Whether it’s anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-lockdown types, those who believe in pedophile cabals, or deep-state conspiracists, media personalities who peddle such tropes are engaging in a sordid ecosystem that draws left and right together on false premises. The extremely online denizens of both movements like to hide behind a mask of “irony” on issues like racism, feminism, and equal rights, promoting reactionary memes and language that is often taken not so ironically by their followers. Playing footsie with the right is not a common thing on the neo-socialist left, but there’s a subset of this latter group, a small but influential band, who can veer into legitimizing the talking points of the extremist right. On the other side, some leftists genuinely seek to transcend the boundary between left and right entirely to create a populist moment that challenges what they see as the elites. In some cases, leftists pay tribute to aspects of right-wing conspiracy theories ostensibly to coax some from the right into left-wing populism. It’s a complex ecosystem, when you map the strange areas of crossover between the political fringes. We’re not going to agree on the Second Amendment… you know what, I tell you what, I go back and forth on the Second Amendment.”ĭore, who reportedly just dropped $1.9 million on an Los Angeles bungalow, has gotten populist mileage himself out of anti-lockdown sentiment, asking why small businesses closed while Amazon was allowed to remain open, saying that the World Health Organization was “cautioning against the lockdowns,” and characterizing the lockdowns on gyms, salons, and sporting-goods stores as “creating death.” He also aired a protester who opposed COVID-19 restrictions as “a conspiracy” and “a tyranny.” He asserted, “It is the top versus the bottom, it is not the left versus the right.” Dore then listed the things they agree about: “We would agree on the war, we would agree on the corporate control of our government, we would agree on police brutality. (Panvidya also has tweeted that Kyle Rittenhouse, the Trump supporter who shot three men, killing two of them, during turbulent anti-racism protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the summer, “was in his right to defend himself.”)ĭuring the interview with Dore, titled “Radical Michigan Anarchist Seeks Unity With the Left,” Panvidya posed in front of a rainbow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag and talked about why the Boogaloos are anti-cop. But Panvidya, who sports a rainbow flag in his Twitter bio, offered the movement a more palatable pro-LGBT and anti-racist face. Emerging into the public eye last spring during right-wing anti-lockdown protests, the heavily armed Boogaloo Boys have promoted attacks against state and government officials in retaliation for COVID safety restrictions.
He recently courted a public-relations disaster when he offered a platform to Magnus Panvidya, a member of the Boogaloo Boys, a militant group that threatened violence ahead of Biden’s inauguration. Take, for instance, Jimmy Dore, the populist YouTuber and member of the Movement for a Peoples Party’s Advisory Council. 6 putsch on the Capitol, some prominent members of the “Dirtbag Left” and radical left have been promoting figureheads in the Boogaloo movement, circulating “deep state” conspiracies, and bantering about “ great replacement” talking points-ones that can sometimes sound an awful lot like the fever dreams of the alt-right. Over the past year, as the far right trafficked in wild anti-masker and pro-Donald Trump fantasies that led to the Jan.