I was just in a hipster coffee shop (safe space) in Williamsburg and the libs were whispering to each other how the cafe was actually owned by a White Supremacist and now it’s shut down. As reported by Bushwick Daily, Sands Cafe has shuttered after the owner was accused of being a member of the Alt-Right.
It all started with a tweet (from a now private account) allegedly outing Guy Sands—the “Sands” of Sands Cafe—as sympathetic to far right ideologies. This kicked off an online controversy, leading to the shop’s demise.
Sands has denied any such association, going so far as to tell the Gothamist that he is “not a goddamn Nazi,” but as Bushwick Daily notes, there are some inconsistencies with his story:
Some of his statements were somewhat contradictory: he claimed to be a lifelong Democrat to Gothamist, though Eater identified him as a registered Republican. He denied maintaining an alt right Twitter account, though below the Gothamist article a commenter posted what appeared to be content from Sands’s deleted account expressing boilerplate far right sentiments and other similar tweets under the handle @SandsGuy remain aggregated on various other sites.
Even more damning for his “not a goddamn Nazi” assertion, though, is a 2016 article in Vanity Fair chronicling Sands attendance at a garbage party thrown by Milo Yiannopoulos after his Twitter account was shut down for saying garbage things about SNL actor/underrated Ghostbusters reboot star/national treasure Leslie Jones. “I’ve always been a contrarian,” Sands says in the VF article, which doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a racist, but it does evidently mean he parties with them. This is man whose now-deleted Twitter account bio reads: “Brooklyn Songwriter : Philosophy Guy : Cineaste : Restaurant Manager : Evergreen Alumni : Political Unicorn.”
Whoa.
The proverbial nail in the coffin comes from Sands himself, who told Gothamist he’d “traveled to Washington DC with the Proud Boys,” whom the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group, on what Sands referred to as an “investigatory” trip.
He’s not a white nationalist, he’s just alt-right curious. And now his coffee bar is closed. Also, the fuck out of here with “cineaste” in your Twitter profile. That should have been warning enough.
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
Top image via Sands Cafe
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