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Dispatch from the freak show

Published by digby on July 6, 2019

Dispatch from the freak show

by digby

The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer covers the Proud Boys and other far-right groups. Here’s the latest. It’s not going well for them:

A far-right rally scheduled for downtown Washington on Saturday has been thrown into disarray by dramatic allegations centering on cocaine, a love triangle, and the far-right Proud Boys men’s group.

“The Proud Boys? More like the Joke Boys,” Republican congressional candidate Omar Navarro, a key player in the bizarre feud, told The Daily Beast.

The drama has torn apart one-time allies prominent on the pro-Trump internet and cost the so-called “Demand Free Speech” rally at least one speaker, after other prominent right-wing celebrities already cited other reasons for not appearing. While the rally was meant to protest the banning of conservative figures from social media, the surrounding drama has cast a shadow over the event.

On one side of the fight: Navarro, a perennial challenger to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) whose losing campaigns against the liberal stalwart have become a cause celebre on the right.

On the other: the Proud Boys, the all-male group of self-described “Western chauvinists,” and DeAnna Lorraine, a self-styled MAGA relationship expert and Navarro’s ex-girlfriend.

The clash became public late on Wednesday night, when Navarro tweeted that Lorraine had been using cocaine and “sleeping with the proud boys.” Navarro declared that he would no longer speak at Saturday’s rally, which was organized in part by top Proud Boy leaders.

“I found this girl I dated is doing cocaine and sleeping with the proud boys I cannot agree with the drug lifestyle they follow,” Navarro tweeted.

Navarro’s withdrawal from Saturday’s rally comes after the event has already lost other speakers. Former Pizzagate conspiracy theory promoter Mike Cernovich had also been on the event’s bill, but said earlier this week that he wouldn’t attend. Fellow former Pizzagate advocate Jack Posobiec has also suggested he may not attend, despite being listed as a speaker on the rally’s website.

In his tweets, Navarro made a series of allegations, claiming that Lorraine had, through the Proud Boys, threatened him “because I said I would expose the cocaine use including hers.” (Lorraine has denied using cocaine, while the Proud Boys describe themselves as “pro-drug.”)

“I denounce the proud boys as of today,” Navarro wrote. “@DeAnnaTLorraine used the proud boys to threaten my life with eminent danger [sic] because I said I would expose the cocaine use including hers. I don’t mind getting kicked out of free speech rally to stand for truth”

Complicating matters further, Navarro is still married to another woman, who he describes in a tweet as “my soon to be ex-wife.” In one tweet, Navarro chastised Lorraine, who says she dated Navarro for a few months earlier this year, for having a relationship with him while he was married.

“@DeAnnaTLorraine didn’t have a problem having an affair with me, so you shouldn’t be dating married men,” Navarro wrote.

Navarro’s tweets followed a tense confrontation that night at Harry’s Restaurant, a divey downtown Washington restaurant popular with that set of pro-Trump personalities.

Lorraine and other conservative figures associated with the rally had gathered at Harry’s the night before the Trump-centric 4th of July celebration in Washington. They were joined by the Proud Boys, a far-right club designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Proud Boys have been charged with violent attacks against their political opponents and must adhere to a series of rules, including restrictions on how much they can masturbate.

Just a few months earlier, Navarro and Lorraine had organized a “Tribute to Men” at the same restaurant. But when Navarro arrived there on Wednesday night, he wasn’t in a celebratory mood.

Accounts differ on what happened at the restaurant. Navarro claims that he was upset about organizational details of Saturday’s rally, and was confronted by a Proud Boy behaving “like an animal.”

Lorraine and other witnesses, meanwhile, claim that Navarro was acting aggressively towards Lorraine and had to be separated from her by a Proud Boy.

“He started intimidating and threatening me and another woman,” Lorraine said.

Rally organizer Adrienna Dicioccio told The Daily Beast that Navarro “tried to start a situation” at the restaurant.

“He got really disgusting that night,” said Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio.

