Better Call J.L.
Facing allegations of racism, the Proud Boys look to a lawyer with experience.
For the entirety of their brief and ignoble history, the Proud Boys have been dogged by accusations that they are a white supremacist hate group.
To handle the problem, this gang of self-styled “Western chauvinists” turns to fellow Proud Boy Jason Lee Van Dyke, a lawyer from Denton, Texas, who brings a special set of skills to the table
Van Dyke worked for most of his career in debt collection, a field notorious for harassment and deception, though he made a brief foray into suits against the makers of “revenge porn.”
In the past year or so, the skills he honed working as a cheap bagman have come in handy in Van Dyke’s effort to manage the fallout from his own racist views.
He became something of a martyr among Proud Boys when Twitter suspended his account last year for a series of violent and/or racist tweets he sent during an online meltdown :
Over the course of this dumb fiasco, Van Dyke butted heads with New York rapper Talib Kweli, who frequently beefs with random racist trolls. Van Dyke got him temporarily suspended and threatened to “skin” him.
The episode attracted a deluge of complaints to the state bar, yet Van Dyke miraculously maintains a flawless disciplinary record. In an email, he brags that he accomplished this feat by suing everyone who ever filed a complaint against him.
He is just as litigious in his work with the Proud Boys, filing SLAPP lawsuits on behalf of the group’s leader, self-proclaimed “free speech advocate” Gavin McInnes.
Even the slightest grievance is enough for Van Dyke to fire off a boilerplate four-page letter on the stationery of his now defunct firm. Here’s an excerpt from one he filed against CV Vitolo-Haddad, an obscure trans blogger on Medium, who like me also has fewer than 200 followers.
How does a busy lawyer like Jason find time to sue anyone and everyone who besmirches his name or that of the Proud Boys? Let’s just say that his schedule is looking mighty clear these days.
It beggars belief but in spring of 2017, Van Dyke was within spitting distance of becoming a public prosecutor. He had shut down his private practice and was set to take a job as an assistant district attorney in Victoria County.
His would-be employer rescinded the offer after another Texas man named Thomas Reztlaff called attention to Van Dyke’s social media history and other unsavory aspects of his past. He is now suing Reztlaff for $100 million.
Van Dyke has been having trouble finding other employment in part due to Reztlaff’s calls and emails—also Google. The Texas State Bar lists him as “retired” effective June 20 but he is still licensed to practice law in Texas and other states.
Like the ACLU but racist
Van Dyke is on the board of the Foundation For the Marketplace of Ideas, which acts as the legal arm of white nationalism. Other board members include white nationalist Richard Spencer and Mike “Enoch” Peinovich, host of the Daily Shoah.
Acting on behalf of FMI, Van Dyke once represented a student at Southern Methodist University accused of posting flyers reading “Why White Women Shouldn’t Date Black Men.”
The foundation was started by Kyle Bristow, a good friend of Van Dyke’s and also a former member of the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, the first student organization ever to be labeled by the SPLC as a hate group. (Note: This refers to the MSU chapter not the national organization).
Though he also attended MSU, Van Dyke did not graduate. He was expelled on weapons charges in 2000, and during a search of his room, campus police found copies of the apocalyptic racist novel The Turner Diaries and the anti-semitic Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
He remained active in MSU-YAF for many years and returned for events, which is how he met Bristow, who became the group’s leader in 2006. According to SPLC, they often wore matching black cowboy hats.
Bristow and Van Dyke eventually teamed up to go after PinkMeth, the aforementioned “revenge porn” site. This case also had a distinct white nationalist component: Bristow viewed it as a campaign to protect white women, who he claimed represented the majority of the victims.
Posting on Stormfront
Last year, when Van Dyke’s racist posts were blowing up Twitter, Nebraska cybersleuth Asher Langton went looking for his account on the Neo-Nazi Stormfront forum, and he stumbled across one named “WNLaw.”
From the 200 plus messages posted on the site from 2011 to 2014, Langton ascertained that WNLaw is a lawyer named Jason who moved from Michigan to Texas, and like Van Dyke, he works in debt collection.
Other small details match Van Dyke’s bio too. WNLaw is also a firearms instructor and a martial arts enthusiast. In a post dated 2011, WNLaw mentioned being 31. Van Dyke would be that age too since his bio says he graduated high school in 1998.
Apparently, WNLaw is a gushing fan of a certain couple of cowboys from Michigan as well.
Of course, Van Dyke responded to this allegation the way any officer of the court would: By sending a menacing “warning” email where he reveals that he knows Langston’s home address.
Van Dyke told the Daily Beast the account wasn’t his, speculating that it could be “identity theft” by one of his “enemies.” So under this hypothetical scenario, someone began plotting his downfall in 2011, posted hundreds of messages on Stormfront over the course of three years and then waited another three years to pull the trigger.
That’s commitment.
Some of WNLaw’s other comments:
- The reason most negros will not use banks is because they want to avoid creditor’s claims.
- Anything and everything is a weapon of opportunity. Just as anything will “fly” if you throw it hard enough (toasters, for instance).
- Well, whites are intellectually superior to blacks. That is a statistical truth.
- In other words, the hookup culture exists as part of a means through which to eliminate the white race.
- Didn’t care much for The Turner Diaries, just got done reading White Apocalypse (great),[NOTE: This is Kyle Bristow’s SPLC murder fantasy] and am now starting on Camp of the Saints.
In one thread, “WNLaw” suggested that white nationalist lawyers could serve the movement while maintaining their reputations by working for white nationalist clients but keeping their beliefs hidden: “I am going to give everyone who reads this a word of advice: if you pursue a career down this path, do what you can to keep your views to yourself.”
Had Van Dyke followed his own advice, he’d now be a prosecutor. But it’s a blessing that he can’t resist the urge to be himself— a disgusting, combative bigot.
