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Kyle Chapman, known to his fans on the alt-right as Based Stickman for beating aleftistprotester with a wooden stick at an early March pro-Trump protest in Berkeley, California, wants people to think hes tough. In late April Chapman announcedon Facebook hiscreation of a new group of right-wing street fighters, called theFraternal Order of Alt-Knights (or FOAK), dedicated to defense and confrontation in the streets. You could almost hear thechest-thumping right through the computer screen.

This organization is for those that possess the Warrior Spirit, Chapman wrote. The weak or timid need not apply.

A few days after that, the Proud Boys network, a group that Vice co-founder and former Fox News contributor Gavin McInnes calls a pro-West fraternal organization, posted a notice about the formationof the alt-knights orderand a call for strong minded men who are comfortable in fisticuffs to join. I reached out toChapman in hopes of seeing his warrior spiritfor myself. Alas, I ended up disappointed.

Initially, Chapman seemed interested in talking and gave me his phone number. But when I called him, he refused to speak to me, insisting that I email my questions instead. Since then nearly a week has gone by, and Chapman has not answered my emailed questions or any of my follow-up nudges on Facebook. (He has read them, though.)The warrior spirit is apparently not enough to help him tough out a conversation with a journalist about why he believes the world needs the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights.

The public claim is that this organization is needed for self-defense.

The Proud Boys are already known to escort woman and targeted speakers to events for protection against violent anti-speech protesters, a blogger named PawL BaZile wrote on the Proud Boys website. FOAK will now take the next logical step in organizing the Proud Boy watchdogs into a force to protect and serve when the police are told to stand down.

Investigative journalist and Southern Poverty Law Center contributor David Neiwert, who has won a National Press Club award for his investigations ofhate groups, is skeptical about these claims.

These guys are there looking for a fight, Neiwert said in a phone conversation. These guys are clearly quasi-fascist, classic protofascists, and theyre on the track to full-fledged fascism. All we need to do is look at history and see how it happened.

Neiwert said he consultshistorian Robert Paxtons theory, published in 1998 in the Journal of Modern History, that delineates the five stages of fascism. Right now, Neiwert argued, far-right elements are seekingto consolidate power and that requires recruiting mainstream conservatives totheir side. By going out into the street and picking fights with leftists, under the guise of free speech and self-defense, groupslike the Proud Boys and the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights can play themartyr and give ordinary conservatives an excuse to rally around them.

My Salon colleague Matthew Sheffield offered a similar analysis last week in a Salon article, arguingthat those on the alt-rightare now angling for more mainstream support, and the quickest way to do that is by portraying themselves as frontline defense against a supposedly violent leftist uprising.As evidence, Sheffield pointed out that propaganda portraying these far-right racist and neo-Nazi groups as free-speech martyrs has quickly migrated to more mainstream conservative sites that also cater to alt-right audiences.

The claim of Chapman and his fellows to be gentle lambs merely provoked by violent leftistsis hard to swallow on its surface, because they just so happen to hold their rallies in places they know have a large presence of antifa activists. Antifa is the label adopted by advocates fora subculture promoting a set of tactics and practices that have developed since the early 20th century (and the rise of fascism in Italy) as a confrontational response to fascist groups, rooted in militant left-wing and anarchist politics,according to Natasha Lennard of The Nation.

But thats not the only reasonits hard to buy the claim that Chapmans hard-right acolytes aregoing into this fight reluctantly.

We dont fear the fight. We are the fight, BaZile crowed in his post announcing the formation of the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights..

Especiallyilluminating was the response that Chapman received when he put out a call on Facebook, under his own profile and the Based Stickman fan page, for a symbol/crest to represent the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights. The self-seriousness of those who responded was matched only by the near-pornographic enthusiasm forviolence.

Heres a sampling of some of the popular submissions:

The above graphic is apparently a reference to former Chilean dictators purported habit of disappearing leftists by throwing them out of helicopters.

Soon there will be a court test for the theory that these far-right forces are deliberately starting fights so they can play the victim afterward.

Last week prosecutors in Seattle filed charges against the married couple Elizabeth and Marc Hokoanainconnection withthe shooting of a man who attended an Inauguration Day protestof a speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of Washington.

The Hokoanas have tried to depict the shooting as an act of self-defense, but a prosecutor argued that the couple created a situation designed to allow Elizabeth Hokoana to shoot the victim in the middle of an extremely crowded event under the guise of defending herself or her husband.

Prosecutors have gathered evidence of premeditation, including Marc Hokoanas statementthat he wanted to crack skulls and coaching his wife, who was carrying the gun, by saying, They have to start this. They have to start it, during the fight.

Neiwert, who was at the event and captured video of the events preceding the shooting, told me on the phone that the victim,Joshua Dukes, had beentrying to break up fights. The Seattle prosecutors agree, arguing that Dukes was shot when he confronted Marc Hokoana for pepper-spraying the crowd.

But Neiwert doesnt want to let leftist protesters off the hook entirely, however.

For the most part, the antifa people are peaceful, Neiwert said, but he also reportedhaving seen antifa protesters throwing rocks and punches. He wasbangedaround a few times at the Seattle protests by antifa radicals trying to knock the camera out of his hands.

Right now the left is being outsmarted by these guys, Neiwert said. Antifa protesters are playing into the hands of the protofascists by giving them the fight they want, he argued.

Even though the Southern Poverty Law Center officially discourages efforts to confront right-wing protesters, Neiwert thinks theres value infirm opposition, [being] out there saying no, you dont speak for us; you dont speak for America.

But you cant do it, Neiwert said, by fighting them physically, adding, All you do is prove their point or seemingly prove their point. Certainly you give the media the opportunity to say, See, both sides are equally bad.

Instead, Neiwert argued that the left should confront protofascists with mockery.He sent me a post he wrote in February forhis personal blogrecountingwhat transpired ata 2005 neo-Nazi rally in Olympia, Washington,when progressive protesters showed up in clown costumes and performed dances to mock goose-stepping.This whimsical display reduced the neo-Nazis to sputtering but impotent rage, he wrote.

In 1993, Molly Ivins reported on a similarcounterdemonstration in Austin, Texas, where 5,000 anti-racist protesters met a Ku Klux Klan rally andmoonedg Klansmen.

Citizens dropped trou both singly and in groups, occasionally producing a splendid wave effect, Ivins said. It was a swell do.

Considering the utter self-seriousness of the protofascists, this could well be an effective response. Its certainly better than giving them a fight, which allows the far-right forces toportray themselves as martyrs and victims and mighteven aid them in rallying more mainstream conservatives to their side.

Meet their macho bravado with clown noses and fart noises. Its tough to play brave soldiers facing down violent leftistsin the face of that.

See more here:
Alt-right hopes to organize street-fighting goon squad: Is it more than macho posturing? - Salon