welcome. andy campbell celebrating the release of we are proud boys how a right wing street ushered in a new era of american extremism. andy campbell is an avid and native reporter and editor covering misinformation and the intersection with within national politics. he's currently based in new york, where he works on the breaking news desk at huffpost. he's considered an expert american extremism, having covered the modern of the far right at the ground level, including the neo-nazi rallies in charlottesville virginia in 2017. his work is regularly cited in scientific studies and scholarly papers and featured on cable news and radio. previously, he worked for the brooklyn paper and the new york post, and he will be in conversation with joe george zornick, the senior editor of the national desk at huffpost, which covers a variety of beats from right wing extremism to abortion to labor. prior to that, he was the washington editor of the nation zone. he currently lives in d.c.. so without further ado, please join me in welcoming to politics and prose campbell and george zornick. thank you guys. so for being here. yeah, thanks a ton and thanks for that kind introduction. i'd like to dive right into it here. i've had the pleasure of working alongside andy for three, three and a half years now at huffpost. he's a very talented reporter and a very difficult space, i can tell you, from editing of people who also cover extremism that it's very challenging work. the subject is is difficult and taxing. the blowback and, the threats are never fun. but andy is one of the best at it. if you are curious, this is not the uniform that huffpost requires. all reporters wear, and we just didn't coordinate today. but get right into talking about the book, you know, what i really loved about this book is having been familiar with an edited coverage of and read about the proud boys years. there was so much in that i didn't know. starting the origin of. why they are called the proud boys. i never interrogated that in my head. so why don't you tell us why that is. right. so gavin mcginnis is the founder of the proud boys and also the co-founder of vice media. he was pushed out of vice media in the early aughts. and we'll talk a little bit about that. but just to show you sort of the the racism and hatred, bigotry inherent in proud boys, the origin story, the name is not often on and gavin, who is reactionary talk show host sitting at the recital of his two kids at, their school in williamsburg, brooklyn. and after kids go on, they play the guitar and the drums. he sees it. 12 year old boy with brown skin, get on stage and sing a number. the aladdin musical, titled proud of your boy and is absolutely disgusted this display he he rails this kid on his talk show you know in front of thousands of people. he calls the kid a fatherless puerto rican he's making fun of he's mocking him by singing song and the the phrase of your boy becomes the calling card of of callers into his show. like you were to say, you know, first time caller, longtime listener, this is what they say. proud of your boy when they when they log on and so as they progressed into a gang. gavin built the proud boys originally out of the audience of his gang. you know, the proud boys came together. and that's that's how it started. and and we'll talk little bit more about, you know, what did with that audience after came up with the name. yeah. so gavin mcguinness is this sort of vagabond youtube shock jock of which there many now. but he was certainly an early comer to the genre and this this sort of community of cruelty that he builds online snowball into the proud boys. when did you as a reporter out on the trail covering rallies and other demonstrations first kind of noticed them on the. yeah we noticed the proud boys kind of first as as they appear in the street we didn't really know about gavin mcinnes his show but but i was a crime for almost you know six or seven years at huffpost covering national crime events that transitioned as trump starts to run for office because at maga rallies there are these increasing displays of violence. so me and our colleague christopher mathias would go to we would start going to maga rallies because we knew that there was going to be violence. and with violence came this concern of just really weird extremist groups all hailing from different parts of of internet. i mean, there were, you know, young kids wearing german nazi flags made to look like meme online. and, you know, just just all these weird groups. the proud boys stuck out as as something more concerning than the other groups. while most of the other groups were masked up, they wouldn't talk to the press. they wouldn't tell their name. the proud boys all wore the same uniform. it is a black fred perry polo with yellow striping. if you see anybody wearing one of those, you know, maybe cross the street or something like that, but but that is and usually a maga hat and they to talk to the press. they were very, very drunken, very violent. and they wanted to be. why for that they wanted people to to know them as. the guys that were out there to fight leftists in the street for trump and. and so naturally, we started thinking, well, this is this is going to be concerning going forward, because normally if people are committing acts of political violence, they're going to want to stay anonymous, not these guys. so we we started following