Hiding in Plain Sight: How the Proud Boys Function as a Radicalization Vector

Khalifa Ihler Institute Research Fellow Samantha Kutner was recently featured in the exposé on the Proud Boys produced by Business Insider. Here she explores the group she has been researching since its inception in more detail. The Institute remains dedicated to the protection of pluralistic and peaceful communities across the world.

As a subject matter expert on the Proud Boys, I remain a trusted source of intelligence and insight on emerging far-right threats. In the course of my ethnographic research, I assessed a discrepancy between Proud Boys framing and the reality of the incidents they organized, coattended, or infiltrated. This led to the creation of the Proud Boys incident map, a resource now embedded in the Khalifa Ihler Hate Map, a unified effort to create a comprehensive picture of global far-right violence.

The Proud Boys are one of the most dangerous organizations in America because they have the ability to reframe their extremism as an assertion of their masculinity, and also because they proclaim to be defenders of the West, a known code for white.

But what does this really mean? In a recent article for Georgetown’s Journal of International Affairs, I wrote, “In America, there is no unifying culture of whiteness. When you distill the concept “whiteness” as promoted by the Proud Boys and similar groups into its most basic components, you get culturally normative psychopathy and aggrieved male entitlement. This is what black and brown Proud Boys identify with when they identify with the American concept of the West.”

In 2017, before my first semester of graduate school began, I saw Peter Cvetanovic, a self-identified white nationalist and student at my university, lead the march at the Unite the Right Rally. Before the events that took place in Charlottesville, I had focused on foreign terrorism, but at this point, I recognized the importance of studying domestic terrorism. I noticed one group backtracking from their involvement, saying their members were not really members, and that the group was a misunderstood fraternal drinking organization. This was one of the first times I heard about the Proud Boys. 

A few months later I was approved by my review board to study the group, a process made easier by the fact that at the time it was difficult to pin down the nature of the group in concrete terms.. If I had gone to my university and said, “I would like to study a violent extremist organization,” or, “I would like to probe the possibility of the group functioning as a radicalization vector,” I would never have been given the go-ahead. Instead, I simply requested to conduct ethnographic research with the Proud Boys. The response, (until the leader of the Proud Boys attempted to weaponize my University’s complaint system in a failed effort to shut down my research project), was a combination of mild amusement and curiosity. 

This was how many met the group in the early years of this movement, and how many potential recruits were enticed to learn more about the group, and perhaps join. As a radicalization vector, Proud Boys recruiters prey on men who are disenfranchised and humiliated in their personal lives; people searching for a sense of belonging and someone to blame. Once they experience the camaraderie and brotherhood, the group acts as a funnel where people can try on radicalization before fully committing to their extremism. 

In addition to leading the march in Charlottesville, the white nationalist Cvetanovic was also a member of Identity Europa. After Charlottesville, the group attempted to rebrand as American Identity Movement, falling back onto patriotic symbols to provide a cover for their extremism. Unlike the Proud Boys, AIM lost significant momentum because they could not successfully sanitize their image after Heather Heyer’s murder. Proud Boys have endured, despite the PR fallout from Charlottesville because of their arbitrary positioning, i.e. alt-light and not right, and post hoc distancing, i.e. the no true Scotsman fallacy;” “an appeal to purity, [...] in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. This and other manipulations have allowed them to hide in plain sight while maintaining some identitarian imagery symbolically linking them back to the Identity Europa movement, such as the use of Black and Yellow colors.

The Proud Boys formed during Trump’s first political campaign, and have since established semiautonomous chapters abroad. Canadian lawmakers are beginning to grapple with the question of how, Gavin McInnes, a Canadian citizen could found a violent extremist organization in America with virtually no pushback and now, after January 6th, questions remain on how the Proud Boys founder feel he can continue supporting the group he claimed to have disavowed in 2018 with no fear of being deported.” Their answer lies in the precedent set by their founder, who "plays a duplicitous rhetorical game: rejecting white nationalism and, in particular, the term 'alt-right' while espousing some of its central tenets." Like their founder, members of the Proud Boys are conscious of their manipulations and willing to use tactics to advance their agenda. 

In my first Proud Boys manuscript, I define cryptofascism as “a communication style that uses coded sanitized language and symbols that help Proud Boys obfuscate their fascist worldview, evade detection by people unfamiliar with the terms, and minimize the severity of their actions on and offline.” This obfuscation was seen in their deliberate style of dress during the storming of the Capitol. They knew their actions were wrong because the new Chairman, Enrique Tarrio, gave them orders to wear plainclothes and not their typical Black and Yellow Fred Perry uniform.

There is empirical evidence to suggest that the Proud Boys when faced with the realities of their actions and ideology, respond through patterns akin to the behaviors of abusers when accused of wrongdoings. Even now, Proud Boys and all complicit in the insurrection in Washington DC on January 6th, 2021 are using these tactics to deflect from their involvement and attempting to shift the blame upon antifascists despite all arrest records showing this to be false.

“Proud Boys exist at the intersection of libertarianism, anti-feminism, and misogyny. Members obscure their core fascist values by appropriating a libertarian ethos based on limited government and maximal freedom.” The Proud Boys' true ideology becomes less ambiguous viewing their observable behavior, such as the events they attend, organize, or target.

As an American Fellow at the Khalifa Ihler Institute, I know how hard it may be for some to pay attention to the extremism that comes wrapped in the American flag. It took an act of insurrection to force the American public to see past their patriotic veneer and recognize their actions as domestic terrorism. The Proud Boys have never wanted freedom in the traditional libertarian sense. They want the freedom to impose their arrested development on the world and the freedom to escape from the consequences of their actions. Under a new administration, we cannot let them.