Whether it was protesting Covid lockdowns, attending school board meetings, or facing off against Black Lives Matter protesters, the far-right Proud Boys were always on hand to support Donald Trump’s first term in office.
When Trump left office in 2021, the group’s leaders languished in jail for their role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. With reported infighting destabilizing the movement, it looked like the group’s glory days were behind it.
But Trump’s return a year ago, and his release of all January 6 prisoners, signaled that a Proud Boy comeback could be in the cards. And while there have been intermittent signs that the group could return to the levels of activity of its heyday, the reality is that Trump’s militarization of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and the Border Patrol, together with the administration’s embrace of white nationalist rhetoric, has left the Proud Boys without a role to play. There is little incentive for Proud Boys to leave their homes when heavily armed representatives of the Trump administration are already picking fights with left-wing protesters.
Never has that been more evident than over the course of the last week, as anti-ICE protesters have flooded the streets of towns and cities across the country since a masked federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
Instead of taking to the streets to face down the protesters and defend Trump’s hard-line immigration crackdown, the Proud Boys have been relegated to posting incendiary memes while promising to provide personal security for right-wing influencers who track every part of ICE’s anti-immigrant raids.
A WIRED review of hundreds of Telegram channels run by Proud Boy chapters across the country, as well as other far-right extremist and militia groups, reveals that there are no public calls for members to mobilize and defend ICE from the protesters.
Instead, members of the Telegram channels are posting deeply misogynistic and homophobic images, videos, and AI-generated content featuring Good and her wife, with one extremist expert telling WIRED that the channels in recent days have been almost giddy in response to the shooting.
“They are very enthused about what’s happening, because for many of them, [ICE and the DHS are] following what their blueprint would have been anyway,” says Wendy Via, cofounder and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, adding that there is no reason why the Proud Boys need to be on the ground. “When you’ve got law enforcement that seems so willing to abuse their powers, why get in trouble.”
The Proud Boy channels, in between celebrations of Good’s death, are also praising the work of ICE in the city.
“You’re an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Five and a half years after George Floyd, in the same city, you subdue a prisoner with your knee. Imagine being that based,” a member of a North Carolina chapter of the group known as the Cape Fear Proud Boys wrote in a Telegram post this week.
There have been some promises of action, however. After right-wing influencers Nick Sortor and Cam Higby claimed to have been attacked while filming content in Minneapolis this week, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio claimed he wanted to help. “I reached out to both [Nick] and Cam with an offer for personal detail,” Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sent to prison over his role related to the January 6 riots at the Capitol, wrote on X on Monday. Tarrio still claims to lead the Proud Boys. “Waiting for a reply. We have a great solution for both of them,” he added.
Higby and Sortor are among a group of right-wing influencers who have been producing a steady stream of pro-ICE propaganda from Minneapolis in recent days, designed to bolster the administration’s decision to flood the city with federal agents. Tarrio did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about what type of protection he or the Proud Boys would be offering the influencers.
It’s hardly surprising that groups like the Proud Boys are so supportive of what ICE is doing, given how explicitly the administration has continued to signal that they are all on the same side. Over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security’s official X account urged followers to join ICE using a graphic with the caption: “We’ll have our home again.”
To most, the words would have meant little, but to white nationalists and extremists there was a very clear and direct message. “By God We’ll Have Our Home Again” is a song, sung to the melody of a 19th-century sea shanty, that has become popular in white nationalist circles and particularly among Proud Boy chapters, many of whom understood the post to be a direct signal to their movement.
“Message received,” the Cape Fear Proud Boy wrote in their Telegram channel alongside a screenshot of the DHS post and a picture of a dogwhistle.
“The official track of the ProudBoys TM️,” Tarrio wrote on X while quoting the DHS post.
“Calling everything you dislike ‘Nazi propaganda’ is tiresome,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote in an email in response to a WIRED request for comment that did not mention ‘Nazi propaganda.’ “DHS will continue to use all tools to communicate with the American people and keep them informed on our historic effort to Make America Safe Again.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the nature of the DHS post.
While the Proud Boys do not appear to be actively mobilizing in response to the anti-ICE protests, there are some far-right groups who are using the protests to bolster their numbers, like Active Clubs, far-right extremist groups that mask white nationalist ideology in a veneer of fitness and male bonding.
“The Left will not be allowed to regain power,” Ryan Sánchez, an individual who has been photographed giving the Nazi salute and is associated with numerous white supremacists and leads a group known as the Nationalist Network, wrote on his Telegram channel. “If this administration fails to crush them, the young men of this country must be prepared to do it ourselves. Join your local Active Club.”
But for now, militias and far-right extremist groups have largely become redundant, with members seemingly content to sit back, watch, and post.
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The post Trump Doesn’t Need the Proud Boys Anymore appeared first on Wired.
