By any other name: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?”, August 2021

I picked up an archaic paper flyer pinned to an obsolete cork board in the now-defunct Market Street branch of FLAX Art Supplies. The handbill advertised a web designer and mobile app developer—Daniel Goodwyn—who offered to teach virtually any platform or software. I wanted to learn social media to prepare for self-publishing my novel 1% Free, so I called. He was cheap. We arranged to meet at Philz Coffee on 24th Street.

“I only drink Philz coffee,” Daniel said.

We met six or seven times at the end of 2015, beginning of 2016. Daniel was an evangelical Christian favorable to fundamentalism, but he wore his religious beliefs close to the vest. He didn’t proselytize. Instead, he would produce his worn King James Bible from his backpack before starting each lesson. I pulled out my Handbook of Denominations by Mead, Hill and Atwood our third meeting and we were off discussing Christianity between social media tutoring. We talked dispensationalism, cessationism, and biblical inerrancy. He’d attended 24/7 worship and prayer events, and would soon do web design for the messianic Jews for Jesus organization.

Donald Trump was beginning his presidential campaign so our conversations weren’t overtly political. Several years later, on September 15, 2020,  Goodwyn was arrested for not wearing a COVID mask riding a Muni bus. On October 17, 2020, he co-sponsored a sparsely attended SF Civic Center far right Free Speech/anti-Big Tech rally with fellow self-proclaimed Proud Boy Philip Anderson. A much larger riotous antifa protest crowd attacked the ersatz Proud Boys and shut down their rally. On January 2, 2021, Goodwyn refused to mask up, leave, or identify himself at a Wyoming gas station and was arrested by local authorities. Finally, on January 6, 2021, he attended the “Stop The Steal” Trump rally and stormed the Capitol building, for which he was indicted by the FBI on January 15 and arrested on January 29, 2021. He was pictured proudly wearing his red MAGA hat to both the Civic Center and Capitol building riots.

I was appalled reading Goodwyn’s story in the SF Chronicle. And not just because of how quickly he went from relative normality to the fascist fringes, but because of how a significant portion of the country went along with him. It’s one thing to wholeheartedly buy into a mythology—reincarnating some imagined Davidic order of ancient Hebrew worship as primitive Christianity versus contesting the nonexistent voting irregularities and fantasy fraud of a supposedly “stolen election.” But when is belief in virgin birth considered normal and belief that COVID is a hoax considered extreme? It’s a distinction without much of a difference. Why debate your location once you’re already in cloud cuckoo land?

There are fascist forms of Christianity: Christian nationalism, Dominionism, Christian Identity. But Goodwyn’s mainstream Christian beliefs—like most religion—are fantasy, not fascism. I’m not interested in distinguishing between spirituality and religion so much as in keeping the two at arms length. I’ve dabbled in both but I consider them interconnected, subjective, and personal in contrast to my more objective historical, scientific, and materialist mindset. I’ve always had religious/spiritual tendencies, experiences, and affiliations; sometimes central and other times peripheral. I was a Sunday school Catholic raised by parents who wanted me to receive the first four sacraments but also enrolled me in public schools. I hung out with liberal Unitarian ministers, Quaker draft counselors, itinerant Catholic Workers, and committed Liberation Theology advocates in high school during the anti-Vietnam War movement. And I was religious-adjacent to all the crap New Age spirituality for which my generation can be blamed.

During my first semester at Ventura College in 1970 I fell in with the Campus Crusade for Christ crowd and became a born-again Christian for five months. My first mystical experiences were spiritual not psychedelic. But I was a far left Christian anarchist who held up the example of the anti-war civil disobedience of the Berrigan brothers and waved about David Kirk’s little red book Quotations From Chairman Jesus, to the distress of my fellow Christians. I’d calligraphied two slogans on the glove compartment door of my 1958 VW Beetle to summarize my worldview at the time: “He is risen” and “peace, love and smash the state.” “Forget the politics,” an exasperated friend once snarled, “just read your Bible.” I lapsed into agnosticism, if not outright atheism, soon thereafter. Or as I quipped at the time: I gave up Catholicism for Lent and saw the light when I smoked marijuana. My involvement with Zen Buddhism through my alcoholic recovery practice beginning in 2010 meant simultaneously reviving my spirituality and reinforcing my atheism. After all, Zen Buddhism is the closest thing you can get to atheism and remain religious.

