To hear him tell it, Gavin McInnes’ recent return to the site formerly known as Twitter is the result of a collaborative effort that included leading members of the British far right and Elon Musk.
“I’m kind of cringing at how happy I am about it,” McInnes told TPM late last month.
McInnes was originally suspended from Twitter in 2018 amid concerns about the activities of the group he founded, the Proud Boys, and other violent right-wing extremist organizations. The ban came after the Proud Boys, with their staunch support for President Trump and their trademark yellow and black polos, had become a nearly ubiquitous presence at street protests where they often brawled with political opponents.
Later that year, McInnes publicly stepped down from his position as leader of the group, in part due to a wave of prosecutions. The crackdown on the Proud Boys reached its peak after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when several of the group’s leaders and members received lengthy prison sentences for their role in the violence.
Today, with Trump back in office, things are very different.
McInnes’ reinstatement to social media shows just how much the situation has changed for both the world and for his organization in recent months. In a pair of interviews with TPM, McInnes and another key Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio, discussed their roles in the organization, their recent connections with Musk and the president, and plans to get back in the street. And, while Tarrio and McInnes have distinct visions for the group, there are also rogue Proud Boys factions who have their own plans to be footsoldiers for the right — and perhaps even for the Trump administration.
Back Online
Few things illustrate the larger cultural shifts that have ushered in this new era for the Proud Boys as clearly as Musk’s transformation of Twitter.
In 2022, Musk, who regularly promotes far-right content on his own account, purchased the social media site. He renamed it X and promptly restored the pages of a number of users who were banned under prior content moderation policies designed to curb hate speech. The moves were a prelude to sweeping changes that rocked Silicon Valley and Washington when Trump won the presidential election in 2024.
Trump brought Musk into his administration. And, following Musk’s Twitter takeover and a wave of pressure from the new leadership in Washington, several high-profile tech and media companies re-evaluated their positions on politics and hate speech restrictions.
With the right wing ascendant in politics and the business world, McInnes has new high-powered allies, his social media account restored, and an emboldened public posture. When TPM called McInnes to discuss his re-emergence on X, we ended up in a wide-ranging, nearly hour-long conversation.
“There’s very little divide between the people already in politics and what the Proud Boys represent, which is political violence against dissenters.”
—Andy Campbell, author of “We Are Proud Boys”
Many of the things McInnes says are a mix of deflection, misdirection, and blatant lies, but when it comes to the story of Musk getting him back on X, there’s a good bit of public evidence to back up his version of events. It’s all right there on the site.
The moment came amid the outpouring of rage and calls for retribution that followed the assassination of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk last month.
On Sept. 18, eight days after the shooting, McInnes weighed in on the brief suspension of the late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which was part of a broader backlash against both public figures and private citizens who made critical comments about Kirk’s legacy of bigotry. Some observers pointed out the obvious hypocrisy among those on the right who touted Kirk’s reputation as a free speech absolutist while tamping down on free speech. McInnes responded to the debate on Compound Media, the subscription site where he hosts a show on which he publicly launched the Proud Boys in 2016.
McInnes’ take on Kimmel and the broader effort to silence Kirk’s critics was, like so much of his output, a combination of hard-right politics, bravado, and violent threats.
“It’s not consistent with our values, and I don’t give a fuck,” he said. “Fuck you. You kicked me in the balls, I gouge out your fucking eyes.”
“We’re hypocritical,” he continued. “This is a fucking war. Fuck you. You got me fired, I get you fired. … We’re going to make them all suffer.”
McInnes’ rant apparently struck a chord with many on the right — including Musk.
A few days before McInnes made his post, he attended “Unite The Kingdom” in London, a rally hosted by British nationalist Tommy Robinson that featured an unruly march with over 100,000 people and a video message of support beamed in from Musk. According to McInnes, he and right-wing vlogger Carl Benjamin connected at an afterparty for the event and Benjamin promised to “fix” his Twitter ban. As McInnes’ take on Kimmel gained traction in right-wing circles, Benjamin shared it in an X post addressed to Musk’s handle on the site.
“Gavin McInnes ought to be restored @elonmusk. He’s no more extreme than anyone else, and has been in the wilderness way longer than everyone else, too,” Benjamin wrote.
Some 30 minutes later, Musk responded.
