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The Proud Boys Are Plotting a Comeback. And They Want Revenge [1]
['Tess Owen', 'Joel Khalili', 'Jake Lahut', 'Seth Harp', 'Elizabeth Chappell', 'David Gilbert', 'Guthrie Scrimgeour', 'Caroline Haskins', 'Dell Cameron']
Date: 2025-01-23 16:25:12.844000+00:00
It would be inaccurate to refer to Enrique Tarrio, who was the leader of the Proud Boys on January 6, 2021, when dozens of members stormed the Capitol, as the gang’s “ex–chairman.”
Within hours of being sprung free from a federal prison in Pollock, Louisiana, on Tuesday, Tarrio called into Infowars to speak with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to correct the record.
During that call, Tarrio—who received a sentence of 22 years for seditious conspiracy charges but was freed thanks to the flurry of nearly 1,600 pardons and sentence commutations for January 6-ers issued by the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump—made it very clear that he had absolutely no intention of distancing himself from the far-right street-fighting gang.
“As far as my future with the organization goes, I’m not going anywhere,” Tarrio said. “We’ve made the decision not to talk publicly about the group’s structure. But I have some suggestions for the media: They should stop calling me the ex–Proud Boys leader.”
It’s been a long time coming, but it appears that the Proud Boys are plotting a comeback. And they want revenge.
“I'm happy that the president is focusing not on retribution, and focusing on success. But I will tell you, I'm not going to play by those rules,” Tarrio told Jones. “The people who did this, they need to feel the heat, they need to be put behind bars, they need to be prosecuted. They need to be imprisoned. We need to find and put them behind bars for what they did.”
“The Proud Boys are not terrorist masterminds. These are not the brightest neofascists out there,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. “But they are committed to the cause. They are single-minded in this mission now: for revenge, for retribution. And as we’ve seen before, they are willing to go across state lines and use violence in furtherance of their goals.”
An analysis of Proud Boys’ social media channels by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism identified a surge in online activity following the January 6 pardons, including discussions of ramping up real-world activism to help further the Trump administration's agenda. “Posts from Proud Boys groups reveal an emboldened network, with members fantasizing about mass deportation schemes and threatening to escalate their attacks during Pride Month,” the GPAHE said in a statement. “These developments point to a broader alignment between extremist groups and the Trump regime, raising urgent concerns about public safety and the normalization of far-right violence.” A North Carolina chapter, via its Telegram channel, proposed carrying out “bount[ies on illegals.” A chapter in upstate New York gleefully circulated a rumor that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was offering $750 rewards to turn in undocumented immigrants.
In the years since the Capitol riot, as dozens of Proud Boy members and leaders copped charges for the insurrection, the group became increasingly elusive and unpredictable. They pivoted away from large-scale public demonstrations—which would often involve 100 or so Proud Boys descending on a city, clad in yellow and black, reeking of beer, looking for media attention and fights—and instead embedded themselves into hyperlocal culture wars across the country, in many cases aligning themselves with Christian nationalists. They started showing up to small protests against vaccines, crashed school board meetings, and intimidated attendees at drag brunches. For the most part, they stayed away from cities or towns where they were likely to encounter opposition.
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[1] Url:
https://www.wired.com/story/proud-boys-comeback-revenge/
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