them closely from the beginning. i think it was 2017 when they really started showing out in force. and that turned out to be a good bet because. now, here we are and they've the justice department says that they've had an outsized role in the planning execution of the insurrection at the capitol. i'm sure that, mike, i think mine's dead. okay. so let's talk a little bit about that because you come to this again and again in the book that they're very good at sort of hacking the news and getting media attention, unlike other groups that don't want any attention whatsoever. tell us a little bit more about gavin mcguinness, sort of his origins in media. he had sort of a weird path through sort of alternative press in canada and here and how does that all of sudden turn into the leader of this sort of frothing street gang? right. so gavin is working. you know he co-founded vice media and was a counterculture magazine and in, you know, at its highest, the early aughts, very popular among young people, was like fashion and partying and it was, you know, it was it was popular with young people. and gavin, the early editorial voice of vice. but vice was beholden to advertisers and sort of the general. i mean, he was filling with just horrible message, edginess, bigoted rants. and this is what filled out the pages that weren't, you know, fashion and don'ts of vice up until recently when i reached for this book, vice still had up one of gavin's old articles, and it was essentially a guide to date rape. i mean, this was standard fare for gavin mcinnes. so in the early aughts, vice starts to become beholden to advertisers. they kind of push gavin and gavin decides he's going double down on this rhetoric rather than clean up his act. and he starts his own talk show and bring along all of the misogynists for his audience that that left vice for him. so he has this really rabid audience of young, angry men. he is pelting them with with, you know, bigoted screeds on his live talk show every single day. and and after a while, you know, these start showing up to his studio and hanging out with him. he starts calling these guys, his disciples. he sees that his audience is more more of a movement of of angry young men who are. fired up about, you know, obama. they're fired up about you leftists and wanting to fight them. so he unleashes them on the world as, a viking, you know, he rejects the fact that, you know, old crusty conservatives aren't going to get out there and fight our culture problems. and he tells, you know, his promise to these men of his audience is i'm going to get you out there and i'm to put you at trump events and i'm going to allow you to to fight people in the street. and so they really latch on to that and builds the proud gang, all of their rules set, their uniform, you know, who they should talk to, what they should think. he builds all of this out live his show, and that was really beneficial to the book because, you know, i able to watch all of these episodes and it put my mind in a really bad place. but here we are and so gavin mcguinness builds, you know, builds the proud boys. he, he, he unleashes them on the world and and immediately they sort of rise to the top, you know, declaring themselves the enforcement of the gop and what they wanted to do was they wanted to to show trump and show right wing that we are there fighting for your values. and so you'll see the proud boys at all kinds of places where gop grievances are. you'll find them at abortion clinics today. you'll find them at children's, where they're discussing trans health rights. you'll find them at public libraries, where they're having drag queen story hours. i mean anything? tucker and donald trump point their finger at today. they're out there ready to fight. and so this what gavin mcinnes built and he built it for that purpose political violence just to dwell in this early period for a second longer you're stressing that they are all men there is some racial diversity within the proud boys not a ton but they are men. and i think what i understand well, as someone who graduated high school, 2001 in college, in 2005, there was that of time that they kind of came out of where like it was sort of the last gasp of really sort of toxic misogyny, masculinity in, popular culture. like, you know, they have you you get into the book how they were sort of put on by one of the opie and anthony guys and the man show on comedy central and things like that. and that's certainly that it's a factor in media now, but it's sort of faded and it across in the book that their reaction to that going away and like the changing norms particularly around gender have really kind of driven them crazy. can you talk a little bit more about how this sort of fading sense that, you know, you can't be a man in america anymore really drives what they do. right. you know, one of the screeds that gavin mcinnes goes on on his show all the time is, is that, you know, the end masculinity, the feminization of and these are all sort of discussions, you know, comedians were having in the early aughts and and gavin looks like product from the early aughts he's got, you know, the handlebar mustache the you know the suspenders, the rolled up sleeves. i guess we have those two. but but but he has sort of on to that image and never let go and he is building this gang in his image now, a bunch of comedians used to be like famous comedians