"It's a fun men's club, that it's still going strong and never become a Nazi thing, overly violent, it started as a fun club, and then we started doing self-defense."

This is how Gavin McInnes, founder of hate group Proud Boys (PB), described the group in the podcast "The War Boys" with other group members, including PB leader Enrique Tarrio, who was arrested ahead of the Capitol siege, and InfoWars alum Joe Biggs.

Just like a group of friends having a chat while drinking beer, the men go on to discuss the origins of the group that has been making the news worldwide since President Donald Trump said, "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by," in the first debate with Joe Biden.

Before then, in 2018, and just two years after its creation in New York, a Clark County Sheriff's Office report, first made public by The Guardian, said the FBI had classified it as an extremist group with ties to white nationalism. The agency backtracked, saying it did not mean to designate the whole group but to "characterize the potential threat from individuals within that group."

The group was classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a non-profit organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists in the U.S., as a general hate group whose "disavowals of bigotry are belied by their actions" and their words.

Hail to masculinity and violence

In the podcast, McInnes explained that the group was designed as "Western chauvinist" with no women, which developed into "guardian angels, and bodyguards," when just two to three months later, PB's (as they call themselves) escorted Lauren Southern, a Canadian alt-right political activist and white nationalist, who was giving a talk in the Bay Area.

SPLC says the PB's "maintain affiliations with known extremists" are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric and "appeared alongside other hate groups at extremist gatherings like the 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville," which former member Jason Kessler helped to organize. This event united Klansmen, antisemites, racists, and militias in August 2017 and was met with counter-protesters, leading to extreme violence, three deaths, more than 30 injured and 11 arrests.

"We don't go to their things, they come to our things," McInnes said during the program.

In an outstanding show of self-pity for the male class and masculinity for being under "attack," McInnes adds: "it's because we live in an era where you can't attack Blacks, Jews, women, retards. We take so much abuse because we can. … Meanwhile, the Black-Hebrew-Israelites regularly kill Jews; the Black Muslims have cabals all over America."

Biggs, whose disdain for women in the military and integration of transgender was open, even said that "being a Nazi today is being a straight white male, pro-western, Christian, that want to have a family."

From the program posted in August 2020, violence is seen as a sign of male empowerment, and Biggs even got rattled, saying, "When are we getting to the point, America, when people get fed up and start fighting back, not just in legal battles, but getting out there."

Referring to counter-actions taken by "enemies," Tarrio said, "I'm not speaking metaphorically, I will beat the s--- out of them.”

Much of the group's hate is focused on "Antifa," short for anti-fascist that refers to far left-wing militant groups. Antifascists, Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists and the general left are viewed as an "existential threat to the nation," SPLC noted.

"[Antifa] Their plan is to destroy America and replace it with nothing," McInnes said.

Read more: Trump impeached for a second time, leaving his fate in Senate's hands

The chauvinist voice

McInnes, who co-founded Vice in the '90s, went from being the hipster of hipsters to a disruptor with a substantial online presence. After leaving the media company in 2008 for "creative differences," he created the website Street Carnage, which had a Jackass-type of approach to some of its content, like getting punched in the face by ex-girlfriends, with a personal blog touch.

In 2018, the website closed, but not before McInnes had time to form the "hit in the chest-alpha male-gorilla" Proud Boys, launch a Youtube channel, write for far-right portal Rebel Media, and launch the "Get Off My Lawn" podcast and "The Gavin McInnes Show."

After Charlottesville, there was an effort to distance the PB from the event, and he even accused Kessler of infiltrating the Proud Boys, Rewire wrote.

In November 2018, he publicly disassociated himself from the organization in all capacities, but as seen in the video, maintained contact with the members.

In the aftermath of the Capitol riots, a Slate reporter present wrote he thought he had seen McInnes in the confrontations, but he denied, noting that he was in New York and "adamantly against this rally from day one."

Explainer: 5 ways Congress could punish Trump after Capitol riot

In support of Trump

In the Rebel News channel in 2017, McInnes said that most PB's were pro-Trump and their presence in many of the president's rallies and subsequent brawls across the country are a testament to that. 

In October 2020, Enrique Tarrio confirmed to CNN that he was also the leader of a Miami-based grassroots group Latinos for Trump, formed in 2016.

In the following December, the PB's were at the pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" events in Washington, including one that ended with group members destroying BLM banners from two historic Black churches. Tarrio ended being arrested for destruction of property and possession of high-capacity firearm magazines on January 4 but was released and ordered to leave D.C. the following day, NPR reported.

"Trump's run for office electrified the radical right, which saw in him a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man's country," the SPLC wrote.

Only 100 days into Trump's term, the SPLC had already concluded that he did not disappoint his alt-right supporter base by making "good on his most inflammatory promises," particularly immigration and nominating "extremist advisers" like Stephen Bannon and Julia Hahn from the alt-right platform Breitbart News. Moves like this gave a push and validated extremist positions and white nationalism.

Besides, the Trump presidency is the "result of a decades-long project by conservative politicians and media figures to delegitimize mainstream journalism and to herd a highly conservative segment of voters into an echo chamber of right-wing media."

Canada ponders 'terrorist organization' listing

Across the border in Canada, authorities are weighing the possibility of including the PB's in the national list of terrorist organizations, alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS. Canadian Armed Forces already consider it an "extremist conservative group, openly Islamophobic and misogynistic."

In an interview with CTV, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said authorities are mindful of ideologically-motivated violent extremists, including groups like the Proud Boys, and collecting evidence to deal with them.

The New Democratic Party, led by Jagmeet Singh, is running a petition calling for the group to be banned and designated a terrorist organization. The public answered the call, and the petition website crashed due to high traffic.

After the Capitol invasion, came official confirmation by the FBI that PB members were among the rioters.

"Self-identified members of the Proud Boys descended on Washington, D.C. earlier this week, as part of activities planned to protest the certification of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election results," the FBI wrote in an affidavit concerning the arrest of Nick Ochs, leader of the Hawaiian PB chapter, quoted by Global News.

With one week to go until Biden's inauguration, an internal bulletin obtained by CNN says the FBI has information indicating "armed protests" are being planned at all 50 state capitols and the U.S. Capitol.

Expelled from mainstream social media and with conservative Parler platform closed, the group might have moved even more underground. But as an article on Vdare, an anti-immigration website that publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists and others, indicates, the ranks are on standby, waiting one final call, one sound bite.

"Right now, it would just take one speech of defiance against Cultural Marxist tyranny; one speech to galvanize resistance; one speech to offer hope; one speech to offer a path forward for the Historic American Nation," the article says.