Update, August 16, 2017: Uno Pizzeria & Grill has confirmed it fired Ryan Roy.
A Vermonter was among the neo-Nazis and other “Unite the Right” types who shook up Charlottesville, Va., in a march-turned-mêlée last weekend. Today’s white supremacists don’t wear hoods, apparently, so as soon as the tiki-torch-wielding images went viral, internet vigilantes around the country started naming and shaming them.
Locals first recognized 28-year-old Ryan Roy in a Vice News video clip. Wearing a backpack and holding a torch, Roy is seen briefly chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!”
On Tuesday Seven Days tracked down Burlington resident Roy, who said the rally “showed that we’re a legitimate movement, that this is a movement of people. It’s not like a fringe thing.”
In a 25-minute interview, Roy admitted to attending the weekend’s events and spoke unabashedly about his “white identitarian” views.
“I feel like white people are discriminated against in this country,” Roy said. “You see a lot of stuff in the media and in popular culture portrayed by the left in this country that is, frankly, anti-white. But that’s not white supremacy. We just want to stand up for our own culture and heritage.”
He continued: “If you look up the definitions of ‘black pride’ or ‘Puerto Rican pride’ or ‘Asian pride,’ those will be considered pride in whatever race that is. But if you look up ‘white pride’ online, it’s white supremacy. It has negative connotations.”
Roy, who grew up in Essex, said his views evolved over time. He used to be a “leftist” before he realized “it didn’t make sense, it was bullshit” and adopted more “libertarian-type views.”
“I became more conservative as I became more informed, read more — and that’s where I am now,” Roy said. “I’m a person who’s interested in reading, who’s interested in learning so I’m always refining my opinions and ideas as I learn new information.”
Those who knew him as a teenager said he was “angry,” but far from a full-throated white nationalist.
“Back then he was just a goth-punk kid, and it never would have occurred to me — it seemed counterintuitive to the crowd we ran with, and especially our close friends,” said Kae Burdo.
Seeing Roy in the video “makes my skin crawl,” Burdo said.
“We forget that Vermont isn’t immune from this, I think. It’s a moment of the bubble bursting for a lot of folk,” she said.
Roy’s employer, Uno Pizzeria & Grill in South Burlington, learned of his activities from phone and Facebook messages.
“Are you aware that you employed an actual nazi?” one person wrote on the company’s Facebook page.
Roy originally was suspended, according to Skip Weldon, Uno’s chief marketing officer. He said the company learned on Tuesday morning that Roy had participated in the Charlottesville rally. The company later announced it had fired Roy.
Roy declined to comment on his employment situation. He did tell Seven Days he sings in a band called “Hate Speech,” which he described as a “power electronics against Communism” group.
He’s also a supporter of President Donald Trump.
“He came out and said things like it is,” Roy said. “He addressed the main issue in this country, which I think is immigration. And that we need to do something about illegal immigration, and frankly, legal immigration.”
Roy said attending the rally “reinforced the feeling” that the white nationalist movement is legitimate and he defended his decision to exercise his First Amendment rights. Are there more rallies in his future? “Probably,” he said.
“My views are right. I don’t feel like I need to hide it,” he said. “I’m not oppressing anyone. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m not breaking any laws. I feel the way I feel.”
Does he feel out of step in left-leaning Burlington?
“It’s a very nice city, and there’s not a lot of crime because it’s a very white city,” Roy said. “And because Vermont is a very white state, you don’t have all these problems you have in other parts of the country.”
What Roy doesn’t like, he told Seven Days, are the refugees in the area.
“They take jobs, they are given resources from our tax dollars,” he said. “You hear about how there’s a housing shortage in Chittenden County, but they’re putting up these people who aren’t from this country. They bring them over and they don’t even speak our language.”
Roy said he’d heard from some friends that he’d been outed. He was concerned because “radical leftists” posted threats against him and his family online.
“I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t participate in any violence,” he said. “Just exercising my First Amendment rights.”
At the end of the conversation, Roy asked me about my political views. Then, he asked me about my last name: Goldstein.