like david cross silverman, where gavin mcinnes, his friends back in the day. but as he was pushed out vice media they of evolved with the culture too and decided hey maybe people don't think is funny anymore and of course gavin doubles down but to your point about people of color within the group, you know, gavin told his his gang that anyone join the group but they had to that both the is the best that's what he pushes all the time west is the best and he and they had to agree and accept that white men were had an outsized role in the success of western culture. so there is white supremacy in the roots of of gavin mcguinness's gang but. there are people of color within. there are very few of them. there are, people of color within the gang and many of these guys are gathering under the banner of of political violence or know anti-muslim sentiment or anti-lgbt hue sentiment, anti-woman, but all of them, again receive this promise that they get to bring that rage out into the street and and certainly they have they have been on a six year parade of violence through american cities. with all of that rage. and on top of that, you know, the few people of color in the gang are held constantly in front of the media as evidence that there's no white supremacy or racism in the gang. but of course, it is embedded in the fabric of the proud boys. so you know that's early on jump ahead to now where you know i think most people remember earlier this year the rnc put out a statement january 6th, a legitimate political discourse and it's, i think, obvious to most that violence become tolerated, if not encouraged in big of the conservative conservative media. what role have the proud boys played in sort of like pushing that forward and to acceptability? sure. that this is, you know, partly a history of the proud boys, this book. but it's but it's also a an examination of the normal causation of political violence in this country over the last few years and the proud boys during that six year parade of violence for trump in trump's name the proud boys were also up to gop. they realized, especially after the neo-nazi of 2017, which they were also involved in that. if we're just going to be a fight gang in the street, we're going to dissolve. much like lot of the groups after unite the right, it we need to become more we need to attach ourselves important people and we need trump to know and appreciate us. and so they're sidling up to the gop. they make friends with roger, one of one of trump's top confidants, who spoke to me for the book and we can talk about that. but as are sidling up to gop they're also sidling up to two media pundits and the media pundits of the right wing are celebrar rating them as soldiers for trump, the leftist boogeyman and blm and whatever leftist threat of the day. they're worried about. and so all of this taken together the deep violence that they were committing was being normalized. you know, this this network of pundits and politicians on the right and so today you're not just seeing fights at maga rallies like me and christopher first saw when we were covering it in 2016. you're seeing the violence in everyday life. you know, if if tucker carlson is railing about, you know, anything on any given day, you can expect that group of extremists and their allies are going to show up in body armor, batons and attack people in the street at those events. and so the threat that they pose going forward is, is that, you know, this normalization has has pushed violence into everyday life and i think that the proud boys are, a big part of that playbook. let's stand roger, because we published a great scoop from your at huffpost this week. you talked to him for this book. i'm glad he talked to you i'm not sure why he talked to you, but i'm glad that did. but, you know, in many ways, obviously, stone is sort of the bridge between the proud and trump himself. if trump world. tell people what he told you and what you learned from talking to him. yeah. so. so roger stone met with the proud boys through tarrio, who is a florida proud boy who became their chairman after gavin mcinnes kind of took a step aside for a in 2018, enrique tarrio wanted to turn the proud boys into that political machine. i was talking about because he realized that they were going downhill. their members getting arrested for various assaults they needed to be politically legitimate. and so he had friendship through doing door knocks for donald trump. he says, with roger stone. roger stone took him in his wing and during our 25 minute conversation, which meandered and i mean, it sounded like a trump speech, this guy is a lot like trump in that he fills conversations with words. you can't really make out what he's saying time to time and he's lying all times. but when there were moments of clarity. he he admitted to me that he had been advising the proud boys through enrique tarrio politically helping, enrique, train them on on becoming more political, running for office, throwing their weight behind candidates and getting out of their crimes. after a. 2018 assault in manhattan, he advised to change their name to better legal representation. he saw the proud boys as something that trump could utilize, but through relationship, the proud boys were very early connected to trump's inner, and that's a big reason why, you know, they remain even as enrique tarrio and a number of other leaders sit in