Proud Boys

It was Saturday morning and MSNBC's Tiffany Cross had a bee in her bonnet. With Senator Lindsey Graham predicting riots in the streets, with Donald Trump reacting to the FBI raid on his home like the Archduke Ferdinand had just been offed, Cross told her audience, "These days, it feels like we are not just at the brink of a civil war, but that one has already begun." Six months ago, here's how I would have responded to Cross: of course this is what a hyper-partisan MSNBC host would say. Civil war fears are really just LARPing by Twitter elites who thrive on hatred of the other side and so assume everyone else must too. "WE'RE GOING IN!" screams Elie Mystal as he screeches up in a Power Wheels Jeep while waving around a purple and orange Nerf Kalashnikov.

When several Proud Boys attended a New Hanover School Board meeting about 175 miles from my North Carolina hometown, I was reminded of the night years ago when I woke to the sound of my mother weeping. Klansmen demonstrating outside our local library had made the late-night news. The sight of those ignorant men outside the doors through which I’d recently exited with Where the Wild Things Are proved unbearable to my mother. She sent a blistering letter to the editor, inciting Klan supporters to call our house hoping to discuss, as one woman asked me before my mother snatched the phone from my hand, just what exactly her problem was with the Klan. And, oh, did my mother tell them.

The invasion of Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 represented the rise and fall of pro-Trump anti-governmental activism in a matter of hours. Its sensational success ensured its immediate collapse as the power of law enforcement came down on its head. Anyone involved must have experienced emotional whiplash. At the time, as millions of us watched on social media, there were smiles, and pranks, and a sense of deranged pageantry. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” seemed to be the mood, perhaps accompanied in some cases by, “What can we do next?” Soon, many of the participants had an answer as they were booked into extended spells in jail. One year on, the organizations involved in the “Stop the Steal” rally and the subsequent rioting are in pieces.

Following the Capitol Hill riot of January 6, a fair number of elected leaders — mostly Democrats — and law enforcement officials expressed their belief that an armed insurrection was in the works. Hostile forces were said to ready to attack Washington intent on overthrowing the government. To forestall this, fences topped with razor wire were installed and members of the National Guard were kept on active duty. March 4 was rumored to be the date set for this uprising. No army of insurrectionists appeared on March 4 or any other date. Nor as far as anyone can tell was there ever a prospect for such an attack. On March 1, the razor wire was removed from one of the tall fences, but reinstalled on a shorter fence across the street, closer to the Capitol.

It’s all so infantile isn’t it? Antifa jackals harass Donald Trump fans during their ‘Million MAGA March’ on the streets of DC. The ‘protesters’ steal Trump caps and set them on fire. They throw fireworks at people. Skirmishes break out, some people get hurt. There’s a stabbing. Underpaid online reporters stalk the scenes with their iPhones, trying to record the violence and make it go viral. Social media users dutifully share scraps of aggro-porn. President Trump, sounding not unlike a teenager reporting on fisticuffs in high school, tweets: ‘ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump Rally, because those people aggressively fought back.’ Which hills?

According to a document obtained by the transparency initiative Property of the People, the FBI now regards the Proud Boys (the self-styled ‘pro-West fraternal organization’ founded by right-wing provocateur Gavin McInnes) as an extremist group linked to white nationalism. As someone who’s met similar groups (I’ve stayed with anti-government militias in Kansas and California), I’m not convinced. In my experience, Proud Boy-style groups aren’t racist – if I had to define them, I’d say they’re obnoxious pro-Trumpers whose politics seem less about making America great again and more about antagonizing the other side. Sure, they tend to be strongly anti-immigration and un-PC more generally – but white nationalist?

Much has been made of the so-called ‘mob mentality’ of left-wing protesters in the last few weeks. The GOP has been eager to paint anti-Kavanaugh activists as the kind of hysterical torch-wielders that deeply concerned this country’s founders. It’s intriguing, therefore, to see how quickly many in the media seized the opportunity to show the violent ‘mob’ mindset in action on the right. Last night, VICE founder Gavin McInnes was the talk of Twitter after footage emerged showing a protester being beaten by a group of ‘Proud Boys’ (McInnes’s followers) on a Manhattan pavement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?