The Proud Boys borrowed skinhead subcultural signifiers for right-wing organizing

Evidence

McInnes envisioned the Proud Boys as a fusion of right-wing ideology and youth culture. The group’s manifesto championed “minimal government, maximum freedom, anti–political correctness, anti–racial guilt, pro–gun rights, anti–Drug War, closed borders, anti-masturbation, venerating entrepreneurs, venerating housewives.” Members gathered to read aloud from Pat Buchanan’s 2001 book, The Death of the West, and their uniform—a Fred Perry polo shirt—nodded to the 1970s British skinhead subculture, long romanticized in Vice’s early aesthetic. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 448

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the Fred Perry polo as a case study in how a subcultural garment migrates from anti-fascist skinheads to far-right paramilitary uniform — a perfect illustration of the omnivore monoculture where signs detach from any fixed community meaning.
• XREF: connects to: Right-wing actors mimicked leftist movement names to hijack protest meaning.; Well-funded right-wing groups borrowed leftist protest aesthetics for funded political goals — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 553; Leaders strategically define social categories to advance their mobilization projects — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 80