In the song, the street rat promises his mother he’ll reform his bad behavior, which includes, but is not limited to, stealing and cavorting with a monkey in a fez. McInnes hated the treacly tune, placed back in the “Aladdin” songbook by the 2014 Broadway musical. It all began in 2015 when the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes, heard the song, “Proud of Your Boy,” at his daughter’s school music recital (you can see him explaining this here, mocking the child singer based on his perceived lack of masculinity and for being raised by a single mom). But “Proud Boys” is in fact an irreverent reference to a song that was cut from the 1992 Disney film “Aladdin.” The name can be read as an unapologetic affirmation of the things they stand for - which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, include so-called “western chauvinism” married to an anti-PC crusade mottled with anti-Muslim and baldly misogynistic rhetoric all dressed in Fred Perry polos. Perhaps the most curious fact about the Proud Boys, the violent far-right group President Trump appeared to call up to the reserves in the first 2020 presidential debate, is how they got their name.
