One of worst things about the Proud Boys is that they derived their name from a beautiful song which was one of the last set of lyrics Howard Ashman wrote before he died, for the movie Aladdin, wherein Aladdin sung to his mother that one day he wouldn’t be such a fuck up.

Howard Ashman was a gay Jewish man whose lyrics are often interpreted to reflect his struggle with AIDS and his devastation at dying young.

It’s bizarre to me that the Proud Boys identify so strongly with a gay Jewish man dying from AIDS, or - if you don’t believe in artists inflecting their truths into their work - with an Arab street thief.

But I guess nationalist white supremacists never were very bright and I suppose artistic interpretation and irony are beyond them.

This is the history of this song, what it meant to its writers, its filmmakers. It’s a really beautiful song, and I really would love it if you’d remember it as this, and not as a co-opted, fascist non-anthem by a bunch of losers who are antipodal to art.

Nationalism has a rich history of stealing work as its own and history remembering the artists as complicit when they absolutely were not. Let’s at the very least, not do that...please.

PS I do find it amusing that someone among these gun toting, woman hating, gay-bashing, virgins, someone watched...either Aladdin on Broadway or some movie special features and really liked this song and somehow convinced their equally dumb peers it was right for them?!