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Enrique Tarrio, ex-leader of the domestic terrorism organization marketed as the “Proud Boys,” showed no remorse during a Washington DC court proceeding where he was sentenced to 22 years for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Instead, the 39-year-old former head of a group that embraces political violence and misogyny whined about having his 40s ”taken” from him via a prison sentence and tearily complained that he’d failed his family. In short, his court statements were all about him.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly was not impressed. Just before handing Tarrio his 22-year sentence, Kelly said,
“I don’t have any indication that he’s remorseful for the actual things that he’s convicted of.”
Tarrio, a Miami resident who has described himself as a “pretty brown” Cuban, was convicted in May 2023 of six felonies, including seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding and destruction of government property. As noted elsewhere on DK,
The judge agreed with prosecutors that the Proud Boys’ crimes could be punished as “terrorism” — increasing the recommended sentence under federal guidelines.
Nonetheless, the judge inexplicably sentenced Tarrio to only 2/3 of the 33-year term prosecutors had recommended.
Tarrio himself was not present for the Jan. 6 terrorist attack, having been barred from entry into DC for the childish act of defacing a Black Lives Matter poster two days earlier, so from outside the capital he orchestrated and led the assault by his gang on the Capitol.
The mass media seem bent on legitimizing the Proud Boys, for example faithfully referring to Tarrio as its “chairman” (imagine the media discussing the “chairman” of La Eme — right, it’d never happen). But according to Salon, the DOJ’s indictment against the gang describes
embarrassing behavior by military veterans in excruciating, painful detail. It describes the childish delight they took in each other and the pride in the crimes they were committing by citing the selfies they took, to which they attached such grand comments as, "So we stormed the fucking Capitol. Took the motherfucking place back. That was so much fun."
Salon adds that indictment reads like
a script for a remake of "Rambo." Using an encrypted social media chat app, the Proud Boys talked about their "Ministry of Self Defense" or MOSD, their "Leaders Group," their "Operations Council" and their "Marketing Council." ...
The Proud Boys established something called the "Boots on the Ground Group," and exchanged text messages asking, "Are we going to do a commander's briefing before 10 a.m.?"
"Standby," came the response in primo-mil-speak.
Just like any prepubescent boys, “Proud Boys” members won't let girls into their club. Predictably, the all-male gang — yes, gang. The ADL notes, “In reality, the Proud Boys bear many of the hallmarks of a gang, and its members have taken part in multiple acts of brutal violence and intimidation.” — is known for its misogyny. The gang’s founder, Gavin McGinnis, described feminism as a “cancer.” Ex-Infowars voice and Tarrio pal Joe Biggs, a frequent Proud Boys rally-planner, has a long history of misogyny and support for rape. After Trump made his “stand back and stand by” comment in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, Biggs exclaimed, “Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy.”
Researchers say members of the gang
have a violent agenda and harbor virulently hateful views of women, Muslims, transgender people and immigrants.
In other words, they’re textbook rethuglicans who, idiosyncratically, eschew masturbation.
Federal law defines, though appears not to punish, domestic terrorism as an unlawful, violent act on U.S. territory that appears to be intended to “intimidate or coerce” a civilian population, influence government policy “by intimidation or coercion,” or affect the conduct of government “by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping,”
Attacks by the “Proud Boys” against demonstrations, LGBTQ events, and other gatherings of people who do not share their small-minded views easily meet this definition.
For example, just after the 2020 election the gang set upon “antifa” in Washington DC, one member allegedly attacking and delivering a deep stab wound to a female antifascist activist whom he outweighed by 100 pounds. The group regularly attacked protests in Portland, Oregon in the late 2010s. The cowards have disrupted and attacked school board meetings, LGBTQ-oriented book readings at libraries and pride rallies. The gang even has gone so far as to set upon an indigenous ceremony in Canada. Since January 6, 2021 the group’s attacks “have only grown more violent.”
West Point publication CTCSentinal, after describing a December 2020 night in which the gang provoked violence that resulted in four stabbings, added,
The day’s events serve as both a reminder of the group’s long-tenured role as drivers of politically motivated violence and a harbinger for the principal role they would assume in the alleged instigation of violence on January 6 at the U.S. Capitol.
The group’s penchant for and frequent resort to political violence underlies my insistence on referring to the “Proud Boys” as a domestic terrorism organization. Canada and New Zealand already have so designated the group.
This gang of violent-yet-cowardly man-boys deserves our very deepest distain and opprobrium, and every member that engages in even the slightest act of violence in a political context should be prosecuted as a terrorist and given a lengthy prison sentence. Public spaces in the U.S. will not be not safe for free expression until groups like the “Proud Boys” have been extinguished.