“What’s his handle?” the billionaire asked.
By the next day, McInnes’ account on the site was reinstated. McInnes said he “absolutely” believes Musk played a role in his return to the site.
Musk, X, Robinson, and Benjamin did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
For his part, McInnes said he would love to get the billionaire to appear on his streaming show even as he recognizes it might be far-fetched. McInnes was less certain about inviting Musk to drinks with the Proud Boys, noting one of the group’s initiation rites involves being repeatedly punched.
“He doesn’t look like he’d be much of a fighter,” McInnes said of Musk.
TPM pointed out that Musk previously claimed he was ready to fight his fellow billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg. McInnes changed his tune.
“Oh yeah,” McInnes said. “Okay. He’s in.”
‘The Godfather’
Along with the return of their social media megaphone, several key leaders of the Proud Boys received something even more important in the initial months of the second Trump administration: freedom.
On his first day in office, President Trump granted pardons and commutations to nearly 1,600 people who were charged or convicted for taking part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. This included six men who had been prominent Proud Boys at the time. One of them was Enrique Tarrio, who became chairman of the group shortly after McInnes stepped down.
Tarrio had received a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy and other charges after federal prosecutors successfully proved he played a role in coordinating the large contingent of Proud Boys who were present as the Capitol was stormed and were among the first people to breach the barricades. Tarrio, whose sentence was the longest related to the attack, has called the case against him a “miscarriage of justice.” He was not in D.C. during the attack and has argued that he and the Proud Boys did “nothing wrong” that day.
Tarrio is now out of prison and, after his own back–and–forth odyssey with Twitter bans, was able to open a new X account during Musk’s tenure.
“We’ve kind of gotten our voice back in the public,” Tarrio told TPM.
The newfound freedom and platform have come at a pivotal time for the Proud Boys. Weeks after the Capitol attack, news broke that Tarrio had served as a government informant against multiple criminal operations in 2012 when he was facing fraud accusations. Those reports, along with fallout from the Jan. 6 arrests, helped fuel a divide in the Proud Boys, with more radical factions denouncing Tarrio and their national leadership. For his part, Tarrio claimed he had not hid this aspect of his past before it made national headlines.
“It was no secret. I talked about it on my podcast,” Tarrio said. “I worked with the government to bring down a sex trafficking ring.”
The group ultimately split into so-called “standard” and “national” factions. This rift, the convictions, and a recent decrease in their mobilizations for rallies and other events contributed to the impression the Proud Boys were down for the count.
Tarrio said the “standard” members are more extremist and were attracted by the notion the group was instrumental to the violence at the Capitol.
“Most of those standard guys are post-January 6 Proud Boys,” Trarrio said. “They thought they were joining, like, some type of fucking militia.”
Tarrio claimed the split was “initiated” by Brien James, a former neo-Nazi skinhead.
“They’re not members of this group,” Tarrio said of James and the “standard” chapters. “They took the logo and they took the colors, and most of them were people that we kicked out.”
James, who says he is a member of the Indianapolis Proud Boys, told TPM he “certainly played a part” in the split, though he credits a Jacksonville, Florida chapter for coming up with the “standard” name. James said the break was motivated by “two factors.” He cited Tarrio’s work as an informant and claimed he had not wanted the Proud Boys to be in Washington on Jan. 6. Tarrio disputes James’ version of events surrounding that day.
Many of the “standard” Proud Boys chapters maintain a presence on Telegram, an encrypted social network that is popular on the far right. These groups refer to themselves as “autonomous” chapters and dub those aligned with Tarrio the “Federal Proud Boys.” Along with Proud Boys regalia and denunciations of Tarrio, their pages are filled with explicitly violent rhetoric as well as white supremacist and neo-Nazi content. TPM reached out to over half a dozen “standard” chapters for this story and did not receive a response.
Amid these divisions, Tarrio and McInnes have been reasserting themselves in the group both publicly and privately.
In the aftermath of Jan. 6, the Proud Boys made some structural changes that both men indicate were a response to the legal pressure. Tarrio says the group now has “like 60 to 70 percent autonomy” for individual chapters.
“You can’t just, like, come around and build a Proud Boy chapter without the consent of the presidents of the entire organization,” he explained.
The group is also being more secretive about who exactly those leaders are.
