[News] The Proud Boys Take Over the Streets of Portland

[Anti-Imperialist News]

/*Two articles follow*/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/19/the-proud-boys-take-over-the-streets-of-portland-oregon/ 



  The Proud Boys Take Over the Streets of Portland, Oregon

by Howard Lisnoff <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/howard-lisnoff/> 
- August 19, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Antifa marches at Trump’s inauguration and the condemnation is almost 
universal, including from some on the political Left. No one is harmed, 
but initially charges are brought against Antifa.

The Proud Boys <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys>, a 
neo-fascist, far-right group march in Portland, Oregon (an “unpermitted” 
march), although they have committed acts of violence, and they are 
allowed a presence on the streets.

Now, just what part of the First Amendment are officials in Oregon 
missing? Hate speech is permissible, but hate speech leading to violent 
acts is not. The Proud Boys marched on and they drew other far-right 
hate groups with them as always happens at these marches.

Look at these “very fine people” as pictured in the /Guardian 
/(“Portland rally: Proud Boys vow to march each month after biggest 
protest of Trump era,” 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/17/portland-oregon-far-right-rally-proud-boys-antifa?CMP=share_btn_link>/Guardian/, 
August 17, 2019).  Good pictures are worth a thousand words and those 
words are supplemented because counter-protesters far outnumbered the 
Proud Boys, from whom they were carefully segregated. Horrifying as the 
rally was, and crucial to the far-right’s dangerous growth, the 
Hater-In-Chief, Trump tweeted on the day of the right-wing rally that he 
was considering categorizing Antifa as a terror group. How many people 
have been killed by Antifa?: 0. How many have been killed by white 
supremacy and Naziism? Hundreds of millions, with about 70-85 million 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties> killed during 
World War II alone!

How many anti-fascists who marched against racism and hate in Oregon 
were simply against hate and willing to put themselves on the streets 
against that hate and belonged to no group in particular? Many, many!

Besides hate having its day on the streets once again, Trump repeats his 
vicious and violence-inducing rhetoric that has given violent groups 
across the US the chance to not only gain credibility, but grow their 
numbers and develop a sense of empowerment that casts them as rightful 
players in the political system. If this isn’t reminiscent of Hitler’s 
rise to power in Germany, with his tens of millions murdered, then what is?

Former FBI agent Michael German, interviewed on /NPR /following the 
far-right Charlottesville, Virginia riot, accurately depicts those hate 
groups at that riot and how police and Trump responded to the 
rightwing’s murderous rampage (“Hate Groups’ Core Changed Little Over 
The Years, Ex-FBI Agent Says,” 
<https://www.npr.org/2017/08/15/543583533/hate-groups-core-has-changed-little-over-the-years-ex-fbi-agent-says> 
/NPR/, August 15, 2017).

Here’s a key segment of the German /NPR/interview:

    GERMAN: Well, that disavowal [Trump’s]  was very reluctant and late.
    And the white supremacist groups got the message from that,
    that this is sanctioned. But more important is that the police in
    these cases – and Charlottesville isn’t the first one. They were two
    in Berkeley. There was one in Sacramento and in Huntington Beach,
    Calif. – are policing these protests very differently, where they’re
    allowing violence and these running street battles to happen. And
    that is – that, again, is a state sanctioning of this kind of
    violence that gives – that makes them far more dangerous.

/*Howard Lisnoff* is a freelance writer. He is the author of Against the 
Wall: Memoir of a Vietnam-Era War Resister (2017)./

________________________________________________________________________________
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/16/portland-far-right-rally/


  Riotlandia: Why Portland Has Become the Epicenter of Far-Right Violence

Arun Gupta - August 16, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Portland, Oregon is_ bracing for a storm of far-right violence. In 
July, Joe Biggs, a former staffer 
<https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-war-inside-infowars>at the far-right 
conspiracist site Infowars announced an “End Domestic Terrorism 
<https://www.facebook.com/events/330882521120737/?active_tab=discussion>” 
rally in Portland this Saturday. Its aim: the local antifa 
<https://rosecityantifa.org/articles/2019-8-17/>movement.