jail awaiting sedition charges. you know, they remain resilient. they're still out there today. in fact, their events are going at more of a clip than they ever were before. yeah. and you see this in a lot of other countries with authoritarian or fascist parties, there's the guys in suits, the political movement and there's the armed wing who who work concert tell people what by the way, you said roger stone wanted them to change their name. he suggested an alternate name to you. what was? yeah, he asked them to change their name to the ancient order of the orange man, he tells me, which say they did not do. you know, it was so interesting to me talking him because i you know, i was asking what you know, it's confusing to me. what you know, you out of this relationship because tarrio obviously has everything to gain by putting the proud boys up on this political pedestal. but what do you get? i mean, these guys keep getting in trouble, you're just going to look bad standing next to them. and he seemed to really take you know, he had personal and professional invested in tarrio. i think he really just saw him as his mentee. and, you know, this is indicative of the gop's embrace of extremism, the right wing right now does not, you know, much of the right wing doesn't see what the proud boys and other extremists are doing as as a problem. i mean, this is part and parcel of what they want for the future and and so we are seeing even after january six every day americans joining the extremists in the street and and roger stone and people like ann colter and carlson have have helped foment that atmosphere. you sometimes you're talking about the proud boys they can buffoonish comical kind of losers but as you have demonstrated and in the book they're actually quite dangerous. another great scoop from the book was the memo you obtained about what they were working on in the run up to january 6th. can you explain what was in that memo and to the extent you can like how you obtained it, what that reporting process was like. right. so i imagine everybody here remembers during the presidential debate, trump saying, stand back, stand by to the proud boys. it was one of the first times, i think a lot of the general public sort of learned the proud boys and. when he said it, a lot of people bicker about what his intent with that. but when he said it the proud boys immediately gearing up for civil war and in fact, one of their leaders wrote a blog immediately after that was titled something like this is war. they saw january six as their last stand for trump. they, you know hundreds of them descend on d.c. and and you know host these rallies in which they're attacking random people in the street punching the media because had been railing about the media at the time. they are absolutely lashing out. they're raising funds. they are gearing up for this civil. and i obtained a through a an anonymous of the proud boys who fed me some information. a 23 page document which shows that the new york state chapter had planned know very meticulously another rally and doing security for another maga rally on january 10th. it was scheduled for that. it fizzled out for probably obvious reasons at this point but but the the document it is so interesting because it shows not only what great lengths they go through to plan their events. i mean it shows which proud boys would be standing on which corner of every street as leftists went through the street. it said what they should do when there are five leftists, when there are ten, when there are 100, where they should be, who they should be calling. but it also kind of pathetically showed how self-important. they are. i mean. this document is talking about million tree positions and phalanxes. you know none of this plays out at their rallies when you're at a proud boys rally. the standard fare is proud boys marched through the streets. they, you might be followed by a throng of. counterprotesters. they wait. they can outnumber. maybe two or three of them. and then they them to a bloody pulp and get away. cops can intervene. it's awful to we've we've seen it happen there. there have been stabbing and assaults in all number. terrible things happen at these events but but it never happens that these guys are, you know, gathering in position and calling each other on walkie talkies and doing what this document said. and it really kind of gave us. a new glimpse at how self-important they are. they specifically one interesting part of the document is they specifically said, you know, were to to assist the cops when they need us. of course, the cops never them to be there or were there to do cops jobs for them if they won't do it. and, you know, you that obviously brings up some images your head. i mean, these guys really believe that they are this necessary law enforcement out in the street. yeah. you i guess you know wonder so much why they feel insecure their masculinity if they can't fly. you know you spoke that someone leaked the document to you. the proud boys have struggled throughout their existence. infiltrators being burned, dogged by antifa fascist researchers. i mean, you know, groups like the proud boys go on about antifa ad nauseum and often it's just sort of creating a boogeyman. but also the reality, the fact that, like antifascist researchers are doing real damage their operations. tell us there are some interesting stories in the book about