GOP Lawmakers Side With Proud Boys After Their Wild Brawl With Neo-Nazis
When members of the Proud Boys and another far-right group founded by a former Proud Boy member protested at the same Oregon LGBTQ Pride event this weekend, the two factions ended up brawling on a sidewalk.
The fight—which saw Proud Boys and members of the Rose City Nationalists exchange haymakers outside an Oregon City burger joint—was one of the frequent spats that populate the far-right social scene. But footage of the fight has gone viral as part of an ongoing effort to whitewash the far right, with conspiracy theorists and lawmakers describing some of the movement’s gangs, describing the Proud Boys as patriots and their opponents as federal agents.
“This is the BEST video on the internet right now,” conservative internet personality Benny Johnson tweeted, describing footage of the brawl as a “Pro-America Patriot rally” interrupted when “feds show up dressed as ‘Nazis,’” until “Patriots for Feds out of rally.”