In the two years after the insurrection of January 6, 2021, it seemed that the Proud Boys — the far-right militia that had been the vanguard for storming the Capitol — were just getting stronger. While they had failed to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election, the group gained prominence and seemed to be growing in size. As Kathryn Joyce reported for Salon, the Proud Boys refocused on harassing LGBTQ people at public events, glomming onto the Moms for Liberty-led assault on school boards, and presenting themselves as shock troops for Christian nationalism. By putting themselves at the center of the culture war, the group was able to keep getting attention and, seemingly, new members.
In 2023, however, the Proud Boys appeared to be "circling the drain," reports Tess Owen of Vice, who has covered the Proud Boys for years. While warning that the group is still a violent threat, especially to LGBTQ people, there is little doubt that they've seen a dramatic decline in activity. There were "just 36 uniformed appearances by one or more Proud Boys across 17 states last year, compared to the 63 appearances across 21 states that we logged in 2022," Owens writes. The events they did have had relatively low turnout, as well.
There's a few things going on. As Owens notes, it's common for extremist groups to fall apart fairly quickly. They are composed of nasty people who seek conflict, so it's inevitable that they fight and splinter over time. There's evidence some Proud Boys are decamping to neo-Nazi groups. I'd argue that the Proud Boys are impacted by the same forces that are causing Moms for Liberty to falter. Republicans bet big into 2022 on far-right groups, but instead, the GOP underperformed in the 2022 and 2023 elections. The backfire effect is reducing enthusiasm for this new breed of culture warriors.
But there's one big factor that cannot be overlooked that made 2023 very different from 2022: Proud Boys finally started going to prison for their role in January 6.
In May 2023, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four of his top lieutenants were found guilty of crimes committed during the Capitol insurrection. The verdicts were very serious. Four of them were found guilty of seditious conspiracy, while a fifth was convicted for assaulting a police officer. The shortest sentence was 10 years. Tarrio got 22 years, and will likely serve most, if not all of it.
That was the most prominent case, but there's been a steady drip-drip of stories about Proud Boys receiving legal consequences. A sampling in recent months of Proud Boys facing justice in the court system: Charles Donohoe pled guilty and was sentenced to 40 months in December for his role in the insurrection. The same month, Anthony Sargent got 5 years after a guilty plea. Christopher Worrell was sentenced to 10 years in January, despite faking a drug overdose to escape his hearing.
Data from The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) Project shows that while there was a gradual decline in Proud Boys activity in the first half of 2023, there was a preciptious drop-off in the mid-summer, dwindling to nearly nothing by the end of the year. This concides with the convictions and sentencing of Tarrio and other top Proud Boys. It's highly unlikely that's a coincidence. Instead, it suggests strongly that these high-profile punishments have successfully scared other Proud Boys into retreat.
To many people, this would seem an obvious outcome. Our prison system is supposed to work as deterrence, and certainly the prosecutors argued that's why they sought lengthy sentences that would garner a lot of attention. But there's also no end of pundits these days who are ready to warn that efforts to hold authoritarians to account will only backfire. They declare that the MAGA movement will only grow stronger if the legal system enforces the law as it is written.
Granted, most of those arguments are made not so much about Proud Boys, but about Donald Trump. Every time a lawyer or a judge tries to impose legally mandated consequences on Trump for his multitude of crimes, a chorus rises up to yowl that he will only get stronger for it. And it is true that, within the Republican party, voters rallied to support Trump after he was indicted on 91 felony charges across four jurisdictions. This has caused some observers, even ostensible liberals, to treat any effort to hold Trump accountable as a mistake that will inevitably backfire. The latest iteration is the bed-wetters arguing that removing Trump from the ballot, which is required by the 14th amendment, will lead to his victory in November.
Trump himself, naturally, hypes this idea that the MAGA movement will only be emboldened by efforts to bring him to justice. After an appeals court hearing Tuesday, in which it seemed the judges are poised to shoot down his claims that he is "immune" to criminal prosecution, Trump returned to that well. "It’ll be bedlam in the country," if the courts permit him to be tried for his attempted coup, he warned. Really, however, it was a threat: That the MAGA movement would be outraged and rise up, with implied violence, to prevent any consequences for previous violence.
This rhetoric scares many. And no doubt that MAGA is a grievance-fueled movement that will seize on this as an outrage to rally around. But most Americans already dislike Trump and the MAGA movement. The main result of legal consequences is to only reinforce that bad opinion. That's especially likely with swing voters, who will be reminded of what a bad guy Trump is, and won't be stoked to stand by a criminal convicted by a jury of his peers.
But legal consequences for Trump may not be a boost of confidence in the MAGA movement some believe. MAGA is a fascist movement that worships what they perceive as strength. To them, "strength" is evading consequences for bad actions. When their leaders are held to account, however, that is demoralizing and, crucially, demobilizing for the right.
The data on the Proud Boys, while incomplete, does a good job of showing how this works. Even while their leaders were under indictment, the Proud Boys could tell themselves a story about how they were a mighty force, able to commit crimes in broad daylight without paying the penalty for it. As soon as their leaders went to prison, however, their members beat a fast retreat. They may be yelling at each other on Telegram about all the liberals they want to "trigger," but they aren't as keen anymore on going out in public to start fights. Odds are high that something similar will happen if Trump's aura of invincibility is penetrated by serious consequences, like a criminal conviction. His supporters who currently worship him like a god will be reminded he's just a man — and a whiny one who smells like a butt, at that.
Even more importantly, we should not flinch from holding Trump accountable because otherwise, it's an invitation to fascists to go even further. As Brian Beutler wrote in a recent newsletter, "It’s necessary in the face of corrosive threats to jettison facts and turn all of politics and law into a contest of will to abuse power." Yes, perhaps we lose if we put up a fight against fascism. But we've already lost if we roll over and let the criminals run free.
