Whatever it was protesting the Covid shutdown, attending school board meetings, or confronting Black Lives Matter protesters, the Proud Boys on the right were always there to support Donald Trump’s first term in office.
When Trump left office in 2021, the group’s leaders were jailed for their role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. With reported controversies marring the movement, it looked like the group’s glory days were behind them.
But Trump’s comeback last year, and his release of all prisoners on January 6, indicated that a Proud Boy return may be on the cards. And while there have been occasional signs that the group may return to the levels of its day, the truth is that Trump’s war on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and the Border Patrol, as well as the administration’s embrace of white nationalist rhetoric, has left the Proud Boys with no role to play. There is little incentive for the Proud Boys to leave their homes when heavily armed representatives of the Trump administration are already fighting left-wing protesters.
Never has that been more evident than last week, as anti-ICE protesters filled the streets of cities and towns across the country since a masked agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
Instead of taking to the streets to confront protesters and defend Trump’s crackdown on immigration, the Proud Boys have been reduced to posting incendiary memes while promising to provide personal security for right-wing influencers who are tracking every aspect of ICE’s anti-immigrant raids.
A wire review of hundreds of Telegram channels run by Proud Boy chapters across the country, as well as other far-right and militant groups, reveals no public calls for members to unite and defend ICE against protesters.
Instead, members of Telegram channels are posting pornographic and homophobic photos, videos, and images, as well as AI-generated content including Good and his wife, and one extremist expert told WIRED that the channels in recent days have been almost confused in their response to the incident.
“They are very happy with what is happening, because for many of them, [ICE and the DHS are] following what would have been,” said Wendy Via, founder and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, adding that there is no reason why the Proud Boys should be down.
Proud Boy stations, amid celebrations of Good’s death, also praise ICE’s work in the city.
“You are an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Five and a half years after George Floyd, in the same city, you defeat a prisoner with your knee. Think you are based on that,” a member of the North Carolina chapter of the group known as Cape Fear Proud Boys wrote in a Telegram post this week.
However, there have been some promises that it will work. After right-wing activists Nick Sortor and Cam Higby said they were attacked while filming in Minneapolis this week, former Proud Boys frontman Enrique Tarrio said he wanted to help. “I reached out to both of them [Nick] and Cam with a proposal for personal information,” Tarrio, who was convicted of treason and jailed for his role in the January 6 riots at the Capitol, wrote on X on Monday. Tarrio still says he leads the Proud Boys. “Awaiting an answer. We have a great solution for both of them,” he added.
