If Harris wins, you will see armed protests

Not all of the proud boys welcomed Quested’s presence. “Some were very aloof, some were like, ‘f— you, you’re the media, I’m not talking to you,'” he says. But Quested found Tarrio “personable and very approachable… Enrique encouraged people to chat with us and they loved it Rest up. There was a reasonable contingent of them who were veterans and liked to talk about the conflict zones we’d been in.”

When asked to explain Trump’s enduring appeal to the American political right, he says, “(Trump) makes people feel. Emotion drives her rather than politics or ideology.” The former president is also good at articulating the frustrations of Americans, he says, especially white men. He thinks Trump will win the election (“that’s just my hunch based on his campaign”).

He found the Proud Boys far more interesting subjects than a meeting with Trump in 2010 at a National Board of Review awards dinner where Rest up was honored: “I met Tim Hetherington (the late Quested contributing photojournalist who was killed in Libya in 2011). He was telling us about Afghanistan and how we were wrong (Trump was advocating a complete American withdrawal from Afghanistan).

“We were like, ‘Okay, mate, but what makes you an expert?’ You don’t talk to him, he doesn’t even listen to you, because he’s thinking about what he’s going to say next.”

The Proud Boys aligned themselves with Trump loyalists Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, who claimed, without evidence, that election fraud propelled Joe Biden to the presidency. 64 days features scenes like Stop the Steal occupying the Georgia State Capitol building in November 2020. “January 6th was not a spontaneous event, it was in the works since the previous election,” says Quested.

The ferocity in which he chronicled 64 days he reminded Quested of going to Chelsea away games in the 1980s: “I went once with my father at Chelsea vs Derby and people were throwing chairs off the fans below, the police had set up a cordon and we were trying to get out… it’s the same thing. There is a shared sense of purpose, whether as a hooligan or a member of the Trump proto-militia; they are looking for brotherhood and a safe space where they can behave as they wish.”

Events reached a crescendo a few days before January 6, when the documentary was in its final stages. “We were sitting on that couch,” Quested recalls, pointing to a nearby couch, “and we were like, ‘Do we want to (film) another fight?’ But I thought we should be there. You can’t make a movie sitting on the couch!” Quested got out in the truck and joined his fellow cameramen Nico Lucas Sonnabend and Alex Spiess. “I thought there was going to be fighting, but I didn’t know they were going to storm the Capitol,” he says.

While Sonnabend filmed in the Capitol building, Quested stayed outside with the Proud Boys in the square below: “My camera got broken, I did a few little knocks and got (hit with) pepper spray and mace.”

The Proud Boys, he reflects, were overwhelmed on January 6. “They lost control of the situation when the crowd went berserk because there were people even more fervent than they were … if the protesters had managed to approach the speaker or the vice president. , there would have been even more carnage.”

Quested ended up being subpoenaed to testify at the Proud Boys trials (Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2023, while several other Proud Boys went to prison for seditious conspiracy and their role in the insurrection).