The Proud Boys Hashtag Repurposed by Men Loving Men

by Adam Oldaker and Bryan Wysopal

• Introduction
• Context
• Key Actors
• Social Media Presence
• Offline Presence
• Impact of the Movement
• Critiques of the Movement
  
• Conclusion
  

Introduction

On September 29, 2020, 73.1 million viewers watched live as Donald Trump refused to condemn white supremacy and told a group called the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during the first presidential debate with Joseph R. Biden.[1] The Proud Boys are designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and are widely considered to be a threat to individuals in many marginalized groups.[2] In the days that followed, LGBTQ+ activist and icon George Takei called on men loving men to repurpose the #ProudBoys hashtag with images of them “doing very gay things.” While some individuals criticized the campaign, it spread widely across social media and interrupted digital communication about the Proud Boys between October 1 and 5.[3]

Context

During the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump on September 29, 2020, Biden and moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump to condemn white supremacy. In response, Trump asked whom he should condemn specifically. Biden responded, “The Proud Boys.” Trump replied by telling members of the group to “stand back and stand by.”[4]

Who are the Proud Boys? The Proud Boys were formed in 2016 by Vice Media co-founder and outspoken conservative pundit Gavin McInnes. While they insist their ideology is not rooted in bigotry, preferring the term “alt lite” to the more damning label of “alt right,” they are known to frequently associate with white supremacists and other more extreme right-wing groups.[5]  They are a male-only, militia style group whose mantra announces them as “western chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.”[6] They are designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and a terrorist entity by the Canadian government.[7]

In the days that followed the Biden-Trump debate, multiple news organizations declared that Trump had emboldened the Proud Boys in his comments. There were reports of group members adding the phrase to the Proud Boys logo, creating merchandise featuring it, and expressing their willingness to heed Trump’s call in social media posts.[8]

While the Proud Boys’ Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram social media accounts and hashtag had been suspended in 2018,[9] executives at these social media companies allowed men loving men to repurpose the hashtag following a tweet by Star Trek actor George Takei on October 1, 2020, in which he called them to take “pictures of themselves making out with each other or doing very gay things.”[10]

Takei’s tweet quickly went viral, and Twitter became flooded with images of men loving men. BBC News reports that, while the #ProudBoys hashtag was tweeted over 88,000 times between October 1 and October 5, many of those tweets came from men loving men.[11] The repurposed #ProudBoys campaign also reached other social media platforms, including Facebook and Reddit.

Key Actors

Donald Trump and Joseph R. Biden

[12]

In the events leading up to #ProudBoys hashtag campaign of men loving men, Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” after refusing to condemn white supremacy during his first presidential debate with Biden on September 29, 2020. The debate was widely viewed in the United States, with “a whopping 73.1 million viewers Tuesday, according to Nielsen.”[13]

Gavin McInnes

 

[14]

Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes is an English-born, Canadian-American right-wing pundit, comic, and co-founder of Vice Media.[15] He is notorious for “comments which are Islamophobic, transphobic, anti-immigration, and anti-feminist.”[16] McInnes distanced himself from the group in 2018 when, after giving a speech at New York’s Metropolitan Republican Club, a violent altercation between Antifa and the Proud Boys ensued.[17] In 2019, McInnes filed an anti-defamation suit against the Southern Poverty Law Center upon their labeling the Proud Boys a hate group, reiterating contradictory claims that the Proud Boys do not support white supremacy and other extreme right-wing views and pointing out that he had left the group a year prior.[18] In another contradictory move, McInnes responded to Trump’s incitement of the group during the 2020 presidential debate with the following: “I control the Proud Boys, Donald!” He also ordered them: “Do not stand down, do not stand back!”[19]

Henry "Enrique" Tarrio

[20]

Henry “Enrique” Tarrio is on the Board of Directors for Latinos for Trump.[21] He has worked in security and has run for office as a Republican for the 27^th Congressional District in Florida, but he is better known as the notorious leader of the Proud Boys.[22] In February 2021, Tarrio was outed as a former FBI informant, which has, in turn, caused certain chapters of the Proud Boys to disavow him.[23]

George Takei

[24]

Star Trek actor George Takei is generally credited with first proposing the idea of men loving men to appropriate #ProudBoys.[25] Following the September 29, 2020, presidential debate in which Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” Takei tweeted a call to men loving men to fill Twitter with images of them “doing very gay things.”

