Asked during the 29 September presidential debate if he would condemn white supremacists, Donald Trump responded as though he were being asked to fulfil some tiresome bureaucratic procedure. “Who do you want me to condemn?” he asked, irritated. His Democrat opponent, Joe Biden, suggested the Proud Boys, a far-right gang. “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” the president said.
The New York Times reported that within minutes of this statement, the Proud Boys’ chairman Enrique Tarrio called the T-shirt business he owns in Miami to order shirts emblazoned with the logo “Proud Boys standing by”. Google searches for the group spiked, and hundreds joined Proud Boys groups on the instant messaging platform Telegram. “I think he was saying I appreciate you and I appreciate your support,” said the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes. The Proud Boys describe themselves as “Western chauvinists”, by which they mean “men who refuse to apologise for creating the modern world”. The Anti-Defamation League describes the group as “misogynistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and anti-immigration”. It adds: “Some members espouse white supremacist and anti-Semitic ideologies and/or engage with white supremacist groups”, though the membership is not exclusively white and the group’s leaders protest any allegations of racism. Beyond a resolute hatred of the left, members are not ideologically homogeneous.
Content from our partners
