Proud Boys

The Proud Boys is a chapter-based organization that has taken part in political rallies and street demonstrations. Federal court documents cited by the Justice Department record that its members “describe themselves as members of a ‘pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world, aka Western Chauvinists’” — the organization’s own characterisation, as entered into the record.

January 6 prosecutions

On 6 October 2022, Jeremy Bertino, then 43, pleaded guilty in the District of Columbia to seditious conspiracy in connection with the breach of the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021, and to unlawful possession of a firearm. The Justice Department stated that his and others’ actions “sought to stop the transfer of power by disrupting a joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the presidential election,” and that under his plea agreement Bertino agreed to cooperate with the continuing investigation. Court documents record that he joined the Proud Boys around 2018 and was for a time vice president of his local chapter in South Carolina, and that he travelled to Washington, DC for rallies as a member on multiple occasions in 2020, including on 12 December 2020.

Four Proud Boys leaders were subsequently found guilty of seditious conspiracy in connection with the same events.

Relevance to digital political discourse

The organization’s structure is chapter-based and its public activity has centred on physical rallies rather than online publishing, which distinguishes it from most entries in this collection. Its appearance here is as a subject of political argument and federal prosecution rather than as a producer of digital content.