(sirens) (sigh)
Drama alert!
﻿ As my more regular viewers know, the pro-Second
amendment Blackout Coffee Company - link in the description - is one of the supporters
of this channel.
When I first partnered with them and mentioned them in a video, I got a pretty decent amount
of comments and messages from folks confusing them with Black RIFLE Coffee, who also said
BRCC were traitors to gun owners.
I didn't know what that was about, corrected people on their mistake, and moved on.
But now, BRCC - which I’ll be calling them because I don’t know how many times I can
get away with saying the scary R word on YouTube - did an interview with the New York Times,
and apparently some drama has ensued, granting us headlines like this one, “Black Rifle
Coffee denounced extremists - and the far right is pissed.”
And according to Twitter, there’s now a boycott.
The company seemingly has two strikes against it at this point, so I decided that now it’s
time for a Liberty Doll investigation.
We’ll start with the New York Times article.
Though, last time I critiqued something from the New York Times, YouTube labeled it as
“hate speech” and “terrorism,” so we’ll see where this goes.
“Can the BRCC Become the Starbucks of the Right?”
The Times asks.
The sub header reads, “The company doubled its sales last year by leaning into America’s
culture war.
It’s also trying to distance itself from some of its new customers.”
Well, already that’s potentially a bad look to the right people.
Even better, the article starts with mentioning January 6th right away in the first sentence.
This is going to be good.
The Times hints that it’s the very events on January 6th that got BRCC into this pickle
in the first place.
They start out with co-founder Evan Hafer’s admission that he voted for Trump, but that
he doesn’t believe there was election fraud.
Then, that he didn’t agree with the storming of the capital, but also didn’t see those
people as a threat to the country, which is a valid viewpoint.
“But Hafer’s distance from the incident collapsed that same afternoon, when he was
alerted to a picture taken by a Getty photographer in the Senate chamber that immediately went
viral.
The photo showed a masked man vaulting over a banister holding several sets of plastic
restraints….The man...soon dubbed “zip-tie guy,” was dressed in a tactical vest, carried
a Taser and wore a baseball hat with an image of an assault rifle silhouetted against an
American flag — a design sold by the Black Rifle Coffee Company, of which Hafer is the
chief executive.”
The Times says that BRCC became the official unofficial coffee of the MAGA crowd, and that
someone at George Washington University’s Program on Extremist notes that BRCC apparel
“was a recurring feature in footage of last summer’s anti-lockdown and anti-BLM demonstrations.”
Co-founder Mat Best says that the company was singled out unfairly in all of these incidents,
and points out that there were probably tons of people wearing Nike and WalMart brands
at the various events, and that those companies aren’t getting associated with violence
and extremism.
He pointed out that they can’t control who drinks their coffee or wears their brand.
And he’s got a point, as apparently he himself was misidentified as zip-tie guy based on
the hat alone, and the company made headlines as if they’d sponsored Q Shaman himself
like a nascar driver.
Zip-tie guy was later identified as Eric Munchel, but the damage was done.
But, the apparent nail in the coffin was when Kyle Rittenhouse wore a BRCC t-shirt.
THE HORROR.
Kyle was in no way affiliated with BRCC, but Elijah Schaffer over at Blaze Media, was.
He tweeted a photo of Kyle in the shirt, writing “Kyle drinks the best coffee in America”
along with a promo code.
The company pressued Schaffer to delete his tweets with the photo, and BRCC posted a video
promising that they believed in the Constitution and the Second Amendment, but that they didn’t
sponsor Kyle in any way and didn’t believe in profiting from tragedy.
It’s probably the most eloquent PR move they could have made at the time, but people
were still pissed.
The Times took this next moment to point out that Hafer is Jewish, and thus suffered anti-semitic
attacks over the incident, and that the company lost between 3,000 and 6,000 subscribers to
their various coffee clubs.
So when January 6th rolled around, along with zip-tie guy, the company was silent.
The Times almost tries to paint this as on par with the Kyle incident, even though no
one stuck Munchel’s picture next to a promo code.
But, says the Times, “the uncomfortable truth remained: that someone like Munchel
would have thought to wear the company’s hat to the Capitol was a large part of how
Black Rifle had gotten so big in the first place.”
The article then quotes Hafer as asking how they could continue to build their brand without
being part of the MAGA movement anymore while also avoiding being called RINOs BY MAGA - not
so much in a philosophical sense, but in a business sense.
And this is the problem with people expecting everything from their coffee to their deodorant
to take some sort of stance on every stupid social justice political cause du jour.
It leaves companies in an impossible bind where someone, somewhere, is always going
to get pissed and call for a boycott, or smear the company all over social media, or force
the issue into some stupid headline until the company caves and ultimately makes things
worse for themselves.
But, at the same time, BRCC PUT itself in that situation by being overtly political
and presenting itself as a “troll-y, Trump-y alternative” to Starbucks.
And then they went on Twitter and spoke to the New York Times and tried not to own the
fact that the company had been overtly political, troll-y, and Trump-y.
While the company seemed to have learned their lesson from the Kyle incident in choosing
not to take a stance on January 6th as a whole, they apparently didn’t learn it enough,
because they gave this interview.
