The organizers of Boston’s “Straight Pride Parade” hate stunt have ties to white supremacists and extremists but one of them got a friendly platform on Fox News to pretend the boys just wanna have right-wing fun. Even as host Jesse Watters made it clear he was not on board.
Watters failed to advise viewers of guest John Hugo’s history as well as that of his co-organizers. This is probably why, as per The Independent:
Mr [Mark] Sahady and Mr [Chris] Bartley are both heavily associated with Resist Marxism – a loose ultra-conservative group found to have links to white supremacist organisations – while Mr Hugo ran, unsuccessfully, for congress in 2018 with an endorsement from the same group.
Mr Sahady is also reported to have organised the right-wing Free Speech Rally and Rally for the Republic, both in Boston, in the aftermath of the infamous Unite the Right march in Virginia in August 2017, during which a counter-protester was killed.
Think Progress noted a Facebook post by Hugo admiring a tee shirt that includes such slogans as, “ALL LIVES MATTER,” “WOMEN ALREADY HAVE RIGHTS,” “ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE NOT IMMIGRANTS” and “WE’RE ALL GUILTY OF ‘LOCKER ROOM TALK.’”
Bartley has tweeted about those who have defended anti-Muslim attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar, “Anyone who tweets #IStandWithIlhan is supporting the chants, ‘death to America’…”
On top of all that, the group has named Milo Yiannopoulos as its grand marshal.
To his credit, Watters repeatedly challenged Hugo and his hoped-for event, which does not yet have a permit. But Watters did not reveal Hugo’s ties to white supremacism or the far right. The upbeat introduction and Watters’ chummy demeanor signaled to viewers that Hugo is a good guy whose amusing sense of mischief might just go a bit too far:
Watters introduced Hugo by saying, “A first of its kind parade may be making its way to Boston this summer.” With a wide grin, Watters said, “The organization, Super Happy Fun America, made up of three guys, is trying to hold a Straight Pride Parade in Boston. Because they claim straight people are an oppressed majority.”
“How are straight guys oppressed?” Watters asked as his first question.
Hugo claimed to feel oppressed because he and his kind are called “villains” in the mainstream media for objecting to parents having sex-change operations for their children “because they don’t like the gender of their child.”
Watters chuckled at this obviously fake oppression, though it was an obvious effort to delegitimize real oppression. He moved on to wonder what a straight pride parade would look like. “Isn’t that just most people walking down the street on a normal day?”
And while Watters laughed harder when Hugo said he wanted to add “S” for “straight” to “LGBTQ,” and at the group’s slogan, “Don’t hate the straight,” Watters was also openly skeptical: “Are you just doing this as a joke to be provocative?” “Do you understand why maybe the LGBTQ community is a little bit upset by this?” and “Are you sure you want to associate yourself with Milo?”
Watters closed by predicting there would be more protesters than marchers but that the parade would get a lot of coverage anyway.
Watch Watters whitewash Hugo’s agenda of hate below, from the June 8, 2019 Watters World.
