It’s been five years since a throng of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other right-wing extremists stormed the capitol building. A violent protest against the election of Joe Biden — or, really, an attempt at providing physical support for Donald Trump’s refusal to give up the presidency — the now infamous insurrection is still an ongoing matter of debate. In a seeming attempt at humanization, Michael Premo’s documentary Homegrownprofiles a handful of participants in the weeks leading up to the election in November 2021 and the subsequent, nationwide, so-called “Stop the Steal” uprisings.

Coming when it does, a year into Trump’s second non-consecutive term, the documentary has a distinctly dated feel. Much of the footage is illuminating, particularly when it focuses on the complexities of former Proud Boys chief of Salt Lake City Thad Cisneros, but a lot of what is included does not add much to an already crowded conversation. After its more interesting first hour, the intimate access gets tiresome, and it’s hard to say what is gained by being introduced to the personal lives of the members of a notorious hate group.

Homegrown Cannot Hold Its Ground Past Its First Hour

Premo’s main subjects are Cisneros and Chris Quaglin, the latter of whom was on the front lines of the capitol attack and was originally sentenced to twelve years in prison (Trump later commuted his and several other sentences after only four years). Between the two, it is Thad who complicates the popular conception of the Proud Boys, since he seems genuinely committed, if naively so, to finding common ground with liberals and leftists. Though, because of his tenuous collaboration with Jacarri Kelley, who helps to run the Northern Utah Black Lives Matter chapter, the Proud Boys had Cisneros formerly disavowed. One of the funnier throughlines of the film is the endless intra-organizational debates about who they should be aligning with. Protestations that they are not White supremacists are followed up by someone else arguing for the inclusion of Nazis.

Homegrown perhaps works best as an active illustration of how righteous indignation at legitimate social problems can be rerouted into bigotry. At the root of Cisneros and Quaglin’s complaints about the American political system is a frustration with financial insecurity and the growing wealth divide between the privileged and working classes. Wildest of all in this regard is the revelation that Cisneros found his way to the far right after having watched Michael Moore’s anti-Iraq war scourge Fahrenheit 9/11. Much of the working class has dissolved, and the rich are richer than ever before, but instead of focusing that anger at, say, the financial institutions that were bailed out in 2008, the Proud Boys have directed their members’ hatred at the Black population, the LGBTQIA+ population, and immigrants of all stripes.

But Quaglin is another story. The New Jersey carpenter does not exactly change the way one might perceive a typical Proud Boy insurrectionist. He owns an army’s worth of weapons, cautions against “illegal” immigrants, and is generally emblematic of a subset of the electorate that uses Black Lives Matter and the non-corporeal ANTIFA as catch-all boogeymen. He persistently makes reprehensible decisions in order to further his ingratiation into the organization, and goes to the January 6th riot despite his wife’s protestations — who was 8 1/2 months pregnant at the time.

Homegrown perhaps works best as an active illustration of how righteous indignation at legitimate social problems can be rerouted into bigotry.

Spending nearly two hours with Quaglin and his comrades is a difficult task. It would be one thing if being exposed to his brain was helpful in understanding his ilk, but there just isn’t much there there. He’s not particularly eloquent, he doesn’t have an official position, and he never learns his lesson — even after his wife files for divorce after his release from prison. Without anything new to say, it’s hard to justify being subjected to homophobic epithets and race-based mockery.

Both Cisneros and Quaglin are only all that interesting in their persistent hypocrisy. It’s baffling to hear far-right racists complain about the so-called violence of the left as they clutch AR-15’s and openly talk about guerrilla warfare against the government. There is some degree of sympathy expressed for the murder of George Floyd, but then Quaglin argues that “90%” of deaths by armed police are justified. “Don’t break the law,” he says.

Perhaps most noxiously, the Proud Boys are repeatedly seen chanting “we are western chauvinists/ we refuse to apologize for creating the modern world,” a declaration that is as bizarre as it is deplorable. Yes, these people aren’t exactly good role models, but it’s hard to point to a concise message we’re supposed to take away from getting to know people who speak of “traditional family values” as cover for racism, sexism and xenophobia. The title suggests these are homegrown terrorists, but is that really new? More pressing is a question the film doesn’t really answer: what are the roots that let them grow, and how do we weed them out?

Homegrown streams exclusively on the streaming platform GATHR on January 6th, 2026.