- The J6 committee on Tuesday aired video of Roger Stone reciting the Proud Boys' initiation oath.
- The 14-word oath was inspired by a popular white supremacist slogan, some experts told Insider.
- Stone, who denies being a Proud Boy, recited it at a 2017 'Cinco de Milo' event honoring Milo Yiannopoulos.
Tuesday's public hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol siege gave many viewers their first look at a disturbing video clip of longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone.
It showed Stone brashly reciting the Proud Boys' so-called "fraternity creed." Recording oneself reciting the creed is the first of four initiation steps for joining the violent, right-wing extremist group.
"Hi, I'm Roger Stone," he says in the brief black and white clip. "I'm a Western chauvinist, and I refuse to apologize for the creation of the modern world."
Extremism experts know the creed well and say its recitation made Stone a first-degree honorary member. Stone has denied being a Proud Boy.
Many experts say the creed is a thinly-disguised homage to white nationalism. Two people who advised the January 6 committee went even further, telling Insider that the 14-word creed is directly linked to "14 words," considered the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world, though other experts warned against making such a direct link.
Stone recorded himself reciting the creed in 2017, says Samantha Kutner, who studies violent extremism at the Khalifa Ihler Institute.
Kutner and the Institute advised the January 6 committee on the Proud Boys' alleged role at the forefront of the Capitol break-in.
"That happened on May 5, 2017, at a 'Cinco de Milo' event at some random mansion in Florida," Kutner told Insider of the Stone initiation clip.
"It was right after Milo Yiannopoulos lost his book deal with Simon and Schuster" over his white nationalist ties, she said of the ex-Breitbart editor who is now interning for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
"That was the event where Enrique Tarrio attended, and a Proud Boy actually recruited him" at the gathering, Kutner said of the extremist group's former national chair. Tarrio is currently jailed along with four other alleged Proud Boys leaders, awaiting a December trial on seditious conspiracy charges.
Stone, who is mired in a Justice Department lawsuit over $2 million in outstanding taxes, did not respond to messages requesting comment.
But Kutner and other experts told Insider that after recording himself reciting the creed, Stone was a first-degree honorary member.
To reach second degree, prospects submit to a frat-worthy hazing ceremony: being beaten by fellow Proud Boys while shouting out the names of five breakfast cereals. Subsequent membership degrees require getting a Proud Boys tattoo and committing an act of violence against an enemy, such as a perceived member of antifa.
—Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) November 14, 2020
The video shown at Tuesday's January 6 committee hearing actually first went public immediately after it was taped — five years ago. It was briefly posted to YouTube the next day by Stone himself.
By February 2018, the Proud Boys were featuring the clip on their own YouTube channel, also since taken down, says Emily Kaufman, who tracks the Proud Boys for the Anti-Defamation League.
"They obviously saw this as a pretty significant endorsement," Kaufman said.
Within the year, the clip reached the mainstream media. The Daily Beast included the Stone initiation clip prominently in its January 29, 2019, feature, "How the Proud Boys Became Roger Stone's Personal Army."
The number 14
The "fraternity creed" was written in 2016 by Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes. It is 14 words long.
Kutner and other experts call that number a conscious homage to a darker and more widespread white supremacist and neo-Nazi slogan.
Known as "14 Words" — and coined by David Lane, a member of the domestic terrorist group The Order — it states, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."
"It's definitely something he did consciously when he wrote it," Kutner said of McInnes' word count.
McInnes used the words "white" and "Western" interchangeably, she and other experts said.
"Once, while on a show with a neo-Nazi host, he recited the '14 words' slogan, and simply replaced 'white' with 'Western,' knowing that 'Western' is code for 'white,'" she said.
"The number 14 is not a coincidence," agreed Heidi Beirch, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and another adviser to the House Select Committee.
"It is definitely a wink and a nod — and probably a lot more," to the Lane slogan and the number 14, Beirch said, which she said is common in neo-Nazi and white supremacy iconography.
"You see its symbology everywhere. People's avatars online have '1488' — so, 14 words and then 88 meaning 'Heil Hitler,'" Beirch told Insider, "H" being the eighth letter of the alphabet.
"It's all over the place. You see Nazis selling T-shirts for 14 dollars and 88 cents. It's completely permeated the culture."
It was Beirch who alerted the committee to Stone's initiation video, explaining to members the significance of the creed and its link to white supremacy in a detailed backgrounder report she sent to panel members, "The Role of the Proud Boys in the January 6th Capitol Attack and Beyond."
Kaufman of the ADL cautioned against drawing a direct link between the Proud Boys' initiation creed and the "14 Words," which her group calls the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world.
Jonathan Lewis of the George Washington University Program on Extremism, also cautioned against a direct link.
"I would be careful of tying them together explicitly," Lewis said of the "14 Words" and the Proud Boys initiation creed.
"But I think that the reality is, they are an organization that is rooted in right-wing ideology," he said. "It's rooted in white supremacy, bigotry, hate, anti-Semitism. These are ideas, concepts, narratives, that are a feature, not a bug, of the Proud Boys."
Extremism watchdogs agree that given his ties to both Trumpworld and extremism, Stone has been, and will continue to be, a central focus of the hearings.
On Tuesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin said Stone communicated extensively with leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, a network of anti-government militias, nine of whose members are also awaiting trial, currently scheduled for September, on seditious conspiracy charges.
The committee has thousands of encrypted messages from a chat named "Friends of Stone," as first reported in May by The New York Times, which said the chat's 47 members included leadership of both the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
Stone used members of both groups as security, Raskin noted Tuesday.