some of these infiltrators. what is it like to infiltrate such a dangerous group like this? yeah, i mean. i talked to, you know, for every image that fox news plays of a black clad demonstrator, a molotov cocktail. there are of research marchers who declare themselves anti-fascist, sitting on line in in locales and trying to thwart extreme events before they begin. one of the ways in which they do this, and i, to a person who does this, is they'll they'll sort of get get in with the proud boys on a chat room, pretend they're a recruit or something like that, and then they will start causing chaos. they'll, they'll start saying, hey, feds coming to the event or you're a fad and blaming each other for for unrest. and then, you know, sometimes they'll thwart events before happen. but i talked to i have two people who are actually members of the proud boys who have been infiltrators for several years. and they feed all the information they receive inside the gang back to their back to their communities to tell them about events that are going to happen tell them when violence is going to happen. when they're gearing up, you know with weaponry to show up at somebody's house. so one one of them is a guy who has been, you know, sending back information. he actually claims that he he was hearing about january six and he was trying to get the word out. and nobody would listen to him. but the interesting infiltrator, the most interesting infiltrator that i have is a woman who has infiltrated the sort of groups of women who hang on to proud groups and so obviously, women aren't really allowed at proud boys events. but there are groups of women who see the proud boys as these. there's the saviors from antifa. and so they're they're they hang on to as many boys as they can and she infiltrate this group and and she she created a character for himself for herself, like an undercover investigator. she said that she said her her name was ashley, what i call her in the book. but she said she had vocal fry and she really like kim guilfoyle and she was a total is how she described herself. and she would you know hang out with these girls and she showed me videos that she took getting as as possible to proud boys events showing talking about violence showing them committing violence getting into fights on the streets and here in dc and and and i you i was like, wow. how do you keep up that character? aren't you worried about getting identified and hurt? and it was so interesting. she said everybody knew that i was faking it, but that helped me in the end because the group of women that are these, you know, almost proud boys, groupies. are all fake to because they think that creating kind of character and that's what a proud boy wants in a woman. is this you kind of, you know, dumbing yourself down and and know acting like a barbie. and she was like it. so it helped me. they really took me in and it really gave her a lot of access. so it's actually also really how many women are in the activists and researcher space who are anonymous and work to thwart the boys from anonymous spaces. you know, getting no kudos for all of the work that they're doing, creating dossiers on the proud boys or getting into their groups. it's really interesting. i, i spoke to a woman who dresses in black and goes to rallies and she in d.c. was stabbed multiple times, a proud boy. and she me the video of it happening and i mean absolutely awful but people really have been putting their bodies on the line for this and women are such a big part of that. we ought to do an article about it. great idea. look, so if you just wandered here from canada or something where the terrorists, where the proud boys are actually labeled a terrorist organization and heard about all this, their stabbings video and they're plotting violence and planning january six, you would think, oh, well, law enforcement must be all over them. what is the reality about how law enforcement has approached the proud boys and tried to disrupt what they do. well, it's it's tough because on on the investing story side, you know, one of the quotes i always go back to is january six, outgoing homeland security official told the new york times, we thought the proud boys were just a drinking club as gavin mcguiness defined them. you know, which shows the proud boys ability for branding. but it also shows that the federal government, you know is ten steps behind where they need be. but but on the local law enforcement side, you know, we've seen time and time again that that law enforcement all sides with the group that's standing them holding back the blue flags and pro-police messaging and that's the proud boys me and christopher. i went to an event in portland, oregon, where proud boys were separated from a throng of anti-fascists, a line of armored cops on a on a highway. and chris went to cover the antifa side. i went to cover the proud boys side. and the entire time the police stood with their backs to the proud boys, who by that point had been sort of turned the portland area into a war zone and they shot munitions. the counterprotesters side, which consisted of anti-fascists and also like local parents. it was crazy. christopher was when a police officer shot a tear gas canister that lodged into protester's helmet. to the that if he wasn't wearing that helmet he wouldn't be alive today. you know this this is the image that we see time and time