The Proud Boys are Terrorists

I’m taking a break from physio exercises, anti-inflammatory meds, way too much time spent in MMOs and the general malaise of eleven months of pandemic self-isolation and/or official lockdowns-of-debatable-effectiveness to weigh in on this.

As of 12:30 EST today, Canada has added the “Proud Boys” to it’s official list of terrorist groups. Also designated were the Atomwaffen Division, the Russian Imperial Movement and The Base, as well as a number of Islamist extremist organizations linked to Daesh. This official designation as “Idealogically Motivated Violent Extremist (IMVE) terrorist entities” gives law enforcement broader powers to investigate and charge these organizations as well as more tools to take down social media presence and place financial pressure on these organizations. Buy Proud Boys merch? That’s now a crime in Canada. Recruit for The Base? That’s a crime. Share videos from Atomwaffen or RIM? A crime.

(For a detailed breakdown of the far-right groups named, I highly recommend The Canadian Anti-Hate Network’s excellent post from earlier today.)

My thoughts about this are still developing and are somewhat varied, so this post is probably going to be all over the map, but I’ve always found writing to be a useful way of processing stuff, so here goes.

My first thought, of course, was “good.” I was assaulted by a Proud Boy at the Mohawk College protest against the PPC in September of 2019. The PPC had the Proud Boys there as “security” against anti-fascist protesters with the predictable outcome that they were violent and confrontational, and any official of the PPC who thought their presence was a good idea showed, at the very least, extremely poor judgment. That the Proud Boys are now officially considered a terrorist group suggests to me that there should be some exploration of the links between political parties and these groups.

Frankly, the Proud Boys are a white supremacist organization founded for the explicit purpose of inflicting violence on their political opponents and if that means they’ve crossed the bar to be declared a terrorist entity, then great. But why did this not happen years ago? Was it just their high-profile participation in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol?

The impetus for this designation change seems to be the NDP-sponsored motion to declare the Proud Boys a terrorist organization last week; a motion which, somewhat amazingly for Parliament, passed unanimously. (As I write this, Jagmeet Singh is triumphantly Tweeting about “our victory” in getting the group declared terrorists.)

And that gives me pause, because I have a serious reservations with the government, any government, simply voting on and declaring a group as a terrorist organization based on seizing a moment to align with the whims of popular discourse.

(Full disclosure, I used to be a card-carrying member of the NDP and even though I’m no longer a member I do tend to vote NDP far more often than not on a least-harm basis. I like the NDP and I even like Jagmeet Singh on a personal level, although I often find myself exasperated by both the party and its leader.)

If the NDP is simply grandstanding, that’s fine, I guess. Political theatre is political theatre. But what happens should a less-progressive party tries the same thing against progressive organizations? The PPC would love to have anti-fascists declared terrorists. Last September the Ontario Police Services Board infamously declared that the 1492 Landback Lane activists on Haundenosaunee territory “are now by legal definition terrorists.” (Spoiler alert, they’re not.)

The concern I have is that a precedent has been set. And traditionally, law enforcement comes down much harder on leftists, racialized people and, especially in this country, on Indigenous people than they ever have on far-right extremists. And if we ever see a Conservative majority in control of Parliament again, then what’s stopping them from doing the same (as a random example) against pipeline protesters? Or against striking unions? Or especially against Indigenous land defenders?

If Parliament can simply put pressure on Public Safety to designate a group terrorists, then that’s a process that seems open to abuse.

Bill Blair, the Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, apparently spoke to staff at the Canadian Anti-Hate Network before the announcement and assured them that the NDP motion was not the impetus for the new designation of the Proud Boys, which is good. Public Safety is likely working with information that might not be available to the general public… but I still worry about it being a knee-jerk reaction to recent events and not the end result of a thorough investigatory process by competent professionals.

Perhaps I’m being ungenerous.

The official government list designating terrorist entities has always been problematic. It was started in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and has generally been focused on Islamist extremism. I’m not denying that Islamist extremism is a real and present threat, but that focus has often been tinged with racist and anti-Muslim overtones, while violent white supremacist groups have gotten a pass. There are now seventy-three organizations on Canada’s terrorism list, and the vast majority are Islamist extremist groups; until today only two organizations were far-right extremists and they were only added in 2019.

Certainly groups like Atomwaffen and The Base are unquestionably terroristic and need to be treated as such, and in fact should have been taken far more seriously far sooner. But the Proud Boys… well, they’re mostly just cowardly dipshits, to be honest. Especially here in Canada, they’re losers with a lot of big talk and very little follow-through. Want some white supremacist stickers or misogynist tweets? The Canadian Proud Boys have you covered. But when they cross the line into violence it’s usually more ridiculous than threatening – when I was sucker-punched by a masked Proud Boy he immediately ran away so fast that he tripped, fell on his ass, and then scrambled away with the seat of his pants suspiciously damp.

Of course, my family and I then got to endure months of online harassment and if you Google my name one of the first hits is still a YouTube video of the incident with dozens of Proud Boy weenies crowing in the comments that I had “Fucked Around And Found Out.” (For the record, what I found out is that my assailant doesn’t know how to throw a proper punch but is extremely good at cowering behind a police line.)

That’s about the pathetic level of Proud Boys Canada.

The US Proud Boys, as anyone living in Portland Oregon could tell you, are considerably more violent and dangerous than their puffed-up Canadian wannabe cousins… as their participation in the US Capitol attack proves. But it’s the same organization… which means that the US Proud Boys and the Canadian Proud Boys are in the same boat.

Which brings me back around to my emotional reaction to the Proud Boys being designated as a terrorist organization in Canada – a warm rush of schadenfreude at the thought of the repressed dumbfucks who joined the Proud Boys to make themselves feel big about their fragile manhood and drink each others’ pee scrambling around in a panic trying to cover up their tattoos and burning their knockoff Fred Perry shirts. (And yeah, maybe I’m being petty about that, but they threatened my mother so I think I’m entitled to a little petty enjoyment of the image.)

Being put on the list of terrorist entities is not a small thing. There are going to be some serious repercussions for people who belong to or support these groups. Maybe not criminal charges simply for membership, but certainly there’s going to be a lot of scrutiny going forward. There will be consequences; financial, employment, and so forth. There will be travel restrictions. There will be social stigma. And they deserve those consequences. And I hope the Proud Boys are right now, at this moment, weeping in fear and trying to price lawyers.

But because that designation is not a small thing it should not be done lightly. And I’m not feeling like the process was given enough gravitas. I hope it was, but it’s not feeling like it was.

And of course, my final thought is that you can make whatever designation you like, but the close links between far-right extremists and law enforcement have always been there. If the laws on the books continue to be enforced unevenly, all the designations and declarations and political grandstanding in the world aren’t going to fix the problem. I remember how the Hamilton Police Service treated the Proud Boys at the Mohawk College demonstration, and I remember how they treated anti-fascist activists during and since. And I don’t have a lot of confidence that designating the Proud Boys as an IMVE terrorist entity is going to change that behaviour.