The conservative quasi-militia known as the Proud Boys is growing their numbers as the group experiences the “calm before the storm”, a new investigation has found.
A report from Reuters found that the violent right-wing group is ramping up activities, including recruitment, as it prepares for the 2024 election and whatever the aftermath of 5 November may bring. According to the news service, the group’s members have been spotted at numerous events hosted by the Trump campaign and other pro-Trump groups – including the massive rally held by the former president on the Jersey Shore last month.
One member of the Proud Boys who spoke to Reuters at the Wildwood, New Jersey event said that the group was providing “security” – a common refrain from the group’s members, who are known for antagonising protesters and in some instances engaging in vicious street brawls with left-leaning demonstrators at everything from Trump rallies to Pride parades.
A Trump campaign official who spoke to The Independent on Monday denied that any of the president’s staff were in contact with the Proud Boys regarding the Wildwood rally. A month prior, Reuters reports, the group’s members were spotted outside of Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
Members of the group who spoke to Reuters described the Proud Boys as being in a kind of holding pattern, with preparations being made for confrontations with the left in the future – possibly in the wake of the 2024 election, as was the case after Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020. The group survives in its current iteration having shed its public-facing frontmen. Enrique Tarrio, one of the group’s founders, is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence on charges of seditious conspiracy and other crimes stemming from the January 6 attack. Gavin McInnes, another co-founder, has cut all official ties with the group, though Reuters reports he is still involved behind the scenes. Chapters also ban all interviews with journalists, with members speaking to Reuters only on condition of anonymity.
But the group’s new underground-oriented vision is reportedly having little effect on the Proud Boys’ ability to continue growing their ranks. The lack of national leadership, according to Reuters, has only empowered local chapters to run wild without oversight.
And members say 2024 may be the year that the group’s members once again take to the streets in Donald Trump’s name.
“If Trump loses, our republic, the country goes away. Bad things are going to happen,” one group member told Reuters. An Ohio chapter, separately, posted a video of members participating in a street brawl this past week after a jury handed down a guilty verdict in Trump’s Manhattan hush money trial.
“Fighting solves everything,” that unnamed chapter posted, according to Reuters.
Members of the group were described by investigators and witnesses of the congressional January 6 investigation as leading the charge during the siege of the Capitol and, in many cases, being some of first (and most violent) rioters to enter the Capitol complex during the attack. The fighting on 6 January 2021 left dozens of police officers wounded and the seat of American democracy trashed as Trump supporters tried and failed to prevent lawmakers from certifying the results of the 2020 election.
Those who spoke to Reuters from inside the group accepted that characterization of the Proud Boys as being the “tip of the spear”, with one telling the news service that “without the Proud Boys, Jan 6 didn’t happen”.
One 44-year-old member of the group, sentenced for his role in the attack in January, told a judge that he would gladly “do it all over again” for Donald Trump.
“You could give me 100 years and I would still do it all over again,” Marc Anthony Bru said as he was sentenced to six years in prison.
