When the Radical Right Comes for Your Culture

Once alt-right figures, racists, or militias take an interest in you or your product, there may be nowhere to hide.

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Since its founding, Black Rifle Coffee has branded itself as coffee for tough guys, associating itself with Second Amendment advocacy, pro-police activism, and veterans’ issues. 

“We develop our explosive roast profiles with the same mission focus we learned as military members serving this great country and are committed to supporting veterans, law enforcement, and first responders,” promises the company’s website.

The company, based in Salt Lake City, Utah,  gained new visibility in 2017 when, after Fox News host Sean Hannity defended accused child molester (and GOP Senate candidate) Roy Moore, Keurig coffee pulled its advertisements from Hannity’s show. This prompted Donald Trump Jr. to endorse Black Rifle on his Twitter account.

But those kinds of endorsements can work both ways. Black Rifle Coffee found itself the subject of unwanted attention recently when Kyle Rittenhouse was spotted wearing a T-shirt touting the brand. Rittenhouse had just posted bail; he’d been in jail since October 30 after being charged with killing two people and injuring one other when a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, turned violent last August. 

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  1. Tim Johnson

    My favorite is folks flying 'Don't Tread on Me,' which seemingly applies to everyone except the Postman delivering their Social Security check.

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    Bill Nelson

    Kermit is next.

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    Seth B

    Another example:

    During the Democratic primaries, there was a bizarre period in which the alt-right tried to adopt Andrew Yang (!) as "their" candidate. Yang's campaign had to work to distance themselves from these morons.

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  4. Frank Pepp

    I wish we'd reclaim the symbols. It was sad when Kaepernick and others protested Nike using the Betsy Ross Flag because it was used by White Supremacists.

    Why not use the flag in an ad reading the Declaration of Independence paired with imagery from the Selma to Montgomery March? Then saying we fall short of these ideals (as we always will), then having athletes saying, "But we will reach the promised land."

    Feels like marketing gold to me.

    Activists could similarly reclaim the Gadsden Flag and really all of American symbolism.

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    Adam Bridge

    I love this quote:

    “I could understand some commie jumping on us because of our history and working-class background,” Gahan told The Post. “But this was ridiculous.”

    Because communism and the working class have a rather long relationship. Sigh. Maybe the alt-right IS the correct place for these guys.

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  6. @Fakejohn

    Before reading this article I was completely unaware how unmanly my coffee was.

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    Charley Warns

    Jonah Goldberg would likely argue that this represents a return to the tribe. He points out in Suicide of the West that in a market economy a seller is incentivized to venture outside the tribe to find a customer. It makes for peaceful transactions between strangers while establishing relationships. Politics and religion are not an issue and moreover should be avoided. A barber not having my worldview wanted to tell me his but instead lost me as a customer as I didn't care to be a captive audience. You break the rules and you pay for it. What radical groups are doing now is forcing sellers to show their tribal affiliations. It's an attack on the buyer-seller relationship.

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      Another Aaron

      THIS is why I make a beeline for the comments and skip the story! (NOTE: does not apply to all TD stories)

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    Bill B

    It's hot here in Arizona so I like my Hawaiian shirts. Last I heard it was the OK hand symbol being co-opted... who can keep up? I just refuse to take any of it seriously.

    Except for 5' Trump flags on the backs of pickups and American flag deaths-head car decals... those are definitely alt-right.

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    Jackson Crawford

    Thank you for this timely article, which helps concisely explain a frustration I deal with every day as a teacher of Norse mythology (a body of lore that the alt-right and its predecessors have been trying to co-opt for a solid century).

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    1. Ingenero.lux

      I remember trying to read about Nordic Runes as a kid fascinated with JRR Tolkien (who was an expert on the subject). The only books in the public library on the subject were restricted access and couldn’t be taken from the grounds because of those morons. Sadly, that made it hard to read and learn more (the internet being nigh-on non-existent, so my options were limited), and I ended up in other pursuits. Then I got older and discovered the neo-Pagan neo-Nazis, and any desire to learn more in college disappeared, as I look like a stereotypical “Aryan übermensch” (or did before kids took a toll on my youthful physique) and didn’t want anyone to get ideas. Bloody racialists ruining perfectly good things.

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        Rick Harlan

        I'm finding the same thing with Indo-European linguistics (which I also got into as a result of Tolkien). I watched a video on the subject sometime in the last year, and the comments were a lot of people wanting to learn "their real language". I was tempted to chime in "Language is not genetic! Your white ancestors didn't speak proto-Indo-European, they got invaded by Inner Asian nomads who spoke it. You might have a little more luck with Etruscan or Basque." I don't think that theory is the most prevalent one, but I like it a lot better than vaguely white-supremacist European homeland hypotheses.
        I was pleased to learn recently that Tolkien was distinctly anti-Nazi. He came close to giving up having the Hobbit published in Germany before World War II because they asked him whether he was "Aryan".

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        1. Ingenero.lux

          Oh yes, he had no sympathy for Nazis in the slightest. He enjoyed languages and research, but didn’t hold to their claptrap, and was, especially for his day, adamantly against racism.

          And I always love (in the sarcastic sense) the people who imagine their ancestors were the paragons of civilization and want to capture their ancient “glories”. I don’t understand why they find those myths so desirable. I have no issue knowing my ancestors were the savages (quite literally) the Romans fought and walled off, fighting and squabbling while the great civilizations of Southern Europe and Africa and India and China were at great heights, their languages a mishmash of words from their past and their neighbors and their conquerors and conquered. Yes, there’s hyperbole in there, but I find the “Aryan” myths bizarre given the realities of Northern Europe just 2000 years ago - übermenschen they weren’t. Given that all of us descended ultimately from Africa, I find the whole exercise silly and pointless, but far too many gullible people buy into it.

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        Scarlette Tarte

        Haha, I blame my kids too. But mostly it is because I love Ice cream.

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    The Stray Goose

    This is what happens when you lose your understanding of what Classical Liberalism is. American conservatives allowed the illiberal right to commandeer their message. They allowed radicals to become fellow travelers not realizing that the illiberal right is at least as dangerous as the illiberal left. It's time to plant a flag in the ground and declare what we believe in. There are many that are sympathetic to the left and right who will be attracted to the CL philosophy and come towards us. We can succeed - we just need to start.

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      Charley Warns

      In his piece, "The Post-Liberals’ Incoherence," Charlie Cooke writes this: "Defenders of our classically liberal order such as I contend that its purpose is not to deliver endless victories to one group or another within society, but to create a framework within which people who hold markedly different conceptions of what constitutes the Highest Good can coexist without going to war."

      Cooke adds this: "Ultimately, the classically liberal order places only one condition on participants, and that is they agree not to try to abolish it or to permanently take it over. Beyond that, it doesn’t much care how it is used. The result is a country in which the Amish and Silicon Valley can coexist, and in which the Mississippi Baptist and the Brooklyn hipster can thrill to the same flag. "

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        The Stray Goose

        That may be why we don't see a lot of CL rallies, haha.

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      The Stray Goose

      Oh. And I heard that the Alt-Right has commandeered the Dallas Cowboys star - just sayin'...

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        Scarlette Tarte

        Lol, I am going to start pushing that one. I hate the Cowboys.

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