The Proud Boys are a far-right group who had many of its members just pardoned by Donald Trump over the January 6th attempt to take over the United States capitol. Those who have wished for that sentence to not be true in our utterly dystopian world had part of their request granted today, as legally speaking, these dolts aren’t the Proud Boys anymore.
In June 2023, Donald Trump’s wannabe brownshirts lost a $2.8 million default judgement to a Washington Black church that was attacked by its former leader Enrique Tarrio and several of his goons after a pro-Trump rally in December 2020. The New York Times is reporting today that “under a ruling by a Washington judge on Monday, the infamous far-right group was stripped of control over the trademark ‘Proud Boys’ and was barred from selling any merchandise with either its name or its symbols without the consent of a Black church in Washington that its members vandalized.”
Things are really shitty right now so let’s just bask in the beauty of that sentence for a while. Let it marinate for a bit. Roll it around in your skull. Enjoy a taste of what happiness used to feel like. We can come back to this blog in a little bit.
OK that was nice, I needed that. Ready for another hit? Per the Times: “The ruling also clears the way for the church to try to seize any money that the Proud Boys might make by selling merchandise like hats or T-shirts emblazoned with their name or with any of their familiar logos, including a black and yellow laurel wreath.”
God yes that’s the good stuff. I’m old enough to remember when the American right talked about personal responsibility and consequences for their actions ad nauseam, right up until they all fell into a cult dedicated to a man who embodies the antithesis of those values, and it’s nice to see the universe remind us that despite the messiness of our earthly squabbles leading us into a darker age, universal principles like hubris still exist.
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