Kowani wrote:After being declared a terrorist group, Canadian Proud Boys to dissolvePeople in Canada sporting Fred Perry polos or official Proud Boys insignia “are simply posers,” the far-right group said in a statement announcing that its Canadian faction is disbanding.
“There is officially no longer any Proud Boys in Canada, it’s officially dissolved,” Proud Boys Canada said Sunday on Telegram.
The Proud Boys is a white nationalist men’s group that was founded in 2016 by Canadian Gavin McInnes, who also co-founded Vice Media in the ‘90s. The Southern Poverty Law Center declared the Proud Boys a hate group for its misogynistic, Islamophobic, transphobic, and anti-immigration ideology. Several of the group’s members have been arrested and charged in connection with the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol in January.
In February, Canada designated the Proud Boys a terrorist organization.
“In the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, we’ve seen an escalation in support that signals an escalation towards violence, for a number of different groups, including the Proud Boys,” the country’s Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said at a news conference in February. Proud Boys Canada said in a statement that its members are “not terrorists or a white supremacy group,” but rather, “regular patriotic Canadians.”
“As a fraternity of men we had thought of [pursuing] the case legally but we have no financial support, given we are not funded by the rich,” the group said.
The U.S. Proud Boys said in a separate statement of their Canadian counterpart’s decision: “Their livelihoods and that of their future generations must come first. Fighting [the terror designation] in court will prove to be expensive and time consuming, Time that must be taken away from raising their children and loving their wives. They will continue to fight for western values...but now...as individuals.”
Finally! It's not like they were as active as the US one, but it's still refreshing to see far-right terrorism recognized as such, and not "people exercising their right to free speech"