Canadian officials on Wednesday declared the far-right Proud Boys to be a terrorist organization, pointing to reports of members participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead.
The decision makes Canada the first nation to name the Proud Boys a terrorist group. The designation makes it a crime for banks or financial institutions to deal with the group’s assets and criminalizes providing financial or material support to the group, according to CBC News and government officials.
In an announcement Wednesday morning, officials said they were also designating 12 other organizations as terrorist groups, including three al-Qaida and five Daesh affiliates. Canada’s minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, Bill Blair, called the step an important one in the effort to “combat violent extremism in all forms.”
“Violent acts of terrorism have no place in Canadian society or abroad,” he said.
In a listing provided by the Canadian government, the Proud Boys were characterized as a “neo-fascist organization that engages in political violence.”
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“Members of the group espouse misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and/or white supremacist ideologies and associate with white supremacist groups,” the listing read. “The group and its members have openly encouraged, planned, and conducted violent activities against those they perceive to be opposed to their ideology and political beliefs.”
Officials added that the Proud Boys “played a pivotal role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.”
Several self-proclaimed Proud Boys have been arrested and charged for their alleged roles in the riot at the Capitol, including a New York man accused of breaking a window with a Capitol police shield during the riot and a Hawaii man who founded Proud Boys Hawaii, according to federal investigators and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
>> Related: 2 members of Proud Boys charged with conspiracy in Capitol disturbance
The Proud Boys were formed in 2016 by Canadian Gavin McInnes, who co-founded Vice Media.
In 2018, police arrested several Proud Boys members and associates who brawled with antifascists after McInnes, delivered a speech at New York’s Metropolitan Republican Club.
McInnes has described the group as a politically incorrect men’s club for “Western chauvinists” and denies affiliations with far-right extremist groups that overtly espouse racist and anti-Semitic views. McInnes sued the Southern Poverty Law Center, claiming it defamed him when it designated the Proud Boys as a “hate group.”
In response to the federal suit, which is still pending in Alabama, the law center said McInnes has acknowledged an “overlap” between the Proud Boys and white nationalist groups.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Cox Media Group