Biggs, who’s encouraged date rape and punching transgender people 
<https://www.mediamatters.org/right-side-broadcasting/new-host-unofficial-version-trump-tv-encouraged-date-rape-and-punching>, 
told followers on Twitter 
<https://rosecityantifa.org/articles/2019-8-17/>to bring guns, declared 
“DEATH TO ANTIFA!!!!!!”, displayed a spiked weapon 
<https://twitter.com/Johnnthelefty/status/1157872808707235841>saying 
that it “will be put to good use,” and posted memes about death squads 
murdering leftists before his account was suspended.

The “End Antifa” rally organizers include Enrique Tarrio, chair 
<https://heavy.com/news/2018/11/enrique-tarrio/> of the violence-prone 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/nyregion/proud-boys-trial-gavin-mcinnes.html>Proud 
Boys, which is designated as a general hate group 
<https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys>by 
the Southern Poverty Law Center, and “Rufio Panman,” the alias of Ethan 
Nordean, a brawny street fighter whose knockout punch of an antifascist 
in Portland in June 2018 was used as a recruiting tool for the Proud 
Boys 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/14/proud-boys-far-right-portland-oregon>.

This week’s rally was called after right-wing media personality and 
provocateur 
<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/andy-ngo-portland-antifa>Andy 
Ngo was attacked in Portland on June 29 while filming a Patriot Prayer 
rally heavily outnumbered by antifa. A video 
<https://twitter.com/Jimryan015/status/1145067852375851008>shows him 
being punched, kicked, and hit with coconut milkshakes and silly string 
<https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/06/30/26731412/portland-police-offer-no-proof-that-protesters-had-milkshakes-with-quick-dry-cement>by 
masked individuals.

    Portland has joined Berkeley, New York, Charlottesville, and Seattle
    as liberal cities that have become flash points for far-right
    violence since Donald Trump took office.

Since then, social media has erupted with dozens of graphic, deadly, and 
specific threats from the far right to “shoot to kill antifa 
<https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1146188483339464706>.” A gun scope 
was superimposed over a photo 
<https://twitter.com/egoldmanrevolt/status/1153459971910242306>of two 
Portland activists with the words “End Domestic Terrorist’s.” In another 
image, a knife-wielding hand bloodily slashes the throat of an 
individual labeled “Rose City Antifa,” one of the oldest antifascist 
organizations in the country.

Portland has joined Berkeley 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/15/police-pro-trump-berkeley-leftwing-activists-court-case>, 
New York 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/nyregion/gavin-mcinnes-proud-boys-nypd.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes>, 
Charlottesville 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/09/21/gavin-mcinnes-alt-right-proud-boys-richard-spencer-charlottesville/>, 
and Seattle 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/man-shot-milo-yiannopoulos-protest-seattle-trump-interview>as 
liberal cities that have become flash points for far-right violence 
since Donald Trump took office in 2017. But Portland is unique in that 
the far right has turned the city into a regular battleground.

Why Portland? The city presents a unique mix of past and present white 
nationalism; policing that enables the far right; weak political 
leaders; and a legacy of antifascist organizing. Combined, these 
elements allow the far right to stage violent spectacles with few legal 
consequences against their ideological enemies — antifa, liberals, 
so-called PC culture, cities — while using social media to glorify the 
violence as a recruiting tool and proof of their racial and masculine 
virility.

_It starts with_ Oregon’s history. The state was envisioned as a white 
utopia 
<https://gizmodo.com/oregon-was-founded-as-a-racist-utopia-1539567040> and 
barred black people from residency until 1926. To this day, Portland is 
the whitest big city in America, with a population 
<https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/portlandcityoregon/BZA115216>that 
is 77 percent white and less then 6 percent black, and that racial 
homogeneity has proved for decades to be fertile recruiting ground for 
racist hate groups.

Joseph Lowndes, associate professor of political science at University 
of Oregon and co-author of “Producers, Parasites, Producers: Race and 
the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity,” said that “in the 1980s, for 
groups like Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance, Portland was a choice 
spot for their ‘10 percent strategy.’ That meant if the city was 10 
percent or less people of color, the far right could organize 
working-class whites there as they believed they wouldn’t meet much 
resistance.”