“I made a rule in 2022, back in February of ‘22, that we’re not going to speak publicly as to what our national structure is, whether there’s a chairman role now or not, just out of precaution and safety,” Tarrio said.
Tarrio indicated part of the inspiration for decreasing the visibility of national leadership came from the Oath Keepers, the other organization hit with seditious conspiracy convictions following Jan. 6.
“They’re no longer in existence because they had a very rigid structure,” Tarrio said of the Oath Keepers. “They take out the leader, they take out some of the leadership, and that’s it.”
McInnes and Tarrio both want the Proud Boys to be different.
“It’s got very similar structure to the Hell’s Angels,” McInnes said when asked about the current shape of the Proud Boys.
“One of the reasons I quit … is because a gang has two legal definitions. One, it has top-down management and, two, it does illegal activities,” McInnes continued. “Hell’s Angels, if they do illegal activities, they do it as individuals. Yeah. There’s no, like, and there’s no top-down dictum.”
Even with the new levels of secrecy and less official titles, both Tarrio and McInnes are being more open about their own roles in the Proud Boys than they have in years.
“I would say that we’re influential. That’s how I would phrase it,” Tarrio said. “That’s never stopped, you know.”
While the chapters have a great deal of autonomy, Tarrio said both he and McInnes have “mediated some internal issues” and acted as a “voice of the club” in public. While no one in the group publicly holds the chairman title, McInnes had no objection when I asked him about prior reports that other members were describing him as the Proud Boys’ “godfather.”
“Sure. That works,” McInnes said of the title.
Tarrio, whose X account identifies him as the “shogun” of the Proud Boys, concurred.
“He’s the founder, the Godfather, as you say,” Tarrio said of McInnes.
The fact Tarrio and McInnes were talking in detail about the group’s structure shows they are “newly emboldened,” said Andy Campbell, an editor and reporter at HuffPost who wrote the indispensable 2022 book “We Are Proud Boys” chronicling the group’s rise. “Until the pardons, at least, they said that there was no national structure anymore,” Campbell said.
Campbell also pointed out that the comments were at odds with McInnes’ past distancing from the group.
“There’s plenty of evidence suggesting that he never stepped down,” Campbell said of McInnes. “Now, post-pardon, he’s admitting it.”
‘Infiltrating Local Government’
Both McInnes and Tarrio want to see the Proud Boys more involved in traditional politics. McInnes pointed to members of the group in Miami who secured positions inside a local GOP organization as a potential model going forward.
“They were infiltrating local government,” he said, adding, “I think that’s a cool route to take.”
Even as they seek to gain political influence, the group’s leaders tend to make comments that don’t square with their actions. McInnes said it was “false” to say they’ve appeared at rallies with white supremacists despite several documented instances of this. While the Proud Boys proudly identify as “western chauvinist” and politically incorrect, both Tarrio and Mcinnes maintain that the Proud Boys are not white supremacist or violent. They often point to the fact some members are people of color, including Tarrio, who is Cuban-American. McInnes, who first gained fame as a founder of VICE Magazine and has consistently tried to frame the Proud Boys as a continuation of that irreverent, hard-partying ethos, even disputed the idea they should be called “far right.”
“We’ve had gays in the club. … They’re all doing drugs all the time. It’s — they’re like fiscally conservative libertarians,” McInnes said.
Unlike McInnes, Tarrio doesn’t “dispute” the term “far right” as a descriptor for his politics. Tarrio also didn’t deny that the group has appeared alongside extremist groups and even has white supremacists among its ranks. However, he blamed that on press coverage.
“From our inception, the media did such a poor job in covering us … that actual people with those views thought, ‘Oh, well, I have a home here,’” he said, adding, “We’ve had those members slip through the cracks.” Tarrio insisted the membership had dealt with white supremacists in the organization and forced them to either leave or “assimilate.”
Over on the “standard” side of the club, James agreed that truly staunch white nationalists and neo-Nazis would likely be uncomfortable in either version of the organization. However, he also said they would not be rejected from membership.
“I think everybody here could be pro whatever they are. So, the white guys could be pro-white … there are guys who aren’t,” James explained. “More importantly, we can have conversations around a fire with other men, like masculine conversations where people can be very honest.”
