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(thread) I've talked a bit before about people who have gotten caught up in the radicalization pipeline from Fox News to alt-right media personalities to organized white supremacism. Today, I'd like to introduce you to one of the people who prey on and recruit these folks.
Meet Mark Anthony Tucci, a.k.a. Tooch.
He's an unrepentant racist misogynist who is an active recruiter for the radical white supremacist group Proud Boys maintaining an audience of nearly 17k through his Howard Stern Show impersonator account, @stern100.pic.twitter.com/fAa7sDd2qN
Mark was full of hate long before he found his spiritual home in the Proud Boys.
He's been using his @sternshow impersonator account to spread racism and misogyny since 2011.pic.twitter.com/DIWUXujWyu
He's occasionally used that same account since early on to promote his self-interests, asking folks to vote for his daughter in a Christmas pageant and, oddly, attenpting to plant this blind item about himself while impersonating Howard Stern.pic.twitter.com/XV2T5BPunw
In early 2015, Mark began a descent into right wing conspiracy theory, including the Illuminati conspiracy theory, a vein of nuttiness that pulses with antisemitism.pic.twitter.com/kqT0o8kmmw
Like many of the radical white supremacists I've looked at, Mark wasn't interested in politics until relatively recently. He was a racist troll for sure, an open misogynist, and a conspiracy theory fan. But then something happened. That something was Donald Trump.pic.twitter.com/mFObz1lwrQ
In 2017, the radical white supremacist terrorist events of Charlottesville unfolded. For many of us, this was a catalyzing moment. We realized with horror that alt-right white supremacy was real and growing. It was a catalyzing moment for Mark, too. He'd found his tribe.pic.twitter.com/NXzk2qOmzh
Mark is guy who has long fantasized about engaging in Fight Club-style macho violence. The radical white supremacist and misogynist Proud Boys, with their cereal-themed beating initiations and explicit lionization of violence against political opponents, were a perfect fit.pic.twitter.com/Uvhf4gqZzP
By 2018, Mark had shifted his hate from the online arena to the real world, in a very public way. Here he is, in Proud Boy uniform, with a group of local Proud Boys, making that cute little "definitely 'okay' and not a 'white power'" gesture in a publicly posted Facebook photo.pic.twitter.com/Cr6vW4hw0v
By the fall, Mark had fully leaned into his newly-found Proud Boy persona, as evidenced by his full-throated and public online embrace of the brand.pic.twitter.com/zRKIziES4s
One defining characteristic of the Proud Boys is that its membership enjoys armored cosplay in preparation for waging violence with counter-protesters, a la Alan Swinney and Kyle Chapman (a.k.a. Based Stickman).pic.twitter.com/13oYofIskg
In the lead-up to the 11/17/18 Proud Boys rally in Philadelphia, Mark made sure folks knew he planned to play dressup, too. Here he is showing off his Proud Boy-logoed helmet-- or as he calls it, his "rally hat."pic.twitter.com/3DQUJHOgdL
Local researchers had been watching Mark and other Proud Boys in the leadup to 11/17. Seeing a dude with patterns of delusional thought and an aptitude for violence, they felt compelled to alert the public. Mark lost his job.pic.twitter.com/tQIHY1S8sU
One of the positive things about documenting radical white supremacy is that it can give white supremacists like Mark an opportunity to see themselves through the eyes of others, to reflect and perhaps disengage from their harmful patterns of behavior.
For a moment it seemed like Mark might be taking that moment to reflect, to think about what a group like Proud Boys brought to the world. Instead, though, he chose to publicly deny affiliation with the Proud Boys even as he bragged about recruiting for them on Twitter.
Here's Mark on Christmas Eve, crowing about his Proud Boy recruitment rates, just one day after he tweeted out his Christmas @GoFundMe.
You know, the GoFundMe asking folks to help the poor guy out because he'd been "misidentified" as a Proud Boy?
Mark raised $534, incidentally.pic.twitter.com/57rDHkrboR
After Mark was identified, he otherwise kept a low profile.
He used his @sternshow impersonation account to engage in racist, homophobic, and misogynist trolling, but shied away from posting about the Proud Boys and baiting those with different political views.
Then, mass white supremacist reporting shut down Eyes of Gritty, the Twitter account that had originally outed Mark. Mark immediately took to Facebook to taunt person behind the shuttered account, cackling with his fellow Proud Boys in the comments.pic.twitter.com/AJgcT0OjA4
The very next day, Mark (wrongly assuming I was the person behind the Twitter account) tweeted me a vaguely menacing threat. Since then, he's been a regular in my mentions, letting me know his thoughts re: my body and how much I need to "get fucked by a real man."pic.twitter.com/GPx6d2sVwH
After the Eyes of Gritty account shut down, he also almost immediately rebooted his hobby of publicly promoting the Proud Boys.pic.twitter.com/MVzwLYvh6j
He's so eager to demonstrate his loyalty to the white supremacist tribe that he goes all out, covers himself in white facepaint, & creates a self-portrait making the white power hand sign, then titles it #whiteface.
Around the same time, he becomes a flat earth theory proponent.pic.twitter.com/Rpawzprstd
And after that manic-seeming surge of activity in March-- whiteface, threats, Proud Boy allegiance declarations, adoption of flat earth theory-- Mark's public facing persona is just selfies and his pretty standard (though still racist and misogynistic) trolling shtick.
That pattern of sporadic, manic-appearing periods of white supremacist rage escalating over time brings me to the first of the two takeaways I want to close out this this thread with.
TAKEAWAY 1: Unlike traditional white supremacists (the Klan, Nazis) alt-right radical supremacist groups pretend their violence towards political opponents is wholly self-defensive. They use the language and symbols of self-defense (Mark's helmet, Swinney's armor) to do so.
That external messaging of self-defense is belied by an internal culture of glorified violence. Proud Boys don't gear up out of fear of leftist violence. They gear up because theirs is a culture of premeditated violence.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/proud-boys-chat-logs-premeditate-rally-violence-in-leaked-chats_n_5ce1e231e4b00e035b928683?fzb …
This is a culture perfectly geared to attract angry, alienated men just looking for place to fit in, 'prove' their own toxic manhood. and find an excuse to enact their violent, hateful fantasies under the veneer of political ideology.
It's telling that despite the Proud Boys' open glorification of street violence, their leadership maintains a practiced distance from the actual fray. These organizers have a political agenda that they want enforced. They look to guys like Mark to violently enforce it.
These guys know who their recruits are. They know what they're doing when they get a guy like Mark, who posts openly about his PTSD, shares his violent ideation, and appears to experience escalating, hate-inflected manic episodes. And then they work to incite them.pic.twitter.com/fDn1dEXl8y
TAKEAWAY 2: Identification works. After Mark was first identified, he pulled back. He disengaged from more violent and explicit promotion of his radical white supremacist group. Only when the account that first identified him disappeared did start up again.
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