again. and i think part of part of is just the messaging there on the street. we've also found that, you know, there are law enforcement elephant elements who side with the proud boys, proud boys have police and military personnel within their ranks. often departments don't know what to do with that information when they learn it because it's not a legal to be a proud boy. so they don't fire them and then nothing changes. and so you know we are seeing we are seeing a lot of situations where police are know go hand in hand with the proud boys and with extremist elements on. the right. i have one final question while i ask it. if people have questions that they like, there's a microphone right here. if you want to start lining up and i'll ask my question, you know what is sort of if we're back in five years, what's the worst case scenario for what the proud boys have evolved into and what are reasonable measures that might be taken to prevent that from happening? that's tough. know, i think that the the scary thing is is already happening and that is that it's not the extremist groups we could kind of define and hold as their own thing and report on them and sort of get the word out about them and and and try to, you know, assuage all the violence. but, but every day americans joining that and taking it as something that's patriotic and not something to dislike. i mean, you know, the the when when the klan dissolved, you know, part of the reason the klan dissolved is because the rest of america had just adopted this ideology of hate that they didn't need the klan to be pushing that rhetoric anymore. and that's something that i fear, with the way things are going right now in the digital age is is that this this rhetoric and this normalized of the violence is just going to be every day american life. and we're going to going to accept it. and i think, to to stop that. we need a total shift. the you know, we have extremists aligned candidates running for office, you know, this year and in 2024 who american voters are going to have to decide whether they want those people running the country. so it's it's up to voters. it's up to law enforcement, to to it. it's up the media to police itself. and all of this taken together is going to be, you know, the way that we respond to this threat. unfortunately, i don't see of that happening really fast. on that cheery note, this fine gentleman here has a. hi. thanks for doing this. and the george. yeah. i want to ask about you were talking about the sort of cultural moment that the proud boys came out of and the and the sense of masculinity at the at the turn of the last century. i want to ask andy some about something you wrote for lit hub recently, where you mentioned mcguinness as sort a a guy who watched fight club and took it way to syria and the brad pitt movie fight club and took it way too seriously. and i guess what i want to ask is how much you see like continued resonance of that version of masculinity. like if, uh, if that they are filling a need the same way that like a barstool sports or whatever would fill a need for certain of men, for a certain kind of masculinity. and how you shift the culture that people have a different understanding of what it means to be a man and, and don't feel the need to chase that. misreading of fight club, right? yeah. i mean i unfortunate innately i do. i mean, you know, time and time again, the of feminization of men has been up by, by, you know, carnival barkers as, as you know an existential threat. and and i and i do see it having resonance. you've brought up barstool sports, in my opinion. you know, the dave portnoy's of the world and the government ministers of the world aren't that far apart. i mean, you, alex jones, tucker carlson, joe rogan, all of these people who have these huge platforms and and sort of lean on testosterone as like this, you know, savior. and they're selling protein powder and testosterone supplements to men, you know, by the cabinet fall. so i do see do see it continued resonating, but i, you know, i hope that these other you know, alex jones, don't you know, activate their audiences i you know in another world you see a number of these guys hey you guys need to get out in the street as well gavin is the only difference with gavin mcinnes is what you know was you guys can get out there and fight with that you know ultra testosterone rage and i'm i'm hoping that doesn't continue. i'm hoping about the misogyny. to what extent do the proud boys identify as incels and how do those two movements relate. okay, i'm going to i'm going to i'm going to tell you something that maybe the cameras won't like very much. but but the the proud boys have very misogynist rules set. and it's a very weird rule set. it is all based in misogyny. the first degree of the proud boys. they have four ranks called degrees, the first degree of proud boys is to declare yourself a proud. you have to do so at all times. you're getting arrested or fired from work. you have to be proud of being a proud boy. that's easy. the second degree and here's where it's where it gets weird. one of the rules that you have to adhere to is that you can't masturbate unless you are within several feet of a woman. now, that sounds ridiculous. it is based in it is rooted in this sort of this sort of idea that you you have to keep your testosterone levels up so that you can fight so that you can be virile, so that, you