Takei is a strong activist for the LGBTQ+ community. According to Sage: Advocacy and Services for LGBT Elders, “He has served as the spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign’s Coming Out Project and was Cultural Affairs Chairman of the Japanese American Citizens League.”[26] He is often referred to as a social media superstar, with substantial followings on his accounts.[27] As of March 2021, he has 3.2 million followers on Twitter and 9.2 million followers on Facebook.

Social Media Presence

Key Tweets

Below is a copy of the tweet that started the campaign. Note Takei’s use of the hashtags #ProudBoys and #ReclaimingMyShine.

[28]

According to the Washington Post, multiple celebrities with large social media followings contributed to the repurposed #ProudBoys hashtag campaign, therefore expanding its reach.[29] Below are copies of #ProudBoys tweets from radio and TV talk show host Andy Cohen and Queer Eye star Bobby Berk.

 

[30]

 

[31]

Many private individuals contributed to the repurposed #ProudBoys campaign, including the ones depicted below. Note that Lorenzo Thione also used the hashtag #ReclaimingMyShine, as Takei did in his original tweet.

[32]

 

[33]

[34]

While the majority of contributions came from individuals, the Canadian Forces in the US enthusiastically took part in the campaign, as the below tweet shows.

 

[35] 

Memes supporting the #ProudBoys repurposed hashtag campaign also went into circulation after Takei’s tweet, including the one below.

[36]

Offline Presence

The Proud Boys proper have, since their inception, been a continuous real-world presence at protests and rallies, some of which have turned violent.[37] The appropriation of the hashtag seems to have been contained online although it may be noted that many of the images selected for posts and memes are of real-life events (parades and other public events).

Impact of the Movement

Enrique Tarrio brushed off the take-over of the Proud Boys hashtag as an attempt to “drown out” the group’s voice on social media, stating that the group is not homophobic.[38] However, Forbes reports that the Proud Boys were generally upset about the take-over, as evidenced by reported Parler activity indicating homophobic sentiments after all.[39]

On October 5, 2020, Takei posted a tweet indicating his satisfaction that the repurposed #ProudBoys hashtag campaign had been successful in making members of the hate group “unhappy with me.” He also announced that the company dotgay had created a site collecting some of the repurposed #ProudBoys posts.

 

[40]

 

Critiques of the Movement

Chadwick Moor of The Spectator was critical of the movement’s efficacy, quoting McInnes’s reference to the takeover as “the most embarrassing self-own the left has ever done, because it shows how lazy and uninformed they are.” McInnes has claimed that the Proud Boys are not a homophobic group.[41] Similarly, Dani Di Placido wrote in Forbes that, while the hashtag takeover is welcome, it “shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Proud Boys market themselves--they have never been afraid of homoerotic displays of affection. That’s a bit of an outdated attitude, even for the alt-right.”[42]

Additionally, Wren Sanders of them pointed out that the #ProudBoys repurposed hashtag campaign ignores the very real threat that the Proud Boys pose to people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Proud Boys members have attacked individuals in the trans and gay communities and loudly shared racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, and other hatred-filled rhetoric. Sanders does not see Gay Pride as an antidote for any kind of systemic hatred, and like other critics of the repurposed hashtag, the author believes that mostly white men loving men participated, therefore ignoring the perspectives of people of color. To combat the real threat posed by the Proud Boys, more meaningful action is needed than, in Sanders’s words, “a photo-op.”[43]

Conclusion

The campaign using the hijacked hashtag covered a period of roughly a week following the first presidential debate of 2020. Since then, #ProudBoys continues to appear on Twitter in this capacity although it is more in limited scope. The hashtag also appears in posts related to the rightwing group’s activities, including its involvement in the January 6, 2021, Capitol Riot.[44] While some tweets do display support for the group, the Proud Boys themselves have not had a presence on Twitter since 2018 although they are still active on Telegram.

