Andy B. Campbell - We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism

G avin McInnes wanted to see more violence from Donald Trumps people.

It was late in March 2016, in the heat of Trumps presidential push, and the national media had latched onto one bit of security footage from a Trump event. The video showed Trumps campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grabbing and pushing Breitbart writer Michelle Fields as she approached Trump and tapped his elbow. Fields claimed that Lewandowski left bruises on her arm. It was enough that police charged Lewandowski with simple battery, but prosecutors ultimately dropped the case. He shrugged off the allegation and the news cycle that followed, which left the pundits to bicker among themselves over the footage and decide whether an assault had occurred.

McInnes, staring slack-jawed at the footage during an episode of his reactionary talk show, couldnt believe it warranted media attention in the first place. A woman touched a presidential candidate and got what was coming to her, he argued. If anything, she deserved more.

She wasnt randomly grabbed! he groused, his voice pitching upward in aggravation as the video played. I think theres not enough violence in todays day and age.

McInnes then launched into one of his signature rants, steering the conversation toward his keynote: America had gone soft in the waning years of Barack Obamas presidency, and there was no better evidence than the news media clutching its pearls over a woman being grabbed and pushed out of the way. Real Americansreal menwouldnt give this story the time of day. Real men are hardened by a lifetime of violence.

When we grew up, violence was everywhere you got in fights! he said. I look at this video, and I dont see nothing.

He wanted more violence. And so he pivoted to show his audience an awesome Instagram account hed found, which purportedly featured photos and videos of ISIS prisoners being executed in Iraq. He had his producer crank up some industrial metal while images from the account flashed across the screen.

Its everything Ive been hoping for, he said of the account. Finally, some violence on our end! Thats what I want. Im done with capitulation.

Ultimately, as was often the case, his monologue didnt make the slightest bit of sense. At the beginning he was railing against Fields and the stupid fucking push that made her famous, and by the end, he was complaining about some Black people he saw on an episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Same problems with African Americans in the rich community, he said. Infidelity, violence, backstabbing. It just looked like the ghetto with a big fancy house behind it.

This was the standard fare on McInnes show. He rambled his way through a long and bitter rant, ping-ponging between right-wing grievances and racist screeds until he ran out of breath and then moved on, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. He pointed out threats to his audience, but rarely brought any one of them fully into focus or spent much time considering the facts. He was sick and tired of this crap, and he left it to viewers to decide what this crap actually was. But where he was often vague about the enemy, he was very clear about his intent.

I want violence. I want punching in the face, he said. Im disappointed in Trump supporters for not punching enough!

His audience ate it up. They revered McInnes because he was more than just another bigoted shock jock who whines and complains and tells it like it is. That market was cornered long before his time. McInnes took his viewers a step further by turning to the camera and calling them to action. He whipped up a miasma of political anxiety and misogynist rage among the men watching his show and then captured it, nurtured it, and weaponized it. And less than two months after the airing of that episode, McInnes announced that hed turned his audience into a gang.

He called them the Proud Boys.

THE PICTURE OF the American political demonstration changed forever the moment the Proud Boys began to show up at rallies.

Donald Trump had just won the presidency, and all over the country, despite the end of his campaign, his supporters were still throwing huge celebratory events in city parks and community spaces and parking lots, which came to be known colloquially as MAGA rallies. But something was off about them.

They featured plenty of patriotic familiarities: big American flags, bigger trucks, barbecues, prayer circles, the 9/11 remix of God Bless the USA, you get the idea. But interspersed among the crowds of star-spangled patriots were these bizarre groups of men nobody had ever seen before, each with their own symbology and uniforms that designated them as members of different factions.

Among them were the Proud Boys, who appeared at first as a kind of Trump-humpy fight club. They were a group of mostly white men in their twenties and thirties, sporting beer bellies and MAGA hats and wraparound sunglasses, who would show up at rallies as one big group, clumped together in a throng of intoxication and noise. They distinguished themselves with a simple uniform, consisting entirely of a black Fred Perry polo with yellow striping. Some of them were suited up for battle, in army surplus gear or football pads and baseball helmets. They wielded American flagpoles as melee weapons and carried cans of beer in the pockets of their tactical vests, in place of hand grenades and bullet magazines. They marched throughout rallies together, hooting and hollering as they searched the crowd for someone to screw with, like a roving crew of bullies shaking down passersby for lunch money at recess. Their presence was off-putting, even for a Trump rallythey didnt have any discernible ideology or political motives, other than drinking and fighting.