Proud Boys
The Proud Boys is an American
The group originated in the far-right Taki's Magazine in 2016 under the leadership of the Vice Media co-founder and the former commentator Gavin McInnes, taking its name from the song "Proud of Your Boy" from the Walt Disney Company’s musical Aladdin from 2011. Although the Proud Boys emerged as part of the alt-right, McInnes distanced himself from the movement in early 2017, saying the Proud Boys were alt-lite while the alt-right's focus was on race. Donald Trump's comment, "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by", during a presidential debate in September 2020 prior to the 2020 U.S. presidential election was credited with increasing interest and recruitment. After the remark caused an outcry for its apparent endorsement, Trump condemned the Proud Boys while saying he did not "know much about" them.
According to the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism the group believes that traditional masculinity and Western culture are under siege, using "Western chauvinism" as euphemism for the white genocide conspiracy theory. Members have participated in overtly racist events and events centered around fascist, anti-left, and anti-socialist violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center has called the group an "alt-right fight club" and a hate group that uses rhetorical devices to obscure its motives. The Anti-Defamation League described the Proud Boys as "extremist conservative" and "alt lite", "overtly Islamophobic and misogynistic", "transphobic and anti-immigration", "all too willing to embrace racists, antisemites and bigots of all kinds", and cites the group's promotion and use of violence as a core tactic.
The group has been banned from multiple social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. In February 2021 the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment of members for conspiracy related to the 2021 United States Capitol attack, and the Canadian arm of the group folded after being designated a terrorist organization.
As of February 3, 2025, the trademarked name of Proud Boys, LLC is owned by Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. A court awarded this property to the church to satisfy its judgment regarding the Proud Boys' 2020 vandalization of a Black Lives Matter banner.
History and organization
co-founded Vice magazine in 1994, but was pushed out in 2008 due to "creative differences". After leaving, he began "doggedly hacking a jagged but unrelenting path to the far-right fringes of American culture", according to a 2017 profile in the Canadian Globe and Mail. The Proud Boys organization was launched in September 2016, on the website of Taki's Magazine, a far-right publication for which white nationalist Richard B. Spencer had once served as executive editor. It existed informally before then as a group centered around McInnes, and the first gathering of the Brooklyn chapter in July 2016 resulted in a brawl in the bar where they met.The name is derived from the song "Proud of Your Boy", originally created for Disney's 1992 film Aladdin but left out following story changes in production; it was later featured in the 2011 musical adaptation. In the song, the character Aladdin apologizes to his mother for being a bad son and promises to make her proud. McInnes interprets it as Aladdin apologizing for being a boy. He first heard it while attending his daughter's school music recital. The song's "fake, humble, and self-serving" lyrics became a running theme on his podcast. McInnes said it was the most annoying song in the world but that he could not get enough of it.
The organization has been described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and NPR's The Takeaway. Criminologists have pointed to the Proud Boys initiation ceremonies, involvement in criminal and violent behavior, identifying apparel and tattoos, and other characteristics as consistent with street gangs. Spencer, McInnes and the Proud Boys have been described as hipster racists by Vox and Media Matters for America. McInnes says victim mentality of women and other historically oppressed groups is unhealthy, arguing that "here is an incentive to be a victim. It is cool to be a victim." He sees white men and Western culture as "under siege" and described criticism of his ideas as victim blaming. According to the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, their views have elements of the white genocide conspiracy theory. According to the ADL, the group is part of the alt-lite and is "overtly Islamophobic". The ADL reports that "deologically, members subscribe to a scattershot array of libertarian and nationalist tropes, referring to themselves as anti-communist and anti-political correctness, but in favor of free speech and free markets." In October 2019, members of the Denver chapter of the Proud Boys marched with members of the Patriot Front and former members of the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party. According to the ADL, "hese relationships show the Proud Boys to be less a pro-western drinking club and more an extreme, right-wing gang." In early 2017, McInnes began to distance himself from the alt-right, saying their focus is race and his focus is what he calls "Western values". This rebranding effort intensified after the Unite the Right Rally. In 2018, McInnes said the Proud Boys were part of the "new right".
