This story originally appeared in Right Richter, a newsletter by Will Sommer. Subscribe now to see what's happening in right-wing media from the safety of your inbox.
The internet went wild on Tuesday with the news that Boston would host a Straight Pride Parade for straight people who claim they’re an “oppressed majority.” One Twitter jokester recommended that the parade take a “straight” route right into the Boston harbor.
While the idea of a few dozen angry straight people marching might be funny, the actual origins of Straight Pride Parade are not. The event is a front for a far-right group founded by notorious right-wing brawler Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman.
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Straight Pride organizer Mark Sahady announced the parade on Facebook, claiming he received permits for the event that would likely take place on August 31.
But Sahady isn’t just a particularly aggrieved straight dude. Instead, he has a long history participating in controversial right-wing events around Boston as an organizer for Resist Marxism, a group Chapman founded at the height of the fame he earned attacking left-wing anti-fascist activists with his eponymous “stick.”
Chapman appears to no longer be involved with the group now that he’s facing felony charges in two states over two assaults. But Sahady has taken up his position, organizing Resist Marxism events around the Boston area.
In Facebook posts, Sahady has endorsed the far-right “helicopter” meme, which calls for liberals to be thrown from helicopters as in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile.
“We may get to throw anti-American communists from helicopters sooner than we thought,” Sahady wrote in one Facebook post.
Resist Marxism’s politics get even uglier, though. In leaked internal chats published in 2018, members frequently made anti-Semitic jokes and used anti-Semitic slurs. At least one Resist Marxism event had security provided by Patriot Front, a white-nationalist hate group.
Sahady isn’t the only Straight Pride Parade organizer with ties to Resist Marxism. Another promoter, John Hugo, unsuccessfully ran for Congress last year with an endorsement and organizing support from the group.
It’s not clear that the parade will even happen, in part because Sahady has a history of failing to pull off his events. Last August, Sahady tried to organize a National March Against Far-Left Violence. The event’s Facebook page linked to a website offering free T-shirts for attendees, as long as they provided their names and addresses. The T-shirt site was later revealed to be an antifascist sting against Sahady and his compatriots, some of whom had accidentally handed their names and addresses over to their ideological enemies.
A source familiar with the Boston government’s permitting process told Right Richter that Sahady had not been granted permit so far. Sahady didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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