The Proud Boys Presented Dan Cox With a Gift. Now, He Says He Didn’t Keep It.
Earlier this month, Dan Cox was set to receive a gift for “service to our country” from members of the Proud Boys, a prominent far-right militia group. He didn’t receive the gift, and he’s not happy about it.
Members of the Proud Boys were offering Cox a private dinner, which the leader of a local Proud Boys chapter asked Cox to attend and bring with him a group of supporters. One of the things Proud Boys do is to put on a dinner in the homes of their followers. These dinners are a chance for all the attendees to connect and give each other “love.” The dinner would also be a chance for Cox to give a speech defending his “service to our country.”
But Cox was “uncomfortable” with this dinner, and he didn’t attend. The Proud Boys didn’t respond to Cox’s email requesting an explanation. A Proud Boys spokesperson told The Daily Beast that Cox should have reported the incident to them when he found out about it.
“He did not comply with our request and our request is clear: ‘We were interested in having a dinner with Dan to bring him support and to tell him that we appreciate the things that he has done for the cause of liberty and freedom,’” the spokesperson said in an email.
Cox is now organizing a campaign of his own—he’s setting up protest events in New York City, California, and Ohio in which he’ll give speeches to an audience of supporters from the other side of the protest.
The Proud Boys has a history of pushing people out of events it hosts because of what it perceives as the presence of “violent” groups. In February 2019, the Proud Boys had a table of eight at a New Jersey restaurant, but because the restaurant was hosting a party with a Ku Klux Klan leader (a “no-no” for the Proud Boys), the Proud Boys claimed there were no room for
