Rick Fitzgerald in his Proud Boys uniform in Sacramento. November 21, 2020
Rick Fitzgerald–a former Fresno Police Officer who was fired after we exposed him as having been a member of the Proud Boys–is still active within the far-Right organization, and is now even running his own splinter chapter.
Background
On March 14, 2021, a group of men in Proud Boys clothing showed up to harass a protest against the sale of the historic Tower Theater in Fresno, CA. The theater was in a historically Queer district and its sale to a notably anti-queer church had upset locals who had an attachment to the local landmark. The Proud Boys, seeing an opportunity to publicly demonstrate their Christian bonafides in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community, were there to support the sale of the building and intimidate and clash with demonstrators.
Among the Proud Boys was Eddie Block, a right-wing streamer who had recently been kicked out of the Proud Boys, who stood with a few other men, wearing matching blue work shirts. Block’s house would later be raided by the FBI, over Block’s involvement and participation in the attempted pro-Trump coup on January 6th.
One of the men, Eddie stated on a stream, was his friend Rick, a Fresno Police officer. The problem for Rick (and Eddie) was that we immediately recognized Rick from a violent march he had taken part in in Sacramento, four months earlier. At that event, he had been wearing his Proud Boy uniform, a Fred Perry and a yellow and black kilt–Proud Boys colors.
The November 21, 2020 rally had turned violent quickly, as Proud Boys bypassed police barricades to march to Cesar Chavez Park–a location that they claimed to be an “Antifa stronghold.” Once at the park, a melee erupted, with Proud Boys assaulting a handful of activists who had been in the park. While Several Proud boys beat a teenaged activist, Fitzgerald could be seen grabbing and pulling the activist’s pro-Black Lives Matter flag. A fellow Proud Boy joined in and ended up wresting the flag away from the owner, who was being pummeled by several other Proud Boys. The far-Right group later posed with the flag as a trophy, loudly exclaiming that they would burn it. Rick Fitzgerald went to tend to Eddie Block, who had been knocked out of his wheelchair by a fellow Proud Boy while the two of them were assaulting a black man.
Fitzgerald went on to found a different local group, the Sons of ‘76, featuring several other men who had been Proud Boys members. He claimed to no longer be a member of the Proud Boys, but declined to denounce them (at the time). It was with this second group that Fitzgerald was participating outside the Tower Theater the day he was exposed.
Once Rick Fitzgerald’s identity and Proud Boy affiliation were exposed, word spread quickly. By the next morning, the Mayor and Chief of Police of Fresno had released statements condemning Rick’s association and Fitzgerald was suspended. He would later be fired. At the time, and in a video recorded before his exposure, Fitzgerald claimed that he had left the Proud Boys, due to the violence he had seen on display that day. However, He is currently running a splinter chapter, Proud Boys Clovis, under the pseudonym “Ghost”. In a now-deleted podcast episode, Fitzgerald also claims that he “never really left” the Proud Boys.
“Proud Boys Clovis”
Fitzgerald appears to have ruffled some feathers in the Fresno Proud Boys in the wake of his firing. In order to defend his own reputation, he threw his old group under the bus, calling them “[stuff]”. Perhaps this is what necessitated his creation of a separate Proud Boys chapter. Whatever the case, his splinter group quickly became a home for other cast-offs from his former chapter, including brothers Morris and Moses “Chango” Blanco. Dennis Newman, a man who has formerly been seen wearing the insignia of the Hammerskins splinter-group American Guard, is also a member of PBC, and has their logo tattooed on his hand. At the time of writing, we have received information that Newman appears to have been recently apprehended for violation of a court protective order.
After the foundation of the new chapter, Fitzgerald started a podcast, “Proud of Your Podcast” to share his thoughts, along with the gospel of the Proud Boys. Using the pseudonym “Ghost”, the four episodes he recorded followed a familiar pattern: He would spend much of his time reassuring the listener that aside from a very small minority, Proud Boys were a harmless drinking club, and the racism and bigotry they were accused of was the furthest thing from the truth. He would then spend the rest of his time espousing profoundly racist positions.
In a fifteen minute inaugural episode, posted in January 2023, Fitzgerald began by introducing himself (through his pseudonym). He went on to say that he “didn’t really leave the [Proud Boys]” but had instead been on hiatus. He also contradicted several of his earlier statements about the Proud Boys by calling them “a really outstanding organization, at its core” and “a worthy cause, a worthy organization”
In the show’s second episode, Fitzgerald lead off with his standard disclaimer that he wasn’t a racist. He then broke into several minutes of tirade about how there are too many multi-racial couples on TV. This is a position popular with racists, and something that non-racists usually just don’t think about at all. “Now all of a sudden, all these companies–and a lot of them, not just a few, but a lot of them–are like ‘now we can finally feel free to represent’. But back in the 70s, not so much. Thant’s a problem. And I do believe there’s a certain amount of indoctrination that goes on.” Fitzgerald is quick to point out that he has no problem with inter-racial couples, he just believes there is a vast conspiracy involving every major media agency to replace white couples with interracial couples. Such racist talking points are emblematic of the “white genocide” conspiracy theory, that a cabal of often Jews, are orchestrating the racial displacement of white people.
In a clip from his third episode, Fitzgerald returns to his favorite formula. “This is probably going to come off as a little racist,” he prefaces, before beginning another tirade: if whites are so oppressive, “Then why does Africa still suck today?” he asks. “Black people are like, ‘well we did this’ well then why didn’t you do it in your own country? Are you telling me you sent all your best slaves to America but you kept the shitty ones in Africa? We can’t build bridges here, we can only build huts. All the bridge-builders went to America. All the people who knew about cotton and agriculture, they all went to America?,” Fitzgerald laughed, before finishing with a dip into the pool of white genocide conspiracies: “We’re all going to go down to South Africa and kill all the white farmers and be like, ‘Oh shit, does anyone have Farming for Dummies? Because we don’t know what we’re doing now.’”
At some point following the release of his fourth episode–on March 2, 2023, Fitzgerald deleted his podcast’s page on the platform Spreaker. Around the same time, he also removed much of the information from his Telegram profile, which had previously identified him as the President of the Clovis Proud Boys chapter. Fortunately, we were able to archive all four episodes of his show prior to their deletion.
Rick Fitzgerald is currently suing the city of Fresno for libel and wrongful termination regarding his firing. The lawsuit is currently in discovery.
Complete podcast audio recordings:
Episode 1:
Episode 2:
Episode 3:
Episode 4: