Whether or not it was protesting Covid lockdowns, attending faculty board conferences, or going through off towards Black Lives Matter protesters, the far-right Proud Boys have been at all times available to assist Donald Trump’s first time period in workplace.
When Trump left workplace in 2021, the group’s leaders languished in jail for his or her function within the January 6 assault on the Capitol. With reported infighting destabilizing the motion, it seemed just like the group’s glory days have been behind it.
However Trump’s return a yr in the past, and his launch of all January 6 prisoners, signaled {that a} Proud Boy comeback may very well be within the playing cards. And whereas there have been intermittent indicators that the group may return to the degrees of exercise of its heyday, the fact is that Trump’s militarization of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) company and the Border Patrol, along with the administration’s embrace of white nationalist rhetoric, has left the Proud Boys and not using a function to play. There’s little incentive for Proud Boys to depart their houses when closely armed representatives of the Trump administration are already choosing fights with left-wing protesters.
By no means has that been extra evident than over the course of the final week, as anti-ICE protesters have flooded the streets of cities and cities throughout the nation since a masked federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
As a substitute of taking to the streets to face down the protesters and defend Trump’s hard-line immigration crackdown, the Proud Boys have been relegated to posting incendiary memes whereas promising to supply private safety for right-wing influencers who observe each a part of ICE’s anti-immigrant raids.
A WIRED assessment of a whole bunch of Telegram channels run by Proud Boy chapters throughout the nation, in addition to different far-right extremist and militia teams, reveals that there aren’t any public requires members to mobilize and defend ICE from the protesters.
As a substitute, members of the Telegram channels are posting deeply misogynistic and homophobic photographs, movies, and AI-generated content material that includes Good and her spouse, with one extremist knowledgeable telling WIRED that the channels in current days have been nearly giddy in response to the capturing.
“They’re very enthused about what’s taking place, as a result of for a lot of of them, [ICE and the DHS are] following what their blueprint would have been anyway,” says Wendy Through, cofounder and president of the International Challenge In opposition to Hate and Extremism, including that there isn’t any cause why the Proud Boys must be on the bottom. “Whenever you’ve received regulation enforcement that appears so prepared to abuse their powers, why get in hassle.”
The Proud Boy channels, in between celebrations of Good’s demise, are additionally praising the work of ICE within the metropolis.
“You’re an ICE agent in Minneapolis. 5 and a half years after George Floyd, in the identical metropolis, you subdue a prisoner along with your knee. Think about being that primarily based,” a member of a North Carolina chapter of the group often known as the Cape Concern Proud Boys wrote in a Telegram put up this week.
There have been some guarantees of motion, nevertheless. After right-wing influencers Nick Sortor and Cam Higby claimed to have been attacked whereas filming content material in Minneapolis this week, former Proud Boys chief Enrique Tarrio claimed he wished to assist. “I reached out to each [Nick] and Cam with a suggestion for private element,” Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and despatched to jail over his function associated to the January 6 riots on the Capitol, wrote on X on Monday. Tarrio nonetheless claims to steer the Proud Boys. “Ready for a reply. We’ve an awesome resolution for each of them,” he added.
