Marco Rubio putting the “boy” in Proud Boy
By 
A paid canvasser for the diseased swamp that is the Florida Republican Party was assaulted earlier this month. Callow Trump sycophant Lil’ Marco Rubio asserted that this assault was politically motivated, a claim that appears to be almost certainly false. What is true is that the assault victim is connected to the right-wing terrorist organization that is becoming increasingly powerful within the Florida Republican Party, with Rubio’s enthusiastic support:
There is no question the canvasser, Christopher Monzon, was the victim of a ghastly assault. But mainstream media reporting on the episode quickly cast doubt on Rubio’s central claim: that the assailant told the canvasser Republicans weren’t welcome there. The initial police report noted no political motivation for the attack, which took place in a high-crime neighborhood. The assailant had been charged with two prior felonies and, according to his mother, has never voted and has no interest in politics.
The true significance of this episode is a detail that emerged shortly after Rubio’s tweet: Monzon turns out to be close with the Proud Boys, a right-wing paramilitary organization. The Proud Boys, a sort of hybrid social club and political gang with racist and violent tendencies, played a central role in organizing the January 6 assault.
Last June, the New York Times reported on how the Proud Boys has begun to take over the powerful Miami-Dade Republican Party organization. It is one of the more alarming signposts of the Republican Party’s evolution into authoritarianism — I would say “most,” except that there are so many — because it signals violent and explicitly racist organizations are being formally welcomed into the party structure.
Monzon was one of the characters featured in the story. Before he joined the GOP, Monzon was involved in other white supremacist causes. He participated in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, where he allegedly used his Confederate flag to attack counterprotesters. His social-media posts from that period are filled with slurs like “Here’s to all the filthy n- – – – – – out there” and “Dirty n- – – – – – love abusing power.”
Monzon told the Times he has been on a “path to de-radicalization.” But when the Miami New Times tried to interview Monzon in the hospital, its reporter was denied access by a contingent of former and current Proud Boys. This suggests his self-professed “de-radicalization” has been, at best, incremental.
The HuffPost reports that Monzon was paid more than $10,000 by the Florida Republican Party this year. Rubio described him as one of his canvassers. Rubio was the Republican establishment’s choice to defeat Donald Trump in 2016, and he briefly gave a convincing performance as a person who was anguished by Trump’s abuse and lies. That he appears perfectly comfortable to work within a party that is developing a racist paramilitary wing is the clearest sign of the party’s complete surrender to extremism.
Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.