramifications for our society If businesses are just going to bend over backwards when activists and mobs demand they do.
But before we get started, let me give a quick shoutout to today's sponsor, Newsvoice.
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A story from L.A.
Taco.
Proud Boys gathering at Atwater Bar The Griffin draws protest police, possible MAGA mom, no arrests.
Los Angeles police were called to an altercation at a neighborhood bar in Atwater Village on Sunday that stemmed from a gathering of members or supporters of a known hate group.
Proud Boys, a self-described Western chauvinist men's club that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group, were patronizing the Gryphon on Las Villas Boulevard on Saturday when word began spreading of the group's presence.
Local activists, including members of LA Democratic Socialists of America and a new group calling itself Defend Northeast Los Angeles, say they were alerted via text and called on supporters to go to the Gryphon Josh Androsky, a member of the L.A.
Democratic Socialists of America, was part of the group that confronted Proud Boys supporters at the Griffin.
Androsky told L.A.
need to know they're not welcome here and they're not allowed to have fun here," Androsky
told LA Taco in an interview.
"'We all went and made sure they know that.'"
LAPD officers were called to the bar at 10.35 p.m. in response to a report of large groups
of fighting at the 3,000 block of Los Feliz Boulevard, said Officer Rosario Herrera.
When officers arrived, they advised both parties to leave the location.
Both agreed, and there was no report taken at the time, Herrera told LA Taco.
You'd think that would be it.
The activists showed up, they won, the Proud Boys had to leave at the request of the police, and there you go, story over.
However, the activists are going after the Griffin now.
Keep in mind, this was an impromptu meetup.
The Griffin didn't plan the event for them or guarantee them space.
The Proud Boys just showed up and had a drink like any other normal patron, and because of this, activists are taking it out on the business.
Justin Caffier said, And interestingly, according to a video from LA Taco,
a bar employee who is arguing with activists says, why do they have black guys and Mexican guys with them?
It would seem that these people were accusing the Proud Boys of being neo-Nazis or white supremacists,
and the bar employee was confused as to why a group with mixed races would be white supremacists.
but ultimately the bar employee said, why am I defending them?
I'm sorry this didn't get posted sooner, but I've been laboring over it for hours.
I'm Jewish, and finding out that my bar was overrun by a hate group has had a
legitimate emotional impact on me, and has made it hard for me to function.
Neither I nor my business partner support any Nazi or white supremacist groups,
This is not a Nazi bar.
We didn't have any advance notice they would be showing up.
This wasn't a meeting that was supported or condoned.
I wasn't there last night, but I was informed that there were Proud Boys in the bar.
At this time, there was only a handful.
Ideally, that would be stopped at the door.
But since they were already inside, I advise that we use a tactic that I've used in the past with gang members or people that are obviously in there to cause problems.
Kill them with kindness, and they'll get bored and go away.
We are generally a pretty mellow and peaceful bar, with no real security, and I foolishly thought this was the best way to ensure they'd leave.
First, let me just say that it's a very odd statement, in my opinion.
Why the bar would claim to want to kill them with kindness so they got bored and leave just seems strange, considering the Proud Boys were there to drink and talk with their friends, and that's what they were doing.
They would get bored when they get bored.
It's not like people show up to bars, sit around, and wait for a confrontation, and then get bored and leave.
So his response seems to be mostly in response to the activists accusing them of supporting white supremacy.
When you go to the Griffin's Yelp page, we can see that it is currently under an active cleanup alert.
This happens when activists brigade a Yelp page because of some political incident or some media event.
It says, this business recently made waves in the news, which often means that people come to this page to post their views on the news.
While we don't take a stand one way or the other when it comes to these news events, we do work to remove both positive and negative posts that appear to be motivated more by the news coverage itself than the reviewer's personal consumer experience with the business.
And because of the response, the business is taking hits from both the left and the right.
Right away, we can see one post, giving it one star, saying, Clearly, this person is on the right.
the fake news handled this, including the owner, the Proud Boys are not a Nazi or a
supremacist group.
The fake news gets their fake info from an actual Nazi website, the SPLC, which is an
actual hate organization.
Clearly, this person is on the right.
And if we scroll down, we can easily see something coming from the left.
I like my meals with a side of love and empathy, and although I typically let people live their
lives, I draw the line at neo-Nazis.
So this spot is a hard pass for me.
I'll be sure to tell my production pals.
Numerous posts as you scroll down are leftist activists accusing the Bar of supporting Nazis simply because the Proud Boys showed up on their own.
By all means, have a negative opinion about the Proud Boys, dislike what they do, and dislike what they stand for.
But it's particularly alarming when activists will target the business because patrons showed up unannounced.
