Proud Boys founded by Gavin McInnes
The Proud Boys is an exclusively male North American far-right neo-fascist organization that promotes and engages in political violence. The group's leaders have been convicted of violently opposing the US government, including the constitutionally prescribed transfer of presidential power. It has been called a street gang and was designated as a terrorist group in Canada and New Zealand. The Proud Boys are known for their opposition to left-wing and progressive groups and for their support for former U.S. President Donald Trump.The group originated in the far-right Taki's Magazine in 2016 under the leadership of Vice Media co-founder and former commentator Gavin McInnes, taking its name from the song "Proud of Your Boy" from the 2011 Disney musical Aladdin. Although the Proud Boys initially emerged as part of the alt-right, McInnes distanced himself from this movement in early 2017, saying the Proud Boys were alt-lite while the alt-right's focus was on race.  Donald Trump's comment, "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by," during the October 2020 presidential debate, was credited with greatly increasing interest and recruitment. After the remark caused an outcry for its seeming endorsement, Trump condemned the Proud Boys while saying he did not "know much about" them.According to the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, the group believes men and Western culture are under siege, using "Western chauvinism" as euphemism for the White genocide conspiracy theory. Members have participated in overtly racist events and events centered around fascist, anti-left, and anti-socialist violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has called the group an "alt-right fight club" and a hate group that uses rhetorical devices to obscure its motives. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described the Proud Boys as "extremist conservative" and "alt lite", "overtly Islamophobic and misogynistic", "transphobic and anti-immigration", "all too willing to embrace racists, antisemites and bigots of all kinds", and notes the group's promotion and use of violence as a core tactic.The group has been banned from numerous social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. In February 2021, the United States Justice Department announced the indictment of members for conspiracy related to the 2021 United States Capitol attack, and the Canadian arm of the group folded after being designated a terrorist organization.Gender and sexuality
Women and trans men are not allowed to join the Proud Boys, and the unnamed president of Proud Boys L.A. told the Los Angeles Times the group admits only "biological men".Leadership
Gavin McInnes founded the group and served as its leader. After the designation of a number of Proud Boys members as extremists with ties to white nationalism, McInnes said that his lawyers had advised him that quitting might help the nine Proud Boys members being prosecuted for the incidents in October. During the announcement he defended the group, attacked the reporting about it, said white nationalists do not exist, and at times he said things that made it appear he was not quitting, such as "this is 100% a legal gesture, and it is 100% about alleviating sentencing, [it was a] stepping down gesture, in quotation marks."As of November 2018, the group named its leaders as Enrique Tarrio, designated as chairman, and the "Elder Chapter", which consists of Harry Fox, Heath Hair, Patrick William Roberts, Joshua Hall, Timothy Kelly, Luke Rofhling and Rufio Panman (real name Ethan Nordean). Jason Lee Van Dyke, who was the organization's lawyer at the time, had been briefly named as chairman to replace McInnes when he left, but the organization announced on November 30 that Van Dyke was no longer associated with the group in any capacity, although his law firm still holds Proud Boys trademarks and is the registered agent for two of the group's chapters.
Although McInnes had earlier said that any Proud Boy member who was known to have attended the Unite the Right rally was kicked out of the organization, the new chairman Tarrio admitted to having attended the event, but "he had misgivings about the torchlight march and did not participate in it."In November 2020, Kyle "Based Stickman" Chapman said he would "reassume [his] post as President of the Proud Boys", though it is not evident that Chapman has ever been president of the group. He also announced that the group, which denies being a racist or white supremacist organization, would take on an explicitly white supremacist direction, and that he intended to refocus the organization on the issues of "white genocide" and the "failures of multiculturalism". He also announced that he would change the logo and rename the group to the "Proud Goys", a term used among the far-right to signal antisemitism. The attempted coup is not believed to have been successful, and the Proud Goys name has not been adopted outside of Chapman's social media.Evidence of further disarray within the leadership of the Proud Boys emerged in February 2021, in the aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack and the many arrests of Proud Boys that followed. The Alabama state chapter issued a statement saying, "We do not recognize the assumed authority of any national Proud Boy leadership including the Chairman, the Elders, or any subsequent governing body that is formed to replace them until such a time we may choose to consent to join those bodies of government." The state chapters of Indiana and Oklahoma endorsed the Alabama statement.