Encouraged by baseless claims the election was stolen from President Donald Trump, leaders of the Proud Boys, an extremist far-right group with ties to white nationalism, are using several YouTube channel for recruiting, fundraising, promoting events, and urging violence up to and including revolution on Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day.
“Revolt motherfuckers,” Proud boys leader Enrique Tarrio says on an episode of InfoWars alum Joe Biggs’ show.
The Daily Dot first reported that “Biggs, a Proud Boys organizer, has been on YouTube for years; his channel, SSG Joe Biggs, has nearly 14,000 subscribers. In July, Biggs posted the first of a new show called The War Boys. Tarrio is a cohost. Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes has been a guest.
Glorifying violence is standard fare on The War Boys, which also features predictable hyper-masculine tropes like homophobia, anti-feminism, bragging about their physical prowess, etc. An entire episode is dedicated to fanboying Kenosha, Wisconsin shooter Kyle Rittenhouse. “The dudes trying to attack this kid fucked around and found out,” Tarrio says. They often mock liberals, especially anti-fascists, whom they claim are the real instigators of violence.
In a Nov. 20 episode of The War Boys, Tarrio encourages members of the all-male organization the Southern Poverty Law Center labels a hate group to covertly attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration and “take over.”
“Do whatever you got to do to fucking get your tickets,” he says. “You show up there in Biden gear and you turn his inauguration into a fucking circus, a sign of resistance, a sign of revolution….
“You fucking kick off this presidency with fucking fireworks.”
The Proud Boys group and individual members have been banned time and again from social media platforms. Biggs himself has been reportedly banned by Facebook and Twitter. In June, YouTube suspended McInnes for glorifying violence. Yet the company has thus far given the cast of The War Boys free rein.
YouTube’s policies broadly prohibit content that recruits, promotes, or glorifies violent criminal or terrorist organizations, is by said organizations, or praises their actions or symbols. The company says that it doesn’t allow hate speech.
At least one proud boy stabbed after random lone protester fights with multiple proud boys. This protester was the only one around in a mob of a few hundred pb’s and fought with one prior to this video starting and him brandishing a knife pic.twitter.com/OeK3Zwp9cv
— barely informed with elad 🕵🏻♂️ (@elaadeliahu) December 13, 2020
Proud Boys members ruthlessly assaulting a non-combative couple. Trigger warning: graphic and brutal. pic.twitter.com/Efqh6TvPvK
— Strictly (@christoq) December 13, 2020