“You are Jewish, right? Are you ethnically Jewish?” he asked.
I asked him how that was relevant to our interaction.
“It just means that I’m concerned that you’re going to lie about me,” Roy said.
“Why would you say I would lie about you?” I asked him.
“Because,” he replied, “that tends to be what your ethnic group does.”
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Written I agree that Nazi’s are deplorable but people do have the right to speech and people also have the right to not listen to speech they don’t agree with. When people confront speech they disagree with, with violence or denying someone they disagree with opportunity is when we stop being a free nation. If an employee is spreading hateful speech at the work place they should be let go but what people think and do on their free time is up to them. The people that are outing people based on their beliefs are glorified bullies. Should the actions of a few extremists in any group discredit the entire organization. If that is true Black Lives Matter should be shut down after one of its supporters shot and killed 5 Dalles officers in cold blood. How about the participants on the left Saturday should they all be outed and lose their jobs too? Dealing with deferring opinions peacefully is the hardest part of being an American.
Dear Citizen, Lose their job? I’d like to see Nazis run out of town by howling dogs and villagers with torches. Companies have mission statements. Companies hire people based upon their ability to carry out the company brand and mindset. Employees have to work alongside people who may be different from them- culturally, ethnically, etc. If I hired someone who turned out to be a white supremacist, they’d be given two weeks pay, and “Adios, Spawn of Hitler”. This guy thinks whites are discriminated against, that Jews lie, and he’s “not oppressing anyone”.
It’s morning in Vermont. Better wake up, folks. Like roaches, racists are everywhere.
Doesn’t this bring new light to the recent South Burlington debate about the “Rebel” name?
Ostensibly a fight about tradition and taxes, the underlying motive for this “controversy” was a campaign to recruit neo Nazi’s, coordinated by a member of the Trump administration in D.C. (formerly a SoBu HS graduate). Unfortunately, they found a rich field to mine in Vermont and folded many white racists into their group. Vermont schools had better start doubling down on their anti-bullying teachings and world history classes on fascism, as well as acknowledgments and appreciation of the immigrants’ role in our country’s history, if they hope to stem this tide of intolerance and hate in our state.
this is so terribly sad –
it boils down to one single word
education
he is profoundly uneducated
you can’t be even marginally educated and think this way
he is just another sad, loser white dude working (or not working now) in some dead-end low wage loser job
plus he’s got the terrible after effects of those stupid ear things
he doesn’t have enough money (or health insurance) to have some desperately needed cosmetic surgery to fix his ears
to think there are angry, loser white dudes like this all over the country –
they think immigrants are the problem –
it’s all about lack of education
that is what fuels his hate –
i feel sorry for him
I wonder who would support Native Americans if they had a racial nationalist movement. Their case for ownership of this continent is a bit stronger.
Dear CITIZEN,
It’s “out there,” not “out their.”
Steveo are you really ok with a person losing their job because they disagree with or express different views than you. Comrade that is one of the foundation blocks of communism. Are you suggesting the USA the home of FREEDOM practice communism. Do you see now how crazy the liberal thoughts that are flowing threw this country today are destroying it. The left is only steps away from for filling their dreams of turning the USA into the new U.S.S.R. For all the millennials out their that don’t know the U.S.S.R is modern day Russia. Now that’s collusion for ya kids.
Hopefully, this convinces other such scumbags to stay in hiding. I’d love to see every person in attendance outed, and subsequently unemployed.
Speaking of unemployment, I don’t believe Mr. Roy will have a case to collect following his attendance at the rally. Hopefully, he takes the message and moves on to somewhere else.
This is hard to read, and the video is devastating — especially after hearing Trump’s rogue speech today. We like to think Burlington is different, but hearing from someone from Burlington who was marching in Charlottesville, with a tiki torch, is stark reality. Thanks to SG and 7-D for raising our awareness.
Wonder what his view on ceding back American lands taken by force from Indian nations. All of us except for native Americans are immigrants and foreigners. Tony Redington Burlington