Proud Boys, Stand By

And Let The Little Ladies Help You Out

The neo-fascist, white nationalist Proud Boys are among the most dangerous curiosities in America’s Freakshow. Their cult came together to soothe and elevate a type of man - angry and resentful because, mostly, they are unwilling to evolve to be the kind of man a woman would actually want to bear children with. They have joined in manly manhood to do weird all-man stuff, desperate for anything but self-reflection that might help them get back in the drivers seat of life.

In 2016, they were the drooling pit bull behind the junkyard chain link fence when Trumpism came along and took wirecutters to their cage.

The Former Guy saw no harm in advertising his connection to them in his first 2020 campaign debate with Biden. Chris Wallace asked Trump to disavow white supremacy and tell white supremacist groups active at the BLM protests of the summer to "stand down." Trump replied, "give me a name" and Biden called out the Proud Boys.

TFG seized the opportunity to throw red meat to the base.

"Proud Boys, stand back and stand by, but I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem. This is a left-wing problem," Trump said.

Thus called upon by their Dear Leader, testosterone-mesmerized Proud Boys stood up and stood by — all the way to Washington. When Trump lost the election, they plotted what a jury has now decided was a seditious conspiracy. They showed up to be “security” for Roger Stone, and stack and breach, while their brothers-in-wife abuse and arms, the Oath Keepers, stockpiled weapons at a hotel just outside Washington DC, aiming to violently stop the peaceful transfer of power.

Meetings and phone and text contact between the convicted Proud Boys included contacts with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and Ali Alexander, an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rallies. Rhodes and the leader of the Florida Proud Boys was already convicted in November of the same charge. Ali Alexander roams free, although recently revealed as a total freakazoid, who entertained himself grooming teen boys on the internet, including sending texts asking for dick pics.

I’m on assignment out of the country this week so I’m going to reprise an observation about the insurrection that I don’t think has received enough legal or other attention. While the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers provide the muscle, and the military training, they couldn’t have been at the doors of the Capitol without an unsung Trojan horse that the DOJ, nor the J6 Committee have done much about.

I’m talking bout the “ladies” in the pink Women for Turnip bus and their allies in DC.

Women, the Trojan Horse of the Insurrection

Right wing women were the Trojan Horse of January 6, 2021.

As I wrote in The New Republic, I’ve studied the role of women in Trump’s misogynistic enterprise for five years, covering the evolution of conservative women in the years that preceded his rise. America’s most influential far-right women may be hobbled by subservience to the patriarchy, but they know exactly how to work it both to their own advantage and for the benefit of their movement. They use their perceived weakness as a tool to advance their covert ambitions, deploying hyperfemininity and fashion to mitigate the brutality of the cause. They trade the political dignity of all women for individual access to money and power.

While militia irregulars, Proud Boys, and other angry white males were plotting on Parler, obtaining military cosplay, and arming themselves with bats and flagpole battering rams in December and early January, top-level Trumpist women in Washington power suits were arranging park permits and lining up a large stage and three Jumbotrons, all in the name of women.Groups like Women for Trump and Women for America First were the advance guard of the Capitol riot: a diversion in lipstick and heels. Using hyperfemininity as a shield, they enabled a fascist rampage right under the nose of the federal authorities. Instead of clacking their knitting needles by the guillotine, they fingered their pearls as the rioters erected a gallows.

Women raised the money and signed the documents that enabled the president to broadcast his excitatory speech, sending thousands to violate the Capitol to hunt down his legislative nemeses, with fantasies of executing them on the gallows they had constructed outside.

None of them were going to break a manicured fingernail in the scrum.

Women for Trump and allied rightist women’s organizations were the Trojan horse of the deadly insurrection. Wouldn’t the Park Service have been more wary about granting an Ellipse permit to the Proud Boys or their allies?  Wouldn’t the Capitol and D.C. police have been on high alert if the Oath Keepers instead of the riders on the pink EMPOWER bus had organized the gathering in their name?

As the insurrectionists continue to be identified and arrested, the pretty women inside the Trump Trojan horse have gone to ground. They have blocked journalists and locked down their social media accounts. Some have maintained their LinkedIn profiles, though, apparently confident that some respectable political or corporate job awaits them. There, they advertise their strategic communications and logistics skills, so recently at the service of a wannabe dictator’s spectacularly televised failed coup. Look for them soon on LinkedIn Myanmar.

You can read their full names and all about the tony jobs these women still hold, here.

And always thanks for reading, and thanks even more for subscribing.