Anti-hate expert doubts Proud Boys Canada has dissolved
Despite their announcement to dissolve, Canada’s Proud Boys might not be gone just yet, one expert has warned.
The group posted a statement on its channel stating it intends to dissolve after federal authorities in February designated the Proud Boys a terrorist organization.
“The truth is, we were never terrorists or a white supremacy group,” the statement said. “We are electricians, carpenters, financial advisors, mechanics, etc. More than that, we are fathers, brothers, uncles and sons,” it added.
Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Antihate Network, said he wasn’t surprised by the move to disband. The group, he said, “has been diminishing for quite a long time and has been in freefall since Jan. 6, especially with being designated a terrorist organization,” he said.
On Jan. 6, the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. was stormed by a mob of rioters, including several U.S. Proud Boy members, incited by then- president Donald Trump, to force Congress members to concede an election victory to Trump.
Following the riots, Canadian
MPS passed a motion urging the federal government to include the Proud Boys in Canada’s list of terrorist groups.
By Feb. 3, the Liberals had done so.
Proud Boys Canada had considered appealing the new designation, Global News reported, but in their statement on Sunday, said that they decided not to as “we have no financial support, given we are not funded by the rich.”
Balgord, however, suggested that it may not be the end of the road for the group. “Not all the (Canadian Proud Boys) chapter agree with their dissolving,” he said. “So, there are still Proud Boys and Proud Boys chapters in Canada … who say ‘no we’re not doing it, we’re not backing down.’”
A private chat with Proud Boys members shared with Global News by one member shows several supporters unhappy with the decision to dissolve and determined to carry the group on.
“If it takes going to prison, f__k, I don’t care, I’ll go to prison again,” one wrote in the chat, as quoted by Global News “I’m in here for life.”
“Stay the corse [sic] brothers, people are waking up all around us,” another wrote.
The outlets also reported that members of the Ontario chapter have refused to obey the statement and said that its author lacked the authority to tell them what to do.
“So the Proud Boys aren’t gone,” Balgord said.
It’s hard to say what those chapters or individuals might do next, he said, but it would be “totally normal” if some of them were to attempt to reform under a completely new branding to escape the terrorist label.
“Some of them might just hang up for fear that at one point, they were labelled a terrorist,” he said. “But others among them aren’t going to and these individuals, some of them probably will pop up in some other groups or other chapters.”
He pointed to several other extremist groups in the U.K. and Canada that have attempted to rebrand or create new groups.
The Soldiers of Odin, for example, is an anti-immigrant group originally founded in Finland in 2015 with several presences in Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden.
However, over time, several dissents in the Canadian faction want to separate from the group’s reputation as a neo-nazi organization fractured into separate groups, whilst keeping the same name, Balgord said.