Facing a New Era of American Extremism

at school, the new round of Supreme Court cases. There's a lot going on, and I believe later on this week there's another hearing by the January six Committee that's investigating the US Capital attack and the role that groups such as the far right group known as the Proud Boys played in the takeover and protest of the US capital. So perfect. Next guest, Yeah, we're very pleased to have with u. Andy Campbell. He's an investigative reporter for the

Huffington's Post. Huff Post my former place of work, and Andy a former colleague of mine. He's also the author of the new book it's called We Are Proud Boys, How a right wing street gang ushered in a new era of American extremism. And he joins us right now in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. And you good to have you with us. Congratulations on the book. So happy to be here and good to see you again town. Yeah,

it's good to see you as well. Um, take us back to here, UM and the the genesis of the Proud Boys goes back before. But as you write in your book, was a very important moment for the Proud Boys. Right during during Donald Trump's rise, a reactionary talk show host named Gavin McGinnis who was also co founder of

Vice Media. UM. He sort of gets kicked out of of Vice Media for his awful, awful rhetoric with the company, UM, and he takes his audience with him, starts his own show called The Gavin McGinnis Show, UM and and doubles down on this misogynist, bigoted rhetoric. And to his audience, he's pelting them with with bigoted tenants. UM. One of his tenants was to quote venerate the housewife. He thought that women and women in the workplace were responsible for

the end of masculinity. He also gave them a tenant to accept that white men were responsible for the success of Western culture. So he's pelting them with these sort of white supremassist ideologies. And he takes that audience and and decides, I'm going to activate these guys. I'm going

to build them into a gang. And he called them the Proud Boys, and he told them, you are going to take Trump and the GOP's grievances and you're gonna get out there and do what the krusty old hats of the GOP won't do and fight them out in the street. And you know, six years later. Uh, They've been involved in so many acts of political violence over

the years. I mean, these guys, um were involved in Unite the Right attacks in cities across the country, and of course, uh their outsized role in the January six insurrection. UM so his small time gang that started here in New York City, uh came to be known as the

national Architects of of January six. And he helped me out here because I feel like extreamist groups have always been with us, right, uh, in our US culture, and yet I feel like you didn't necessarily hear about them or you know, and this is a group that's out there, and you think about the impact that they've had on our culture and our society. What's different. Well, the Proud

Boys were smart. After the Unite the Right rallies of Charlottesville, which they had a hand in, UM, they realized that that just being uh you know, sort of a fighting hate group wasn't gonna last very long. A lot of the groups that that took part in the Unite the Right rallies dissolved immediately after that because people were like

those guys are Nazis. And the Proud Boys got a new leader named Enrique Tario, who was very well connected in the political scene in Florida, uh so connected in fact that he was friends with Roger Stone, Trump's top confidant, um Enriquetario told me he realized we needed to become a more political machine if we're going to position what we want to do, which is the violence right as as something you know, regular Americans on the right we'll

see as patriotic, as as defenders of Trump against what they describe as the leftist threat in the street. And so he turned them into a more political monster and positioned what they do as protected speech and and and patriotism. Where are you seeing the rhetoric that you write about in this book seep into American political discourse inside Washington d C. You hear a politicians speak and are there cases where you say that is something that I've heard

from Gavin McGinnis. I think Gavin McGuinness echoes the GOP and and and vice versa. I mean, Gavin pushed uh, anti immigration, anti Muslim rhetoric and and what he wants them to do and what they have done in the years since Gavin has kind of stepped aside, UH, is that they take the GOP and and Fox New his rhetoric as marching orders. So, for example, over the summer, the Proud Boys have been going to drag Queen's story hours across the country and showing up to intimidate people.

They showed up to an event in Nevada at a public library that had been going on for years. Um. But one of them brought a rifle and started making their way toward the door. Parents and children screamed and and and ran. Uh. This is happening at a rapid clip. Um. But but it's no surprise that Fox News all summer has been railing against lgbt Q, against drag queens, um and you know, characterizing them as as groomers, as coming

for your children. And so it mirrors the rhetoric where the Proud Boys are looking at uh, you know, Fox News and Donald Trump and saying this is what we need to go out there and put violence to andy. When when you and I were working together at Hugh Post. You were not writing about UH, the Proud Boys. You were not writing about American extremism. How did you come to start writing about it? And why write this book?

I was a street level crime reporter back when we worked together, and you know, I covered acts of violence across the country during Trump's rise, those acts of violence made their way into politics. Through the rise of Donald Trump, we saw any number of extremist groups coming together under the banner of Trump thinking that they had an ally in the White House. And the ones that stood out

to me were the Proud Boys. Because these guys wanted to be lionized for their violence, they wanted to talk to the press, they were proud of what they did. UM and so you know, focusing on them turned out to be a good bet because now they orbit so many acts of political violence, including January six, and so as January six was happening, and as they continued their violence despite a lot of their leaders going to jail, I realized that this is the warning shot that we

need to write the going forward. This cycle of political violence, held aloft by the GOP and and media, UH is going to continue. And so that's why I wrote it, is there a typical demographic of an individual who is a proud boy. Proud boys are of a lot of ideologies. There's neo Nazis and people of color within them, but the majority of them are are white guys who are angry and want to fight out Trump's grievances. How much is also that they feel like they've just been left

behind in this economy. I think there's I think there's an element of that, but again it's the violence that they're aiming for through those grievances. You know, as I was thinking about you coming on listening to you talk, I mean, is this our ku Klux Klan in terms of our times? Ku Klux Klan? Is that how we need to think about it? There are absolute comparisons to be made. I mean, this is a force that is racist at its core. They've made inroads with politics, and

they've made inroads with the American public. But with the clan. You have to remember, the clan didn't lose power because people rebuffed them. The clan lost power because so much of the American public shared that ideology that they weren't really needed anymore. And and that's the fear going forward with these guys is that uh, you know, enough people are going to see political violence as a normalized option in politics. Uh, that the Proud Boys may not be needed.

