Camden, wearing his green combat helmet and American Guard sweatshirt, played a leading role. Swinging a baton or stick, he screamed, red-faced, at the opposing protesters, daring them to cross the line. Meanwhile, Toese was acting like a football coach, ensuring people were holding their places in the line. The standoff went on like that for about 15 minutes before police moved in and broke it all up.
When it was all over and the tear gas had cleared, the collected warriors for the radical Right—Proud Boys, Patriots, and American Guardsmen alike—all gave each other manly hugs and went their separate ways, bonded by the day’s battle. Their previous differences were all washed away, it seemed.
Indeed, on the Facebook page of American Guard founder Brien James—who wrote up a recap of the day’s events for his followers—Toese chimed in, praising Camden and the American Guard in the comments: “I will stand have your six brother you dont have to explain anything and your boys that was there today was fucking warriors!!!!”
Joey Gibson added a dancing-GIF meme to signal his agreement.
*
A week later, the Proud Boys events went bicoastal. There was the Oct. 13 downtown evening attack in New York City, coverage of which created international headlines and viral videos, not to mention police investigations that shortly led to arrests—nine of them altogether. The next evening in Portland, Oregon, Gibson’s Patriot Prayer and a knot of Proud Boys prowled the downtown in search of leftists to confront, and eventually got into a handful of brawls.
The New York events, and the multiple arrests that followed, sent the Proud Boys into a serious tailspin from which they still have not recovered. Shortly after The Guardian reported that the FBI now considered the Proud Boys an “extremist group,” founder Gavin McInnes, a longtime alt-lite gadfly, announced he was leaving the organization.
“As of today … I am officially disassociating myself from the Proud Boys,” he told reporters, explaining that he was doing so for the sake of the nine men arrested following the New York riot, and that he believed doing so could “help alleviate their sentencing.” Shortly after that, McInnes announced he was suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for having designated the Proud Boys a hate group.
As in previous years, these street brawlers went mostly quiescent during the colder winter and spring months, but this year the quiet has mostly been a product of the complete chaos and disintegration of both the Proud Boys and other street brawlers such as Patriot Prayer. These groups have usually planned their political-events-cum-street-fights for summer, but with the Proud Boys now banned from Facebook—where they previously organized freely—it’s unclear what the future holds for these street brawlers.
However, they’re also showing no signs of just going away. Earlier this month in Eugene, Oregon, a contingent of Proud Boys led a pro-Trump rally featuring about 100 marchers that was met by a much larger contingent of several hundred counterprotesters, leading to a confrontation that shut down much of one of the area’s main highways for hours.
The same weekend, Gibson flew out to Albany, New York, to help lead a contingent of “Patriots” and Proud Boys who were holding an anti-abortion rally there. It turned out to be a very tiny contingent, and no counterprotesters showed up; eventually, it devolved into a competition in demonstrative prayers among the participants, with several (including Gibson) making themselves completely prostrate.
Their propensity for violence recently resurfaced in a report by Andy Campbell on the chats among Proud Boys discussing upcoming confrontations with antifascists. “All I want to do is smash commies too,” wrote one. “Actually I’m lying, I’m way past just hitting them. When the time comes I will stop at nothing to fully eradicate them all!” In some of the photos they exchanged, they showed off weapons they intended to bring to protests, including axes and machetes.
At the same time, the falling-out between the Oregon chapter of the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer and its founder Gibson this spring means the latter organization is likely to continue following Gibson’s new strategy of seeking recruits from rural areas while promoting a “constitutionalist” response to Washington state’s newly enacted gun safety laws. Which is to say, Gibson may be sparking fewer street brawls when he’s mainly occupied doing events in places like Goldendale and Richland, and he no longer has Toese—who remained loyal to the Proud Boys, and has parted ways with Gibson—by his side.
In the meantime, the Proud Boys as a national organization have settled into a quieter stage following McInnes’ departure in October. Numerous other would-be leaders subsequently claimed they were each the new leader of the street-brawling club. First up was a Texas man named Jason Van Dyke, who held all the organization’s legal paperwork and announced himself as the new chairman of the Proud Boys. Van Dyke was notorious for threatening journalists who wrote about the Proud Boys as a designated hate group or labeled them white nationalists, sending them cease-and-desist letters insisting they “do not now, nor have they ever, espoused white nationalist, white supremacist, anti-Semitic, or alt-right views.”