Similarly, the often-contradictory beliefs of the right-wing MAGA milieu—distrust of powerful “liberal” elites, COVID as hoax or Chinese bioweapon, vaccines as ruse or social control mechanism, Democrats “stealing” the election from Trump, etc—are certainly delusional but not explicitly fascist. The worldview that a shadowy cabal secretly controls things undergirds both QAnon’s outright idiocy of a secret sect of devil-worshipping pedophiles who dominate Hollywood, big business, the media, and government and more traditional fascist/Nazi/white supremacist antisemitic tropes like the canard that the Jews run the world. Fascism had been building during the four years of Trump’s presidency with the increasing radicalization of right-wing MAGA populism; the mobilization of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, III Percenters, QAnon; and the sense of Weimar deja vu. It’s a wonder those yahoos proudly selfied their own comically failed Keystone Kops insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Spencer Sunshine addresses the hardcore threat posed by the rise of overtly fascist/neo-Nazi/white supremacist tendencies and groups:
We see how they make other right-wing movements more extreme, how they take over cultural and religious milieus, as well as organize in geographical communities—and of course see (and are often subjected to) the violence that inevitably follows. Of course, we do also worry that they will expand into a significant political force, although this has been a rare phenomenon in the United States. It is these movements directly in front of us that are our main concern, not the looming fear that a Nazi administration will be in power in the near future.
But how to think about all the ordinary conservatives apparently going along for the ride? They seem hellbent on asserting their precious individualism while practicing an insipid herd behavior.

Personally, I was stunned I’d gotten to know one of the default ultra-right players in this drama. I’d set up my Facebook account under his tutelage so he was my “friend zero.” He stayed off my posts until this last year when he made a couple of loose comments here and there. Then January 6 happened and he dropped off most social media. At 32, Goodwyn has left behind his so-called “impetuous youth.” “He’s very principled but not always over the right things,” his father told the judge presiding over his case. I’m tempted to offer him the same advice I got back when I was 18 to “forget the politics, just read your Bible.” But I guess the feeling of having god on your side is pretty overwhelming.

I’m also tempted to call Goodwyn what I’ve been called as part of the Left for a half century—a fellow traveler. What else to make of a semi-normie evangelical Christian who willingly bought into the reactionary, meta-fascist MAGA narrative and wholeheartedly participated in the January 6 quasi-putschist assault on the US Capitol building? I’ve been on the left of the Left for over 50 years—first as a left anarchist and then as a left communist. As a libertarian socialist/Marxist I disdained social democrats and denigrated Leninists: disagreeing, arguing, and fighting with them while organizing, demonstrating, and protesting with them around so many causes. I’ve been called a pinko, fellow traveler, and useful idiot by folks on the right. So it’s nice to claim turnabout is fair play labelling useful idiots like Daniel Goodwyn with what Nazi Party sympathizers were called—Mitläufer or “tag-along.” The American occupiers of West Germany had a five-tiered hierarchy in their denazification program after the defeat of Hitler, with Mitläufer the most controversial category. Above Entlastete (exonerated) and below Minderbelastete (minor offenders), Mitläufer were loosely defined indirect supporters of Nazi war crimes not directly implicated in any formal Nazi criminal activity.

