The Martyrs of the Far Right: Accountability After January 6th
By Samantha Kutner & C. L. Murray
Members of the Proud Boys at a February meeting of the New Hanover County Board of Education. - Picture by Benjamin Schachtman, WHRQ News
“Zack Rehl never got to meet his newborn daughter. He never got to meet her.”
“You know…whose fault is that?”
On May 4th, 2023, four leaders of the Proud Boys, a group that mistakes the consequences of their actions as something oppressing them, were found guilty of seditious conspiracy related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and multiple other felonies. According to the evidence presented at trial, the defendants plotted to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force and prevent Members of Congress and federal law enforcement officers from discharging their duties. The group played a significant role in the violence at the breach of the Capitol. The defendants directed, mobilized, and led a group of Proud Boys and other members of the crowd onto the Capitol grounds, leading to the dismantling of metal barricades, destruction of property, breaching of the Capitol building, and assaults on law enforcement. The Department of Justice secured more than 600 convictions for a wide range of criminal conduct on January 6th and in the days and weeks leading up to the attack. At Glitterpill, we believe it is important to look further back in time to see how narratives evolved in the years leading up to January 6th.
The future of the Proud Boys has come into question after January 6th, and increasingly so after the May 4th conviction of central leadership. In our written expert testimony submitted to the January 6th Select Committee, we noted that narratives speculated on the “dismal future” of the group following January 6th. We have seen evidence that the Proud Boys have grown exponentially, both in membership and in the number of chapters. We also explained how they decentralized and shifted their tactics to focus on local strategies. We suspect this will blunt the impact of the seditious conspiracy conviction on the organization. By design, decentralized organizations are less vulnerable to the “decapitation” of national leadership.
Another factor that suggests it is too early to celebrate “victory” against the Proud Boys based on the recent conviction is their reliance on “martyrdom narratives” to mobilize their members. Martyrdom narratives in which they are presented as “victims” has been a fixture of the group since its inception, when there was a lack of a clear framework to respond to emerging threats and less data available to understand the severity of the threat they pose.
In 2018, several members of the Proud Boys were arrested and charged with various crimes related to their involvement in a violent brawl outside of a Republican Club in New York City. The brawl occurred following a speech by Proud Boys’ founder Gavin McInnes, organized by the Republican Club. The judge who presided over the trial thought harsher sentencing would deter others from engaging in political violence. What many did not understand about the group at the time was how that trial outcome would seed martyrdom narratives we see the results of now.
As reported in our written expert testimony submitted to the January 6th Select Committee:
On July 6, 2021, a channel was created on Telegram called “Free The Boys”with the following description: “A place for all the charity pages, fundraising and News regarding all the Proud Boys that have been unjustly imprisoned, their constitutional rights taken away from them and being tortured on a daily basis. Free the Boys”. That same day, it linked to donations for Zachary Rehl, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, and Nicholas Ochs. On August 17, 2021, they added William Chrestman and Nicholas Kennedy. They asked for people to share the channel, claiming that ”[a]ll of our boys that are in jail need your help and support.” On October 4, 2021, they shared a post from Nicholas Ochs where he stated that his fundraisers had been shut down, so he offered to sell a “genuine, unopened bottle of Trump Vodka signed by Milo [Yiannopoulos]” for $7,000 in order to raise money for his “legal troubles”. These requests are widely shared among the official Proud Boys channel and on several chapter channels. Ethan Nordean has done many interviews about his “unjust treatment”, including with Gavin McInnes, and on “TikTok News”, both of which were shared on various Proud Boys telegram channels. Nordean also spoke with representatives of the “Patriot Mail” Telegram channel to describe his condition and further the narrative that Proud Boys and others are being unjustly treated. (Kutner, Ihler, and Murray, 2022).In our report, we explained that the Proud Boys can be held accountable for their actions through existing federal and state laws, without being officially declared a violent gang or extremist organization.
While the recent Proud Boys' convictions are seen as a symbolic win by some in the general public, they are being viewed in pro-Trump spaces as a call to action, with the group now having more to add to their canon of “martyrs”. In more radicalized, pro-Trump spaces, it has a mobilizing effect. Trump’s poll numbers have risen since his indictment. This threat will only increase during LGBTQAI+ Pride month this June, as the Proud Boys have been aggressively targeting issues related to the community in recent years. As former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi stated, it’s important to celebrate the recent verdicts but not lose sight of the growing threats ahead.
As their tactics have shifted focus from national to local politics, cities, and states have become the battleground where they operate and where they can be countered through rigorous enforcement of existing laws. When our report was submitted last July, we emphasized that existing state laws against hate crimes can be used to combat many of the violent, intimidating, and vandalistic acts committed by the Proud Boys. However, for those laws to work, they have to be enforced, which has proven to be an issue. For example, Wilmington, North Carolina’s anti-klan bills ban wearing masks or hoods to conceal your identity. Still, the New Hanover County Sheriff will not enforce this law against Proud Boys, despite their repeated disruptions at school board meetings and other public events. In contrast, last year, authorities in San Francisco initiated a hate crime probe after a drag queen story hour was disrupted by Proud Boys, which will have a greater deterrent impact on future behavior by the Proud Boys and similar hate groups.
Although there are laws on the books in many cases, there may be a need for additional legislation to specifically target how the Proud Boys are attempting to “innovate” to circumvent current legislation. The 1950s-era anti-klan law in North Carolina was, as an example of this, originally passed because the state and federal laws that existed at the time were not sufficient to combat the threat posed to vulnerable populations by the Ku Klux Klan. Unfortunately, rather than drafting laws to target domestic extremists like the Proud Boys, many cities and states are instead drafting laws targeting the same vulnerable populations as the Proud Boys: Anti-trans legislation is increasing across the US.
Laws that could hold the Proud Boys and other groups accountable do exist. The problem is that they are not consistently enforced. Given the increase in far-right extremism we have been tracking in recent years, it is vital that local, state, and federal officials enforce these laws and that policymakers at local levels strengthen existing laws. This increase is not just a domestic United States story; the Proud Boys and the far-right extremist movement have gone global.
In this new era of far-right violence, it is crucial to understand the global far-right from a transnational perspective and as an international terrorist threat. This is exemplified by our investigation of the Proud Boys for the January 6th Select Committee and our efforts to map the global far-right in the Hate Map. This confusion and laissez-faire approach aid the growth of a global anti-democratic movement. It is vital to see Proud Boys as symptomatic of an evolving threat: A radicalized, conspiratorial, global anti-democratic network that appropriates the language and symbols of patriotism and has attached itself to the violent denial of diversity, one that is not going away any time soon.