Proud Boys Founder Booted Off YouTube For Copyright Infringement

Featured image license CC Attribution 3.0 by Steven Crowder via Wikimedia Commons

YouTube has booted Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and it’s the latest social media platform to cut ties with him and his far-right organization. McInnes had more than 220,000 subscribers when his channel was suspended, The Daily Beast reports.

Apparently, McInnes ran afoul of YouTube’s copyright rules, The Hill reports. A statement on his YouTube page reads, in part, that the channel was terminated after “multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement.”

“When a copyright holder notifies us of a video that infringes on their copyright, we act quickly to remove content as is required of us by law,” a spokesperson for the social media giant told The Hill. “We terminate the accounts of repeat offenders.”

McInnes has been bounced from Amazon, PayPal, Twitter, and Facebook. And just last week the alt-right provocateur was bounced from his online gig at CRTV after the company merged with The Blaze, conservative media host Glenn Beck’s creation, according to RawStory.

Designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Proud boys describe themselves as “a pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists.”

Members of the group were arrested in November following a street brawl in New York last October. McInnes has since disavowed the group but insists it isn’t a white nationalist or alt-right organization. And he was recently denied a visa to visit Australia after it was found he was of “bad character.”

In a video that went quickly viral, McInnes said, of his former group:

“We will kill you. That’s the Proud Boys in a nutshell.”

And in the video, someone can be heard encouraging violence from supporters of President Donald Trump.

“Fighting solves everything. We need more violence from the Trump people,” and “Trump supporters: Choke a motherf*cker. Choke a b*tch. Choke a tranny. Get your fingers around the windpipe.”

The SPLC notes “rank-and-file Proud Boys and leaders regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists.” The organization is noted for its misogynistic and anti-Muslim rhetoric. They have shown up alongside other hate groups, most notably at the “Unite The Right,” rally in Charlottesville.

The SPLC notes McInnes has made some particularly repulsive comments. Here’s one such example which shows his feelings about Muslims:

“It’s such a rape culture with these immigrants. I don’t even think these women see it as rape. They see it as just like having a teeth [sic] pulled. ‘It’s a Monday. I don’t really enjoy it,’ but that’s what you do. I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t have the same trauma as it would for a middle-class white girl in the suburbs because it’s so entrenched into their culture.”

So we can be glad that YouTube has pulled him off the air. That’s one less airbag filling the atmosphere with hate that at least for some people, never seems to end.

Featured image license CC Attribution 3.0 by Steven Crowder via Wikimedia Commons