Crossing the line: “What’s Left?” March 2019, MRR #430

[The Motherfuckers are] a street gang with analysis.
—Osha Neumann

Fuck shit up!
—hardcore punk catchphrase

Conservatives are the new punk.
—alt-right-lite catchphrase

When I read Michael “Bommi” Baumann’s political memoir Wie Alles Anfing/How It All Began in 1979, about his experiences as a West German urban guerrilla, I took to heart his slogan: “Words cannot save us! Words don’t break chains! The deed alone makes us free! Destroy what destroys you!” The feeling behind his words resonated with the aggressive, direct action-oriented anarchism I’d developed since 1968, but by the late ‘80s I’d abbreviated those sentiments into the phrase “fuck shit up.” Fuck shit up was a hardcore punk war cry. Bands from Useless Pieces of Shit to Blatz wrote songs with the saying in the title and the lyrics. There’s no more punk an expression than “fuck shit up,” which is abbreviated FSU in graffiti.

An organization of punks arose in the Boston area in the early ’90s also called Fuck Shit Up/FSU, started by Elgin James. James was a mixed-race orphan raised by peace-and-love hippie foster parents who preached pacifism but subjected Elgin to a harmful home environment of alcohol and drug abuse. He reacted to his parents by becoming straightedge and rejecting their pacifism for the Black Power philosophy of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and the Black Panther Party, ultimately embracing the aggressive ideals of hardcore punk rock. Running afoul of the law, confined briefly to juvenile hall, Elgin enrolled to study pre-law but suffered brain damage from an injury incurred during a gang fight. He slowly, painfully recovered his mental and physical abilities through intense physical therapy, but remained destitute and homeless until he moved to Boston. There, he became the singer for the hardcore band Wrecking Crew in 1991 and joined a multi-racial crew of working class punk kids to form FSU, with Fuck Shit Up also coming to mean Friends Stand United and Forever Stand United.

Ostensibly aggro, straightedge and anti-racist, Boston FSU’s core stance was undying loyalty to one’s crew of friends defended by righteous violence. Boston FSU started by claiming to purge white power skinhead gangs from shows and the scene, then quickly moved on to taking out drug dealers. Going “right after the heart of the enemy, money,” FSU robbed drug dealers, then gave half of their take to local charities and straightedge bands while keeping the remainder for themselves. FSU started an “arms for hostages” scheme to trade handguns for pit bulls used in dog fighting rings with inner city gangs. Boston FSU’s reputation grew. Soon FSU chapters sprung up across the country. In 1992, I remember FSU being listed in Anti-Racist Action zines as a premier straightedge, anti-racist, hardcore punk organization and therefore legitimate allies in the fight against white supremacy.

That didn’t last. Many Boston punks considered FSU thugs and their claim to rid the scene of nazi skins bogus. FSU also targeted bouncers, scene outsiders, and civilians with what the group considered justified violence. “Fuck nazis and dope dealers” escalated to “fuck anybody who isn’t us.” Ideologies grew more extreme, with hardline supplanting straightedge. Members died and chapters splintered. A number of FSU members eventually joined the Outlaws and Mongols motorcycle gangs. Violence linked to FSU in Salt Lake City—including a mob attack, McDonald’s arson, and mink farm bombing—culminated in a gang-related murder in 1998, leading the FBI to declare FSU a street gang by 2009. Elgin James put out a hit on a supposed neo-Nazi and then attempted to extort money from the individual in 2005, which lead to his arrest by the FBI in 2009 and imprisonment in 2011/12.

So when does a crew become a gang? When FSU fell apart, James and surviving founding members formed the Foundation Fund to set up scholarships at local universities to honor dead FSU members and reflect “hardcore punk culture” and ideals. But FSU had crossed the line from scene crew to street gang long before.

Now consider another example of the use of violence in turning a crew into a gang.

Breitbart published an article entitled “Political Punks” in 2015 that featured a détourned image of the classic Ramones picture, the four band members posed against a brick wall with their faces switched up for Greg Gutfeld, Clint Eastwood, Ann Coulter, and Gavin McInnes. One of the first uses of the spurious meme, the cliché that “conservatives are the new punk” has become a mantra for McInnes and his ilk ever since.

