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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Once again, Seven Days cuts straight to the Left Wing party line! Not knowing the difference between White Nationalism (read: the Alt-Right) and White Supremacy (a throwback term for the exceptionally unrelated “KKK” and perhaps the Nazi LARPers you saw in the video — do you REALLY believe the Klan is even a thing in the 21st century? Really?). Right away, it’s clear you need to actually research what you’re writing about and not just regurgitate leftie propaganda. You’re not a journalist, you’re part of the echo chamber. Your use of quotation marks to set off things so you can add a snide tone to those offset phrases is equally transparent. In your insulated bubble, the Narrative is more important than the facts. Or, as the kids say, “feels before reals.”
It’s all ad hominem attacks and hyperbole to shut down the conversation for you folks, isn’t it? What about an honest discussion about race, even if it hurts feelings? How about dropping the infantile (and obsessive) use of words like “hate” or “Nazis” or “fascists” (so predictable, as if you all learned it from a single source) and actually discuss the merits (or lack thereof) of what people like Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, Greg Johnson, or Henrik Palmgren are saying? Why won’t you? Because many of the ideas of the Alt-Right cut to the core of the matter and that scares many of you who choose white guilt and running from the truth as desperate options. You stay scared. Not us.
I don’t believe there’s a movement to erase history and take down all the statues! The monuments of the civil war were often placed in public spaces during 1920s Jim Crow states where there was to be a reminder to all free black and that it was a certain group of people still in charge. This isn’t erasing history this is making history, reflecting a new sentiment in our nation and movingly towards healing. We’ll never erase history or old blood stains. And as for free speech, that was a design to keep the public and press from the gallows and prevent tyranny. Our president has advocated jailing the press. Say what they will, even lie, but the press seems to get less defense as free speech than a bunch of people who want to associate themselves with gas chambers, mass graves, and human ashes created in an effort to exterminate a people from the face of the planet.
I have known Ryan Roy for many years and used to order food from him and chat when he worked at the Kountry Kart Deli on Main Street. He was probably the most polite, friendly and service oriented employee there. I would have not attended nor marched in Charlottesville, but it is difficult to see him as hateful.
I do see evidence of anti-white hate coming out of the current political climate (and have seen it at BLM rallies in New York firsthand) and I don’t like one bit more than hatred of any other group historically. The more intense this becomes, the more sides will line up, and I fear where this is going.
Citizen,
The employer has rights as well, and if a vocal Nazi/Antifa/Rastafarian on staff hurts business he shouldn’t be compelled to keep him. He has responsibilities that extend outside one problem employee.
However, I do wonder how the commentators calling for this guy’s job would feel if someone was fired for espousing a less controversial ideology. Moral outrage tends to ebb and flow, and hit targets you wouldn’t necessarily expect. It was the commies who were blacklisted, now it’s the Nazis, who’s the next deserving group?
We should keep at the forefront of our minds that the people we disagree with, no matter how vile we think they are, are human as well. I know that’ll probably strike most people as preachy, but we’re seeing people get seriously hurt and killed because we’ve exchanged empathy for blind hate.
Steveo your are aware that there is a difference between Naziism and white nationals and there is even a difference between white nationalism and conservatives like myself. You sound like you are a member of the hitious group known as the anti-far. I’m sure no one wants those people either. So good luck getting a job unless your employer wants to be associated with a group like that. There’s not much difference between the Nazi’s and the anti-far both groups are always trying to suppress the freedoms of others. You are just as appuling as Mr. Roy.
Complain away, Citizen. Odds are that your complaint would fall on deaf ears, as disliking Nazis is generally considered to be a good thing on this planet. If, however, my employer was to decide to fire me for that view, it probably wouldn’t be all that hard to find a better employer, as next to nobody is going to hold being a decent human being against me.
Our Nazi, on the other hand, is unlikely to find work anywhere in this area, due to his own actions. People don’t like Nazis. People don’t trust Nazis. People don’t want to be around Nazis, and because of that, very few people are going to hire Nazis. If Mr. Roy wanted to remain employable, he probably ought to have considered the consequences of making it known that he is a Nazi. Once he’s a well-know pariah, he’s actively hurting his employer by remaining employed there, and leaves them little choice but to fire him.
People need to remember that having Freedom of Speech doesn’t make them immune to consequences. It only protects you from the government, not from the rest of society. If you tell the world you’re a Nazi, most of it will hate you and legally shun you for it.