Five leaders of the far-right street-fighting group the Proud Boys will be locked up for nearly a century of combined time after a judge recently delivered sentences in their January 6 seditious conspiracy cases.
Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former leader of the now-dissolved national chapter, will serve the longest sentence to date of anyone involved on January 6 — 22 years — and will be about 61 years old upon his release. Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola, the other Proud Boys co-defendants in the case, were each sentenced to between 10 and 18 years in prison on various charges. The sentences are a big deal: They signal that there are consequences for helping to lead an insurrection that temporarily interrupted the peaceful transfer of power, and that violence from far-right militia groups — once fringe but now increasingly mainstream — can, in fact, be checked.
The sentences “reflect the danger their crimes pose to our democracy,” Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote in a statement. “The leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, learned that the consequence of conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power is 22 years in federal prison.” FBI Director Chris Wray echoed the sentiment: “[T]hose who attempted to undermine the workings of American democracy will be held criminally accountable.”
But these rebukes of the Proud Boys from the country’s highest law enforcement officers don’t mean the Proud Boys will disappear. Members will likely lean into a strategy they developed in the wake of January 6: decentralization — dissolving the national chapter and beefing up local ones — in order to mobilize on the front lines of the GOP’s culture war.
“The Proud Boys switched up their tactics dramatically in the wake of January 6,” Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups, told Vox. “They haven’t tried…
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