{"id":18406,"date":"2025-12-22T14:18:34","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T13:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=18406"},"modified":"2025-12-22T14:25:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T13:25:02","slug":"das-ende-der-proud-boys-wie-eine-schwarze-kirche-den-namen-einer-hassbewegung-uebernahm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/das-ende-der-proud-boys-wie-eine-schwarze-kirche-den-namen-einer-hassbewegung-uebernahm\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of the \u201cProud Boys\u201d \u2013 How a Black Church Took Over the Name of a Hate Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many readers are now asking what became of the Proud Boys \u2013 that far-right group that once served as Trump\u2019s street army and played a central role in the storming of the Capitol. The answer is as unexpected as it is symbolic: their leaders were convicted, many of them later pardoned by President Trump \u2013 their structures are fractured, and even the name \u201cProud Boys\u201d no longer belongs to them.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is one of those ironic turns that only America can produce. One of the oldest Black churches in the country, the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington D.C., now owns the trademark rights to a movement that once tried to intimidate it. The name \u201cProud Boys,\u201d a symbol of violence, machismo, and white nationalism, now officially belongs to a congregation whose roots go back to the time of slavery \u2013 a place that once honored Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To the best of knowledge and belief, Mad Aster is a shell company associated with the Proud Boys, created solely for the purpose of protecting the Proud Boys trademark from an adverse judgment resulting from the Church\u2019s lawsuit against PBI, as well as from potential claims by other creditors of PBI and the Proud Boys.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Court documents show that \u201cMad Aster\u201d was nothing more than a front company \u2013 founded to save the name \u201cProud Boys\u201d when the legal noose had already begun to tighten. According to the lawsuit, the company was registered only days after the dissolution of the original Proud Boys International LLC, apparently with the sole purpose of shielding the trademark from an impending judgment by the Metropolitan AME Church and from potential creditor claims. A legal shield, empty in substance but rich in intent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The story begins on a cold December evening in 2020. After a pro-Trump rally, members of the Proud Boys marched through downtown Washington. Around 10 p.m. they reached the red-brick building at 1518 M Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20005, just a few hundred meters from the White House. Before the eyes of bystanders, they tore a large \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d banner from the fa\u00e7ade of the Metropolitan AME Church, carried it triumphantly through the streets, shouted racist slogans, and finally burned it near Black Lives Matter Plaza. The scene, filmed and circulated online, was no accident but an act of political intimidation \u2013 a symbolic threat against a Black congregation that has endured for nearly two centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n