BELLE PLAINE, Canada (AP) – An Arizona woman charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol bragged in a Snapchat video that was recently recruited by a Kansas City chapter of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist organization he describes as “Western sexists” and has long banned women members.
Felicia Konold’s claim that the chapter recruited her and that she was “with them now,” even though she is not from the Kansas City area, has intrigued experts studying far-right movements.
“It’s ironic that such a deeply misogynistic organization has attracted someone who is a woman to join their organization,” said Eric Ward, senior member of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “He tells us that now there are discrepancies in the ranks of Proud Boys.”
Details of the video appeared last week in a likely affidavit against 26-year-old Konold of Tucson, accused of conspiracy, civil disorder and other federal charges. derived from melee.
Konold sounded almost euphoric at the Snapchat video he posted after the Capitol attack, saying he could never have imagined influencing the events that unfolded that day. Riu refers to “all my boys, behind me, keeping me in the air, stepping back. We did it (expletive)!”
To apparently prove her point that she had just been “recruited into a (explosive) Kansas City chapter,” she showed in the video a two-sided “challenge coin” that appears to have marks designating her as belonging to Kansas City. Proud Boys.
The challenge currency is membership, which seems to go against the rhetoric about women in the organization’s national leadership, Ward said.
“The fact that I have this coin, the currency of challenge, tells me there’s something going on around the genre in the Proud Boys, and it’s something worth paying attention to,” said Ward, who is also the executive director of the Western States Center, a civil rights advocacy group that works to promote gender equity.
Experts overseeing right-wing extremist groups point to the controversy that erupted when former mixed martial arts fighter Tara LaRosa tried in December to establish a Proud Girls affiliate on the social media app Telegram.
Proud Boys’ social media channels responded quickly and called auxiliary groups like Proud Boy’s Girls or Proud Girls “ridiculous ideas.” One post read, “Don’t walk around your head.” “Do you want to support us? Get married, have children and take care of your family. “
Alex DiBranco, executive director of the Research Institute on Male Supremacism, said there are differences between the Proud Boys chapters on whether women should be embraced as Proud Girls, although the group in general s ‘has become more hostile to women’s auxiliaries in recent years. Mothers of Proud Boys have posted about the Proud Boys meetings they organized for their children.
But DiBranco said people in his group who have worked on the issue are still unaware of the situation in which a woman was actually recruited to be part of Proud Boys ‘own chapter, which is strictly against Proud Boys’ rules. .
Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said for a period of time there were Proud Boys ‘Girls support groups made up of members’ wives and friends, but they were not allowed full membership. in the group. . He said, as far as he knows, none of these auxiliary groups are active at the moment.
“The group has been very clear from the beginning that it is a men-only organization and they hold misogynistic beliefs and believe that women are best suited for housework and should act as mothers and housewives,” he said. dir Miller.
Prosecutors allege in a court file that William Chrestman, who they described as the leader of Kansas City’s Proud Boys cell, “easily recruited” Felicia Konold and her brother, Cory Konold, of Arizona to unite -in the Proud Boys group of Kansas City.
Neither his defense attorney nor his father responded immediately to messages requesting comments.
The Proud Boys have been known to incite street violence against protesters. The group gained widespread attention during a presidential debate in September, when then-President Donald Trump famously told them to “stand back and stand by.”
Prosecutors allege that as of December, the Proud Boys encouraged their members to attend the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, DC. A large group of them, including Felicia Konold and other members of her Kansas City cell, were captured on video marching together and later entering the U.S. Capitol.
While there were many white women in the Jan. 6 protests, white supremacist groups tend to be dominated by white men, DiBranco said. Groups like QAnon are usually popular with women, but supporters of Proud Boys and supporters of QAnon gather in such protests. The anti-vaxxer movement against vaccines is dominated by women.
“Those blockade protests exposed their members to these elements of a far-right coalition of which these women could not be a part,” DiBranco said. “It’s possible that women went from anti-vaxxer to QAnon and other types of conspiracies.”