Proud Boys
The Proud Boys is a far-right, neo-fascist organization, which promotes and engages in political violence in the United States. Founded by Gavin McInnes in 2016, women are not allowed to join the Proud Boys.
Quotes about
[edit]- KLOBUCHAR: Well, there was -- I just noted that just today, a reporting in The Washington Post, that on Monday, a complaint was filed against a member of the Proud Boys in Washington State, where federal prosecutors alleged that, in fact, there were plans made for many different entries into the Capitol, is that correct?
WRAY: Yes. There have been a growing number of charges as we continue to build out the investigation. Either individuals who are now starting to get arrested that involved charges more things, like planning and coordination or in some instances individuals who were charged with more simple offenses but now we're superseding as we build out more of an understanding of what people were involved. And there were clearly some individuals involved which I would consider the most dangerous, most serious cases among the group, who did have plans and intentions and some level of coordination.
KLOBUCHAR: And I think you've arrested now twenty members of that group or -- is that right?
WRAY: I don't know the number off the top of my head. Yes.
KLOBUCHAR: Well, so what I was thinking when Senator Graham was talking is that if, and they show up in this complaint with encrypted two-way Chinese radios and military gear, that you must -- there must be moments where you think if we would have known, if we could have infiltrated this group or found out what they were doing, and that -- you have those moments?
WRAY: Absolutely. I will tell you, Senator, and this is something I feel passionately about, that any time there is an attack, our standard at the FBI is we aim to bat a thousand, right? And we aim to thwart every attack that is out there. So any time there is an attack, especially one that's this horrific, that strikes right at the heart of our system the government, right at the time of transfer of power is being discussed, you can be darn tooting that we are focused very, very hard on how could we get better sources, better information, better analysis so that we can make sure that something that what happened on January 6th never happens again.- 2 March 2021 exchange between Senator Amy Klobuchar and FBI director Christopher Wray
- A member of the far-right Proud Boys texted his F.B.I. handler during the assault
- Beyond barring the description of the men Rittenhouse shot as “victims,” Schroeder has ruled that prosecutors cannot bring up Rittenhouse’s connections to the Proud Boys, a white nationalist organization that has a history of inciting violence at protests. Schroeder... said that Rittenhouse’s association with the Proud Boys wasn’t relevant to the case — despite the fact that shortly after the fatal shootings last year, Rittenhouse flashed a hate symbol and posed for pictures with the group in a Wisconsin bar.
- 27 October 2021, Judge Bars Prosecutors From Calling Those Killed by Kyle Rittenhouse “Victims”, by Chris Walker, Truthout
The Proud Boys’ Real Target, Garrett Epps 2019
[edit]- The Proud Boys’ Real Target, The Atlantic (August 23, 2019)
- I haven’t seen Justice Hans Linde in more than a decade, but I thought of him last Saturday, when I found myself locked in a science museum with frightened parents and children while neofascist thugs marched by. Hans was a child in Weimar Germany; I suspect he would have known how I was feeling. The museum was the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, in Portland. The occasion was a rally organized by the Proud Boys, an all-male group that exalts “Western values” and promotes Islamophobia. Other affiliated groups joined in—a loose conglomeration of racists, chauvinists, and just plain thugs. Some of them were connected to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, two years ago, at which a right-wing marcher drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a woman named Heather Heyer. The Proud Boys aren’t from Portland, but they have selected the Rose City as the site for their rallies, threats, and clashes with local “antifa,” or antifascist activists. The rally Saturday was nominally to demand that Portland suppress the antifa groups so that the Proud Boys can march unopposed whenever they choose. [...] What has this to do with Hans Linde? Hans was born in 1924 to a prosperous Jewish family in Berlin. He once told me that his first clear memory was of watching from the family apartment while Nazis in brown shirts brawled with Communists on the Kurfürstendamm below. When Jewish life in Germany became untenable, the Lindes relocated to Denmark, and then, by good fortune, obtained U.S. visas. The Lindes settled in Portland; Hans attended Oregon public schools, and then Reed College, in the city’s Eastmoreland neighborhood. He served in the Army, attended law school at UC Berkeley, and began a brilliant career as a U.S. Supreme Court clerk, a Senate aide, a law professor, and finally the greatest justice ever to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court. I came to know Linde because, many years ago, I wrote a profile of him.
- Since the Saturday demonstration, the Proud Boys have announced that they will be back every month until the City suppresses the antifa movement, whom they call “domestic terrorists.” The impudence is striking. The Proud Boys are threatening violence to achieve political change. That is the textbook definition of terrorism. Moreover, even before Charlottesville, domestic terrorism had emerged as a danger from people motivated by the far-right ideology—that is, from the political forces (if not the actual individuals) now demanding that the government crush their enemies so that they can own the streets. Consider a very partial list of horrendous crimes motivated by right-wing racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism: a mass killing at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina; pipe bombs sent to public figures who oppose Donald Trump; a massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue; and 20 people—mostly Latino—gunned down at an El Paso Walmart.
See also
[edit]- Activism
- Aggression
- Civil unrest
- Conflict
- Mob rule
- Rule of law
- Violence
- White privilege
- White supremacy
