Watch: ‘Straight Pride’ Organizer Says They’re a “Totally Peaceful Racist Group”

(TMU) — A failed U.S. Senate candidate and far-right leader of the so-called “Straight Pride” movement in the United States has garnered the derision and mockery of people across the country after accidentally telling a California city council that his National Straight Pride Coalition is a “totally peaceful racist group.”

When Don Grundmann uttered the comment to the Modesto City Council, he was met with such audible scorn and laughter that he wasn’t able to cut through the uproar to correct himself audibly, despite speaking into a microphone.

The gaffe comes amid months of allegations and reports that the “Straight Pride” campaign has merely been a Trojan horse for right-wing extremist groups to push an anti-gay message as well as a broader white supremacist agenda.

On its website, the coalition describes “Caucasians” as being “the biological majority of the historical developers and founders of Western Civilization.” It also claims that “current and future generations” face the risk of “being destroyed by the inherent malevolence of the Homosexual Movement.”

Grundmann, whose political career has centered on demands to ban immigration and same-sex marriage, has also sought to infuse his “straight pride” parades with a celebration of whites as the architects of so-called “Western civilization”—a common trope for those pushing a Eurocentric perspective that seeks to depict non-whites as inferior to Americans of European descent.

In video posted of the City Council meeting, a visibly agitated Grundmann can be seen making the case to hold his event at an amphitheater in Modesto. The city manager’s office is currently considering the event application, a spokesperson told USA Today.

As local residents boo and jeer Grundmann, he then begins gesticulating toward council member Kristi Ah You for allegedly agitating residents against the anti-gay and white supremacist group.

Deploying a common argument right-wing extremists use to allege victimization, he says:

“You pulled the race card to justify attacks against us in that park. When they come, you’re going to turn right around and say we deserved it.”

As the crowd of locals begin rumbling in disapproval, Grundmann then smashes the ball right into his own net for a spectacular own-goal, noting:

“We haven’t done anything! We’re a totally peaceful racist group.”

At that point, the council chambers erupted with uproarious laughter while Ah You face-palmed and turned away from the council chamber, cracking up in a fit of giggles. To no avail, Grundmann tried to correct himself but was drowned out by the brutal laughter flooding the meeting hall.

Ah You had previously called Grundmann’s National Straight Pride Coalition “hateful, harmful, insincere, and dangerous” in a Facebook post. She is also the birth mother of Matthew Mason, whose adoptive mother, Mylinda Mason, is an organizer for the coalition.

Matthew came out as gay at 19 and has denounced his estranged mother as a white supremacist and anti-gay fanatic.

On Thursday, Grundmann sought to assuage members of the press over what he told the Washington Post was a “just a verbal gaffe” rather than a blunt admission of the group’s racism, alleging that “white supremacy doesn’t exist,” brushing the concept off as “fake news” despite the growing incidence of white supremacist terror attacks such as the El Paso massacre that claimed 22 lives in an attack targeting Mexicans.

In an interview Thursday with USA Today, Grundmann said his anti-gay group was being “viciously smeared and lied about that we’re racists” when groups like Planned Parenthood—rather than his coalition or the similar groups like the fascist Proud Boys or Ku Klux Klan—are “the main source of racism in our nation.” 

Grundmann explained:

“Our culture is under attack on multiple fronts, such as just being men. There’s so-called toxic masculinity. There’s actually college courses being taught that men are an inherent problem, there’s something wrong with them.

We’re saying that it’s OK to be a man. It’s OK to be a woman. It’s OK to have a natural family, a man, woman and children.” 

It’s OK to be white.”

However, his comrade’s adopted son Matthew Mason has strongly condemned Grundmann’s alleged “straight pride” cause as simple “hate pride” agitation. He told Fox 40:

“This isn’t ‘straight pride.’ This is hate pride.

Dog whistling to white supremacy, that is immediately inciting violence … I am afraid of violence happening. I don’t want anyone in my community to be hurt.

This is not a positive message and this community is committed to positivity, to love, to inclusion and to diversity. And this message is none of that.”

By Elias Marat | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com