Cory Graves
During A Brief Stint As The Proud Boys’ Leader, Idiotic Denton Lawyer Jason Lee Van Dyke Unintentionally Exposed the Names Of The Group’s Top Brass. Whoops!
It hasn’t been a happy holiday season thus far for radical right wing “fraternity” known as The Proud Boys.
In case you’ve missed any of the flurry of activity from the male-only posse of so-called “Western chauvinists” over the Thanksgiving media lull – including the rise and fall of a North Texas-based leadership figure – here’s a brief timeline to catch you up.
- On November 19, a government-issued memo officially declared the outfit to be “an extremist group with ties to white nationalism.”
- On November 21, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes announced via YouTube that he was stepping down from his post, partially in hopes of securing lesser charges for the group members arrested for a New York rioting case in October and, allegedly, out of worry that he’d one day face RICO charges given the group’s new extremist classification. He would be replaced at the head of the organization by the retired Denton lawyer Jason Lee Van Dyke, a known racist who had long served as a lawyer for the Proud Boys and who is widely known both inside and outside of the lawyering profession as a “fraudulent buffoon, violence-threatening online-tough-guy, vexatious litigant, proud bigot and all around human dumpster fire.”
- On November 24, Van Dyke and a scrambling “Elders Chapter” posted a revised and redacted version of the Western Chauvinist organization’s new bylaws, accidentally doxing their new leaders in the process. Van Dyke attempted to post the Proud Boys bylaws online with the names of its new top leaders redacted. But instead of doing it with a marker and then scanning the docs — a go-to move for any experienced and/or sane — he simply highlighted it black in his word processing program. Meaning? Anyone who highlighted the black-out portions of the those bylaws could clearly see that it listed the the names Harry Fox, Heath Hair, Enrique Tarrio, Patrick William Roberts, Joshua Hall, Timothy Kelly, Luke Rofhling and Rufio Panman as Proud Boys elders. Even after multiple stories and even tweets aimed directly at Van Dyke have pointed out his mistake, his error-filled document has remains posted online in its original form at of the time of this writing, some nine days later.
- On Thursday, November 29, the Proud Boys dropped Van Dyke as a member and as its lawyer, issuing an official statement on their website that was attributed to the doxxed elders. Van Dyke, who claims his leadership lasted all of 36 hours, was replaced atop the Proud Boys hierarchy by a man named Enrique Tarrio from the group’s Miami chapter.
Yeesh.
That’s a pretty not-great stretch there for the Proud Boys — and possibly even worse for Van Dyke, who couldn’t even get an organization of shitbags to support him for any considerable amount of time.
As far as learning more about the inner workings of the bizarre Proud Boys organization, though, it’s been a pretty great little run. While many of the Proud Boys’ offbeat codes of conduct have admittedly been known and widely publicized for years, it’s still worth noting some of the more ridiculous portions of the bylaws, which, as noted above, we’ve now received, word-for-word from the group’s top brass thanks to Van Dyke’s incompetency.
Take, for instance, these following rules:
- “Membership in the Fraternity shall be limited to persons who were born male, who currently identify as male.”
- White supremacists, members of the alt-right (“or any person who is a member of an organization identifying as such”), terrorist organizations or Antifa are prohibited from membership.
- No “wanking” more than once per month unless “the act occurs during a consensual sexual contact with a female who is not a prostitute.”
- The second degree of initiation into the fraternity involves prospective members reciting the names of five breakfast cereals while current members punch them: “Immediately after reciting the Fraternity Creed, the supervising brother shall instruct to probationer to name five breakfast cereals. At that time, the five brothers surrounding the probationer shall begin punching the probationer only in the arms and torso area of his body until such a time as he recites the names of five breakfast cereals. The supervising brother shall count the cereals aloud and the punching shall immediately cease once either (a) the fifth breakfast cereal is reached; or (b) the probationer indicates through words or actions that he is unable to continue and wishes to withdraw from the Fraternity.” At which point the new initiate is to receive a hug from the supervising brother and everyone that punched him.
It’s no wonder that current Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio claims many of the group’s bylaws are “jokes” meant to bring the left and right together. Hey, if you can’t laugh at yourself…