Proud Boys founder quits after FBI labels group ‘extremist’
Gavin McInnes, the rightwing Canadian hipster provocateur who co-founded the Vice media empire in Montreal, has quit the Proud Boys, two days after it emerged that the FBI categorizes the fraternal organization as “an extremist group with ties to white nationalism.” “I am officially disassociating myself from the Proud Boys in all capacities, forever. I quit,” McInnes said in a video posted to YouTube. “I was never the leader, only the founder.” He said he did this reluctantly, as he sees the Proud Boys as the greatest fraternal organization in the world, but “rumours and lies and terrible journalism has made its way to the court system.” This refers to the NYC Nine, a group of Proud Boys members who were arrested after a brawl in Manhattan after a talk by McInnes. McInnes said he has been told that his disassociation “could help alleviate their sentencing.” He was reading from a script. He denied that the group, whose members wear distinctive Fred Perry golf shirts and style themselves as “Western chauvinists,” has ties to white nationalists. He also denied that the Proud Boys is an extremist group, and characterized it as more of a group of guys who like stupid jokes and silly games, such as punching each other until they can name five breakfast cereals. He also said white nationalism and white supremacy is “a crock” that people should not be talking about. “Such people don’t exist,” he said. He then solicited money for a legal defence fund. He and his wife and children have reportedly been upset by the reaction of their neighbours when they moved to the expensive suburban New York town of Larchmont. Following the New York brawl, yard signs started going up in their neighbourhood saying “Hate Has No Home Here.” His disassociation from the Proud Boys also follows close on the decision of the Canadian e-commerce company Shopify to ban the group. That, in turn, followed similar decisions of Facebook and Instagram. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate group activity, lists Proud Boys as a hate group. But it was news of the FBI designation that was most damaging. That emerged in an FBI warning to police in Washington State that the group is actively recruiting in the Pacific Northwest and its members have “contributed to the recent escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Charlottesville, Virginia, Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Wash.” “The FBI categorizes the Proud Boys to be an extremist group with ties to white nationalism,” according to a report produced by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office in Vancouver, Wash.