With all the obligatory throat-clearing about how vile the Proud Boys are, there are a lot of straight up lies circulating right now about their connection to white supremacists, the most flagrant being that the organizer of Unite The Right was a Proud Boy.

The reality is complicated and messy. Jason Kessler, who is a straight up white nationalist, tried to join the Proud Boys, but under what PB founder Gavin McInnes claims were false pretenses about his ideological beliefs. McInnes (again, a vile guy) explicitly rejected UTR.

He banned PB from participating and denounced those PBs who showed up anyway. Then he had Kessler on his show and excoriated him, saying about Heather Heyer, “The blood of this girl, I mean, it’s obviously on the hands of the guy driving the car, but it’s also on your hands.”

Since this is Twitter, pointing these details out risks being called a fascist apologist, so I'll add that McInnes has had many avowed white nationalists on his show, including Kessler himself, Kyle Chapman, Stefan Molyneux, and Lauren Southern.

He has expressed affection and respect for Richard Spencer, and has wink wink nudge nudge "joked" about murdering immigrants etc. He's a disgusting guy and the Proud Boys are a disgusting organization. That said, it doesn't serve anyone for Media Matters etc to just make shit up.