McInnes was born in Britain of Scottish parents who migrated to Canada when he was a child. He played in the Ottawa punk band Anal Chinook and founded Vice with Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi in Montreal in 1994, exhibiting from the beginning his propensity for provocation, rightwing culture jamming, and countercultural cooptation. McInnes almost single handedly manufactured the gentrifying, mostly white, male and young hipster subculture. He was bought out by his two Vice partners in 2008 and, fancying himself a comedian, writer, actor and businessman, he attempted various marginal commercial ventures. But by 2012 his increasingly right wing trajectory was apparent. He peddled transphobia, founded his own news commentary internet show and advertising company, and became a regular contributor for Rebel Media, Infowars, and Fox News. He wrote for more overt paleoconservative/white supremacist media like TakiMag, American Renaissance, and VDARE. And McInnes founded the Proud Boys (PB) in 2016 just prior to being employed by CRTV in 2017.

What The Monkees were to music the PB are to politics—a cleverly constructed and recruited group designed to appeal to a carefully targeted demographic. And like hipsterism before, the PB were mostly concocted by Gavin McInnes, whose leadership has been equal parts deflection and “balls out” bullshit. He has constantly declared the PB multiracial and gay friendly, yet its membership remains overwhelmingly young, white, and hetero. From its retro rightwing ideology (anti-feminist pro-family, free enterprise small government, anti-Muslim “Western chauvinism”) to its goofy ritualism (Disneyesque name, Broadway themed anthem, five cereal faux beatdown initiation) and pseudo-Masonic trappings (pledging, graduated system of “degrees,” Fred Perry “uniforms”) the PB as a fraternal organization boils down to drinking and fighting, in McInnes’s own words. And despite simply wanting to enjoy a drink with “his boys” and a little spurious charity work, McInnes is all about the fighting, having declared “I want violence, I want punching in the face. I’m disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough.” He amended the PB with a “fourth degree initiation” where “We don’t start fights […] but we will finish them.”

What this has meant in practice publicly is overt provocation, intentional aggression, and targeted violence by the PB. At New York University, in Berkeley, California, in Portland, Oregon, and mostly recently at the New York Metropolitan Republican Club, the PB have squared off against antifa in alliance with assorted white supremacist (Identity Evropa, 211 Boot Boys) and patriotic militia (Oath Keepers, III Percenters) groups. Acting as “founder, not fuhrer,” McInnes proclaimed after Charlottesville that the PB can’t have white supremacist alt-right members while at the same time declaring that white supremacy doesn’t exist. This leaves the PB free to associate and openly work with the racist alt-right as a rightwing alt-lite ally. The PB may have started as a joke, but it’s far from a goof that simply got out of hand. McInnes deliberately fanned the PB’s violent rhetoric, hyperbolic claims, and collusion with white supremacy. In turn, this allowed McInnes to transform the burgeoning PB from a contrived crew to an ersatz gang specializing in bodyguard muscle, anti-antifa vigilantism, and general rightwing mayhem. The Monkees, after all, were quite popular and had a decent following even when they were purely corporate tools.

I viewed the brutal Boston Beatdown videos and realized that six or seven charismatic individuals besides Elgin James were behind FSU’s power and draw. When I saw Gavin McInnes’s rambling, incoherent video distancing himself from the PB and the “Proud Boys 9” “for their own good” now that the FBI unofficially consider them extremists I could feel the palpable fear of a RICO anti-organized crime indictment looming over McInnes’s resignation action. McInnes had become the clownish ex-hipster Mussolini of a suburban gang without analysis. Now that an “Elders Chapter” and Chairman Enrique Tarrio are officially the boss of this so-called “Western chauvinist” fraternity few think the PB will remain the leading alt-right-lite organization tasked as GOP enforcers and anti-antifa vigilantes. Some are predicting sectarian battles and splits. Others believe the PB will gradually fade into obscurity. But the PB might yet linger. To Mao’s famous dictum “if you don’t hit it, it won’t fall” I’d like to add the anarchist caveat:

“If it doesn’t fall, you didn’t hit it hard enough!”

Originally this column featured a Skarhead picture to obliquely reference a wider discussion about crews in punk and hardcore from https://dukecityhardcorepunk.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/crews-in-the-punk-and-hardcore-scene/. I got crap for it so I replaced it and other pictures with ones from Boston Beatdown.

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