Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) Spends 4th of July Posing for Photos with Hate Group Members
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) spent 4th of July in Prescott, AZ, where he posed for a photo with at least one member of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right extremist hate group. Nearby were people wearing t-shirts indicating them as members of two other hate groups, the Oath Keepers and the Boogaloo Boys. The Oath Keepers is an armed and explicitly anti-government group. The Boogaloor Boys are accelerationists who hope to bring about a civil war between the American government and its people. The vast majority of Boogaloo Boys envision this civil war as a race war.
After he was exposed by journalist Nick Martin of The Informant for associating with members of a hate group, Gosar replied that Martin’s identification was “motivated by his hate of America.” He went on to call NBC News a “socialist front group” and Martin an “enemy of the people.”
Gosar has a history of associating with right-wing extremists. He has endorsed at least two far-right and white nationalist candidates in the 2020 election cycle: Laura Loomer and Lauren Witzke. Loomer, who is running for U.S. Congress in Florida, is an Islamophobic conspiracy theorist. She also regularly traffics in antisemitic tropes about George Soros. Witzke, running for U.S. Senate in Delaware, is also QAnon-believing conspiracy theorist. Her campaign is managed by Michael Sisco, an open fascist who also traffics in antisemitism and racism.
Gosar’s affinity for antisemitism and extremism is not limited to the people with whom he associates. In 2017, he suggested (inaccurately) that the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in August of that year may have been organized by an “Obama sympathizer” and funded by George Soros. Gosar also falsely accused Soros of having “turned in his own people to the Nazis.”