The FBI considers the neo-fascist gang the Proud Boys to be an “extremist” group, new documents from a Washington state sheriff’s office reveal. A 2018 internal affairs report from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office in Vancouver, Washington, states that the “FBI categorizes the Proud Boys as an extremist group with ties to White Nationalism.” The internal affairs report — which outlines an investigation into a sheriff’s deputy’s membership in the Proud Boys — states that the “Proud Boys were publically [sic] categorized as an extremist group by the FBI in 2018 … ” The FBI has never publicly described the Proud Boys as “extremist,” but the internal affairs documents show the federal agency is willing to do so when instructing local law enforcement. The Proud Boys, a self-described fraternity of “western chauvinists,” is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group has been implicated in acts of political violence across the country in the last two years, but has nevertheless been embraced by certain factions of the Republican party.

Mashable Tech Gavin McInnes, founder of the neo-fascist gang the Proud Boys.

The internal affairs report — provided to HuffPost by the government transparency group Property of the People — was written by Michael McCabe, headquarters commander at the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. “The FBI has warned local law enforcement that the Proud Boys are actively recruiting in the Pacific Northwest and that some in the group have contributed to the escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington,” McCabe writes in the report. McCabe told The Guardian that the FBI had classified the Proud Boys as “extremist” during a briefing. The Proud Boys is explicitly anti-feminist, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-transgender and anti-leftist. As an organization, it is also decidedly pro-President Trump. Its members often don red Make America Great Again hats with their black Fred Perry polo shirts. Gavin McInnes, who co-founded Vice before leaving the media company in 2008, founded the Proud Boys and often incites its members to commit acts of violence. “Fighting solves everything,” he has said.

In October, McInnes spoke at the Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattan, where he re-enacted the 1960 assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, a leader of the Japanese Socialist Party, who was killed on live television by a far-right ultranationalist. (McInnes called the assassination an “inspiring moment.”) After the event, Proud Boys members violently assaulted leftist protesters in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The NYPD arrested multiple Proud Boys members days later. Although McInnes has publicly rejected the racist “alt-right” — which has allowed the Proud Boys to attract members of color — he has close ties to white nationalist figurehead Richard Spencer. Jason Kessler, who organized the deadly white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017, was a Proud Boy. Alexander Ramos, who claimed to be a Proud Boy, was convicted in the beating of Deandre Harris, a young black counterprotester, at the Charlottesville rally. “The FBI’s failure to initially identify the Proud Boys as a violent organization allied with White Nationalists is hardly surprising given the FBI’s long record of targeting social justice activists as terrorists while turning a blind eye to the threat posed by the radical right,” Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People, told HuffPost in a statement.

New York Daily News via Getty Images A gang of Proud Boys attacks a group of anti-fascist protesters in Manhattan in October.