Proud Boys have been involved in rallies displaying racist imagery, such as confederate flags.
I suspect their tolerance of non-whites is going to vary from cell group to cell group. They seem principally united in rallying around crude symbols of violence, patriarchy, misogyny, and hatred of the Left, rather than overt racism, but they are still a dangerous group.
That's basically the trap that pundits and democrats keep setting for Trump, and he keeps falling into it (I suppose we can chalk it up to lack of intelligence on his part, or poor strategy by his campaign team).
Similar kinds of traps keep getting set for Biden, and he's walking into them half of the time too.
Setting the "Trump supports white supremacy" trap is pretty simple:
- name an entity that happened to be present at any sort of far-right event that happened to also include actual white supremacy groups
- Try to get him do denounce them
- Rather than clarify, in an intelligent manner (don't know if he's got the tools for that last part) "Groups that attend rallies that aren't racists themselves, don't magically become
racists by proximity if actual white nationalists also happen to be there" He takes the bait and says things like he did in the debate, or says things like "there were good and bad people on both sides"
It's basically the political version of a loaded question. Find an event where maybe 10% of the people there were racist agitators, try to get him to disavow the entire event, so that his choices are "Do it, and insult the 90% of conservatives who were there who aren't racists" or "Don't do it, and then everyone gets to say that he refused to condemn racism"
...it'd be sort of like if there was a huge biker rally like Sturgis, and a bunch of clubs, who weren't involved in the same types of illegal things that the "1%" clubs are involved in, happened to be there in attendance along side the 1% club members who also happened to be there, and setting the expectation that "if someone doesn't condemn the entire event and every club that was in attendance, that means "they refuse to condemn biker gangs".
Biden has been getting the same setup from the conservative side when it comes to the topics of
law & order and The Green New Deal, because they know he's trying to walk that edge of "Moderate" versus "Further left". We saw him walk into the Green New Deal trap during the debate.
They basically trashed the green new deal, knowing that Biden would jump to defend it with comments like "it'll pay for itself" and "it's a great plan" (to appeal to the farther left), and then when asked "Do you support the Green New Deal?", he says "No, that's not my plan" (to appeal to more moderate democrats). At which point, the logical response to him would be: "Joe, if you say it's a great plan and it'll pay for itself, then why don't you support it and why isn't that your plan?"...however, the moderator did him a bit of a favor by bailing him out and moving to a different topic.
I'd like to think if we had two smarter candidates as the two front runners, they'd be able to easily navigate through these painfully transparent setups their opposition is throwing at them.
If it devolved anymore, they'd both literally be asking each other
"Have you stopped beating your wife?...it's a yes or no question!"
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