The comedy industry’s alt-right problem

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Dear Friend,

At the intersection of the comedy industry and alt-right politics lives a community named after the shock-jock duo Opie & Anthony that includes Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and a smorgasbord of right-wingers—Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler, “Crying Nazi” Christopher Cantwell, Mike Cernovich, Sal Cipolla, Faith Goldy, Roosh V, and even former KKK leader David Duke.

Writing for The New Republic’s website, Seth Simons explains the origins of his reporting on comedy and the alt-right: “I’ve spent the last five years writing about the comedy industry.… This work has periodically brought me in contact with some of the leading lights in the scene’s transgressive edge—the place where popular, mainstream comedy bleeds into the kind of right-wing politics that animated the Capitol riot last month.” He adds, “The mobs that descended on Washington, D.C. … have roots in specific areas of modern culture, including Facebook, Buzzfeed, and the increasingly online world of comedy.”

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Simon warns that the “far right has splintered into factions with varying ideologies and goals, each preparing for a new era of post-Trump violence. The people who gave this movement a constituency in comedy—who masked it in the language of free speech, who hid it behind the shield of more respectable artists—are all still in charge of their little fiefdoms. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”

You can learn about ToxicCisWhiteMaleFat; racist Trump supporters; the comedy connection to Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, and Donald Trump Jr.; and much more, by reading Seth Simons and the best investigative reporters, opinion writers, and cultural critics in America.

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Sincerely,

Kerrie Gillis, publisher

Read Seth Simons’s The Comedy Industry Has a Big Alt-Right Problem