What is funniest to me is all the people thinking they've got a gotcha by making it sound like gay pride.

The origins of the Proud Boys is that it was a fan club for the comedian Gavin McInnes. If you don't know him yet, look him up, he's HILARIOUS and an anti-woke comedian.

There was an intern (or a classmate of his son, his story changed slightly later) that was singing [proud of your boy]from the Aladdin musical](https://youtu.be/DX4YR3ItBsw) and he thought it was really gay and funny. So he created a group from his fans that were supposed to learn to be men. It was basically a knock off of fight club, but it was never meant to be taken seriously.

After people started protesting his shows, especially on college campuses and often attacking his fans, the Proud Boys showed up to protect fans and make sure they could exit and enter.

They started kinda showing up to a lot of anti-fa and SJW rallys after that. Including the Charlotte riots. This is when CNN started calling everyone who was not on the left there racists and Nazis. At this point the Proud Boys had absolutely nothing to do with race at all.

After that though a lot more racists really did start joining.