Proud Boys and the Culture of Violence
A look at how the Proud Boys helped fuel the January 2021 insurrection through a culture of violence.
One day after the worst presidential debate in American history, Americans took to social media to brawl over the label "white supremacism." During Monday night's debate, President Trump called on the Proud Boys, a far-right group engaging in combative stand-offs against Antifa, to "stand back and stand by." The next morning social media was ripe with a cocktail of opinion on whether the Proud Boys were white supremacists.
Their current leader is Enrique Tarrio, an Afro-Cuban who serves as international chair of the group, says Proud Boys aren't the problem, adding "it's the people who want to commit acts of violence against people they don't agree with. And that is called domestic terrorism. And that's what we're here to fight today."
Along with other members of minority backgrounds, he has denounced white supremacy. Shaping the future of the group's members, Tarrio told Business Insider that the group is becoming more politically organized during this year's elections:
"Chapters around the U.S. are instead working to elect dozens of members who are running for office themselves in local, state, and federal positions." - Enrique Tarrio, Proud Boys Leader
According to Business Insider, there are currently 22,000 Proud Boy members worldwide and at least 30 of the mare running for election in the United States this year.
To understand the impact the group could have, we have to look at the group's past. Proud Boys was founded in 2016 by Vice media co-founder Gavin McInnes, as a product of what he labels the "New Right" formed out of what began as a men's club for "Western chauvinists." The proud boys are also misogynistic, antisemitic, and anti-Muslim. In 2010, McIness said:
"But the Muslim world is filled with shoeless, toothless, inbred, hill-dwelling, rifle-toting, sodomy-prone men ready to kill for a God they've never seen. They even have their own Hatfields and McCoys: They're called Sunnis and Shiites." - Gavin McInnes, Proud Boy co-founder
The New York Times describes the Proud Boys as trading in political violence. Vox calls them the "shock troops of the weirdo right." A day after the debate, Proud Boy leadership across states have interviewed with the media and denied a mantra of violence. And yet, here's how McInnes describes Proud Boys:
"We will kill you. That's the Proud Boys in a nutshell. We will kill you. We look nice. We seem soft. We have 'boys' in our name, but like Bill the Butcher and the Bowery Boys, we will assassinate you...Fighting solves everything. We need more violence from the Trump people." - Gavin McInnes, Proud Boy co-founder
The open call to violence McInnes boasts is too brutal and vulgar to republish. For those who wish to listen to it, it's available in the tweet video below.
This is Gavin McInnes, founder of The Proud Boys, talking about why he created them and what their purpose is.
McInnes' words are his and speak for themselves.
These contradictions between what is said and what is seen have lent to the confusion of what the Proud Boys are. Beyond the label of white supremacy, there is another field of extreme patriotism that sees Western culture and values within a fixed window of time as superior. This framing of what Western culture is doesn't take into account a history rich with the migration of ideas and thinkers, all of which have contributed to the the modern day West as we know it. Nor does it take into account that a future world of people have the potential to and likely will improve upon even the best of what Western civilization is right now.
In short, the Proud Boys is a fight club anchored to a likely immutable interpretation of what it means to be an American man. And with that, they have found a nesting space within President Trump's Make American Great Again (MAGA) philosophy, which also relies on looking backward rather than looking forward on how a nation can continue shaping itself into an advanced civilization.
Elizabeth Neumann, a global security risk and operations expert, and a former Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention in the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security, compares the Proud Boys to a gang. In a tweet threadyesterday, she writes:
"...the Proud Boys bear many of the hallmarks of a gang and its members have taken part in multiple acts of brutal violence and intimidation...many members have criminal records for violent behavior and the organization actively pursues violence against their perceived enemies. After several years of forging alliances with members of the Republican political establishment, the Proud Boys have carved out a niche for themselves as both a right-wing fight club and a volunteer security force for the GOP. Despite assoc[ications] with mainstream politicians, Proud Boys' actions & statements repeatedly land them in the company of white supremacists & right-wing extremists. Kessler, the primary organizer of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, is a former Proud Boy." - Elizabeth Neumann, former Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention, DHS
To grapple with the depth and complexity of the issues before us, we need to move into a more sophisticated understanding of "white supremacist." The Proud Boys are not white supremacists; they're neofascists adoring the rebirth of Western chauvinism. And it doesn't bode well for the prospect of a unified America that the day after the debate, the Proud Boys turned "stand back, stand by" into their slogan.
A Gen Z American I spoke with today had this to say, echoing the narrative that support for one extreme group yields support for another extreme.
"Why is antifascism [Antifa] a bad ideology? I guess I'm just wondering if the president is actively rallying white nationalists, what have we to do beside support anti fascists." - Gen Z voter, male.
Every action has a opposite reaction until and unless a gridlock between the two is broken, and that opportunity was missed by both candidates on Monday night.
While some Americans see the Proud Boys are a civilian line of defense against Antifa — including, arguably the President of the United States based on "stand back and stand by," — other Americans will respond to the surge of support for the Proud Boys by latching onto Antifa with greater passion. One polarity drives another. This is the war of extremes and it thrives where nuance, education, and dialogue are absent.
There is deep confusion on where to go from here. It's been three years since Charlottesville's Unite the Right rally put white supremacy back on the public's radar. Three years later we're still not at collective understanding of white supremacy, toxic nationalism, or that fascism is diversifying its branding into splintered identity groups. Antifa (short for "anti-fascist"), for example, is no less fascist because it has the word "anti" in it.
Instead, our national hyper focus on race has pegged the issues within the context of race. The surging levels of extremism America is experiencing has less to do with race at this hour, and more to do with polarity and tribalism. We need to be look at what the next generation of far right nationalism looks like, how these identities are aligned with supremacists philosophies despite attracting an ethnically diverse membership, and to what extent these groups embrace violence.
The Proud Boys and the Boogs (Boogaloo Bois) evolved from a younger broader alt right movement that is minimal/anti-government, nativist, and growing. Although white supremacists are members of these groups, being a white supremacist and even being white are not core int the way they were even a generation ago. There's a significant generational shift that started taking place distinctly around 2015.
Some might call this shift White Supremacy 2.0, but white supremacy is a side dish — it's not the steak, it's the peas. The steak is disenfranchisement. It's the sense that communities have been marginalized, which brings the conversation full circle to radicalization and what drives people to join these movements. Those driving factors are community, identity, purpose, and belonging. Most significantly, especially in the case of the normalization of fringe groups like Antifa, Boogaloo, and Proud Boys, the driving factor is a common purpose.
Photo Credit: AFP