As Navarro left the restaurant, the Proud Boys yelled that they were banning him from their men’s club, according to Lorraine.

“They said ‘we’re disavowing you, you are no longer one of us, you can’t claim to be one of us,’” she said.

In response, Lorraine said, Navarro vowed to blast the Proud Boys on social media.

“He said at the bar, ‘I’m going to go off on you guys on Twitter,’” Lorraine said, adding that Navarro had regularly threatened in the past to ruin her career as a conservative personality with allegations on Twitter.

Navarro denies any wrongdoing at the restaurant.

“The Proud Boys are just as bad as antifa is,” Navarro said. “The Proud Boys are a bunch of drunk guys who are accusing me of being drunk.”

Navarro sent his tweets shortly after leaving the restaurant. But the feud didn’t end there.

The Proud Boys responded to Navarro on Wednesday with a late-night Periscope livestream shot in a backyard somewhere in the Washington area, starring right-wing personality and former InfoWars staffer Joe Biggs.

“A punk-ass bitch named Omar Navarro is running his fucking mouth, and he’s about to get the smackdown, know what I’m saying,” Biggs said, adding that Navarro was attacking the Proud Boys because “he can’t satisfy his motherfucking woman.”

Tarrio chimed in, claiming that Navarro runs his quixotic campaigns against Waters in an attempt to make money from gullible conservative donors. Navarro lost his last two races against Waters by more than 50 percentage points.

“He admitted to me that he stands no chance against Maxine Waters, and he admitted to me that he’s doing it just to get donations from you guys,” Tarrio said in the video.

Ethan Nordean, who has become something of a celebrity Proud Boy in the group because of a viral clip of him punching a left-wing antifascist in a fight, fumed in the background.

As the video ends, Biggs declares that Navarro has been “fucking banished” from the Proud Boys.

“The helicopter blades are spinning,” a person off-camera warns as the clip ends, a reference to the Proud Boys’ fondness for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose regime executed its opponents by throwing them from helicopters.

Navarro said the Proud Boys in the video were clearly on drugs.

“They’re disgusting, they’re reprehensible, they are a joke of an organization,” Navarro said. “They should be the Proud Jokes, not the Proud Boys.”

The feud has also drawn in other right-wing personalities. On Telegram, anti-Muslim British activist and Saturday rally speaker Milo Yiannopoulos called Navarro “a piece of work.”

Now that he’s on the outs with his one-time allies, Navarro is happy to detail more allegations against them. He urged The Daily Beast to find evidence of Lorraine using cocaine at Harry’s, and asked The Daily Beast to send a reporter to the Proud Boys annual Las Vegas convention, where he promised there would be “some pretty compromising stuff.”

“These guys are completely disgusting—they sleep with women that are married,” Navarro said.

Lorraine denied using cocaine, and said she has never had a relationship with a Proud Boy.

“I’ve never even kissed a Proud Boy,” Lorraine, the author of pro-Trump relationship guide Making Love Great Again, said.

The Proud Boys, on the other hand, aren’t as reluctant to discuss drug use. In a post to Telegram, which Proud Boys and many of their allies have been forced to use after being kicked off Twitter and Facebook, the Proud Boys mocked Navarro for his prudish attitude towards cocaine.

“I’m sure people are shocked to hear there was cocaine at a party in DC too!” the group wrote. “Shocking development asshole.”

Tarrio said he wasn’t sure what cocaine use Navarro was referring to, but wasn’t concerned about the allegation.

“Regardless, we’re pro-drugs,” Tarrio said.

As for Navarro, he’s running against Waters in 2020—this time without even the right-wing allies who helped him in the past. While he had been planning to protest social media bans at the rally on Saturday, he now says Twitter was right to ban some of the people coming to the event.

“Most of them are blocked on Twitter for the right reasons,” he said.

If Trump didn’t have so many red hats in law enforcement (especially the federal agencies at the border) we could all rest easy that these are his “shock troops.” They are violent but they are also ridiculous.

Update: The rally

Ok.

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