The Sturmabteilung (Storm Division or Assault Division in English)— better known as the SA— was founded by Hitler and his pals Ernst Röhm and Emil Maurice in August 1921. It was a paramilitary organization created to protect Nazi Party meetings and members from attacks by left-wing political opponents, but it quickly became involved in violent street-fighting and played a key role in Hitler's bid for power in the 1920s and 1930s. The SA was part of the failed Beer Hall Putsch (or Munich Putsch) in November, 1923.
After Hitler's arrest and imprisonment, the leadership of the Nazi Party temporarily passed to Röhm and Heinrich Himmler. The SA continued to operate, but under increased scrutiny and suppression by the authorities. In ’24, the SA was officially disbanded by the government crackdown, but was re-established in 1925 with a slightly more moderate image and a focus on propaganda and recruitment rather than violent street-fighting. Under the leadership of Röhm, it grew rapidly in the late 1920s and early 1930s, playing a key role in building support for the Nazi Party and intimidating political opponents. When Hitler got out of prison in December 1924, he immediately set about re-establishing his control over the SA and they played a crucial role in promoting the ideas from Mein Kampf and spreading its message. After Hitler got out of prison, the SA grew Hoover 100,000 members. By 1932 there were around 400,000 members. After Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, the SA played a key role in consolidating Nazi power and suppressing opposition. After the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, its role was largely subsumed by the Gestapo.
Gavin McInnes founded the Proud Boys, a violent neo-fascist, misogynist hate outfit, to oppose left wing groups— mostly imaginary— in September of 2016. Advocates of domestic terrorism, they have been banned by Canada, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, even Twitter, but not by the GOP.
They are estimated to be around 6,000, although yesterday the Wall Street Journal published a report by Jan Wolfe that indicates they are growing despite their recent setbacks— like their chieftain, Enrique Tarrio, and 3 of his lieutenants being found guilty of sedition charges on Thursday.
Despite this federal prosecution and others, “the Proud Boys have remained very active since Jan. 6,” said Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, based at the University of Maryland.
“They really haven’t missed a beat,” Dr. Jensen said, in part by pivoting from supporting Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results to cultural grievances over issues such as gay rights.
Proud Boys membership is difficult to track, but one nonprofit that monitors extremism, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), recorded 143 incidents of Proud Boys political violence or protest activity in 2022.
That was a decrease from the 166 incidents it recorded in 2021 but an uptick compared with the 128 logged in 2020.
“Proud Boys activity actually increased after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot compared with 2020,” said ACLED’s communications head Sam Jones. “Our data indicate that they remain one of the most active— and most violent— far-right groups in the country.”
Proud Boys members have described their group as a men’s organization for “Western chauvinists.” They have often fought with left-wing activists. Tarrio has defended the group’s actions, previously telling the Wall Street Journal that the group doesn’t condone violence unless in self-defense.
The group saw a surge in membership after Trump referred to the group by name during a 2020 presidential debate. A Journal video investigation found Proud Boys were key instigators of the Jan. 6 riot.
The Proud Boys have been hobbled in some ways by the Justice Department’s investigation into the Capitol breach, which has led to more than 1,000 criminal cases, including the sedition trial that ended this week.
The investigation and the trial made clear that there were several Federal Bureau of Investigation informants in the Proud Boys organization. This revelation has sowed distrust within the group, researchers say.
The group also faces a batch of potentially costly civil lawsuits. In one case, a historically Black church in Washington, D.C., is seeking $22 million in punitive damages from the organization for vandalizing the church’s property during a Dec. 12, 2020, gathering of Proud Boys in the city’s downtown.
The Proud Boys organization has proved resilient, however, even as its legal woes mount. The group’s growth is due to its nonhierarchical power structure, which has allowed it to withstand the jailing of leaders such as Tarrio, researchers say.
Since its founding in 2016 by Gavin McInnes, a Canadian also known for co-founding Vice Media, the Proud Boys avoided centralizing too much power in its national leadership, and after the Capitol riot gave even more power to local chapters.
“The [Proud Boys] local chapters always had a lot of autonomy to do their own things,” Jensen said. For this reason, Tarrio’s arrest “didn’t create that much of an issue for the local chapters,” he said.
As the Proud Boys organization has expanded, another right-wing group involved in the Jan. 6 attack has shrunk. The Oath Keepers militia has “virtually disappeared” since the Capitol riot and subsequent successful prosecutions of the group’s founder and others for seditious conspiracy, Jensen said.
In contrast with the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers organization put significant power in the hands of its founder, Stewart Rhodes, who formed it in 2009. The group promotes resistance against the U.S. federal government, which Rhodes has described as tyrannical and illegitimate.
ACLED, the nonprofit that tracks political violence and protest activity, recorded 37 such events involving members of the group in 2020, 14 in 2021, and just two in 2022.
Since the Capitol riot, the Proud Boys have moved away from election denialism and become increasingly fixated on drag shows and other gay-pride events.
Last summer, a group of Proud Boys entered a Northern California public library shouting antigay and anti-transgender slurs as parents and children attended a “Drag Queen Story Hour” event, according to an Alameda County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.
“The men were described as extremely aggressive with a threatening violent demeanor causing people to fear for their safety,” the police spokesman said in a press release at the time. “An active hate-crime investigation is under way as is an investigation into the annoying and harassing of children.”
The Proud Boys are latching on to social issues at the forefront of the culture wars, and this is proving effective for recruitment, researchers say.
“After Jan. 6, as election denialism lost mainstream support, we saw these local Proud Boys chapters refocusing their energy on what was going on in their local communities, and attaching themselves to issues that were getting mainstream traction,” Jensen said.
The nonhierarchical leadership of the Proud Boys is emblematic of how contemporary far-right groups operate, researchers say.
“The contemporary landscape is not structured around hierarchical groups, as much as it is around loosely connected individuals that find themselves using internet ecosystems like Telegram,” said Matt Kriner, a researcher at Middlebury College’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism.
The use of the word “but” by Trump in this 2020 presidential debate is what caused a lot ope the problem with the Proud Boys: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by, but I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem.”The Proud Boys convictions are likely to lead to Roger Stone, who has been using Proud Boys as his "body guards."
