When musicians Howard Ashman and Alan Menken wrote the lines “Someday and soon I’ll make you proud of your boy”, from the song “Proud of your boy”, which in 2011 managed to be part of the musical adaptation of Aladdin, surely They didn’t think their lyrics would end up inspiring the group that carried out the violent insurrection at the Capitol ten years later.
But beyond the name, the far-right association Proud Boys (Proud Boys, in Spanish) is far from the message of the Disney tape. Its creator, British-born Canadian journalist Gavin McInnes, was inspired by the theme song in 2016 while running Taki’s Magazine, which ended up bringing the group to life. Civilian armies of white men who reject women, blacks and homosexuals. They became protagonists in Trump’s presidential rallies since 2016 when they confirmed their support for him, and even the president himself hesitated to condemn their violence in the middle of an electoral debate in 2020.
Before all that power they gained within the bases, in 2017 their own creator McInnes had turned away from them. For him, the monster of him was not extreme enough. The authorities have another version. In the last few hours, its former leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. This sentence comes after several members were sentenced in May for the crime of conspiracy to commit sedition, for his participation in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when a mob of protesters tried to prevent the ratification of the victory of the current president, Joe Biden.
Tarrio’s is the most recent sentence of at least 40 members of the group who have gone through the US courts to answer for what happened on January 6, 2021. According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism of the University of Maryland, these defendants come from the District of Columbia, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, all large voting states. The center also records that at least 83 members or supporters of the Proud Boys have committed crimes across the country. These arrests have resulted in charges ranging from destruction of property to possession of weapons and assault, and even murder.
The profile of its members is also the most revealing, according to these experts. These are people who, on average, are 35 years old. The oldest of the detained members was just 63 at the time of his arrest and the youngest 21. At least twenty-six of the Pride Boys have a background in the US military and/or law enforcement.
While most of the Proud Boys defendants had no additional affiliations with other movements, authorities have determined that at least 14 individuals had known ties to other extremist movements. Thirteen of these carried out successful attacks (both violent and non-violent) in the United States.
The most worrying thing about this group is that, according to the civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), despite the furious onslaught of justice against what the prosecutors in the case call “Trump’s Army” The Proud Boys are not in the process of disappearing but rather of reconversion.
SPLC has warned that the neo-fascist group is “diversifying” and opening more branches than ever across the country. Now, according to experts, more than a direct political action they have moved towards an obsessive campaign “of transphobia, homophobia and misogyny”. Says the SPLC that “these hateful sentiments, which have always helped fuel the extreme right, have now been put at the forefront of their efforts as an organization.” As the human rights organization explained to Agencia EFE, “to understand why, it is only necessary to look at the Republican Party. A growing radical faction of the party has in recent months taken up a militant opposition against LGBTQ people and reproductive rights,” they stated.
