Cool: Proud Boys Channels Are Exploding on Telegram

As Twitter and Facebook boot accounts from their platforms, Proud Boys channels on encrypted apps are gaining new members at a rapid pace

Cool: Proud Boys Channels Are Exploding on Telegram Proud-boys-on-telegram

In light of mass deplatforming on big tech social platforms like Twitter, as well as the right-wing social network Parler doing dark on Sunday night, everyone from casual Trump supporters to far-right militants are flocking to alternative social networks such as the encrypted messaging apps Telegram and Signal. On Tuesday, Telegram announced that it had increased by 25 million users over the past few days, bringing its total user base to 500 million people.

Many of these new users have flocked to far-right extremist channels (essentially, group chats), where they are being subject to increasingly heated rhetoric, including threats of violence and organizing further during Inauguration Week. In particular, the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist organization that had a major presence at the storming of the capitol last week, is making a substantive play at organizing on the platform. Two major Proud Boys channels on Telegram, which Rolling Stone is declining to name, have exploded in use by at least 69 percent and 83 percent since January 5th, according to data from author of Against the Fascist Creep and professor at Portland State University Alexander Reid Ross, which he shared with Rolling Stone.

What’s more, their rhetoric has intensified. Even prior to the storming of the capitol on January 6th, one major Proud Boys channel run by one of its state chapter heads, which has a little more than 32,000 subscribers as of publication time, published a call for action after leader Enrique Tarrio was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor count of destruction of property after allegedly burning a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a D.C. church.

“Proud Boys stand up to the mob and our people get arrested. Not a peep from the GOP. It’s evident that anyone who stands up to the Marxist insurrection will made an example of,” the post read, concluding with, “Here’s the point: there is no political solution.” Another post reads, “They want you to shut up and comply, and they are warning you of what will happen if they don’t. What will you do, will you lay down and die the thousand deaths of a coward, or will you fight back against tyranny?”

.https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/proud-boys-telegram-far-right-extremists-1114201/

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Cool: Proud Boys Channels Are Exploding on Telegram

Cool: Proud Boys Channels Are Exploding on Telegram

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