Paras Shah: As the investigations and trials related to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol continue, convictions and sentences have piled up. More than half of those arrested have pleaded guilty, and among those convicted at trial, are leaders of the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys.
Though these groups became famous for their roles in the January 6 attack, they were active long before efforts to “Stop the Steal.” And while some of the leaders behind these groups are likely to remain in prison for many years, the forces they unleashed are continuing to grow. The Proud Boys, in particular, are on a mission to undermine the rights of queer and trans people across the country.
But how have they gone from the insurrection to protests at drag shows? Insight from the hours of depositions and expert statements collected during the Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation show a direct line from the Capitol attack to the Proud Boy’s current views on gay and trans rights. Because, for groups like the Proud Boys, that tout what they call “western chauvinist” values, securing Donald Trump’s seat in the White House was just part of preserving a power structure that depends on narrow constructions of gender and family structure. It’s a power structure that harms those who don’t fit into the mold of a Proud Boy.
Understanding the Proud Boys' ideology -- the way they think, recruit, and mobilize – is critical to understanding how their goals and tactics are about more than just who's in office. It's about controlling the rules of society itself.
This is the Just Security podcast. I’m your host Paras Shah.
To walk us through how anti-LGBTQ views fit into the Proud Boys’ ideology, we have Jacob Glick. Jacob is a Policy Counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law. As an Investigative Counsel on the January 6th Committee, Jacob interviewed Proud Boys members for dozens of hours and heard their views directly.
Hey, Jacob, welcome to the show.
Jacob Glick: Hello! It’s so good to be with you.
Paras: Jacob, I know many of our listeners will be familiar with the January 6th Committee’s final report, but what they might be less familiar with are expert statements that were received by the Committee, many of which are now compiled on Just Security’s website. To get us started, what were your biggest takeaways from these expert statements?
Jacob: First of all, I want to say that these expert statements obviously do not reflect the work of the committee itself, or the views of the committee. But throughout the course of our investigation, members of the committee staff requested statements on a number of topics, including domestic extremism, the role of social media and the attack, from leading experts in the field, to try to help us contextualize the work we were doing as we were trying to figure out what questions we should be asking these witnesses. What we should be looking for in documents. We asked and we received dozens of expert statements from really impressive figures all across, sort of the sweep of the talent that our country has to offer. And I think that what you see in these expert statements is a really frightening conclusion that January 6 should be seen not as an individual, catastrophic day, but as part of a broader pattern of anti-democratic mobilization and a trend towards authoritarianism that is not all that unique.
And so while it is something that might feel new to modern American politics, this is not something that's new, even to our own country. And we had several really striking statements from historians like Carol Anderson, Kate Mazur, Greg Downs, who really compellingly analogize the situation on January 6, and leading up to January 6, to moments after the Civil War, and during Reconstruction. When sort of revanchist coalitions of white vigilantes took up arms to try to overturn governments that were supported by multiracial, multi-ethnic coalitions of Americans. And ultimately, obviously, in the case of reconstruction, those vigilante mobs were successful in overturning an idea of American democracy that was more inclusive and more racially equitable.
Paras: When you think back on these interviews and putting them into the context of history, what are your biggest takeaways?
Jacob: You're talking to folks about, you know, what plane they took from their home state to D.C. You're talking to them about, sort of who they met on January 5, and it feels kind of granular and anticlimactic. But when you place that, that personal narrative in the context of a sort of historical process of democratic disintegration, a really stark reality comes to the fore. Which is why I thought it was so important to have these statements out in the public now. To help others expand their view of January 6, to understand how the violence of paramilitary actors is not disconnected from the authoritarian shift of our electoral politics. And we're continuing to see that synergy between violent groups, armed extremists and, obviously, unelected political agendas. And that's something that we should see as a continuation of January 6, rather than a separate story.
And so it's more important for us to understand January 6 in the context of that history, so that we have an appropriate prolonged response to this anti-democratic movement that we're seeing, sort of still unfurling today.
Paras: I want to focus in on how the proud boys ideology specifically applies to LGBT people.