Technically, Goodwyn is Minderbelastete with his co-sponsorship of the San Francisco riot and participation in the Capitol riot. But the US government has a long, sorry history of accommodating right-wing extremism, from aborting Reconstruction in restoring the defeated Confederacy to the Union to the superficial denazification of Germany and Austria after WWII.(1) With Trump and his minions still at large, there will be no foreseeable de-Trumpification of America. Sympathizer, ally, collaborator—at what point does it cease to matter? Daniel Goodwyn is indicted on several conspiracy-related Federal charges and his saga remains Great Dictator Chaplinesque.(2) I expect he will be handled with kid gloves.(3)

SOURCES:
Personal recollections
“Statement of Facts, re: Daniel Goodwyn,” Case: 1:21-mj00063, filed 1-15-2021
“Feds Track Down Bearded Proud Boy Seen Smashing Capitol Windows With Police Shield” by Adam Rawnsley and Pilar Melendez (Daily Beast, 1-15-2021)
“SF Proud Boy the Latest Charged by FBI for Storming the Capitol” by Joe Kukura (SFist, 1-15-2021)
“S.F. man, a self-proclaimed Proud Boy, charged by FBI in Capitol riot” by Trisha Thadani (San Francisco Chronicle, 1-16-2021)
“SF web developer, allegedly seen on Baked Alaska’s livestream, charged in Capitol riot” by Katie Dowd (SFGATE, 1-17-2021)
“Web designer who allegedly stormed Capitol refused to wear mask after arrest, feds say” by Kevin Krause (Dallas Morning News, 2-12-2021)
“United States of America v. Daniel Goodwyn,” Case 1:21-cr-00153-RBW, filed 7-28-2021
“FBI says Capitol riot suspect tried to chew through his mask after agents made him put it on during arrest” by Natalie Musumeci, Madison Hall and Michelle Mark (Insider, 7-29-2021)
“Unfinished Thoughts on Fascism #2: Real Existing Fascism in the United States” by Spencer Sunshine (unpublished, Patreon only, 7-5-2021)

FOOTNOTE 1:
The exception was the 1775-83 American Revolutionary War. More Loyalist colonials were forced into exile—mainly to Canada—than were Royalists exiled during the 1789 French Revolution.FOOTNOTE 2:
Daniel Goodwyn, a “self-proclaimed” Proud Boy, was charged Friday with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricting building without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

According to a criminal complaint, Anthime Gionet, a far-right social media personality who goes by the name “Baked Alaska,” called out Goodwyn’s full name while live-streaming the riot.

Goodwyn then asked Baked Alaska to stop “doxxing” him and stated Gionet’s full name. As a Capitol Police officer tried to usher Goodwyn out of the building, he called the cop an “oathbreaker” and yelled for people to get the officer’s badge number, the complaint states.

Gionet also referred to Goodwyn in the live-stream as “SFThoughtCriminal,” the name of a far-right Telegram account popular with members of the Proud Boys.

Goodwyn was later identified when an associate contacted the FBI. He messaged the associate on Instagram while still inside the Capitol, saying, “Tell your dad if he doesn’t want his guns I can find some folks who will.”

Later, Goodwyn wrote on Instagram, “I didn’t break or take anything but I went inside for a couple of minutes.” (from the Daily Beast, 1-15-2021)

FOOTNOTE 3:
Daniel Goodwyn calls himself a citizen journalist and this claim will likely be his main defense in challenging the Federal charges brought against him. I have long supported the alternative media that arose beginning in the 1960s which in turn gave birth to citizen journalism. Also known as participatory, democratic, guerrilla, or street journalism, this type of reporting is proudly opinionated, subjective, activist, and embedded in the communities it covers. But the right to take pictures and record videos in public and then blog about it afterwards doesn’t mean you’re not also a fascist fellow traveler or wannabe who can be arrested and convicted or sued and bankrupted or doxxed and taken down for your sketchy behavior. Whether or not I agree there’s such a thing as objective journalism as claimed by the mainstream media, I consider Daniel Goodwyn and his ilk (James O’Keefe, Andy Ngô, et al) at best as selfie journalists who make themselves the story and take great pleasure in streaming themselves doing so. At worst they work hand-in-glove with the far right, tailoring their activities and messages as propagandists for if not outright members of the right-wing groups they purport to report on.

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