Orange County Republicans to Speak Alongside Alt-Right White Nationalists

Editor’s Note: In the wake of this article being published, IGD was contacted by the Old House Restaurant in Huntington Beach, which told us that the event has been canceled. In response, the event organizers are planning to protest the restaurant.

They write: “They shut us down because they don’t support “celebrating western culture” July 9th they have an event celebrating German heritage (the exact same fucking thing). I’m planning a protest. Bring flags and MAGA stuff. I’m willing to be the majority of their patrons are conservative and would like to know that this business shuts down right wing events on the request of the left.” 

In the wake of a string of grisly murders and acts of terror on American soil carried out by white nationalists and the Alt-Right, you’d think that most mainstream politicians would be fleeing from being even slightly associated with them. In fact, some are running towards it.

With a cult of personality based (no pun intended) around Kyle Chapman, aka, “Based Stickman” and “the Alt-Knight,” Alt-Right organizers associated with violent groups such as the Proud Boys, who have open ties to neo-Nazi groups, are organizing a series of events in Southern California in an effort to bridge the gap between hardcore Alt-Right and white nationalist activists and ‘mainstream’ Republicans.

Already, Chapman, who has a long arrest record for drugs and illegal weapons, is on his third strike, and has been arrested three times in Berkeley for violent confrontations since he last got off probation, has spoken at various events across the country, including in Riverside, California. At a recent event, Chapman spoke with both a right-wing talk show host as well as elected Republicans, talking about his plans for creating an Alt-Right street fighting force and teaching young boys “how to talk to women.” From the talk-show host and local elected leaders, he got a warm and positive reception, as they see that Chapman is someone who can “fight the Left.”

On August 5th, these ‘bridging’ events between the violent Alt-Right and the Republican Party will continue, as a “rising star” in the Alt-Right, Johnny Benitez, is organizing a speaking event at the Old World German Restaurant in Huntington Beach.

Benitez, a member of the Proud Boys and a mainstay at violent Alt-Right rallies, is inviting other movers and shakers in the Alt-Right to the event, as well as elected Republicans. The event is billed as a ‘Celebration of Western Culture,’ obviously very coded language, and will feature Kyle Chapman, Brittany Pettibone, a Alt-Right author and conspiracy theorist for the white nationalist website AltRight.com, which is run by the infamous neo-Nazi, Richard Spencer, and Jim Gilchrist, of the racist anti-immigrant Minuteman Project.

Interestingly enough, recently Pettibone did an interview with the neo-Nazi media network, Red Ice TV, where she went on record that she is not having an affair with Chapman, who is married. She complained that neo-Nazi websites like The Daily Stormer who claimed that pictures of Pettibone embracing Chapman while wearing his sweater were proof that the two were sleeping together, had hurt her career as a podcaster on ‘traditional values.’ She even went so far as to say that she didn’t want to be seen along side him for fear that the rumors would grow. While we could give a fuck about these accusations, the fact that Pettibone felt she needed to go on a neo-Nazi media outlet to address accusations from a neo-Nazi website, and that such accusations hurt her career writing for a white nationalist website, should raise a red flag for anyone.

According to the EventBrite page:

We will have speakers talking about traditional gender roles, the dangers of Illegal Immigration, the dangerous growing presence of Islam in our communities and other topics.

Oh Johnny Benitez’s Facebook he also discussed the event:

But while Benitez is bringing together different segments of the far-Right, Alt-Right, and white nationalist movement, he is also pulling in several elected members of the Republican Party, including Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and Assemblywoman Deborah Pauly.

According to Wikipedia, Rohrabacher:

Dana Tyrone Rohrabacher is the U.S. Representative for California’s 48th congressional district, and previously the 46th, 45th, and 42nd, serving since 1989. He is a member of the Republican Party. He chairs the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats.

Rohrabacher’s district covers the areas of Seal Beach, Sunset Beach, Huntington Beach, Midway City, parts of Westminster, Fountain Valley, parts of Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Beach, and Laguna Niguel.

Rohrabacher has attacked health care throughout his career, has ties to the French fascist party the National Front, is a climate change denier, and is an enemy of migrant workers. He once stated that “It wouldn’t really be a problem if all the Mexican farmworkers in America were rounded up and deported because prisoners could pick the nation’s fruits and vegetables.” His background as a libertarian activist and then as a paleoconservative, gave him a bit of buzz among the Ron Paul crowd, and make him in many ways a grandfather to much of the Alt-Right. In recent years, his links to and support of Putin’s Russia have also led him to be embroiled in a series of scandals.

Alt-Right and white nationalist websites like Counter-Currents have supported Rohrabacher in the past, and claim that he is one of the closest mainstream politicians to their ideals.

Assemblywoman Deborah Pauly is another far-Right Republican, who’s main claim to fame seems to be that she made anti-Muslim remarks to police while she was getting arrested for drunk driving. About 6 years ago, Pauly also became the subject of numerous protests after she “sparked outrage by wishing death on Orange Countians entering a February Muslim charity event in Yorba Linda. She labeled the men, women and children “terrorists” and “enemies of America.”

Pauly also stays involved in a variety of right-wing causes, from anti-abortion protests to supporting Turning Point USA, and is totally behind the Trump administration. In many ways, Pauly represents the kind of ‘soft’ white nationalism that Trump played on well during this recent election cycle. Like most ‘Deplorables,’ Pauly rubs shoulders with the Alt-Right. Here are some memes that were shared on her Facebook, along with links to InfoWars and other websites.

Violent insurgent far-Right movements feed off of the space that mainstream Republicans give to them. Just this year, Trump removed white supremacists from the list of threats that the government gets money to surveill, even though white nationalist and Alt-Right killers have murdered more people in the US in the last 16 years than any other group. Meanwhile, anarchist, antifascist, and anti-capitalist protesters arrested at Trump’s inauguration face upwards of 75 years in prison and repression against social movements continues to build.