Proud Boys Are Trying To Infiltrate Local Governments Across The Country

A new report suggests that current and former members of the Proud Boys are trying to run for local offices around the country after the media exposed them on the national level. This is a strategy that many extremists have tried to pull off in the past, some of them successfully, as it allows them to build up recognition while slowly injecting their extremist ideologies into one locale at a time. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A report from NPR this week says that members current and former of the proud boys are starting to run for local offices across the country. What they're doing, according to this report, is, is they're running scared because obviously their national image has been tarnished. You know, the proud boys are a self-described Western chauvinist group. They're known for going out there to protest, causing violence, getting in these, you know, horrific fist fights on the streets, 30 of them were arrested as part of the Capitol riot. So yeah, not exactly the most reputable people that you'd want running for a national office. So members of the proud boys say, well, what if we don't go now national? What if we try to avoid the spotlight and start small?

And that's exactly what they're doing. And again, some of the people running for office are former proud boys. They say, well, I don't agree with this. I didn't agree with them participating in the storming of the Capitol. So I'm not, I'm not one of them anymore. I still probably hold the chauvinistic views of the proud boys, but I still think I'd make a darn good addition to this city council over here in Topeka, Kansas, and that's what's happening. But folks, this is the extremist playbook. Okay. The proud boys did not come up with this strategy. We have seen it play out for decades if not longer here in the United States, especially down here in the south, we have seen the KKK. They openly at many points, actually advise their members to run for local offices, run for school board, run for city council, run for any open office locally.

Because once you get in, then you can spread your ideology. You can do it slowly. You can do it covertly. You can do it without the media paying attention because you're on a small local level. And then from there you work your way up. You've already built this good base in your hometown, people know you, people start to like you, and then, then you go national. And I firmly believe that is the proud boys strategy here. And again, this is something I, I did interviews actually with members of the KKK all the way back and I think it was 2004, 2005 and they confirmed that this is what they're doing. That they're actually out there encouraging their members to run for office locally.

And now we have the proud boys doing the same thing. This is what we have to look out for. And part of the reason they're able to do this and other extremists are, is because, yeah, there's not national attention on local elections. Right. We don't have a ton of local reporters going out there digging into the backstory of who's running for city council, but we should. We have local newspapers. We have local news stations, and I know most of them are owned by massive corporations, but maybe stop, take a look at some of these people and let the constituents know who they're actually voting for or against.