know, you can be a better man. and it's it's total bunk science. there are there are actual that refute the that you're going to have higher test owen if you don't do that. but you know the proud boys who called in to gavin mcguinness's show absolutely loved it. they called it a game changer for their relationships and for their lives. and so they're they're sort of rally ing around this this weird ritual. but the the misogyny is is embedded absolutely. through everything. and i think part of it is, you know, that that this is a you know, you said incels these are i think you could call all them intel's right. you can you can say there's a lot overlap between incel, the involuntary celibate, these sort of violent online misogynist groups and there are, you know, men's rights activists online. all of these things orbit the proud boys and. really the proud boys are a spectrum of ideologies in that sense they are. there's within the proud boys, there's men's activists. you know, there are anti-male, muslim, anti anti-immigrant, anti lgbt. q you again gavin said you can be anyone, but there is a absolutely a lot of overlap between the men's rights activist types because, you know, these guys believe in the second degree. thank you. given our total lack of gun control in this country, why aren't they armed with. ar 15 or ak 47 or whatever, since there's no legal reason they can't? that's a good question. i in a lot of cases they are. the the issue is is that often the places where they believe they can find a hornet's nest of leftists to fight are in the middle of cities that don't have gun that do have gun research because mean so so often when you see the proud boys you know just fighting it's because they're in a portland oregon or in a d.c. or in a new york city. but there are, you know, proud boys that are armed at events. and and they are they overlap a lot with these self-described militias, the oath keepers and the three percenters, who are also, you know, all aboard on, january six. who are you? all they do is guns, rights issues. but again, the proud boys find ways to bring weapons around, even there are weapon restrictions. the big one is they they like to bring american flags to events that are, you know in the flagpole is just a baton. they conceal weapons. but but i have a number of planning documents before events that show in their rooms. you know, they're they're taking pictures of themselves with guns and, hatchets and things that they're, you know, fantasizing about people with. but oftentimes they can't because there are restrictions. supreme court has said those are illegal. for instance, in new york. yeah. i mean, there are there are like portland, oregon, where there's federal land right in the middle of the city and when extremist groups can, they love that federal land because it means they can bring anything want. there been several occasions in portland, oregon where a proud boys rally was happening. they're duking it out with their fists in, the street. police find gunmen on the rooftops. proud boys, gunman and. there's nothing that they can do about. unless, of course, they fire a shot. but certainly the the specter of gun violence is around for sure. certainly surprised that there hasn't been a mass shooting at one of these rallies because there are always guns. thank you. thank you. hello. hi. i am wondering. i feel like during the biden administration action and please correct me if i'm wrong, we've seen kind of a lull of these big extremist you rather rallies or whatever. and there's been more a focus on prosecuting. like we've got the january six committee. we've got the alex jones trials. so i'm wondering how you feel about this new kind of perspective of on pushing back against extremism, whether in the public eye or in the courts, and if that's actually going to do anything both in time for 20, 20, 24 or even this year. yeah, i think i think we're going to learn a lot this election. you know, there are a of extremist tied candidates and proud boys candidates out there. i mean i'm you know this election i'm looking at candidates who are trump endorsed and who have ties to extremists. one example is in washington state. joe kennedy's running for a house seat there is tied to a whole bunch of extremist groups and even paid $11,000 in consulting fees. a proud boy. people love him in his in that district you know he unseated a long time republican there in the primary. so those are those are the types of things i'm you know, i'm worried about for for this election. but but you are right to say, sophie, that that the big extremist on their own have sort of died down a little bit because they're looking at january six and going, okay, we have to lay. enrique tarrio told me on the phone. you know, we told the proud boys after after this to to lay low focus on fundraising and focus on the individual. this is why the proud boys are so resilient. they have chapters all across the country. they can work autonomously from the national and they can latch onto whatever they want so. that's why like i said, you're seeing these proud boys that americans events rather than maga rallies. i mean, are when when you know trump's starts back up in earnest for for 2024. i feel like we're going to go back to mack rallies and it's it's not looking good. i mean one of the remarkable things when you read a lot the indictments have be proud boys others 19 six is