Head of Republican County Assembly in California Organizes Event with White Supremacists...Again.

Mylinda Mason, head of the Stanislaus County Republican Assembly, co-organized a pro-Trump assembly with the Proud Boys (a white nationalist hate group), QAnon believers (antisemitic conspiracy theorists), and the California Straight Pride Coalition (a white supremacist group whose own leader described it as a “totally peaceful, racist group”), outside of a Planned Parenthood Clinic.

The Proud Boys have a long history of violence. Members describe themselves as “Western chauvanists,” and founder Gavin McInnes said in 2017, as part of an anti-Jewish rant, that he was “becoming antisemitic.” Mason is far from the only Republican official to associate with the Proud Boys: In October of 2018, the Miami-Dade County Republicans chair and a staffer for now-Governor Ron DeSantis both attended a Proud Boys event. That same month, a New York City Republican Club hosted McInnes as a speaker. Following the event, the Proud Boys — including a staffer for then-State Senator Marty Golden (R) — violently attacked anti-fascist protestors. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) was photographed with a member of the Proud Boys on the 4th of July in 2020.

QAnon is a set of antisemitic conspiracy theories about a powerful “Deep State” comprised of Democratic politicians, Jewish donors, and Hollywood stars who they believe run a child sex-trafficking ring. QAnon believes claim that Donald Trump is aware of this conspiracy, and is secretly working to destroy the “Deep State” and “Save the Children.” The conspiracy is, at its core, a modern-day version of blood libel — the Middle Ages-era claim that Jews drank or ritually used the blood of Christian children. QAnon has moved from the fringes of the internet to the mainstream, openly promoted by multiple Republican figures.

The California Straight Pride Coalition opposes homosexuality and believes in the “superiority” of “whiteness” and the “Caucasion race.” The group warns on its website that “enemies of the cross” are enacting a “massive coordinated attack” and “establishing their own replacement belief system of Satanic Humanism as the dominant cultural and societal paradigm of an enslaved humanity, desire the total destruction of Christianity.” The Coalition is led by Don Grundmann, a former Republican candidate for Senate. Grundmann is also the founder of Citizens Against Perversion and the American Warrior Ministry. At a Modesto City Council meeting ahead of a Straight Pride event in 2019, Grundmann appeared to have a slip of the tongue, stating "we're a totally peaceful, racist group." In the same city council meeting, Grundmann also stated that Planned Parenthood was the "greatest mass murderer of Blacks in this nation's history."

Mylinda Mason personally helped to organize a the 2019 Straight Pride event, and had expressed her hopes that the Proud Boys attend it in an interview before the event. Her estranged son, who is gay, spoke out against the event, and alleged that his mother taught him “white men that built the world.”