Proud Boys turn on ‘weak’ Trump
After the presidential election last year, the far-right Proud Boys declared their undying loyalty to President Donald Trump.
In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been stolen from Trump. “Hail Emperor Trump,” the Proud Boys wrote.
But by this week, the group’s attitude toward Trump had changed.
“Trump will go down as a total failure,” the Proud Boys said on the same Telegram channel Monday.
As Trump left the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys have started leaving him.
In dozens of conversations on social media sites such as Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Trump a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak.” They also have urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Trump or the Republican Party.
The comments are a startling turn for the Proud Boys, which for years backed Trump and promoted political violence.
Led by Enrique Tarrio, many of its thousands of members were such die-hard fans of Trump that they offered to be his private militia and celebrated after he told them in a presidential debate last year to “stand back and stand by.” On Jan. 6, some Proud Boys members stormed the U.S. Capitol.
But since then, discontent with Trump, who later condemned the violence, has boiled over.
On social media, Proud Boys members have complained about his willingness to leave office and said his disavowal of the Capitol rampage was an act of betrayal. And Trump, cut off on Facebook and Twitter, has been unable to talk directly to them to soothe their concerns or issue new rallying cries.
“When Trump told them that if he left office, America would fall into an abyss, they believed him,” said Arieh Kovler, a political consultant and independent researcher in Israel who studies the far right. “Now that he has left office, they believe he has both surrendered and failed to do his patriotic duty.”
The shift raises questions about the strength of the support for Trump and suggests that pockets of his fan base are starting to fracture.
Many of Trump’s fans still falsely believe he was deprived of office, but other far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers, America First and the Three Percenters also have started criticizing him in private Telegram channels, according to a review of messages.
Tarrio couldn’t be reached for comment. A spokesperson for Trump didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Proud Boys were founded in 2016 by Gavin McInnes, who also was a founder of the online publication Vice, as a club for men. It soon attracted people who appeared eager to engage in violence and who frequently espoused antiMuslim and anti-Semitic views.
The group supported Trump throughout most of his term.
After the November election, the group’s private Telegram channels, Gab pages and posts on the alternative social networking site Parler were filled with calls to keep the faith with Trump. Many Proud Boys, echoing Trump’s falsehoods, said the election had been rigged.
But when Trump’s legal efforts failed, the Proud Boys urged him on social media to use his presidential powers to stay in office. Some urged him to declare martial law or take control by force. In the last two weeks of December, they pushed Trump in their protests and on social media to “Cross the Rubicon.”
“They wanted to arm themselves and start a second civil war and take down the government on Trump’s behalf,” said Marc-André Argentino, a researcher who studies the far right and a doctoral candidate at Concordia University. “But ultimately, he couldn’t be the authoritarian they wanted him to be.”
Then came the week of the Capitol storming.
On Jan. 4, Tarrio was arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of burning a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a Black church in Washington.
Two days later, other Proud Boys members were part of the mob that breached the Capitol. Some posted dozens of videos of the rioters on social media, celebrating them as a show of “collective strength.”
The group expected Trump to champion the mob. Instead, Trump released a video Jan. 8 denouncing the violence.
The disappointment was immediately palpable. One Proud Boys Telegram channel posted: “It really is important for us all to see how much Trump betrayed his supporters this week. We are nationalists 1st and always. Trump was just a man and as it turns out an extraordinarily weak one at the end.”