But it's not all just white members, right, All Proud Boys are not just white. I get asked about this a lot. And you know, the Proud Boys, first of all, their racists at their core, right, Gavin Gavin gave them a tenant that they have to accept if they join. Anybody can join, but they have to accept that white men are responsible for the success of the West. And

and there are people of color. There are also neo Nazis and the Proud Boys, but they are all gathering under this banner of getting to fight out their rage in the street against the left and against Trump's opponents, and that can create strange bedfellows. Just just last weekend, Nazis joined Proud Boys in Texas, UH for for a

Drag Queen Story our event they were protesting. And and also on top of that, the very few people of color that are members of the Proud Boys are held aloft constantly by the Proud Boys as evidence that they're they're not racist, they're not white supremacist, and that has served to put a veil in front of them when they're confusing the media and law enforcement. Hey, Andy, over the summer back in June, we saw footage emerged from Idaho about the Patriot Front gathering to protest an lgbt

Q event. And I'm wondering where the relationship is between Patriot Front, Proud Boys, and other sort of right wing extremists. Help us kind of untangled that web, right that this is a this is a machine and a cycle of of extremism that we're seeing in front of us right now. For example, Q and on conspiracy theorists and Alex Jones type plant to see that satanic pedophiles in the form

of drag queens are coming for your children. Uh. Donald Trump and Fox News sanitize and grow that seed for their audiences, push it out to millions of people, and then the extremist street groups like the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, oath Keepers who are also big on January six, come to burn it all down. And so the Proud Boys, I see them as uh, both normalizers of political violence but also the pointy end of this extremism machine. Now, if you lop off one of those parts, there is

somebody they're already ready to take take it on. And and the scary part about what we're seeing now is that everyday Americans are joining these extremist groups in the streets. And so you are seeing how big are they? I would say, in there in the you know, five thousand to ten thousand range. They may have been bigger at one point. But but you know, people ask, well, why should I worry about them if if they're not going to knock on my or one day. They haven't been

known to do door knocks. But their their threat lies in their ability to coalition build um. They can gather many, many extremists and everyday Americans together under one banner wherever they are in the country. Are you afraid doing this at any time? Because you were embedded right within? I mean, certainly writing for a tough post, I've I've gone. You know, I've been in face to face with proud boys over

the years. Originally, they weren't a threat to me because I'm a white guy, and and they don't think that they can intimidate me. It's true, and it's it's but now I have gotten married to a fellow extremism reporter and and now that she's in the picture, we have received some threats because they see a woman or you know, whenever they see a person of color, they know that that they can add an intimidation factor in there, so

not before maybe a little bit. Now, can you talk a little bit about your reporting and how you went around about reporting this over the last few years. Yeah, I mean we were we were covering their rallies. Uh,

you know, kind of from day one. A lot of them happened in Portland, Oregon, you know, a liberal town where where they believe that they could kick the hornets nest in terms of leftism, and and they would show up um for you know, maga events is what they called them, wait for leftists to come out and then and then track them down and beat them into submission. Uh. This was ongoing, you know, and we were shouting it

from the hilltops over and over. But I don't I don't think it was until uh, you know, Donald Trump sits on stage and says stand back, stand by at the presidential debate in that most Americans knew about their violence. What was that moment for for you as a reporter who covered this? I mean, did that legitimize the Proud Boys movement. I mean it certainly made them feel that way. You can argue that Trump didn't intend to activate the Proud Boys with that, and he was specifically asked to

disavow them, and he did not. He blamed the left and then said old boys, stand back and stand by. But but the Proud Boys took it as marching orders, and and they started gearing up for what they called on a blog post civil war, their last stand for Trump on January six and and Trump's inability to rebuff them is just indicative of the GOP's embrace of them. I spoke to Roger Stone, uh, sat down with him

last year. Uh and and he told me, admitted to me that he'd been advising the Proud Boys through their political ambitions for years. Andy, before we let you go. Um, there is sort of a silver line into this entire coverage. You mentioned that you met your wife, who is a fellow reporter on extremism. You met her at a at a neo Nazi rally. Yeah, Unite the Right. Uh in sen we were both reporting for competing publications. Uh and and we are you know from that day. Just recently

we got married in France. And uh, you know love it a Nazi rally, a hopeless place. Uh, the story

you can tell your grandkids. Hey, just quickly, um thirty forty seconds here, based on your reporting, based what you learned about the Proud Boys, is there some conclusion as the January six Committee continues to do its investigation about some connection between the Trump administration, the White House at the time, and the Proud Boys so quickly, Well, not only did Roger Stone tell me he'd been advising them for years, but I'm interested to see their sedition trial

coming up this winter because Proud Boys have already agreed to testify against their own and we may learn a lot about their relationship to Donald Trump and and the people around him. Certainly they've been doing security for top level media pundits and politicians. So we're going to learn a lot this winter. Well, we learned a lot in talking to you and through your book, Andy Campbell, thank you so much. Investigative reporter at have post his book.

Check it out. We are Proud Boys, how a right wing street gang ushered in a new era of American extremism. If you missed it, it'll be on our podcast and in our weekend show