Update: The Oregonian published a report on Dec. 5 refuting the claim in the Guardian report that the FBI has officially labeled the Proud Boys an extremist group. “The FBI has not designated the Proud Boys, whose members routinely appear at right-wing protests in downtown Portland, as an extremist group, Oregon’s top FBI agent said Tuesday,” the Oregonian reported. “The FBI never intended to do so when it briefed Clark County law enforcement leaders recently about regional threats, Special Agent in Charge Renn Cannon said during a wide-ranging meeting with media at the bureau’s Portland headquarters.”
Original report:
Any group that embraces violence to promote their cause is, by definition, an extremist group, but whether they are officially designated as such by the federal government is another question. The leaders of the far-left Antifa openly advocate for the use of violence to push their agenda, and have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to do just that. Many members of the right-wing Proud Boys, which has been involved in various scuffles with Antifa over the last year, have also demonstrated their willingness to resort to violence. According to a new report, the federal government now officially considers both extremist groups.
Since at least September 2017, federal security agencies have labeled Antifa a “domestic terrorist group.” Now, according to a document reported by the Guardian, the FBI considers the Proud Boys to be an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism.”
Citing a newly revealed Washington state law enforcement internal affairs document, the Guardian reports that the FBI partly blamed the Proud Boys for the “recent escalation of violence,” which has consistently involved Antifa, though the Guardian fails to even mention the left-wing extremist group once in its report.
The official document that makes the claim is a memo from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office published by government transparency non-profit Property of the People. It is part of an internal investigation into former Clark County deputy Erin Willy, who was fired in July for wearing a “Proud Boys Girls” sweatshirt, which was caught on photo by the Vancouver-based Columbian newspaper.
“The FBI considers the Proud Boys to be an extremist group with ties to white nationalism,” the memo states. “The FBI has warned local law enforcement agencies that the Proud Boys are actively recruiting in the Pacific north-west,” the memo explains later. “Proud Boys members have contributed to the recent escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Charlottesville, Virginia, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.”
The group’s founder, former VICE co-founder Gavin McInnes, rejects the notion that the group is either “white nationalist” or “alt-right.” The Proud Boys generally present themselves as a group willing to fight back against the violence-embracing Antifa in defense of western civilization.
The Guardian provides more details on the internal affairs memo:
The author of the document, headquarters commander Michael McCabe, is in charge of internal affairs, training, background investigation and courthouse security in the Clark county sheriff’s department.
After confirming the authenticity of the document, he told the Guardian in a telephone interview that the FBI’s classification of the Proud Boys as an extremist group was revealed to him in “a briefing we were given by the FBI” on 2 August, at Clark county’s west precinct.
The briefing included agency heads from local law enforcement, and in it the FBI said that they “have been warning [local law enforcement] for a while” about the Proud Boys, “not just in Washington but around the nation”.
McCabe told the Guardian that the information on the Proud Boys was given to him by an FBI analyst. The information addressed the topics of how the FBI tracks extremist groups, particularly in the region.
“The FBI did not directly address the designation or the briefing in response to specific email questions, but did say that while ‘the FBI does not and will not police ideology,’ the agency ‘regularly assesses intelligence regarding possible threats and works closely to share that information with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners,'” the Guardian reports.
Related: Police Looking For ‘Proud Boys,’ Antifa After Brutal Manhattan Brawl