By: Justin Credible
In February, the 117-year-old Metropolitan Republican Club elected Ian Walsh Reilly, a 40-year-old gay doorman, to be president and he has been a lightening rod of controversy even before he became president.
His election was highly unusual as he was endorsed by fellow gay conservative, the flamboyant and highly controversial far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos who lobbied his social media followers to join the Metropolitan Republican Club. Once they paid their $75, they were able to vote.
Last year Reilly, then the club’s second-ranking officer, played a central role in inviting the popular “alt right” podcaster Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right group the Proud Boys to speak at the club’s East 83rd Street headquarters.
This resulted in clashes outside the club’s doors, as wild-eyed, black clad ANTIFA communists threw glass bottles at Proud Boy members who came to listen to McInnes speak. Several people were arrested in the chaos, none of them were the ANTIFA radicals who initiated the brawl.
As of press time, 2 Proud Boy members were sentenced to 4 years prison, while the original provokers (who got beaten up) were never identified nor charged. The beating the communists took was indeed brutal, however it could be interpreted as self-defense as bottles were thrown at the men.
While Gavin McInnes is far from the “fascist Nazi” that his leftist foes accuse him of being and Proud Boys are not “white supremacists” as ANTIFA claims, they remain controversial to traditional Republicans and are lumped into the “alt right” label.
“There was nothing stopping them from buying memberships for one another. One person’s card bought like six memberships,” said a board member speaking to the N.Y Post on Reilly.
“If it weren’t for the alt-right … I am pretty confident he would not have won that race.”
This drew a lot of media attention, something the low-profile club with a rich heritage that has included Theodore Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller among its members and serves as a regular stop for high-profile Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Tucker Carlson.
“Ian is not the archetype of someone who is president of Metropolitan Republican Club: he’s a professional doorman … it’s a little bit weird,” said one member.
“He’s incompetent,” said another.
Reilly has also taken heat for building ties to far-right groups abroad, including the ultranationalist political party “Alternative for Germany”, according to left leaning political site Daily Beast.
Reilly disagrees with the criticism and insists he is not a racist or “white supremacist”. In February he told NY1 News “I’m very proud to be the first openly gay president of the Metropolitan Republican Club. I reject anything that would mark me as some sort of bigot or supremacist or anything like that” He also pointed out that a more diverse group of people including gays and women have joined the club.
Reilly says he denounces prejudice, but he would not denounce McInnes or the Proud Boys. “Mr. McInnes, in my mind, is a satirist, a comedian. I think I’ve seen worse on HBO. I’ve heard worse. This to us was about freedom of speech”, he told NY1
He does have some supporters however: “Ian Reilly has worked his ass off,” board member Pete Holmberg, who had endorsed Reilly’s opponent, told The Post. “There aren’t enough Republicans in this town for us to hate each other. We cannot afford the luxury of undermining each other.”
