Today, Explained - Who are the Proud Boys?

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

President Trump told a fringe group of misogynistic racists to “stand back and stand by” at the first presidential debate. Vox’s Jane Coaston explains. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. It was just one week ago that President Donald Trump and Vice President Joe Biden met in what was easily the ugliest televised presidential debate in the history of the United States. And I know we're all eager to forget it, but there was this one moment that's worth revisiting. Do you want to call him? What do you want to call him? Give me a name. Give me a name.

White supremacist and white supremacist. White supremacist and white supremacist. Stand back and stand by. But I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what. Somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left, because this is not a rightist... President Trump didn't just fail to denounce the Proud Boys. He emboldened them, which is really scary if you know who the Proud Boys are. And if you don't, Jane Koston is here.

She covers conservatism and far right groups for Vox. But before we start, just a heads up that the Proud Boys are a group of racist misogynists who say all sorts of hateful things you might not want to hear. We will begin after something we all do want to hear, the sound of two boys I'm very proud of, my buddy Roshan playing with his beautiful baby boy, Neem. All right. Deep breath, and here we go. So the Proud Boys are essentially a far-right street fighting group.

Hmm. And they were founded by one of the founders of Vice. Like Vice on HBO? Like Vice News? Oh, yes. Vice on like HBO, Vice, like Vice News. Oh yes, Vice, like Vice on HBO. Gavin McInnes, who he founded Voice of Montreal, which later became Vice Media. He founded that in the early 90s. In the early 2000s, Vice used to be very much of like, everything's very ironic, and actually all of our racism is extremely ironic and you're only people who are not getting it or taking it seriously.

What kind of racism are we talking about here? What was he promoting? So he, for instance, told the New York Times, I love being white and think it's something to be very proud of. My son, for example, I was thinking about the other day, he was watching some documentary about Chippaqua, I forget, Chappaquin. Those monkeys that are the most like us, they're the most human acting apes.

Chappaquin, I can't remember. Anyway, my son's watching it, and he's eating popcorn, and he thinks he recognizes one of them from another movie. And he goes, oh, I like this. He kind of has a bit of a lisp. And he goes, oh, I like this. He kind of has a bit of a lisp. And he goes, oh, I like this monkey actress. Which is what I said when Jada Pinkett Smith did her video about the Oscars. It's challenging because, again, so much of this has been cast within this veil of irony that anything he says can be posited as either, you know, you have to take it super seriously

or he's joking. And so many people took it as he was joking and then later started to think, hey, hang on a second. And that's because after he leaves Vice Media in 2008, he moves to what he called the new right, which is essentially this idea of Western chauvinism and a concept of social libertinism. For instance, he wrote a lot in the early 2010s about how he wanted to totally defile the women he sleeps with and how women want to be abused. Oh, no. And he started working later for a Canadian far-right outlet called Rebel Media, in which he made a video called 10 Things I Hate About Jews. Oh, no.

And then when he got criticism for that, he would later tweet, 10 Things I Hate About the Goddamn Motherfucking Jews. Oh, no. And so then he gets a lot of support from, you can have guessed it, a lot of racists. So he's written for a bunch of quote unquote racial realist organizations, including VDAR and American Renaissance. And he's gotten a lot of support from well-known racists like David Duke for his outright anti-Semitism. And so a lot of this is his entire concept that there's a war on masculinity, which apparently he will take on by complaining a lot.

So he'll complain about commercials that have too many interracial couples, as if there's a correct number of interracial couples to have in an advertisement, or commercials that show, quote, emasculated men. His real sense is that there is a belittling in the mainstream media of white men. Okay, so provocative bigot Canadian who works in alternative indie and later fringe media is putting out lots of hatred and toxicity for years. What does he do next? He created the Proud Boys. The Proud Boys, again, going with this veil of jokey irony. Proud of your boy. I'll make you proud of your boy.

It started out as a joke. The song Proud of Your Boy, which comes from the Disney Aladdin musical, helped to inspire the name. I've wasted time. I've wasted time. I've wasted me. So say I'm slow for my age, a late bloomer, okay, I agree. And so the entire concept, as Gavin McInnes explained in 2016,

was that this is a group of people, a Western chauvinist who refused to apologize for creating the modern world. They want to be part of the days where girls were girls and men were men. And there are multiple levels to become a proud boy. Levels. And I would like to note here that this is all going to sound weird. Part of this entire thing of wrapping it in jokey irony is that when you try to take it seriously, you sound like an idiot. Mom, I will try to try hard to make you proud of your boy. So there is four levels to become a Proud Boy.

The first is to declare yourself a Proud Boy. The second is to swear off masturbation. So they're Catholic? No. It's masturbation gets you distracted from, you know, the things you should be paying attention to, like being angry about how many interracial couples there are in advertisements. Ah. That is combined with a serial beat-in. So if you want into the group, you have to get beaten up while successfully reciting the names of five breakfast cereals. Are you joking? I regret to tell you, not joking. And you can, people can search on

the internet. Please, God, don't do this. There are videos of people getting beaten up by reciting these names because, and I quote, defending the West against the people who want to shut it down is like remembering serials as you're being bombarded with 10 fists. So they beat people as they recall serial names to prepare them, to initiate them? Yes. Yes, that is what happens. So that is level two. Level three is to get a Proud Boys tattoo. But the fourth level, and I think what gets into what the actual point of this group is, is you have to get into a fight for the cause.

