Yahoo News Not just a ‘provocateur’: Gavin McInnes should not be allowed into Australia
You may already know that Gavin McInnes is coming to Australia – News Corp is already publicising his visit.
If McInnes’s visit follows the pattern set by other far right grifters like Milo Yiannopoulos and Lauren Southern, news.com.au’s friendly profile will be followed by appearances on Sky’s “after dark” shows and talkback radio.
Then, when the tour is met by protesters, conservative commentators will line up to condemn them as antifa agitators, and urge police to repress them.
The fly in the ointment for conservatives is that McInnes is more difficult to describe with the euphemisms they have developed for other far right figures.
It’s difficult to describe the leader of a violent rightwing street gang as a mere “provocateur”.
The Proud Boys – which McInnes describes in another euphemism as “western chauvinists” – have serially engaged in street violence since their founding in 2016.
I have witnessed a lot of this violence up close from my base in Portland, Oregon.
In 2017, I saw them in attendance at an “alt-right” rally held in the city just weeks after a white supremacist killed two men on a commuter train. Months later, they took part in two separate rallies that degenerated into running brawls on Portland’s waterfront.
In June 2018, at two separate events, they once again engaged in violent confrontations with leftwing counterprotesters. The second event on 30 June was the most intense street fighting I have ever personally witnessed, including what took place in Charlottesville at the Unite the Right protests (that is, what took place before the murder of Heather Heyer by a white nationalist). In an earlier incident, three Proud Boys beat down a pedestrian in broad daylight in a Portland shopping district.
McInnes has made comments which are, by turns, Islamophobic, transphobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-feminist
In the days following that event, the Proud Boys and their rightwing allies celebrated one of their number, a Washington man called Ethan Nordean, punching several leftists to the ground.
On 4 August they had another rally, which ended in a police attack on peaceful counterprotesters.
But in truth that day was dominated by mob violence. Proud Boys joined groups of half a dozen or more rightwing demonstrators who were attacking counterprotesters who were already on the ground.
This kind of many-on-one attack by Proud Boys was seen once again in New York City last weekend.
On 12 October, McInnes addressed Manhattan’s Metropolitan Republican Club. The occasion was the 58th anniversary of the assassination of a Japanese socialist.
Protesters were in attendance. After the event, his supporters once again pursued them and were caught on video, in large groups, administering beatings and homophobic slurs to lone and prone protesters.
Police are looking to arrest nine Proud Boys for their role in the violence, which has been condemned by everyone up to the governor of New York.
Among the rightwing group were people who have since been identified as members of far right groups. Earlier in the evening, McInnes himself emerged from a car carrying a plastic samurai sword.
The following night, once again in Portland, some more Proud Boys fought in the streets with leftwing protesters. One of their number threw a man into a plate glass window, and another beat a counter protester with a club.
Portland’s mayor is currently trying to pass an ordinance to deal with the violence and disorder that Proud Boys have helped bring to the city.
That violence and disorder is predictable, consistent, and habitual. It is not an aberration, it is the group’s central purpose. McInnes himself has described them as a “gang”.
Their stated beliefs may resemble an edgy restatement of conservative Republican orthodoxy, but as Brendan O’Connor put it in the Baffler, “these groups stand for nothing resembling a conventional political program or platform – but that does not mean they are apolitical”. They are “bound together by violent misogyny and ultranationalism”. They assert these beliefs through violence. And Gavin McInnes has encouraged violence throughout the group’s history.
Yes, McInnes has made comments which are, by turns, Islamophobic, transphobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-feminist. The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the Proud Boys as a hate group. But one hardly expects the Australian right to rule someone out on those grounds.
Yes, he has pushed conspiracy theories, and has connections to white supremacy. But again, for allegedly “mainstream” Australian conservatives, this is generally no barrier.
But one would hope that the fact that he leads a violent street gang should prick some consciences in the Australian government, who seem happy to renounce visas to anyone they deem problematic.
Gavin McInnes should not be allowed into Australia. If he is, he should not be given a platform by any media organisation. And if that happens, whichever organisation empowers him in this way should be forever disbarred from complaining about crime, violence, or incivility.
As for Australia’s right, it has a clear choice – it can keep feting visiting members of the far right, or keep whatever moral authority it still retains. There is no in-between position.
• Jason Wilson is a Guardian writer and columnist