James said he’d moved on from his own past in skinhead and white supremacist organizations because he felt it would be more “effective” to “get more people involved.” While he is working in a more diverse coalition, James hasn’t necessarily changed his perspective.
“I see all of society right now — or at least half of society — going further to the right,” James said. “Some of that does entail white people being less apologetic about their views.”
While McInnes and Tarrio both deny white supremacy is part of the Proud Boys, James believes there is no “distinction” between standard and national when it comes to tolerating those elements in their ranks.
“I don’t think we’re any more or less racial than the rest of the Proud Boys,” James said of his group.
Perhaps the one clear thread in Proud Boy politics is staunch support for Trump. Tarrio noted that has persisted despite any internal discord with the more extremist elements.
“We’ve always had a rift,” Tarrio said. “It was a whole bunch of different subcultures … that never had a nexus, and kind of the nexus was Donald Trump.”
McInnes agrees that Trump is a unifying figure for the Proud Boys.
“He’s just — he’s one of us,” McInnes said of Trump. “I love that he refuses to kowtow to this whole shame culture. He’s a Proud Boy in many ways.”
In May, Tarrio had the chance to meet Trump at the president’s private beach club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago.
“I went with a member to go have dinner. You know, obviously, I’m trying to see the president … and then I got the chance,” Tarrio said. “It was anywhere between a seven and 10-minute conversation.”
The meeting has previously been reported on. However, Tarrio revealed something new about the encounter. Along with thanking Trump for the pardon, Tarrio said he “was advocating for the pardon” for four of the other Proud Boys who received commutations of their Jan. 6-related sentences rather than full pardons.
TPM reached out to the White House and asked about the possibility of additional pardons for the Proud Boys. A senior White House official said, “Any decision on pardons or commutations will come directly from the President, and the White House will not comment on any speculation regarding such actions.”
With Trump term-limited, Tarrio expected the group to actively support Vice President J.D. Vance — or any Republican nominee — in the 2028 election.
“I will campaign aggressively for whatever the Republican candidate is,” Tarrio said.
Tarrio has also previously mounted a campaign of his own. In 2020, he announced he was running as a Republican for the Florida congressional seat that was, at the time, occupied by Democrat Donna Shalala. Tarrio raised barely any money and did not ultimately appear on the ballot. While the seat is now occupied by a Republican, Maria Elvira Salazar, Tarrio indicated he could be a primary threat.
“My goal is a federal seat and, specifically, I’d love to be a congressman,” he said. “I’d love to represent my district.”
Back in the Streets
While Tarrio has his eyes on the campaign trail, he said the Proud Boys are also ready to get back to their more standard ground game — showing up on the scene of raging political controversies.
In recent weeks, Trump and his administration have taken aim at Chicago, Illinois and Portland, Oregon. Framing small protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions as dire threats to the rule of law, the president has called in the National Guard. He and other officials have made wild, exaggerated allegations characterizing the cities as lawless hellscapes. Portland, specifically, was a key flashpoint during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, as Proud Boys and other far-right groups regularly brawled with demonstrators. Now, Tarrio said they will return to the city “at the end of the month.”
“We made a decision that we are going to go back to Portland. At what capacity? I don’t know, but I could guarantee you it’s going to be safe,” Tarrio said. “We’re not gonna go fucking, like, balls to the walls and go to the ICE facility and beat the shit out of people.”
His comments were in keeping with the past suggestions from Proud Boys leaders and members that the group is not inherently violent, which might be their most unbelievable claim of all. Prominent Proud Boys have often characterized their violence as solely a response to the left. Both Tarrio and McInnes echoed that notion in their conversations with TPM.
“As I always say, we don’t go to their things,” McInnes said. “They come to our things.”
However, moments later, McInnes also suggested the Proud Boys should continue staking out “Drag Story Hour” events. Tarrio also indicated such events are a “very specific situation” where they should try to “shut this thing down.”
“I’m not anti-LGB. I’m anti-TQ plus whatever,” Tarrio said.
“It might appear that the Proud Boys and our other extremist groups have sort of lost their power and dwindled out. I think that the pardons will make them more emboldened, but I also think that the campaign of political violence that they were on in Trump’s first term is now part and parcel of Trump’s administration.”