Notes

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[1] Adalain, Joseph. ”The First 2020 Presidential Debate Scored Massive Ratings.” Vulture, 30 Sept. 2020, https://www.vulture.com/2020/09/tv-ratings-for-the-first-2020-presidential-debate-score-big.html. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[2] “Proud Boys,” Anti-Defamation League, https://www.adl.org/proudboys. Accessed 22 Feb. 2021.

[3] “Proud Boys: Far-right Group Becomes LGBT Trend Online.” BBC News, 5 Oct. 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54380656. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[4] “First Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” C-Span, YouTube, uploaded 29 Sept. 2020, https://youtu.be/wW1lY5jFNcQ. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[5] “Proud Boys,” Anti-Defamation League, https://www.adl.org/proudboys. Accessed 22 Feb. 2021.

[6]McInnes, Gavin. “Introducing: The Proud Boys.” Taki’s Magazine, 15 Sept. 2016, https://www.takimag.com/article/introducing_the_proud_boys_gavin_mcinnes. Accessed 22 Feb. 2021.

[7] “Proud Boys.” Southern Poverty Law Center, splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys. Accessed 20 Feb, 2021.

[8] Murphy, Paul P. “Trump’s Debate Callout Bolsters Far-right Proud Boys.” CNN, 1 Oct. 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/30/politics/proud-boys-trump-debate-trnd/index.html. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[9] Ingram, David. “Facebook Removes Pages Belonging to Far-right Group ‘Proud Boys.’” NBC News, 30 Oct. 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-removes-pages-belonging-far-right-group-proud-boys-n926506. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[10] Sachs, Julia. “No, Instagram Did Not Block #ProudBoys Because Gay Men Were Using It.” Grit Daily, 6 Oct. 2020, https://gritdaily.com/instagram-block-proudboys/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[11] “Proud Boys: Far-right Group Becomes LGBT Trend Online.” BBC News, 5 Oct. 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54380656. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[12] Screenshot of Donald Trump and Joseph R. Biden. “First Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” C-Span, YouTube, uploaded 29 Sept. 2020, https://youtu.be/wW1lY5jFNcQ. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[13] Adalain, Joseph. ”The First 2020 Presidential Debate Scored Massive Ratings.” Vulture, 30 Sept. 2020, https://www.vulture.com/2020/09/tv-ratings-for-the-first-2020-presidential-debate-score-big.html. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[14] Photo of Gavin McInnes. “Gavin McInnes Net Worth 2020, Biography, Career and Relationship” by Imo Nyong, USA News Court, 4 Dec., 2020, usanewscourt.com/gavin-mcinnes-net-worth.

[15] Knox, Patrick. “‘Hipster Godfather:’ Who Is Proud Boys Founder Gavin McInnes?” The U.S. Sun, 2 Oct., 2020, the-sun.com/news/1562850/who-proud-boys-founder-gavin-mcinnes.

[16] Wilson, Jason. “Not Just a ‘Provocateur:' Gavin McInnes Should Not Be Allowed into Australia.” The Guardian, 18 Oct., 2018, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/19/not-just-a-provocateur-gavin-mcinnes-should-not-be-allowed-into-australia.

[17] Shannon, Joel. “Who Are the Proud Boys? Far-Right Group Has Concerned Experts for Years.” USA Today, 30 Sept. 2020, usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/30/who-proud-boys-group-mentioned-debate-has-violent-history/5868406002/.

[18] Kennedy, Merrit, “Proud Boys Founder Files Defamation Lawsuit against Southern Poverty Law Center.” NPR, 5 Feb., 2019, npr.org/2019/02/05/691643824/proud-boys-founder-files-defamation-lawsuit-against-southern-poverty-law-center.

[19] Cinone, Danielle. “‘He’s the General’ Proud Boys Founder Gavin McInnes Says ‘Don’t Stand Down, Don’t Stand Back’ after Trump Name-Checked Group during Debate.” The Sun, 30 Sept., 2020, thesun.co.uk/news/12811623/proud-boys-founder-gavin-mcinnes-trump-debate

[20] “Proud Boys Leader Has no Sympathy for Lawmakers Targeted by Capitol Riot” by Mallory Simon et al.,  CNN, 25, Feb., 2021, cnn.com/2021/02/25/politics/capitol-riot-proud-boys-enrique-tarrio-soh/index.html.