The organization glorifies political violence against antifa and leftists, re-enacting political assassinations, and wearing shirts that praise Augusto Pinochet's murders of leftists. In April 2016, McInnes, who believes violence is "a really effective way to solve problems", has said: "I want violence, I want punching in the face. I'm disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough." In August 2017, he further stated that "e don't start fights but we will finish them." Heidi Beirich, the Intelligence Project director for the SPLC, said that this form of intentional aggression was not common among far-right groups in the past. She further said the far-right's claim that "e're going to show up and we're intending to get in fights" was new. In 2018, it was reported, based on an internal memo of the Sheriff's Office in Clark County, Washington, that the FBI had classified the Proud Boys as an extremist group with ties to white nationalism. Two weeks later, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Oregon office clarified that the FBI did not mean to designate the entire group, only a number of members of the group, ascribing the error to miscommunication. During the conference, the FBI recommended referring to classifications about the group by the SPLC and other outside agencies.
The organization is opposed to feminism and promotes gender stereotypes in which women are subservient to men. The organization has a female-member-only auxiliary wing named "Proud Boys' Girls" that supports the same ideology. The ADL states that the Proud Boys are an "extremist conservative group". According to the ADL, McInnes and the Proud Boys are misogynistic, depicting women as "lazy" and "less ambitious" than men, and "venerate the housewife". McInnes has called for "enforced monogamy" and criticized feminism as "a cancer". Some men who are not white, including Enrique Tarrio, the group's former chairman and the Florida State Director of Latinos for Trump, have joined the Proud Boys, drawn by the organization's advocacy for men, anti-immigrant stance, and embrace of violence. The Proud Boys claim to condemn racism, with Tarrio stating that the group has "longstanding regulations prohibiting racist, white supremacist or violent activity". However, the ADL has deemed that the group has an ideology of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, misogyny, transphobia and anti-immigrant sentiment with the group known to threaten, intimidate or violently assault anti-racism protesters. The group has claimed there is an "inherent superiority of the West", going to great lengths to mask members' connections to white supremacy. The ADL states that the Proud Boys' "extreme, provocative tactics—coupled with overt or implicit racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and misogyny and the fact that the group is so decentralized, inconsistent, and spread out—suggest the group should be a significant cause for concern".
The Proud Boys have been banned by social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. In August 2018, Twitter terminated the official account for the group along with McInnes' account under its policy prohibiting violent extremist groups. At the time, the group's profile photo showed a member punching a counter-protester. Facebook and Instagram banned the group and McInnes in October 2018. That same year, YouTube banned the Proud Boys founder for copyright violation in December 2018. On June 16, 2020, Facebook announced it had removed 358 accounts from its platform and 172 from Instagram that held ties to the organization.
Membership and doctrine
The total number of Proud Boys members is unknown. Reports estimate membership between several hundred up to 6,000. In July 2018, the Proud Boys L.A. branch had 160 members and up to 300 pending applicants, according to the unidentified Proud Boys L.A. president.Political ideologies and positions that the Proud Boys adhere to include anti-communism, anti-feminism, anti-immigration, anti-LGBT rights, antisemitism, authoritarianism, chauvinism, crypto-fascism, Islamophobia, and Trumpism. Individual members have also expressed support for QAnon and white supremacy. According to David Neiwert, the Proud Boys recruit with emphasis on right-wing 15-/30-year-old white males who come primarily from suburbs and exurbs.
The Proud Boys say they have an initiation process that has four stages and includes hazing. The first stage is a loyalty oath, on the order of "I'm a proud Western chauvinist, I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world"; the second is getting punched until the person recites pop culture trivia, such as the names of five breakfast cereals; the third is getting a tattoo and agreeing to not masturbate; and the fourth is getting into a major fight "for the cause". The masturbation policy was later modified to read: "no heterosexual brother of the Fraternity shall masturbate more than one time in any calendar month" and "all members shall abstain from pornography".
The Daily Beast reported in November 2018 that the Proud Boys amended their rules to prohibit cargo shorts and the use of opioids and crystal meth. However, the same article mentioned that no restrictions were placed on cocaine.