Topline
Started in 2016 by Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes as a provocative club for men who love America but hate political correctness while vehemently denying any connection to the “alt-right,” here’s how the Proud Boys—now viewed by many as an alt-right extremist group, threatening enough to warrant a state of emergency in Oregon ahead of a rally planned for Saturday—became what it is today.
Armed members of the far-right Proud Boys groups stand guard during a memorial for Patriot Prayer ... [+]
Key Facts
McInnes began the Proud Boys in the fall of 2016, eight years after leaving Vice over “creative differences,” having co-founded the media company when it was just an edgy Montreal-based magazine in 1994 .
A regular media personality appearing in various conservative talk shows, McInnes announced to the world Proud Boys as a secret club for “Western chauvinists,” men (“women are not allowed”) focused on “anti-political correctness” and “anti-white guilt” with meetings that would consist of “drinking, fighting and reading aloud from Pat Buchanan’s Death of the West.”
The election of President Trump skyrocketed interest in the group, and by the end of 2017, the Proud Boys Facebook and Twitter pages had over 20,000 members, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, with chapters around the world, and possibly coaxed by McInnes’ inflammatory rhetoric (McInnes admitted he may be Islamophobic and acknowledged being sexist), began to attract the attention of extremist groups.
Jason Kessler, a white supremacist who identified as a Proud Boy, helped organize the August 2017 “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which attracted neo-Nazi groups and Klansmen, and resulted in the death of Heather Heyer and injury of 19 others when a self-identified white supremacist deliberately drove into a group of counter-protesters.
McInnes tried to distance Proud Boys from extremist groups, warning members that “If you decide to rub elbows with those people [while] in colors, you very well could find yourself disavowed” and expelled Kessler from the group—though had spoken with him about the rally less than two months earlier on Compound Media talk show “The Gavin McInnes Show,” which has since ended.
In 2018, as seven group members faced charges related to a street brawl in New York, McInnes quit Proud Boys, saying his legal team and law enforcement had advised him to leave to alleviate the sentencing, but “I do this reluctantly because I still see this as the greatest fraternal organization in the world.”
Key Background
Since then, Proud Boys has been one of a handful of right-wing groups to exploit tense clashes between police and protesters across the country. Group members, donning gold and black Fred Perry polos, have attended and brawled with left-wing activists at Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, over the summer. These clashes between right-wing and left-wing groups, energized by Trump’s accusations that antifa is destroying weak Democratic cities, have ended in violence, and even death. On August 29, Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a supporter of the far-right Patriot Prayer group, was fatally shot following a Trump vehicle parade through Portland by Michael Forest Reinoehl, an antifa member. Since then, the Proud Boys have been planning a “show of force” in Portland, per The Washington Post, which will take place Saturday afternoon. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) declared a state of emergency on Friday in anticipation of this weekend’s rally, which organizers expect to draw as many as 10,000 right-leaning activists to Portland, in addition to a sizable crowd of counter-protesters. “Portland has franchised these riots across the country,” Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio said in an interview with The Washington Post, saying he hopes the Saturday rally spurs more crackdown on protesters from authorities.
Crucial Quote
“When you mix a combination of the shrouded and overt bigotry along with their propensity for violence and showing up at the most incendiary events, it really is a significant and growing risk,” said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino. “It’s especially volatile when you overlay this political season where the election is considered a battleground in a civil war.”
Surprising Fact
Facebook banned the Proud Boys and McInnes from its platform, a main source of recruiting for the group, in October 2018, citing “policies against hate organizations and figures.”
Further Reading
“Proud Boys Founder: How He Went From Brooklyn Hipster to Far-Right Provocateur” (The New York Times)
“Thousands of Proud Boys plan to rally in Portland, setting up another clash in a combustible city” (The Washington Post)