[21] “Team Trump.” Latinos for Trump, latinosfortrump.us/team-trump. Accessed 2 Mar. 2021.

[22] “Enrique Tarrio.” Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Enrique_Tarrio. Accessed 2 Mar, 2021.

[23] Carless, Will. “Proud Boys Splintering after Capitol Riot, Revelations about Leader. Will More Radical Faction Emerge?” USA Today, 12 Feb. 2021, usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/02/12/proud-boys-splintering-after-capitol-riot-revelations-leader/6709017002. Accessed 2 Mar. 2021.

[24] Photo of George Takei. ”Star Trek's George Takei: ’I’d Take a Female Friend to Premieres. Then Go Out to a Gay Bar'” by Ryan Gilbey. The Guardian, 6 Oct. 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/06/star-treks-george-takei-id-take-a-female-friend-to-premieres-then-go-out-to-a-gay-bar. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[25] Siese, April. “Twitter Users Take over Proud Boys Hashtag with Photos of LGBTQ Love.” CBS NEWS, October 5, 2020, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/proud-boys-twitter-hashtag-photos-lgbtq-love. Accessed 22 Feb, 2021.

[26] ”George Takei: Actor, Activist, Influencer.” Sage: Advocacy and Services for LGBT Elders, 9 June 2018, https://www.sageusa.org/george-takei-actor-activist-influencer/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[27] ”The Extraodinary Trek of George Takei, Social Media Superstar.” Herald Net, 21 July 2019, https://www.heraldnet.com/life/the-extraordinary-trek-of-george-takei-social-media-superstar/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[28] https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1311791729767526400

[29] Peiser, Jaclyn. ”The Proud Boys Were Emboldened by Trump’s Words. Then, LGBTQ Couples Reclaimed the Group’s Hashtag.” The Washington Post, 5 Oct. 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/05/proudboys-twitter-lgbtq-takei/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[30] https://twitter.com/andy/status/1312747210044473349?lang=en

[31] https://twitter.com/bobbyberk/status/1312806632607285248?lang=en

[32] https://twitter.com/thione/status/1312539263360172032

[33] https://twitter.com/standingoutbrst/status/1312932708637646853

[34] https://twitter.com/marnimarie851/status/1312982988364435457

[35] https://twitter.com/CAFinUS/status/1312734325104873473

[36] https://twitter.com/Pepita9000/status/1312532769235365888

[37] Holt, Jared. “Proud Boys’ Violence: A Pattern." Right Wing Watch, 15 Oct., 2020, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/proud-boys-violence-a-pattern.

[38] Elassar, Alaa, “Gay Men Have Taken over the Proud Boys Twitter Hashtag.” CNN, 4 Oct. 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/04/us/proud-boys-twitter-hashtag-gay-men-trnd/index.html.

[39] Brown, Adam. “Proud Boys Are Furious that Gay Men Have Taken over #ProudBoys on Twitter.” Forbes, 4 Oct. 2020, forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/10/04/the-proud-boys-are-furious-that-gay-men-have-taken-over-proudboys-on-twitter/?sh=57c21ed12aaf.

[40] https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1313264817491382277

[41] Moore, Chadwick. “The Pride Boys: Smearing the Proud Boys as Homophobic Is a Losing Strategy.” The Spectator, 5 Oct. 2020, spectator.us/life/pride-proud-boys-gay-hashtag.

[42] Di Placido, Dani. “Why the Twitter Hijacking of #ProudBoys Isn’t Quite the Victory It Seems.” Forbes, 5 Oct., 2020, forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2020/10/05/why-the-twitter-hijacking-of-proudboys-isnt-quite-the-victory-it-seems/?sh=35704aec18b4.

[43] Sanders, Wren. ”White Gays, Please Stop Using Anti-racism as a Photo Op.” them, 7 Oct. 2020, https://www.them.us/story/proud-boys-twitter-hashtag-op-ed. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021.

[44] https://twitter.com/mog7546/status/1367923074935447556