Last week, the Department of Homeland Security used a song beloved by white supremacists in a recruitment ad for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The self-pitying “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” which equates living in a diverse community with being oppressed, has long been an anthem for racist terrorists, neo-Nazi groups and, crucially, the Proud Boys — one of the paramilitary organizations that led the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. As a local journalist in California reported at the time, the Proud Boys covered their faces and sang the song at a November 2020 Sacramento event, vowing to “put ourselves on the line” to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election.

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“Fighting solves everything,” he said in April 2016. “We need more violence from the Trump people. Trump supporters! Choke a m*****f****r. Choke a b***h. Choke a tr***y. Get your fingers around the windpipe, if they spit on you. That’s assault.”

It’s an idea McInnes repeated again and again: that “self-defense,” at least for a right-winger, is so expansively defined that his audience was entitled to meet even the smallest perceived insult from “the left” with maximum violence. If someone spits on you, attempted murder by choking is justified. In one episode from June 2017, McInnes and his guests complained about a “leftist play” — a production of “Julius Caesar” with the dictator dressed as Trump — and how they wanted to “rush the stage.” He said, “I’m sick of this culture where they tell us that we have to be nonviolent and just sit and accept abuse.”

McInnes also preached an elaborate theory that liberalism is basically a mental disorder — caused, of course, by allowing women too much access to the public square — and that the cure for it was beating it out of people. “I used to hate [the left],” he said in October 2016. “Now I just see them as spoiled brats. Or a bratty girlfriend who’s PMS-ing and they want to be slapped.”

In another episode that same month, he said, “Liberals, they’re just dumb. Their hearts are in the right place. They’re just stupid and they need a slap in the face. Well, we’re here to tell you that we’re right, we are proud, and we’re going to give you the slap you deserve.”