Gavin McInnes Resurfaces on Vacation After Enraging Allies By Faking Arrest
Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images
Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes resurfaced on Tuesday after apparently faking his own arrest during a live broadcast of his online show two weeks ago.
“We’re shooting a show, can we do this another time?” McInnes said while on air August 27, apparently to someone off set. “I didn’t let you in,” McInnes added before disappearing from the shot.
McInnes disappeared after that moment. While some allies right-wing media outlets claimed he had been arrested, others said the display looked more like a stunt.
Now McInnes, who founded the far-right, all-male Proud Boys in 2016, has resurfaced. He posted a photo of himself on a boat believed to be off the French coast.
Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes has re-emerged two weeks after faking his arrest. So far he hasn’t acknowledged the whole staged arrest thing, which enraged some of his allies: https://t.co/kxNR5lEczP pic.twitter.com/785P2UtXdi
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) September 6, 2022
Last week, after multiple right-wing websites ran headlines declaring McInnes had been detained, far-right comedian Owen Benjamin revealed an alleged text message in which McInnes explained it was all a prank.
“Prank. Don’t tell,” McInnes texted Benjamin, who was clearly not amused and pushed him to come clean.
After the text message exchange went public McInnes texted Benjamin back and wrote, “Did you spill the beans?”
“Looks like you did. We’re done,” he added.
Benjamin slammed McInnes, writing, “People are actually scared, you know?” People are actually afraid when things like that happen.”
“I went to the right wing politically because I thought the left were grifting immoral liars,” Benjamin, a well-documented racist and anti-Semite, wrote on Instagram ripping into McInnes. “Boy was I mistaken.”
NEW – Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes’ on-air FBI raid & presumed arrest were apparently faked.
Racist troll comedian Owen Benjamin posted on Instagram earlier today supposed texts from McInnes stating it was all a “prank.” Bejamin calls his stunt an “attention grift.” 🤡 pic.twitter.com/Wz7JZEGGqZ
— Miami Against Fascism 🌴☕️ (@MIAagainstFash) August 29, 2022
Far-right circles have been whipped into a frenzy of fear that the Biden administration may begin arresting militia members – a fear which apparently inspired McInnes’s prank.
The prank has since angered many of his allies on the right who called him out for stoking fear at such a sensitive time.
“Gavin McInnes has never spent a day in prison,” wrote Matthew Walker, a Tennessee Proud Boys leader, in a Telegram reported on by the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer. “7 of my friends are in there because of him!”
The DailyDot’s Claire Goforth also parsed through far-right social media and found a bevy of anger directed at McInnes.
“Doing it the day a PB got 5 and a half years for loitering was disgusting,” said one commenter noted Goforth. The message was an apparent reference to a Proud Boy sentenced to a 55-month prison sentence for participating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Goforth detailed other responses to McInnes’s prank:
“The boy who cried wolf,” wrote one. Others simply called him an “asshole,” “motherfucker,” and other names.
Many are likening him to Jussie Smollett, the actor who staged a hate crime against himself.
Several referred to McInnes as “Gavin Smollett” or replied “hi Jussie” to the shirtless boat picture he posted on Telegram.
McInnes, who also co-founded Vice in 1994, quit the Proud Boys in 2018.
