At least they do not call themselves The Proud Men.
They are the Proud Boys, which befits their juvenile quest for attention.
Just look at 30-year-old Nicholas Radovich, who showed up in a Proud Boys hat and T-shirt at an Aug. 23 election night celebration following a triple win for right-wing school board candidates in Sarasota, Florida. The three victories tipped the board from a longstanding 3-2 liberal majority to a 4-1 conservative majority and the mood was giddy.
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When the time came for a group picture, Radovich and 50-year-old fellow Proud Boy John Hoel joined everybody else. The beaming people crowded around Radovich did not seem bothered by his Proud Boys attire. They did not seem to notice that he was flashing a white power hand signal.
But any number of people spotted it when the photo reached the twittersphere. The resulting furor was what anybody could have predicted. A reporter from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune sought comment from Bridget Ziegler, the one incumbent among the victorious school board members. She responded with a written statement. Her words carried all the more weight because she has played an active role in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “parents’ rights” campaign against “wokeism” in the schools. She was a co-founder of Moms for Liberty. And her husband is the vice-chair of the state Republican Party.
“The Proud Boys are a menace,” she said. “They aren’t involved in the work and they played no part in the win, but they attend public events and try to photo bomb every photo just to secure attention and headlines.”
The remarks prompted Radovich’s fellow Proud Boy, Hoel, to post a letter to Ziegler on Facebook on Thursday that was first reported by the Sarasota-Herald Tribune.
“Regardless of how irrelevant I may be, I felt the need to respond to Bridget Ziegler’s most recent insulting remarks,” Hoel wrote. “I was getting attention regarding a picture taken at the candidate’s election celebration event. Of course, this fact alone started the lefty tears flowing buckets of righteous indignation because I dared show my face publicly and this was expected.
“Unexpected was the arrogant response by Bridget Ziegler. When pursued for a comment regarding my presence at the event, Zeigler called the Proud Boys, obviously referring to myself and Nick Radovich, ‘A Menace.’”
Hoel noted that Ziegler had also called them “total yahoos, irrelevant.” He recalled that she had offered another word to describe the Proud Boys back in October of 2021 “during the COVID experiment in tyranny, [when] parents’ speech was all but being shut down by the communist members of our school board at meetings.” The Proud Boys had demonstrated outside the home of a liberal school board member named Shirley Brown, who supported a temporary restoration of a mask mandate in response to a spike in COVID cases. They had used a megaphone to accuse her of child abuse. Ziegler had risen to her fellow board member’s defense despite their political differences.
“Bridget referred to us as, ‘jackasses,’” Hoel recalled. “We took the insult in stride assuming Bridget was under a large amount of pressure. However, I have reached my level [of] tolerance and I personally have had enough.”
He went on, “My loving wife and I were invited to the recent victory celebration because of the efforts we put in during this vital campaign to flip our liberal school board. We did not, ‘Just show up’, and we did not photobomb. We turned around from speaking to other patriots at the party and were asked to be in a picture. We had no idea who was taking the picture or that it would be in the newspaper.”
Hoel insisted that the Proud Boys and their allies had played a significant role in the triple victory.
“We were greatly involved in getting you not simply elected, but through the finish line with an utter blowout victory!” Hoel said. “Despite what you believe, this is the reality of the situation.”
The Proud Bays had driven around a billboard denouncing one of the liberal candidates as a “LIAR” and a “WOKE DEMOCRAT.” They had distributed mailers saying the Democrat candidates were “BLM/PSL/Antifa Rioters, Planned Parenthood Babykillers / Want Grooming.”
The ultimate reality is that Ziegler and her fellow conservative candidates countenanced this madness and the Proud Boys are not going to mature and become reasonable and cease being a racist hate group because the liberal majority is out.
“We the people expect more than not masking or vaxxing our children, this is common sense,” Hoel wrote. “We expect to hear what long and short term goals you have for our schools. We expect to see change in the administration. We expect to see a culling of WOKE programs already in place that segregate our children based on race and that promote degeneracy and sexuality. We expect to see budget cuts that trim the excess fat off administration, that will then free up money to increase teacher pay and benefit the students themselves.”
He was not done.
“We want you to promote the laws of morality as given to us by our creator. It is important for our youth to learn how these laws work and how they affect our society. Freedom and morality move in parallel.”
That from a member of an outfit that was at the forefront of the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“The higher the morality in any given society, the more freedom,” he continued. “The lower the morality in any given society the less freedom. We have a morality issue in our schools because of the WOKE programs already in place, and these things happened on your watch. You now have the help you said you needed to affect change.”
Members of the Proud Boys rally against vaccine mandates on Nov. 20, 2021, in New York City.
GettySounds like Ziegler and the others may well be in for some rough school board meetings.
“I encourage you Bridget, to ease back on trashing the parents that live and work in your community,” he wrote. “Honestly, you know nothing about me personally or the frat I belong to. Instead, keep working for those who put you in a position of power. Most local conservatives see through mainstream media false narratives. It’s interesting that you pick and choose the narratives you tow the line for and those you do not. Many people have theories why this is but that’s for another time.”
Ziegler may end up seeking advice from Brown on how to handle being a target of the Proud Boys.
“The bottom line is this, if we are to put down this attack on our children, families and communities, WE WILL HAVE TO BE UNITED,” Hoel went on. “This attack is not going away simply because you were elected. We will have to continue to stand for what is right and I believe it will only get more difficult as time goes on. As long as we are doing what’s right, there is no need to attack one another.”
And since they are Proud Boys rather than Proud Men, you can imagine who presumes to be the infallible arbiter of what is right.
“To Bridgette and the additional newly elected school board members, we are counting on you to fulfill your oaths and to do not your will, but that of whom afford you this opportunity, ‘We the People.’”
Hoel ended with the Swahili word for freedom, which the Proud Boys have shamelessly appropriated as their battle cry.
“UHURU!”
Ziegler declined to comment beyond a statement that she also gave to the Herald-Tribune.
“I stand by my previous comments on the Proud Boys & their antics,” she said. “I am focused on delivering the reset at the board level that voters overwhelmingly came out to support and restoring the integrity, energy and attention to our core mission—quality education for all students.”
You could almost forget that the reset she contemplates is the DeSantis agenda. DeSantis’ most recent appointment to the state board of education was Esther Byrd, who has openly expressed support for both QAnon and the Proud Boys.
Now that was a jackass move.
