Contextualizing the Proud Boys: Violence, Misogyny, and Religious Nationalism Page 1 of 29 Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Religion. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). date: 11 November 2022 Contextualizing the Proud Boys: Violence, Misogyny, and Religious Nationalism Margo Kitts, Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies Coordinator, Religious Studies and East-West Classical Studies, Hawaii Pacific University https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.1066 Published online: 19 October 2022 Summary One of the most strident voices in the US alt-right scene in the early 21st century belongs to the Proud Boys. Although born only in 2016, the group shares sentiments with older accelerationist groups who seek to return the United States to what they see as its pristine origins. “Alt-right,” “alt-lite,” and “white” are disputed terms among the group’s various chapters, but xenophobia and misogyny are two pervasive themes. Similarly to other voices on the alt-right, the Proud Boys vary in the degree to which they will accommodate racialist Christianity and/or a romanticized Nordic spiritualism. However, to the extent that religion can be made to serve the establishment of a white ethnostate, even the most atheistic among them have come to see religious tolerance as a pragmatic necessity. What is most religious about them, however, can be understood as resembling European metapolitics, which exploits atavistic dreams, mythic symbols, and eschatological values to foster a cultural awakening to nativist dreams. The Proud Boys version of this nativist dream is their aspiration to return to a purported Judeo- Christian ethical foundation for Western civilization, together with a Greco-Roman model of the Republic. Keywords: Proud Boys, violence, misogyny, male initiation rituals, Gavin McInnes, Alain de Benoist, ethnopluralism, religious nationalism Subjects: Religion in America There is nothing new about harnessing religious rhetoric to promote nationalist interests and xenophobia. Although its voices today are strident, its expressions hark back decades and even centuries. Americanists will remember the religious prose harnessed on both sides in the Civil War; Indologists on the emergence of Hindutva; Eastern Europeanists on the Balkan conflicts; and religious notions have infused the conflicts in Rwanda, Nigeria, and Uganda, as well as in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, not to mention conflicts involving pan-Islamic aspirations. 1 Whether religion is the only driver of these conflicts is contestable, but it is arguable nonetheless that religious flags have waved over conflicts not only since European religious wars and the Crusades, but as far back as Iron and Bronze Age war rhetoric, with its royal boasts of gods running in front and sanctifying battles in Hittite, Mesopotamian, and biblical literature. 2 It would appear that rarely has there been a conflict which could not be shrouded with religious symbols and rationales, right up to January 6, 2021, when Christian flags, prayers, and crusader slogans in the march on the United States capitol alerted us to the pressing reality of religious nationalist politics in contemporary times. 3 Margo Kitts, Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies Coordinator, Religious Studies and East-West Classical Studies, Hawaii Pacific University 1 2 3