they really thought you could think why are they doing this on national and being so brazen. they thought trump was going to bless it all like they it was going to work. so why would they worry? and one of the big sort of hanging over politics now is if trump and pardons the six or as he's pledged or hinted that he will do. and mean you talk about normalizing the violence that's kind the rubber stamp that would. right. and you know and on top of that if there are successes among those extremist side candidates here in the midterms, you know, i think that there's a possibility the midterms taking the wind out of the sails, the entire politically violent contingent. but we will see. okay. so i was called randomly. this is a conversation. well, thank you for showing it. so this is the question. the second generation holocaust survivor. and. i didn't read the book, but my question is except of running with the eight or 15 and hormones in the street, do they have like an ideology that codifying any ideology. in case they come to power. is there an institution not with the things they don't want to the things that they want to do. mm hmm. and second thing that's fascinating to me, if you had encounters with them, what was happening? what was fermenting underground in the united states that brought up such a move ment from people coming overseas to see this as the land of the free people, where everybody is welcome and to see this movement like what went wrong with them, that they this need to. right. yeah. yeah. thank you. i mean, violent nationalist sentiment, that echo is trump's rhetoric as as he came to power is is exactly the line that the proud boys followed. they were very, very anti-muslim. as trump was coming to power. and in fact, they they showed up to attack and harass people in a muslim community in upstate new york after the right wing media sort of against it alongside trump. and so i think if you know, if if they fully to power, they are following what the gop is following right now and that is a very very strict nationalist sentiment. and so i think that there are comparisons to be made to previous fascist movements that, you know, the brownshirts, the the klan, given their inroads in politics. and i and i think that, you know, i think that going forward, you they and a lot of extremist groups here are really just hanging on to to do what trump saying and what the overarching gop is saying that into your question. um, half the way. okay. but other people think you so i know your book is about boys, but i kept thinking when i was listening to this. i mean, my first i guess real realization was in 2017. charlotte's that but you heard equally mainly from trump. true. what about the antifa? and they didn't like look like a very friendly bunch either. right. and you were talking about that there needs to be just a general shift away from surge for violence and. i mean, do you have opinion about the left extremist and. yeah. are they just the same gang in different color? yeah. well, glad you asked that, because. can you. oh, i'm sorry. yes, she was asking, you know, is there a concern of of violence on the left? and the answer i always have for this is first that that when you look at the numbers and numbers have been created, you know, researchers harvard looking at all of the blm rallies, 2020, for instance, and been released by trump's law enforcement agencies. looking at the numbers, the the death and destruction caused by far right extremists in america far outweigh the the violence and destruction on the left just at a numbers game. the blm rallies of of 2020, for example, a washington post researchers found they're at 96.6% of those events. there were reports of any injuries and zero reports of property destruction. and so just from looking at it, from that perspective, it just doesn't add up. and there's no equalization there. now, the right wing try to equalize it because it necess. it takes groups like the proud boys now are there militant leftists? absolutely. do some militant leftists commit acts of violence? they want to hurt people? do they hate democrats as much as they do republicans? there are out there? absolutely. but, you know, like we were talking about before, the anti-fascist work that's happening, the the molotov cocktail holding, black clad leftist is the tip of the tip of the iceberg of of what leftist demonstration and act of ism is right now. and, you know, just looking at those it the problem that we have to worry about right now is is far right extremism. if there are no more questions, that's kind of convenient and there's a very popular guy these days. he was on morning this morning and he has to take a train tonight back to new york for which show. ali velshi in the morning. okay. there you go. he is going to sign some books. so we want to leave time for that. but i just want to say thank you guys so much for coming. this is. this is the culmination of six years of work and when you read it, you'll you'll realize also the culmination of a whole bunch of relationships i've built. you through the years. and so many people in this room have been a big part this. you have to, george. and you my huffpost community so so thank you all for being a part of this. thanks for coming to come up and talk to a pleasure to be with you today and to discuss a really important book from a guest that many of you may be quite familiar with and othma