Not that Van Dyke had a great deal of credibility in this area: As a college student at Michigan State, he had been affiliated with the leader of a notorious white nationalist campus group there; according to the SPLC, when campus police searched his dorm, they found neo-Nazi literature, including The Turner Diaries and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He was also arrested in 2000 for domestic violence.
The nasty streak continued well into his adulthood in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. On his Twitter page in 2014, he threatened another user, a black man, with a photo of a noose and text reading, “Look good and hard at this picture you fucking nigger. It’s where I am going to put your neck.”
Van Dyke’s tenure, however, was short-lived. In late November, the Proud Boys announced that Van Dyke “is no longer a member of the Proud Boys fraternity, and will no longer be representing the fraternity in any legal capacity.” (A few weeks later, he was arrested after failing to show up for a bond hearing on a threat he had made.)
The new leadership, the organization announced, would be in the hands of a select group of members called “the Elder Chapter,” whose identities initially were to be kept secret, except for that of the new chairman, Enrique Tarrio.
However, within a week, the identities of the Elder Chapter had all been exposed, thanks to their decision to publish their new bylaws publicly—with the Elders’ names (Harry Fox, Heath Hair, Patrick William Roberts, Joshua Hall, Timothy Kelly, Luke Rofhling, and Rufio Panman, aka Ethan Nordean) embedded and unredacted at the top for everyone to read.
*
Right-wing street-brawling groups such as Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys have had a contentious, on-again-off-again relationship with the white nationalists, skinheads, neo-Nazis, and other racists that have been attracted to their events. In Patriot Prayer’s case, these included eventual Portland MAX murderer Jeremy Christian, who was ejected from one of their events a couple of weeks before stabbing two people to death. The day after the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned ugly, Gibson bitterly denounced their presence at a Patriot Prayer event in Seattle: “Fuck white supremacists! Fuck neo-Nazis!” Gibson told the crowd, reminding them that he himself is a person of color, “and I have no use for that kind of thinking. It’s wrong.”
A handful of months later, however, a bevy of white nationalists from the street-fighting group Cascade Legion served as security for another Patriot Prayer event in Seattle. Since then, the Proud Boys have become indispensable fixtures at Gibson’s events.
Proud Boys founder McInnes for a very long time danced a similar tango with the radical Right. He vociferously insists even today that the Proud Boys are “nonviolent,” yet McInnes himself so openly reveled in and glorified the street violence committed by his members, especially when it showed up on video, that his claims to a nonviolent ethos were meaningless lip service.
More to the point, genuine fascists were drawn to his events like flies to honey, which all of these groups found eventually was just something they couldn’t control—not that they took the task seriously in the first place. In New York the night it all came apart, the Proud Boys had been supplemented by neo-Nazis from the 211 Bootboys skinhead gang. In Portland, the presence of white nationalists wasn’t as pronounced, but their presence at Gibson’s events has been a constant since their start in 2017, while Proud Boys became Patriot Prayer’s explicit partners for the better part of a year—until they suddenly weren’t.
Likewise, McInnes long claimed that Proud Boys are not “alt-right” because they are explicitly not white nationalist in their agenda. Yet McInnes’ own predilection for bigoted outbursts undermines that message, and, unsurprisingly, more than a few white nationalists have donned the black Fred Perry polo shirts that are their street-fighting uniforms.
Samantha Kutner, who monitors Proud Boys activity nationally at her website Light Upon Light, says that ordinary non-racist conservatives attracted to the organization prove highly flexible when it comes to having actual white supremacists in their ranks. “I asked a Proud Boy this question when he shared a photo of Hammerskins who showed up to a Proud Boys event in the Bay Area ‘thinking they were welcome’,” Kutner said. “I asked him what you’re asking me now, what it is about the ideology that attracts these types of members to this group? The short answer is the redpill.”
