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TRS 504um posters describe their radicalization as a gradual process, with charismatic alt-lite personalities like Gavin McInnes introducing them to ideas they would eventually take to their extreme. McInnes, especially, hides under a guise of irony, freely using racial slurs and making incendiary comments about women, Muslims and African Americans in the name of mocking political correctness.

McInnes, who formed the Proud Boys in 2016, has repeatedly insisted the SPLC-designated hate group is simply a right-wing mens drinking club in the vein of the Elks Lodge, and has taken pains to distance himself from the alt-right. But even he agrees that theres overlap between his Western chauvinist Proud Boys and self-proclaimed white nationalists: both sides have in common Western chauvinism, theyre not embarrassed by whiteness or whatever, [and] they dont believe diversity is the end-all and be-all.

Responses within the TRS threads show how easy it is to slip from the notion that the West is the best into believing that western culture is superior because its white. Of the respondents in the sample, roughly 15 percent mentioned McInnes as a step in their path to white nationalism or recommended using his videos and writing to convert others. There are more than a few real-life examples of Proud Boys moving into more extreme groups.

McInnes is loathed by many at TRS for being unwilling to take racial politics head-on and counter-signaling them, but hes still credited with helping to cultivate their own belief in white nationalism. In a thread called Do We Still Hate Gavin McInnes? a user calling themselves KarlVonBraun came to his defense, writing I remember first hearing Gavin trash niggers who do that pole/street dance thing on the subwayBasically he says everything short of calling them worthless niggers. I'd literally never heard anyone be brutally honest about what is uniquely nigger behavior while maintaining decorum, without crossing lines you can't cross. It was totally exhilarating. Another user wrote, I guarantee that he is still (without meaning to) funneling people into the Alt-Right.

McInnes is also responsible for introducing a number of TRS users to Jim Goad and, indeed, for much of the writer and podcasters recent resurgence in popularity. Goad got his start as a writer in the 1990s producing his own controversial and acerbic independent magazine and, in 1997, published a book in the same vein. The Redneck Manifesto, which begins with a chapter called White Niggers Have Feelings, Too, bemoans liberals tendency to look down on poor whites and argues, Multiculturalism is a country club that excludes white trash. Goad (much like McInnes) began his career as a sort of small-time countercultural celebrity, but his focus on white persecution now earns him widespread praise within the alt-right.

McInnes has hosted Goad on his shows numerous times and, on a list he created of required reading on Western culture, included Redneck Manifesto together with Patrick Buchanans The Death of the West and Charles Murrays Coming Apart: The State of White America both writers who are also mentioned as influences by TRS posters. One respondent called Goads book an early redpill on the malicious anti-white agenda of the left.

Goad takes advantage of the fact that hes often treated as a serious literary figure, presenting his extremist views on race as simply thoughtful meditations on politically taboo topics or as an attempt to resist political correctness. Hes used his numerous platforms to perpetuate the myth of white slavery and criticized the corporate globalist left for making it difficult for the Daily Stormer to maintain a domain. He even hosted Andrew Anglin, the sites founder, on his podcast, as well as former Ku Klux Klan lawyer Sam Dickson and the Holocaust-denying author Michael Hoffman.

Goad, who is cited six times by TRS members, disparages Those who blame Jews for everything. But in the same breath, he repeats their rhetoric, making him into what one poster calls the missing link from people like Gavin to the white nationalist TRS. If youre trying to red pill a friend and they like Gavin, NotDonSilvo wrote, send them his old podcast with Jim and some of his Taki articles or guest appearances in Gavins Compound Media [show].

Besides his podcast, Goads main platform is Takis Magazine, an extreme right-wing publication with an irreverent tone that promises its only ideology is to be against the junk culture foisted upon us by Hollywood and the mainstream media. Along with Goad and McInnes, it publishes authors like John Derbyshire, who was fired from the conservative National Review after he wrote an article for Takis about advising his teenage children to stay out of heavily black neighborhoods. It described black people as ferociously hostile to whites and is now listed in the greatest hits section on Takis website.

Takis contributors overlap with those at the hate site VDARE, including Steve Sailer cited four times by TRS users whose writing is largely dedicated to opposing immigration and drawing a false link between race and intelligence.

BothTakis Magazineand VDARE are cited by posters of the TRS threads as good in-betweeners, and, together, are cited in more than 16 percent of responses. Both websites, the user Cniva wrote, are good at presenting racism in a were just being reasonable/this is what the science says, why are you acting so upset? type of way.

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McInnes, Molyneux, and 4chan: Investigating pathways to ...