Meet The Hipster Racist Fox News Guest Attacking Neil deGrasse Tyson

Gavin McInnes, Fox News guest, formerly of Vice

A frequent Fox News guest who has contributed to a white nationalist website attacked Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and host of FOX's Cosmos, for speaking out about racial profiling he has experienced.

Gavin McInnes, who co-founded Vice but left the company in 2008, reportedly because he was a “liability,” said he “hate[s]” Tyson and complained about Tyson stating that he has been racially profiled in stores on the June 3 edition of Fox News' Red Eye:

MCINNES: I hate this guy [...] White liberal nerds love this guy so much, he could defecate on them like Martin Bashir's fantasies and they would dance in the streets. All he does is, he's drunk with adulation. And he talks about things like “when I was young in New York I would get racially profiled when I'd go into stores.” Back then he looked like he was in The Warriors. He had a huge afro and a cutoff shirt and New York was a war zone. Sorry, you fit the profile.

McInnes was apparently referring to a panel discussion at the Center for Inquiry in which Tyson discussed how many adults tried to steer him away from a career as a scientist as a child, and said that he has been racially profiled in stores (starting 1 hour, 1 minute and 30 seconds in):

McInnes used to write for VDARE.com, which the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a “White Nationalist” “hate group,” and stated in 2011 “I love me some VDARE.” In one post for VDARE.com, McInnes compared a Canadian university to a “madrassa” because it wouldn't host Jared Taylor, a white nationalist who advocates for founding all-white towns.

McInnes currrently writes for Taki's Magazine, a “paleoconservative” website that publishes overtly racist articles including ones by neo-confederates. At Taki's, McInnes has referred to Asian-Americans as “slopes” and “riceballs,” suggested Muslims are “stupider” and “more violent” due to inbreeding, defended blackface because some minstrel shows were “just mimicking black people” and “fun,” backed the racist comments of Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson, and argued that to yell the n-word at someone is “not racist” but “just very rude.” He also owns his own website, StreetCarnage.com, where he defended Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's racist comments because Bundy was just “wonder[ing]” if African-Americans were better off under slavery. In 2013, 18 Milling Rising gave him a “Lifetime Achievement Award in Hipster Racism,” a brand of racism marked by making “ironically” racist “jokes.”

He has also compared being a single mother to “child abuse,” claimed that women who join the workforce are generally not doing what “they naturally want to do,” and said that having short hair is like “rape.”

Greg Gutfeld, co-host of The Five and host of Red Eye, is one of McInnes' biggest fans and hosts him often. According to a Nexis search, Fox News' Hannity has also hosted McInnes frequently -- 18 times so far in 2014.

UPDATE (6/10/14): In an interview with the sports and pop culture blog Grantland, Neil deGrasse Tyson brought up McInnes' reaction as an example of why he rarely raises race in his public appearances (emphasis added in bold):

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: [S]ince 1993, I've declined every interview that has my being black as a premise of the interview. Because it's not my public -- I don't come up and say, “I'm your black scientist. Here's what black people think about science. Here's how astrophysics affects black people.”

GRANTLAND'S REMBERT BROWNE: But when I watch that clip [of the 2005 Center for Inquiry Panel], regardless of the time period, the reaction -- the fact that it resurfaced and the reaction to it on Twitter, it was clear people were -- I don't know if “shocked” is the word --

TYSON: Yes, shocked. Yes. Yes. They reacted. People reacted to it. And they heard me say something that they'd never heard me say. So they reacted. And then they think there's some inner pent-up thing because that got a whole lot of attention. And there are people only learning who I am now and they think that's raging within me.

BROWNE: But it's not?

TYSON: It is so not. It is the last thing I think of when I am performing professionally, bringing the universe to audiences.

BROWNE: My reaction wasn't one of shock --

TYSON: Oh, and by the way, that [2005 Center for Inquiry clip] has already been reacted to by a white supremacist. He was on Fox News.

So that's another reason why I generally don't even think about it. Because that then becomes the point of people's understanding of me, rather than the astrophysics. So it's a failed educational step for that to be the case. If you end up being distracted by that and not [getting] the message.