andy campbell is a senior editor at huffpost.usses this and much more in his book "we are proud boys: how a right wing street gang ushered in a new era of american extremism." welcome to democracy now! congratulations on your new book. start off on this document you found and brought it to who the proud boys are. >> thank you. the proud boys put together this document preparation, like you said, for the event in new york city on january 10. it was sent to them on january 5, right before january 6, and it shows how meticulous the proud boys planning is before these events. in an, they are checking to see where police are, what positions they should be in, what they're allowed to bring in any jurisdiction, and how they can use their optics to get away with it after their violence. they certainly planned to clash with leftists at the event and they planned to "do the police's job for them." there's a lot of planning that goes into these. in that event actually fizzled out because of the carnage at the insurrection. but that is not t

joining us now, author and investigative reporter andy campbell. "we are proud boys: how a right-wing street gang ushered in a new era of american extremism." great to see you, andy. here's how you set things up for readers -- the proud boys managed to capture the hearts and minds of a substantial slice of the american public during the trump years. they enjoyed great public power and influence despite sitting atop a colossal wave of violent extremism that was causing irreparable damage to the country. to understand how they managed to build such an empire, you have to go back to their first few months in action when they were gaining popularity on the right. they were playing a double-sided game, fighting out the right wing's grievances in the street while at the same time buttering up the right people in the upper echelon of the gop. to that point, andy, you interviewed roger stone, who admitted to you he's been advising the proud boyings for years. tell us about that. >> right. this is about the embrace by the gop about the right-wing before. i s

andy campbell, a senior editor at the washington post, the author of we are proud boys -- andy, welcomee they especially successful online. >> the proud boys have taken what extremist groups used to do, which is only the violence, only the hate, and they have made it palatable for the gop and the national audience by gaining relationships within the gop and with media pundits who helped them sort of normalize the political violence, something that is a necessary defense against what they call the leftist threat, the gop's bogeyman. the proud boys on their parade of violence over the last six years, leading up to january 6th, we're getting tons of support from trump's inner circle and the likes of a fox news. you now, with qanon and with the white supremacist, all of these kind of come together in this machine of misinformation and violence, the proud boys stone alone on the gop foot soldiers. >> that is astounding, we talked about this after january 6th, how oprah paired kept hill was, right? security of capitol hill because they did not necessarily know what was coming, right? a lot of

andy campbell joins me now.post, where he covers extremism, misinformation, and the intersection with politics. as i mentioned, author of the book. we are proud boys, a right-wing street gang ushered in a new era of american extremism. andy, good to see you. >> thanks for having me. it's a pleasure. >> as you said, the proud boys are in the news, they have a very good year. >> absolutely, i mean, the proud boys see them fill -- see themselves as an enforcement arm of the gop, and take their orders from the rhetoric of donald trump and fox news. and they have normalized this six year parade of violence that has gone by by securing relationships within the gop, and upper levels. so it is through those relationships that the proud boys are allowed to continue these violence, we are not seeing this just in my got rallies anymore, but in every day american life. we are seeing abortion clinics, and children's hospitals, and libraries where people have drag queen story hours. and whatever tucker carlson and trump are c

>> they literally wrote the book on, a senior editor at the huffington post andy campbell his new booke through the origin story of the name, what that tells us about who the proud boys have become. >> thank you for having me on, you know bigotry, hatred, misogyny are built into this group. gavin mcinnis is a founder and a reactionary talk show host built the proud boys with bigotry in the rule set. he came up with the proud boys name as he was sitting down at the recital for his children. young boy with brown skin get up and sing a song from the aladdin musical called proud of your boy. that became a joke on his show. he made front of the little boy. he said he was disgusted by the little boy and cowboys became part of the name. with this race just racist massage in a space that he gave them he set them out in the street to fight over the gop's grievances so now you have proud boys and qanon adherence are creating this extremist atmosphere. it's really pushing it out to every day americans we saw going forward you're seeing every day american life being festooned with this political v

it is known, for example, that the artist andy warhol sincerely loved industrial soups and in one of his famous paintings 32 cans of campbell'sol is also depicted in the future, already a very rich man, he went to restaurants and ate almost nothing in them, but asked wrap up with you and gave away this food. uh people. uh, on the street to the poor, but he really preferred very simple food. he preferred restaurant food to burgers. the most ordinary he, but preferred the same instant soups , and fans of the book. john tolkien's the lord of the rings came up with a recipe for mushroom stew based on the novel, and they cook, of course, transforming into characters, like nikolai morozov in the hobbit frodoroda, the scene of a hotel near moscow, which was also created based on the book. it looks like the fat native village of the protagonist of the book. brother. we can read my mushrooms announced by frodo they were made by the best housewife in the world, mrs. privet. take your paws away, i'll tell you hobbits are very fond of mushrooms even more than ours, so young frodo fell down with some kind of hook to climb, but now there w