And even a statement from the Griffin denouncing the Proud Boys, associating them with hate groups and neo-Nazis, is not enough to stop the backlash.
Following this, The Griffin posted this message.
The Griffin is closed for the evening of July 15th.
Moving forward, The Griffin will post no tolerance signs at the entrance,
and our staff will screen entering patrons accordingly.
No person with any affiliation to any hate group will be allowed on the premises.
No sexism, no racism, no ableism, no ageism, no homophobia, no fatphobia, no transphobia, no hatefulness.
Now, in my opinion, activists should not be targeting a business
who served random patrons who showed up wearing Trump hats.
But, unfortunately, the business sided with the activists, and now they're getting attacked from both sides.
It really seems like there's no way to win for the Griffin.
They're just going to reap the benefits of current American politics.
But the question remains as to whether or not the Proud Boys are a racist group.
Are they really associated with Neo-Nazis?
Well, they have had their connections in the past.
But looking at a story about Charlottesville, we see this quote from Gavin McInnes.
The unfortunate position that Charlesville puts us in is now it would seem as if we're
speaking on behalf of Alex Fields Jr., who allegedly murdered a woman, he explained that
afternoon over the phone from New York.
We're now his ambassadors, and we're fighting these anti-fascist kids, physically fighting
on behalf of white nationalists, who purposefully threw dynamite into a wasp's nest, and that's
not my cause.
I don't want to fight on their behalf.
McGinnis has been spending a lot of time like this lately, trying to ensure he isn't yoked to other yokels.
He had formally disavowed the Charlottesville rally back in June, but critics noted that chief organizer Jason Kessler had once been a member of the Proud Boys.
McInnes said he kicked Kessler out once his racist politics became apparent.
And from the New York Times, Unwilling to be associated with explicit neo-Nazis, some of those invited to the Charlottesville event did not even bother showing up.
Among them was Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys, a conservative fraternal organization of self-described Western chauvinists.
Well before the gathering in Charlottesville, Mr. McInnes had planned to hold a free speech rally in Boston on Saturday, but it remained unclear whether it would take place after Civil Rights Group on Monday asked the city's mayor, Martin J. Walsh, to revoke the rally's permit.
Mr. McInnes, in an unusual move, said he hoped the event would be cancelled.
It's a lose-lose situation, he explained.
If we have a permit and we don't go, it would show that Antifa, or anti-fascists, can shut us down whenever they want.
But if we do go, it will look like we're fighting for Nazis we don't like.
The Proud Boys are often associated with the alt-right, but in the past they have denounced the alt-right and said that anyone who holds those views isn't welcome in the Proud Boys.
Now they're typically referred to as far-right.
But, the question remains, are the Proud Boys racist?
And I think it's fair to say that there are probably many people associated with the Proud Boys who are in fact racist.
But, at an organizational level, they have denounced racism, they have denounced the alt-right, and as you heard from those other statements, attempted to distance themselves from the events of Charlottesville and other neo-Nazi groups.
But rest assured, because they're associated with the right, they're going to be called white nationalists, they're going to be called white supremacists.
As we saw in the video earlier, the Proud Boys at the Griffin had black members and Mexican members with them.
And there are a lot of stories about non-white Proud Boys and the issues they face when they're called racist or white supremacists.
And it's also important to point out that the left also has its fair share of racists as well.
A video was recently going viral among the right of left-wing activists protesting ICE in Portland screaming F-ing N-word at police over and over again.
And for obvious reasons, I can't play the video.
YouTube will probably give me a strike of some sort, so there's no point in playing it if I'm going to censor it.
But you can Google this and see that this video is legitimate.
It's being passed around all over Twitter.
Simply because a handful of activists in Portland were yelling racist things doesn't mean I'm going to accuse Antifa of all being racist, though many of them are.
And the same can be said for the Proud Boys.
At a surface level, they're going to say they're not racist, they don't believe in it, and that racists aren't allowed, and they have many people of varying ethnicities within their group, but it's fair to say that some of them probably are racist.
No matter what your opinion on any of these groups are, it's worrisome when activists target businesses simply for doing what a business does, allowing people to come in and have drinks.
And unfortunately, it seems the Griffin has sided with the activists, which is only going to result in ongoing damage to their brand and reputation because they took a side.
Unfortunately, they took a side that won't support them, because even after denouncing the Proud Boys, the left is still attacking them online, still refusing to shout there, and the tweet about them hosting white supremacists is still going viral, with 18,930 retweets as of today.
So let me know what you think in the comments below.
What is going to happen if our society continues on a path where businesses refuse to serve people, take political sides, and a mob will come to a random business, destroy their reputation, simply for serving random people who showed up?
Comment below, let me know what you think.
We'll keep the conversation going.
You can follow me on Twitter at TimCast.
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