Jacob: So there's a lot of great work that's been done analyzing Proud Boys’ hostility towards LGBTQ individuals. People like Heidi Beirich have done a lot of phenomenal work on the history of the organization. But so much of what the Proud Boys are, is a reflection of this aggrieved masculinity, of really violently aggressive frustration in how modern society functions. And where you saw a lot of elliptical conspiracy theories in other militia groups – you get to the anti-semitism and the racism and the misogyny and homophobia through that conspiratorial lens – the Proud Boys are pretty open about it. And they basically say that they have a conception of Western civilization that is extremely traditional, patriarchal, and hierarchical and rigid. And anyone who threatens that rigid hierarchy is a threat to our society. And basically, is an invitation for our society to collapse. And justifies their use of violent, vigilante force against that group. And so when you see prominent Republican politicians singling out the LGBTQ community as sort of the tip of the spear of societal destabilization – and you've seen that over the last years with the proliferation of the groomer narrative, misinformation about pride and really just hateful targeting of trans youth, drag queens and others – that then filters down to groups like the Proud Boys, who are more than willing to soak up another narrative of grievance and of threat. And then mobilize themselves to defend society once more. But I want to be clear that this idea of misogyny and homophobia stretches way before this current fixation on LGBTQ populations in the electoral political realm.
The Proud Boys were founded on this sort of homophobic, grotesquely misogynistic credo. Only men are allowed to join. And they were trying to reassert this sort of imaginary primal view of masculinity that does not allow for gender queerness in any way. And so, it makes sense that one of their targets would always be a more visible LGBTQ community. But what's really terrifying is the way that mainstream political messaging has now brought out that undercurrent that's always been a part of the Proud Boys, to the extent that it's now become really the centerpiece of the Proud Boys.
Paras: So, how does this concept of “western chauvinism” tie the insurrection together with ideas about gender and sexual orientation?
Jacob: It was really interesting to be deposing Proud Boys about things related to the 2020 election and President Trump's influence on the group. And then you'd see flashes of other issues pop to the fore. The most significant of these, I think, for me, was the focus on gender norms and sexual orientation. And obviously, these conversations were taking place in the context of a sort of newly-launched assault on LGBTQ rights by Proud Boys chapters in 2022. But it was still striking to hear them in recounting the events of 2020. Sort of just, say – you know, one mentioned Tucker Carlson and said that he does a really good job of diffusing gender ideology, and the way that kids are confused. And we asked another about why he was a Proud Boy, what he believed Western chauvinism to be, and he sort of started talking about pronouns being a real burden on society and on him, personally. There was someone else who, again, brought up the fact that kids are being warped and can't trust their parents. Brought up abortion and trans rights in basically the same breath, when we were just asking you about, ‘why’d you join the Proud Boys?’ And we were expecting some answer about Antifa, or an answer about election fraud, perhaps. But the first thought was really concerns about masculinity and gender and sexual orientation. And so, the way I have kind of – and many others have conceptualized – this broader movement is really one of threatened masculinity, using the potential for violence to lash out against anyone who doesn't conform to this vision, or threatens this vision.
It was kind of circular, because they would talk about President Trump being a strong leader who stood up for America, who wanted to defend traditional values. And then you'd ask them what their traditional values were. And they’d kind of go back into this conversation about Western civilization, and it would be completely circular. And it was really difficult to get them to pin down what they meant by Western civilization. But as I've said, oftentimes what you did, you got to this idea of a traditional family structure, and sort of a more patriarchal conception of society.
Paras: I’m curious, as you’re sitting there, were there moments during these depositions when these views really came out?
Jacob: So, in the course of these depositions, you’d have many witnesses, who started off trying to be really dismissive of the Proud Boys’ seriousness. And of their own involvement in the Proud Boys. But there would be moments that I know were really challenging for me and for others on my team, when that facade would break. And there would be a real flash of hatred, of anger, of vigilantism, that shone through this conversation. And there's one example that will always stick with me of a Proud Boy who was very insistent on sort of keeping himself on the right side of history, so to speak, who denounced all the people you’d want someone to denounce if you were an upstanding American. He was denouncing Nazis, denouncing dictators, denouncing communists. and basically saying nothing he did was wrong. And then you get to an actual conversation about January 6 and the violence against police officers. And all of a sudden, there's this aggressive shift in conversation, where the Proud Boy starts to explain that there are instances where law enforcement cannot do what is moral. And therefore, it's up to groups like the Proud Boys to enforce morality. And one of my colleagues asked if that meant that the Proud Boys should serve as basically a moral police force. And the guy agreed. And then, I believe I asked if it was wrong for people to enter into the Capito – and this was over Zoom, but it was still disturbing – the guy looked me right in the eye. And he said, ‘They're heroes.’
And when confronted by the reality that law enforcement officers were seriously injured and killed that day, he did not back down. In fact, he dug in his heels and defended the idea that Proud Boys should be empowered to have this vigilante role in society.