Kutner is referring to the term used by recruits themselves to describe the process of online radicalization by the alt-right or its related far-right movements, including anti-feminist misogynists and raving “QAnon” conspiracy theorists—referencing, of course, the red pill/blue pill dilemma from the film The Matrix, the result of which meant being “awakened” to “reality” as the alt-right defines it.
“Proud Boys reframe their extremism as an assertion of their masculinity and the belief that women are beneath them,” Kutner said. “This misogynistic pull is the same pull that attracts men who join Identity Evropa, American Identity Movement, or Turning Point USA. The redpill entry point to radicalization is similar in the disparate groups of the far Right. This, coupled with Gavin’s extensive ties to alt-right figures (which he goes to great lengths to conceal), makes the Proud Boys the perfect radicalization vector.”
The October rally in Providence demonstrated how meaningless and fruitless all the attempts to distance themselves from racist radicals has proven for these organizations. By joining arms when confronting the hated “radical left,” their differences disappeared, and their cohesion into a unified movement still containing all those racists grew.
Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, these far-right street-brawling groups eventually become thick with white supremacists of various stripes, underscoring how little control leaders such as McInnes and Gibson actually have over the violent elements within their ranks. That is especially manifest when it comes to the American Guard.
*
Brien James is open about his past as a neo-Nazi skinhead organizer. It’s part of his pitch to would-be recruits for the American Guard, his new, ostensibly non-racist, “civic nationalist” paramilitary group. “I spent over 20 years in the white nationalist movement, most of that time in a leadership position of one skinhead crew or another,” he explained in a video commentary posted on Facebook. “I founded and ran some of the most extreme white nationalist gangs in America. I don’t want to get into too many details, but I have lived a full life.”
He almost sounds proud of it, claiming the experience gives him a special understanding of the alt-right movement. It’s part of an effort to reshape his image as a reasonable participant in far-right street events, and spread the reach of the American Guard through its association with other far-right brawlers such as the Proud Boys and the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights. (All are designated General Hate groups by the SPLC.)
James claims he left the white nationalist movement in 2007 because “the philosophy wasn’t for me anymore.” So the new organization he cofounded, American Guard, for which he is listed as “Indiana vice president,” is now a vehicle for what he describes as a non-racist “civic nationalism,” distinguished from white nationalism by its focus on non-racial issues.
The group largely has been making its presence felt in a variety of street actions, including the Charlottesville protest of Aug. 12, 2017, where some of its members appeared in full regalia, including James. In the process, it has been linking arms with other street-fighting far-right groups such as the Proud Boys and FOAK, though its presence has also created dissent among other groups organizing street rallies. James claims membership in both groups as well, describing himself as “the representative for Indiana for the Proud Boys, and also for the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights.”
American Guard itself made something of a splash shortly after Charlottesville by expelling white nationalist Augustus Invictus from its ranks for his overt racism. Still, it’s not entirely clear where American Guard fits into the far-right street-brawler ecosystem, since its “civic nationalism” rhetoric matches much of what’s been expressed elsewhere by McInnes and other far-right ideologues—namely, the idea that nationalism can be focused on “civic” matters, such as adherence to the Constitution, without dealing with race.
Nonetheless, American Guard claims to have chapters in 22 states, though it appears that a number of these chapters involve a handful of members at best; some may be one-person operations.
It’s also unclear what its recruitment base is. If anything, American Guard appears to be geared to drawing recruits from James’ former contacts in the white nationalist movement, offering them the chance to participate in an organization claiming to be non-racist while still openly preparing for street brawls. “I’ve been in serious trouble with the law, every left-wing fundraising organization in America has written about me several times,” James said on Facebook. “I’m very familiar with both sides of this issue from top to bottom. There’s very little that someone could experience either within the white nationalist scene or in the civic nationalist scene that I have not experienced.”
Indeed, James has a long history of involvement with various white supremacist skinhead gangs. He is best known as a leading organizer of the Vinlanders Social Club, a skinhead group noted for its violence; he was described in a 2006 profile as “a thug’s thug.” While he explains that he left the scene shortly afterward, he is anything but remorseful about the toxic influence of his activism. He says he “started leaving the white nationalist movement in 2007, of my own free will and on my own terms. I didn’t jump to the other side, I wasn’t ran out, I didn’t leave to appease anyone or to try to make my life easier. I just decided that the philosophy wasn’t for me anymore.” Nowadays, he says, “I consider myself to be what most people refer to as a civic nationalist, as opposed to a white nationalist. I believe in putting America first, I support the Constitution, and basic libertarian principles, and I don’t care what race you are, or much else about you, as long as we agree on these principles.”