Best later said that he felt they had no choice but to do the interview with the New York
Times, “The New York Times was going to do a story on us no matter what, and we thought
we’d share some of the veteran-related causes that we work with, just to give them an understanding
of our business, because the left-leaning media tends to rip us apart," he told the
Current.
“I don’t know what their agenda was, and it’s not out of the question to think there
are people there who wanted to hurt our company, because we’re all gun-toting, freaking freedom-loving
patriots.”
He says he doesn't know their agenda, but also says the left media tends to rip them
apart.
They should have expected as much, frankly, and would have been better off not getting
involved, because then it wouldn’t look like they were endorsing throwing some of
their customers under the bus.
The Times solidifies this view by pointing out all the companies that have distanced
themselves from Republicans since the dawn of the Trump era, and why doing so was a good
idea.
But the more companies give in to this idea, the more people will expect it, and the cycle
will continue.
And, to nail it home, they include a quote from Hafer, in big, bold letters, “I hate
racist, Proud Boy-ish people.
Like, I’ll pay them to leave my customer base.”
The rest of the article is mostly about the history of the company, and the personal histories
of its founders,as well we their charitable exploits - but also gets in a couple digs
at BRCC’s customer base, suggesting they’re mostly people who emulate military service
and live vicariously through veterans who fancy themselves “commandos preparing for
theoretical war” but “are unlikely to encounter physical danger in their daily lives.”
The Times suggests that BRCC feels the same way, and that the founders “roll their eyes”
at the culture but recognize it as a business opportunity.
The article also goes on to say that while they won’t denounce Trump on the record,
the company and its founders no longer support Trump, or the Republican Party, as they’re
“detrimental to the company.”
Of Kyle Rittenhouse, Hafer said, “It’s such a repugnant group of people.
It’s like the worst of American society, and I got to flush the toilet of some of those
people that kind of hijacked portions of the brand.”
Also, apparently, St. Michael the Archangel is a hate symbol now and so BRCC pulled products
that were supposed to have pictures of the saint.
That’s just randomly thrown in there.
Now it is entirely possible that this stuff was taken out of context, or even made up.
But, if there is one thing that I’ve learned in covering the news and the culture war,
it’s that you don’t open yourself up to any major media news outlet.
I myself was mentioned, not by name but by video title, in a Guardian article meant to
smear the VCDL and their 2020 Lobby Day, and earlier this year was featured in a hit piece
at the Seattle Times, without my consent, and neither article was particularly flattering.
If you’re anywhere on the political spectrum that isn’t the left, speaking to the media
is generally just a no good, very bad idea.
And whether the company meant to throw it’s customers under the bus or not, legacy media
is giddy with it and taking the story and running.
The article led to a bunch of backlash on social media, from internet randos all the
way up to Mike Cernovich, who claims that BRCC promoted the article “for days and
blocked anyone who asked them about it.”
I can’t confirm that, but they did retweet the article on the 14th, which mostly got
critical comments with no sympathy for BRCC, including claims that the Times was highlighting
violent extremists in the mainstream and that the company was built by racists with micropenises
who cater to racists with micropenises.
There are claims that the main twitter account and the CEO both posted the article and later
deleted the posts.
Several users also retweeted photos of customers and conservative blue checks alike being blocked
by the BRCC Twitter account after claiming that they had only asked about the article,
asked about donations the company had allegedly made to the democratic party, or questioned
attributing Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions - and his supporters - to racism.
Among this list appears to be Cernovich himself, Cassandra Fairbanks, John Cardillo, Kurt Schlichter,
The Quartering, and others.
They also allegedly deleted critical Tweets before deleting the entire posts.
Evan then responded with a video on Instagram, claiming their words were indeed twisted and
taken out of context.
Hafer claimed he had been under the impression that the article was meant to be about racism
and anti-semetism in America, in the context of “being the target of an organized attack”
after denouncing Rittenhouse last year.
He also called the New York Times piece “misinformation.”
He claimed all the negative quotes were strictly about racists and anti-semites, and not about
conservatives in general.
He also claimed that he interviewed with the Times out of a sense of responsibility to
the veteran community, to give the Times the opportunity to write an objective story about
the company and their stance on veteran issues - but also acknowledges that they knew the
chances of that were very slim.
In the video, Hafer chalks up the “misunderstanding” to the difficulties of navigating the culture
war.
He also then claims that they never tried to be political - which is silly - and states
that going forward, they’re not going to be overtly political.
Which frankly, is naive, when your company name literally has the word “rifle” in
it and you sell coffee roasts with names like “AK 47" and "Thin Blue Line” along side
grenade-shaped coffee mugs.
Then, Hafer and Best took to Dana Loesch, claiming fake news I'm a very soft and admittedly
leading interview.
I think they genuinely thought that they could play both sides and that the Times article
would somehow score them more customers than d*ck jokes.
If the quotes really were taken out of context, if some of them really were flat out misinformation
- then the question remains why BRCC and its founders continued to promote the article,
without any corrections, until five days later, AFTER the backlash.
I know that if an outlet as big as the New York Times put out a story with fake quotes
from me, bashing my viewers, I’d be on that right away, not...reposting it all over social
media.
As the kids say these days, seems sus.