Where now for the proud boys?

[Gob]

During the the Trump era, the far-right Proud Boys rode high, enjoying presidential support, recruiting thousands of men, and, as the self-nominated nemesis of leftist Antifa activists, participating in a string of violent street altercations around the country.



But now since Trump’s election loss and the aftermath of the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC, a series of blows dealt by law enforcement, elected officials and their own leaders have shaken the extremist fraternity that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a hate group.

Since their foundation in 2016 by the far-right Canadian media personality and entrepreneur Gavin McInnes, the all-male group – who wear uniform clothing, enforce bizarre initiation rituals, eschew masturbation, and reward violence with higher degrees of membership – have been an outsized presence on the landscape of pro-Trump extremism, and successful in promoting themselves as the most militant part of his coalition.

But their role in the Capitol insurrection especially has brought far less welcome attention.

Law enforcement agencies have connected at least 10 Capitol arrestees with the Proud Boys in criminal complaints and affadavits. Those charged include leaders like the Florida combat veteran and conspiracy theorist Joe Biggs and Washington state’s Ethan Nordean, whose prominence rose in the group after he was caught on film attacking an antifascist during a 2018 riot in downtown Portland, Oregon.

Biggs – a former employee of Alex Jones’s conspiracy-minded Infowars network – was central in organizing incursions into the city of Portland in 2019 and 2020, each of which drew Fred Perry-clad militants from around the country to confront antifascists and city authorities.

He is now charged with impeding Congress, unauthorized entry to the Capitol, and disorderly conduct.

However, the affidavit supporting the charges also alleges Biggs was involved in extensive radio communications with other Proud Boys on the day. The allegations of coordination between members of the group may hint at more charges to come.

Alex Newhouse, a researcher at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute, said in a telephone conversation that it was likely that “more conspiracy charges being levied on some of these people in the future”.

Shannon Reid, an assistant professor in criminology at the University of North Carolina, said the strategy in these cases resembles the one prosecutors often use in pursuit of criminal enterprises, where the aim is to “pick up as many people as humanly possible and to hope that they just plead out”.

The cases against Biggs and Nordean turn what had been the Proud Boys’ greatest weapon – social media – against them as authorities have detailed their alleged misdeeds using material that they and others posted online.

For example, a grand jury indictment of a Texan, Nicholas Decarlo, and the founder of the group’s Hawaiian chapter, Nicholas Ochs, alleges that they together inscribed “Murder the media” on the front door of the Capitol before stealing a Capitol police officer’s handcuffs. In an affidavit, an FBI special agent says that they determined that Ochs had been in the building from his own Twitter account.

Meanwhile, Dominic Pezzola and William Pepe allegedly conspired with each other in a sequence of events which included Pezzola assaulting a Capitol police officer, stealing his riot shield, and then using it to smash in one of the Capitol’s windows. The evidence cited in affidavits includes Pezzola’s account on the shuttered conservative-friendly social media service, Parler, and videos posted online by other rioters.

The FBI says that another arrestee, Bryan Betancur, was wearing a Proud Boys cap at the rally. They also say that Betancur is a “self-professed white supremacist” who discussed carrying out school shootings and expressed support for Charlottesville killer, James Fields.

He was placed inside the Capitol building by signals from his court-ordered ankle monitoring device, a parole condition related to an earlier offense.

Newhouse said that voluminous social media evidence suggests that “this was carefully planned and extensively communicated in the moment”. The connection between Proud Boys and other extremist organizations – previously noted on several occasions by US law enforcement – has now led to the first instance of the group being outlawed. Last Wednesday, the Canadian parliament formally declared the Proud Boys a terrorist group, citing their “misogynistic, Islamophobic, antisemitic, anti-immigrant and/or white supremacist” ideology and their association with “white supremacist groups”.

The designation opens the way for any crimes committed by Proud Boys to be prosecuted as terrorist acts. It also means that any fundraising, travel, recruitment and training for the group can be prosecuted, and members can be added to no-fly lists or denied entry to Canada.

Meanwhile, parliamentarians in Australia are pushing their government to follow suit, after McInnes was denied entry to the country on character grounds in 2018.


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[MajGenl.Meade]

eschew masturbation

Must be double-jointed

[ex-khobar Andy]

He was placed inside the Capitol building by signals from his court-ordered ankle monitoring device, a parole condition related to an earlier offense.

Love it. Reminder: these people vote.