Proud Boys are literally just a drinking club, and like any group of young men who like to drink they're also up for a good brawl. They were effective against Antifa back in 2017 because it was still just small groups vs small groups, and that's where they had the advantage vs soy boys and untrained LARPers.
But in 2020 Portland, they're facing an
organized mob. A small group can't win vs a mob on strength alone, so they got BTFO yesterday. It looks like they were there to provide security for a QAnon/police/generic right wing whatever protest, which they've done in the past very effectively. But that was not the place or scenario where they could be effective, and it shows.
If they aren't going to update their tactics, they should stop doing these publicly staged confrontations.
(In one of the videos yesterday, when
the kids were getting hit by the bear spray, one of the leftists shouted "welcome to the pepper spray!" The Portland mob has built up an actual, biological resistance to mace/pepper spray over 3 months of rioting, as well as stocking up on professional gas masks. There was no way the Proud Boys were going to show up with mace, exchange fire, and win.)
If the Proud Boys stay home for the next few months, it'll be forgotten. Just another blip in the news cycle, and we get back to Scenario B optics.
The really aggravating thing is that this gave Antifa their only "win" in the last month. They got rocked by the Feds, shoved out by the State Police, and now are getting pushed around nightly by the PPB. They had no ZOMG WHITE SUPREMACIST incidents they could credibly blame for anything, and now they have one.