And they also, many of them describe this sort of idea that the Proud Boys can do things that law enforcement cannot. To enforce their vision of public order, public morality, and really traditional masculinity. And it's the worst brand of toxic masculinity you could imagine. Beating each other up until they could name four types of cereals. Really weird rules about sex and engagement with women. And it sounds silly on the surface, but once you drill down to their decision to associate with an extremist organization instead of a, you know, bowling league, there's a common fear that traditional society, a man's traditional place in society, is being dismembered in some way. And that justifies taking up arms to defend this vision of America.
Paras: A lot of this is playing out at drag shows and other events. How does that relate to January 6th and what can we learn this time around?
Jacob: I see a lot of echoes of what we're seeing now with mobilizations against drag shows and other LGBTQ events, with what happened in the run up to January 6. As you saw increasing militia activity against public officials – think about Gretchen Whitmer, about the sort of patrols of election sites and vote counting centers, individuals bringing weapons. This sort of slow burn of political violence – of threatened political violence, harassment, intimidation – against a target that these extremists believe is sort of leading the charge against their cause. They're sort of the tip of the spear of Antifa’s dystopia. They had a months-long mobilization against that enemy. And by the time you got January 6, it was too late for the rest of society to realize that all of those small scale mobilizations were leading to something big. And they were leading to something that could justify mass violence against law enforcement officers, against elected officials, against the Vice President. And we didn't see those blinking warning signs before January 6, or at least we didn't see them enough to stop what was happening. But now, as we see that same cadence of sporadic violence, sporadic confrontations, now targeted at the LGBTQ community, we can't afford to wait until that builds into a massive maelstrom of open warfare at a Pride parade in New York or LA or Austin. We can't afford to wait for the big January 6 redo, in the context of sort of anti-drag, anti-queer, anti-grooming hysteria.
Paras: At first glance, this seems like a pretty disparate line of thinking on hot-button issues. Is this how Proud Boys members described this narrative when you interviewed them?
Jacob: A lot of individuals we depose start to really be nervous that the same Democratic politicians who “locked them up,” – quote, unquote – then are going to let “Antifa” – again, using quotes – run rampant. And they conflate Black Lives Matter and Antifa and are really, hyper-aggressive manner. They claim defense, they claim they're nervous. But really, it seemed to us to be a shield for them to justify vigilante activity against racial justice protests in the summer of 2020. And Trump, again, amplified those efforts. And that becomes a clarifying moment for this anti-democratic political movement, anti-democratic extremist movement to say to themselves, “we're going to confront governments we don't like and social movements we don't like.” Explicitly in this frame of trying to beat back a less white, less white, less – quote, unquote – “free nation.” And we're doing it with the support of our president.
And as you get into the fall, and then the winter, the President makes this story one, complete whole. So you start off with Democratic politicians “locking up patriots, then you have Democratic politicians letting Antifa run wild, all at the behest of George Soros.” And then you get to the fall, and those same Democratic politicians are “manipulating the elections” in these largely black and brown cities to “steal the White House” from Donald Trump. And so it's the same villain throughout the entire year. And it's really a pretty racist, anti-semitic trope of Democratic politicians, coded as Jewish, manipulating black and brown voters to destabilize society and then steal an election.
But at the bottom line, it was an assertion of control of hierarchy. And, in many cases of patriarchal hierarchy that was intimately bound up in Stop the Steal. That in a way that I think sometimes gets missed, because it's so tempting to talk about Stop the Steal in the sort of dramatic context that it was presented to us all who were not associated with the movement, that it was the election, and it was Trump being insane. It was Arizona and Wisconsin and a crazy conspiracy theory out of Detroit, and it was something new every day.
Paras: And how have their tactics shifted since January 6, what have the Proud Boys been focusing on since the attack.
Jacob: The core of their authoritarian ideology, I think has remained pretty constant. After January 6, many of these state and local chapters started to embark on their own missions, to target school boards who were trying to impose mask policies on their schools as the vaccines were being rolled out. Vaccine requirements, mask requirements – you saw Proud Boys sort of take to their local communities, instead of the national stage, and agitate at school board meetings. That then quickly became a campaign of harassment and intimidation against “critical race theory” in schools. Again, quote, unquote. And then that then morphed into a more frontal assault on schools having curricula that were inclusive of LGBTQ people, and the book banning and anti-grooming mania that we've seen explode in 2022.
And so by the time you get to 2022, this focus on local governance, which is really the core of our democracy, had deposited the Proud Boys in this space of anti-LGBTQ frenzy. Right, as national Republicans were also targeting the LGBTQ population. Figures like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump were doing the same thing. And so once again, through this local activism, the Proud Boys were able to insert themselves at the center of a national conversation.
Paras: So in a lot of ways, this focus on LGBT rights has become a focal point for these hyperlocal efforts that you’re describing. And it's now Pride Month, so do you expect to see the Proud Boys trying to disrupt Pride events?
