Chet Hanks, son of actor Tom Hanks, has inadvertently emboldened white supremacists and other hate groups, according to a recent report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE).
The younger Hanks jokingly coined the phrase “White Boy Summer,” sometimes abbreviated as “WBS,” in 2021. Building off trends such as rapper Megan thee Stallion’s “hot girl summer,” Hanks said the phrase was intended to promote an embrace of “fly” white boys.
Now, Hanks is responding to the co-opting of his social media movement by extremists a day after GPAHE's report was written about in The New York Times. In an Instagram post uploaded on Wednesday, Hanks clarified that White Boy Summer is all about “love.”
“White boy summer was created to be fun, playful, and a celebration of fly white boys who love beautiful queens of every race,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “Anything else that it has been twisted into to support any kind of hate or bigotry against any group of people is deplorable and I condemn it.”
This is not the first time Hanks has had to respond to criticism over his White Boy Summer phrase. Some critics believed that white men did not need to be glorified through the trend because of the privileges they have in society. When he first coined the term, he clarified that he was “not talking about Trump, you know, NASCAR type white.” Instead, he shouted out white men like R&B singer Jon B and rapper Jack Harlow.
Despite Hanks’ insistence that the term is not meant to be used in a hateful manner, many members of the far right still use White Boy Summer as a rallying cry for white supremacy, according to GPAHE's report.
GPAHE found that the terms White Boy Summer and WBS have spiked on Telegram, a communication app that has hosted a number of extremist groups, each summer in the years since the trend took off.
Additionally, far-right personalities such as conservative commentator Jack Posobiec have also publicly used the phrase. Posobiec waved a White Boy Summer flag at a conference for the conservative youth group Turning Point USA in June.
Hanks had revived White Boy Summer among his fanbase in an Instagram post uploaded on May 20.
“I have consulted with the heavens, felt a westward breeze, and walked outside of a strip club and saw my shadow… this will be a #WBS #iHaveSpoken,” he wrote.