James’ background has caused American Guard some grief within the ranks of the street-fighting right. When organizers of a planned “free speech” event in Berkeley in August announced that American Guard would be among the participants, Gibson and his Northwest-based Patriot Prayer—which has organized a number of such violent rallies along the West Coast—announced it was pulling out because of his presence. In the end, the Berkeley event was held without either group’s participation, though it was a violent affair nonetheless.
Since then, American Guard has shown up to participate in several events organized by others, notably a pro-gun “Show Me the People” rally at the State House in Jefferson City, Missouri, on Aug. 25. They reportedly planned to participate in a pro-gun rally on the Kent State campus in Ohio on Sept. 29, but it’s unclear whether anyone from AG actually participated; one Guard organizer indicated confusion about whether the event would be held.
Even within the ranks of the dissenters, American Guard’s standing was and remains murky. While Gibson denounced James, Toese posted a photo of himself with an American Guard logo (complete with a silhouette of a person being dropped from a helicopter, a la Augusto Pinochet) on Facebook.
As James explained it, the criteria for membership in American Guard makes allowances for white nationalists and racists—large enough allowances to drive a battalion through. He says “the stance that the American Guard has come to by democratic process … is that we intend to basically ignore, though not impede, the majority of the white nationalist movement. Our members can choose to attend, or not attend their events. We will not be inviting them to our events, for the most part, or asking for their help, and the ones who do come, and choose to come as friends or supporters, will come with the understanding that they are there to support whatever cause we are working on and not to promote separate agendas.”
All this anti-racist rhetoric, however, is in stark contrast to how American Guard has gone about recruiting new members and expanding its reach across 22 states. A number of the organization’s new chapter leaders, for example, also traffic in neo-Nazi symbols and catchphrases, and appear to have backgrounds as white nationalists. A leading example is James Camden, the Manchester-based New Hampshire chapter vice president and one of the leading combatants Saturday. Before he joined up with American Guard, he was active in the neo-Nazi Soldiers of Odin organization in New Hampshire.
Another prime example is American Guard’s new chapter vice president in Colorado, Rick Hervey. In most of his social media posts, Hervey promotes American Guard as a patriotic enterprise; in others, he can be seen wearing a T-shirt promoting the neo-Nazi mantra “the 14 Words.”
Other recruits, such as a Missouri man welcomed into American Guard this year as a “new patch member,” can be seen elsewhere on social media sporting a “White Power” wristband and a Skrewdriver T-shirt, honoring the notorious skinhead band. In another social media selfie, the Missouri chapter president is wearing a shirt emblazoned with “White Pride.” A number of other participants show up with neo-Nazi and Vinlander symbology in patches they wear and in their tattoos.
Brien James, foreground, and his homies
Along similar lines, Brien James can be found posing for selfies with current members of the Vinlanders. Joshua Long, despite his purported disdain for white supremacists, shows up in a group photo with members of the racist skinhead group to which he formerly belonged, The Hated.
Over time, the boundaries between the factions of far-right street brawlers seem to be blurred by the attitudes of the brawlers themselves. Even the leaders who denounce white supremacism on one stage seem to find their attitudes shifting with circumstances.
And as Samantha Kutner notes, “Proud Boys have trouble controlling violence because their ideology is very closely aligned with the groups they claim to vet.”
As Joey Gibson was departing the October event in Providence, he encountered anti-fascist organizer Daryle Lamont Jenkins and had a brief conversation with him. Jenkins confronted him about hanging out with white nationalists and dubious figures such as American Guard.
“You’ve got straight-up Nazis out there, and they’re here with you,” Jenkins said.
“That’s just fine. They can hang with us. I don’t care,” Gibson replied. “As long as they’re not causing problems, they’re fine.”
Click click. Grin. Shrug.
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