Jacob: I want to be really clear on one thing: it's not just the Proud Boys. There's a broad coalition. It's the January 6 coalition, right? A whole constellation of these groups, I think, have now already shown up at drag shows and at drag brunches, other LGBTQ community events. And they've shown up, in many cases, armed. And had standoffs with supporters and allies of the LGBTQ community and with drag performers. In some cases, this has led to violence. In Wadsworth, Ohio a couple of weeks ago, there was a neo-Nazi sort of muster at a drag brunch, I believe. That led to multiple injuries and multiple arrests. And in some cases, counter protesters have shown up armed. And we saw this last year, before even the real height of a lot of this anti-drag hysteria.
I think what I'm really worried about is the permission structure that these far-right extremists have been given to confront drag performers, basically any queer space. And to go out and bring their weapons and “protect the children” – quote, unquote – which will really mean a full scale confrontation with an entire community. And that community wants to protect itself, as well. And you get into a situation where you can easily spiral into violence, particularly if law enforcement is not playing a constructive role in de-escalating situations.
Paras: As we have seen more incidents of armed protestors showing up to events like drag shows and intimidating and menacing people – in some states, that can be a misdemeanor or even a felony offense. But there’s also rhetoric around the Second Amendment and the right to carry arms. And that can be used to mask this behavior and avoid the legal issues. So, how should we think about that?
Jacob: There is a deep-rooted mythology around the Second Amendment in this country that individuals are allowed to act as Proud Boys and others are acting at these drag events, basically showing up in a group to menace others, intimidate others, while armed. In most states, that's simply not the case. And the Supreme Court has been crystal clear since the 1800s that the Second Amendment does not protect private paramilitary activity. In many of these instances, you're seeing groups of men, organizing together with some kind of structure. They're being told where to march by a leader, they're being told how to spread out around a drag show. And they're using weapons to then function as a private militia. That is not protected by the Second Amendment. And you know who said it wasn't created by the Second Amendment, was Antonin Scalia, in his opinion in DC vs. Heller, where he explicitly affirmed the idea that the Second Amendment does not extend to prohibitions on private militias, and that's essential to preserving public order. So, when you think about the Proud Boys and other armed extremists at these drag events, when they're acting in concert with each other, don't think about the Second Amendment. Think about paramilitary laws within the state in which this event is occurring. And whether those laws prohibit this behavior. And in most cases, they do. So, ICAP has a whole compendium of paramilitary laws in each state, and in most cases there are prohibitions that would apply to this conduct.
Paras: Pride protests and pushback against LGBT activists certainly aren’t new, but are celebrating Pride month amidst this escalation. What can organizers do to prepare for pushback and the escalation that we might see?
Jacob: What we've done in ICAP is published a short guidance document that Pride organizers can use to make a plan in case there is armed extremist mobilization at their events. And we want to make sure that these organizers are aware of laws against paramilitary activities, so they can understand what counter-protesters can and can't do. When they can be armed, what they can do while they're armed. All of that kind of technical legal information is crucial in ensuring that Pride organizers and other members of the LGBTQ community and their allies are able to keep a clear head and understand what is allowed to happen at these public forums. Because obviously there are important First Amendment concerns, there are Second Amendment concerns, that we want to make sure that we appreciate while we're formulating responses to potential violence. Because you don't want to get caught up in the technicalities. And we've also provided a number of action items that Pride organizers can take. For example, reaching out to local officials beyond law enforcement. So, sympathetic city council members, members of national organizations that might be able to create a spotlight on the event – including ICAP – to sort of put pressure on local officials in a capacity to respond, to make sure that they respond. And we want to make sure that there's not just one option for Pride organizers who are trying to avoid violence in their events. Because we know each situation is going to be different. Relationships with law enforcement is going to vary across localities and across circumstance. And we need to ensure that there are multiple pathways for Pride organizers to ensure a safe, joyous event.
Paras: Jacob, this has been such a great discussion. Thanks so much to you and Mary for all the great work you do at ICAP. We'll be sure to link to your Pride guidance in the show notes. Thanks again for joining the show.
Jacob: Thanks so much. It was great to be with you
Paras: The Just Security Podcast is produced in partnership with NYU’s American Journalism Online Program. AJO trains students to become world class journalists, no matter where they live, or work. Find out more about AJO and how you can apply in our show notes.
This episode is hosted by me, Paras Shah, with co-production and editing by Tiffany Chang and Michelle Eigenheer. Our music is the song, “The Parade” by Hey Pluto.
Special thanks to Clara Apt and Jacob Glick. You can read ICAP’s Pride guidance in our show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.