—Andy Campbell, author of “We Are Proud Boys”
James and the “standard” Proud Boys discuss the possibility of violence in more direct terms and are unapologetic about their desire to “step up and defend the country.” James said those chapters are also fixated on Drag Story hour. He framed it as part of a “battle” that also includes opposition to NARSOL, a group that advocates for reforming and eliminating sex offender registries.
“We have been more than willing to go out and take to the streets to put a stop to that,” James said.
That issue, he said, is more of a current focus for his chapters than politics.
“All this political shit, it ain’t like we’ll completely disengage from it, but we saw how Trump, like, wiped away everything that went on the last four years in 30 days. And our assumption is we’re caught in a cycle where that’s going to happen again,” James said. “While all that stuff is worthwhile and it can’t be ignored, we’re switching gears because we believe there’s a huge problem with pedophilia and sex offenders.”
The mainline Proud Boys are clearly more willing to get involved in electoral politics, but McInnes again deflected when asked if that could include fighting another election result like they did in 2020.
“It’s so weird to be fixated on this possibility of violence from the Proud Boys when … America has been up to its fucking neck in left wing rioting for years,” McInnes said.
Data has consistently shown that the right wing — not the left — has been responsible for more extremist political violence in recent years.
Amid all the misinformation and efforts to distance himself from violence, McInnes framed the Proud Boys’ role in the new Trump era in distinctly militant terms.
“The gloves are off,” he said. “We tried to play nice. You threw us in jail. … It’s a street fight now.”
McInnes backed off slightly when we pointed out the contradiction with his effort to paint the group as peaceful.
“It’s a cultural war. Like, we’re going to get you fired,” McInnes said. “We don’t care if you, you know, call us names. We’re not apologizing anymore. But it’s not like an actual, ‘I’m gonna go fuck you up.’”
For his book on the Proud Boys, Campbell documented extensive instances of violence by the group. He also watched hours of McInnes’ online broadcasts.
“From the beginning … Gavin McInnes on his live show was not cautious about his desire for the Proud Boys to commit violence,” Campbell said.
Campbell offered his own prediction for what would happen if the Proud Boys return to the streets of Portland or anywhere else.
“They’re going to defend themselves in the same way that they always defended themselves, which is to say, march through the city attacking protestors, collecting propaganda, and facing zero consequences for it,” Campbell said.
But Tarrio offered an interesting rationale for why the Proud Boys might not need to rage in the same way they have in the past.
“There’s no reason to protest things. We’ve kind of gotten what we wanted,” Tarrio said, adding, ”The culture has shifted right.”
To some extent, Campbell had a similar point of view.
“Trump is saying he wants to attack the citizenry, and wants to lock up dissenters of American culture, and LGBTQ people,” Campbell said. “There’s very little divide between the people already in politics and what the Proud Boys represent, which is political violence against dissenters.”
Campbell also noted that Trump has federal troops at his disposal.
“It might appear that the Proud Boys and our other extremist groups have sort of lost their power and dwindled out. I think that the pardons will make them more emboldened, but I also think that the campaign of political violence that they were on in Trump’s first term is now part and parcel of Trump’s administration,” Campbell said. “They’re going to be waiting in the wings for whatever battle Trump decides to send them on. But for now, Trump doesn’t need them. Trump has his own forces.”
There are indications some of the most radical Proud Boys are moving to join those forces.
To carry out Trump’s mass deportation project, the Department of Homeland Security has launched an ICE recruitment drive accompanied by a social media push that has included nationalist themes and even imagery associated with online white supremacists. The extremist “standard” Proud Boys chapters, which maintain a presence on the encrypted social network Telegram, have taken notice.
On Aug. 12, a Telegram account for the Cape Fear Proud Boys in North Carolina posted ICE recruiting materials from the DHS X page along with its own note urging followers to sign up.
“An ad like this attracts exactly the type of man ICE needs,” the post said. “The ICE hiring window is still open. … Wanna deport illegals with your absolute boys?”
The post concluded with a link to the ICE jobs page.
On Sept. 18, James shared a message on Telegram claiming several of the group’s “standard” members had become ICE agents.
“Trump already gave so many of us jobs with ICE,” James wrote. “We may have to start recruiting soon to fill all these spots.”
Yet, as McInnes and so many other Proud Boys often have, in his call with TPM, James insisted it was all just a joke.
“Half of everything we do is a troll,” he said.
