The 'proud boys' is a far-right organization that promotes political violence against leftists through direct involvement in political violence, promoting political assassination and male chauvinism. To execute their objectives as a politically inclined organization, they have implemented the use of propaganda to popularise their agenda. Social media has fallen privy to such a form of abuse and misuse by this organization. Social media platforms as Twitter and Instagram have been used widely in the spread of propaganda. Instagram as a social media platform has a strong influence on youth culture, identity, and perceptions of the world, with the application serving not only for youth to follow accounts that aspire to them but also for entertainment and identity building through memes. Media serves as powerful institutions for the socialization of youth, and content on the platform reveals that memes are serving as building blocks of ideological meaning (DeCook, 2018). Proud boys have circulated memes and content that are conservative, and that promotes in all ways promote white supremacy and ideologies promoting hate and are aimed at brainwashing the community to celebrate western ideals.
Proud Boys operate on an ideology that consists of both symbolic and physical violence, and they have humor and irony used this in gaining popularity and in recruitment trough their hashtags, memes, and GIFs. For instance, the proud boys use hashtags, such as #bitofagymlad #gains #Iamagymlad to convey their messages. Such an impression reveals how the boys made judgments about credible information, such as in the accounts of Brooklyn Beckham as a 'bit of a lad.' Twitter shut down the official account for the group, as well as McInnes' account, under its policy prohibiting violent extremist groups. At the time of closure, the group's profile photo was a member punching a counter-protester, an indication that the g violence against protestants. Another successful propaganda weapon the alt-right produced was its caricature of the Social-Justice War (SBS Dateline, 2018). In this case, they flooded YouTube with "cringe compilations" depicting liberal bloggers, protesters, and college students, mostly young women, screaming at opponents, calling out their racism, sexism, and hate speech. In an interview, Richard Spencer described these figures as a gift from the left to the alt-right. "I love Social-Justice Warriors," he said. "I might donate money to them or something. I want them to become even more, just, ridiculous happening. And there are only going to be two sides. Either you are with the SJWs, or you are with the Fascists."
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The proud boys have adopted a black Fred Perry polo shirt with yellow piping as their unofficial uniform. Fred Perry was previously associated with the mod subculture and skinhead groups, including the British national front. The proud boys also wear shirts that praise Augusto Pinochet's murders of leftists. The t-shirts also include a bizarre mix of messages and pop culture references that encapsulate The Proud Boys' ideologies. The shirts have brutal slogans that are used in their propaganda war of spreading western chauvinism and their beliefs as an organization. Most of the contents of the shirt and the hats are politically inclined since this group supports Trump's presidency. Notably, the shirts also have pictures of guns and other violent content that are used in accelerating violence against the Protestants. The proud boy shirts also have the group initials PB and POYB generally to popularise the group and basically for identification
References
DeCook, J. R. (2018). Memes and symbolic violence:# proud boys and the use of memes for propaganda and the construction of collective identity. Learning, Media and Technology , 43 (4), 485-504.
SBS Dateline. (2018). Meet the Proud Boys, a group that says it speaks for a new minority: the disenfranchised young male. YouTube Video. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7f4b1o6BKM
