The Dallas incident rapidly worked its way up the right-wing food chain, from the Blaze to the Daily Caller to Alex Jones to Steve Bannon and then, inevitably, to Tucker Carlson. An "America First" congressional candidate from Ohio tweeted his support for one protester who'd tried to force his way into the bar, while another "America First" former congressional candidate from New York marked his approval with a tweet that read simply, "John Doyle Nationalism." Former Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes praised the crowd for confronting "these sick groomers who sexualize children," and a cohost on the right-wing podcast of Steven Crowder remarked that Nazism had arisen as "a response to this kind of culture developing in Germany." Videos taken by protesters circulated widely online, amplified by numerous conservative media figures and politicians. RELATED: Who is Nick Fuentes? A young white nationalist who hopes to pull the GOP all the way to Hitler But on the right, the protest was treated as a coup.
It was an ominous start to Pride month in a year that has seen increasingly vitriolic attacks on LGBTQ rights across the country, and the Dallas protest followed the cancellation of another Pride event in Indiana featuring drag performers after conservatives targeted it online. "It's going to be so kek when we take away all your rights," one protester associated with the white Christian nationalist America First/groyper movement told a counterprotester who was defending the event, using movement slang that roughly means "lol." In response, hard-right YouTuber and protest leader John Doyle, who was standing nearby, added with a smirk, "Every single one of them." Misster hosted a family-friendly "drag queen brunch" advertised with the tongue-in-cheek slogan, "Drag Your Kids to Pride." The event was intended to be light-hearted, featuring musical chairs, mocktails and a chance for kids to vogue alongside the performers.īut before the doors had even opened, the whole thing turned ugly, as dozens of right-wing protesters showed up on the sidewalk outside, recording attendees, calling them "disgusting" "groomers" or "faggots" who wanted "to cut the dicks off of little boys" and even following and heckling both performers and attending families as they walked back to their cars. On Saturday morning in the Dallas "gayborhood" of Cedar Springs, an LGBTQ bar called Mr.