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 were 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 a proud Boy comeback could be possible. While there have been intermittent signs of renewed activity,the reality is Trump’s militarization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol,along with the administration’s embrace of white nationalist rhetoric,has left the Proud Boys without a clear role. There’s little incentive for them to take to the streets when heavily armed representatives of the Trump administration are already confronting left-wing protesters.
This has become especially clear over the last week,as anti-ICE protesters have flooded the streets of towns and cities across the country as a masked federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
Instead of confronting protesters and defending Trump’s immigration crackdown,the Proud boys have been relegated to posting incendiary memes and offering personal security for right-wing influencers who are tracking ICE’s anti-immigrant raids.
A WIRED review of hundreds of Telegram channels run by Proud Boy chapters and other far-right extremist groups reveals no public calls for members to mobilize and defend ICE from the protesters.
Rather, members are posting deeply misogynistic and homophobic images, videos, and AI-generated content featuring Good and her wife. One extremist expert told WIRED that the channels have been “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. “When you’ve got law enforcement that seems so willing to abuse their powers, why get in trouble.”
The Proud boy channels are also praising ICE’s work in Minneapolis.
“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 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, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio offered his help. “I reached out to both [Nick] and Cam with an offer for personal detail,” Tarrio, convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 riots, 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.