The Proud Boys have perhaps become best known before the debate for this violence. The point of the Proud Boys is to attract counter-protesters who they will then fight. All they do is exist to create events purely to attract counter protesters. Because if you provoke counter protesters, you can feed a victimization narrative. That is what they want. They want to fight people. They want to use violence. How does this go from like one Canadian who says provocative and misogynistic and racist things in various like indie hipster

media like 15 years ago to an organization that's out on the streets in 2020 wreaking havoc? The internet, the public Facebook group for the Proud Boys, which I believe has since been removed, has thousands of members. There are Proud Boy organizations online in which you could kind of create a

local chapter of the Proud Boys. And the entire point, again, is to draw viewers and draw sympathy online. So even these street fights that take place where the Proud Boys might be vastly outnumbered by Antifa or nothing will actually happen until a Proud Boy will instigate something in which to get that victimization narrative. And then they can get a lot more support online by basically saying that we're the last bastion against whatever you want it to be. Proud Boys were at the Unite the Right rally in 2017. There have been meetups and chapters in cities across the country.

They rely a lot on attention. For instance, being able to put themselves as being the entity that's standing up against Antifa, especially in fights that they themselves are creating. That's what this is about. It's about creating an effective online narrative while also getting to punch people in the face. That's what they want. What happened after the debate, after the break?

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Jane, how do the Proud Boys end up being on the debate stage with Joe Biden and President Donald Trump a week ago? I think because they represent the support for militia groups that has been so implicit among swaths of the right. The idea that if the left has Antifa, and this is again in the view of the right,

then the right needs something to fight back against them. And that's actually been, you know, that really plays into the Proud Boys narrative, despite the fact that the Proud Boys will fight basically anyone and have instigated fights themselves. And so it comes up at the debate because Joe Biden suggests that Trump condemn the proud boys. And instead Trump plays exactly into what the proud boys want. He says, stand back and stand by,

but I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, somebody has got to do something about Antifa and the left, because this is not a right wing problem. This is a left wing. This is a right wing problem. This is a left wing problem. This is a left wing problem. And he later said that he meant that the group should stand down and let law enforcement do their jobs and then denied knowing who they were, which seemed odd,

because not only should Trump probably be aware of this group, but also Roger Stone, Trump's one-time ally and subject of a recent presidential pardon, joined the Proud Boys. Oh, they're taking convicted felons? Yeah, by saying that he was in support. There is no word yet as to whether or not he's gotten into a fistfight over the Proud Boys, but, you know, maybe. Why is it that Joeiden brought them up specifically i think that because that they are a group that people had heard of um i think that are or that he had heard of especially in connection with violence uh there had been a people associated with the proud boys and i think that that was a

name that just happened to be top of mind because I think that Proud Boys generally threaten to show up anywhere where they think or where they believe opportunity can strike. In Portland and in Seattle, you saw Proud Boys showing up. I mean, there are lots of other people that you could think of, but I think especially if your concern is street violence. If you're Joe Biden and you're running on being reasonable and calm, the Proud Boys are the exact opposite of that. The reason why I say there's a war coming is because if Trump wins, Black Lives Matter and all them other Antifa dumbasses are going to try to start war. We ready. Don't worry. We ready.

Us rednecks and stuff, we ready for y'all. But if Biden wins, we coming. And we coming strong. racist, chaos-causing, misogynistic, hateful group of basically, what, internet trolls, to stand down and stand by. I mean, they responded by saying that that's awesome and thank you. On Telegram, a group leader wrote, standing down and standing by, sir. Also, a new logo with the president's words appear. They responded passionately and with tremendous enthusiasm. So they see this as a call to arms.

Is there a risk here that the amount of attention that was drawn to them at the presidential debate actually ends up like boosting their numbers, that it's a boon to the Proud Boys? I think that it could be a boon to support for the Proud Boys. I think that the actual joining of the Proud Boys, because again, most people don't themselves want to fight people in the streets. I think that the ideological support could be a boost, but I think the actual membership, that is going to be itself a challenge. Keep in mind that to get past being a first level Proud Boy requires getting beaten up a tattoo and then beating up somebody else. Do we know how many Proud Boys are out there at this point? We do not.

Again, because a lot of the people who are talking about Proud Boys are people who are either wanting to overplay it for their own purposes or underplay it. There are not that many Proud Boys, but there are now more people than ever who have heard of the Proud Boys. So like we're talking about hundreds of Proud Boys, thousands, tens of thousands? I would say not thousands. I would say probably hundreds. Okay, so this isn't something, despite being brought up at a presidential debate, this isn't something that we need to worry about in this country, that some sort of militia of dunces is going to be pouring into the streets at any moment? I don't think so. But I think that the support that these groups are getting, especially though, because so much of that support is tangential.

I think that that is concerning because while people may not want to get into violent actions themselves, they in some ways want someone else to on their behalf. Does that mean the best antidote to the Proud Boys is to just ignore them? Yes. If they were doing an event

that is supposed to make you want to yell at them, don't yell at them. If the Proud Boys could not gain any attention by doing absolutely anything, I would say that that would be a real win for everyone, including society. Jane Koston.

You can hear more from Jane on the Weeds podcast, where she's a co-host. It's obvious from our conversation with Jane that the Proud Boys mostly hang out online, on social media. But one thing that ended up on the cutting room floor is that there's been a number of homophobic incidents with the Proud Boys. They haven't been very kind to the gay community, but in the vein of another win for everyone, including society, there was one this weekend. In the wake of the debate, gay couples took over the Proud Boys hashtag and flooded it with photos of themselves kissing and hugging and caressing and just being gloriously gay. There's something to be proud of. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained. so shy