Oregon currently has a disproportionate number of hate groups 
<https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2018/02/oregon_plays_prominent_role_in.html>and 
militias, while in the broader Pacific Northwest, many far-right groups 
participated in and were energized by the Bundy family’s armed takeover 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/12/22/cliven-bundy-case-ranch-standoff-fbi/>of 
the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon in early 2016.

Speaking of the massive brawls in Portland, Lowndes said, “There is 
another legacy of the anti-authoritarian left, anarchists, and 
anti-fascists who also since the 1980s have been a militant 
street-oriented left.”

That’s where the police come in. As the far right has turned Portland 
into a battleground nearly a dozen times since 2017, local journalists 
have revealed how police affinity for the far right has enabled its 
violence.

Internal documents obtained by the Willamette Week, Portland Mercury, 
and The Guardian reveal that Portland police see the far right as “much 
more mainstream 
<https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/06/27/portland-police-saw-right-wing-protesters-as-much-more-mainstream-than-leftist-ones/>” 
than the left. Text messages between a police lieutenant and Patriot 
Prayer leader Joey Gibson, who’s been hit with felony riot charges 
<https://www.opb.org/news/article/joey-gibson-criminal-charges-cider-riot/>, 
show that the police fed him real-time information 
<https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/02/14/25885836/texts-show-protective-relationship-between-portland-cops-and-patriot-prayer>about 
the movements of antifa during street skirmishes, and gave him advice on 
how his most notorious brawler, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, could avoid being 
arrested 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/01/exclusive-video-shows-portland-officers-made-deal-with-far-right-group-leader>on 
two separate occasions. In June 2017, when The Intercept 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/06/08/portland-alt-right-milita-police-dhs-arrest-protester/>asked 
the police about Toese, a spokesperson claimed that they didn’t know who 
he was and said their real concern was about the actions of antifascist 
counterprotesters.

There’s more. Portland police launched a criminal investigation 
<https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2019/07/31/portland-police-launched-a-criminal-investigation-after-joey-gibson-complained-about-an-antifascist-demonstrator/>against 
an activist based on material provided by Gibson. And during an 
extremist rally on August 4, 2018, police discovered Patriot Prayer 
members with loaded guns on a garage rooftop directly overlooking the 
protest 
<https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2018/10/15/23710274/members-of-patriot-prayer-brought-loaded-firearms-to-roof-before-august-protest>. 
The police let them go and didn’t inform anyone for two months 
<https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2018/10/15/23710274/members-of-patriot-prayer-brought-loaded-firearms-to-roof-before-august-protest>, 
including Mayor Ted Wheeler 
<https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/10/armed_protesters_were_on_portl.html>, 
who serves as police commissioner. In the Portland metro area, there are 
cops who are Islamophobes, 
<https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2019/06/27/report-shows-portland-police-officer-had-posted-in-extremist-facebook-groups-promoting-islamophobia-and-anti-government-paramilitary-organizations/>an 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement private prison that employed a Proud 
Boy 
<https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2019/06/25/ice-contractor-cuts-ties-with-vancouver-proud-boy/>,and 
a sheriff’s deputy 
<https://www.columbian.com/news/2018/jul/20/clark-county-sheriffs-deputy-fired-proud-boys-sweatshirt/>affiliated 
with the Proud Boys as well. All of which fits a national pattern of 
white supremacists infiltrating law enforcement 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/the-fbi-has-quietly-investigated-white-supremacist-infiltration-of-law-enforcement/>.

_When it comes_ to left-wing protests, the bias comes into sharp focus. 
On June 4, 2017, police unleashed less lethal weapons on leftists, 
illegally kettled nearly 400 people 
<https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/05/portland_police_oversight_repo.html>, 
recorded their IDs, and retained the information 
<https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/05/31/city-review-reveals-portland-police-did-not-delete-photos-of-protesters-ids-despite-promises-to-do-so/>despite 
assurances that they wouldn’t. The American Civil Liberties Union of 
Oregon 
<https://www.aclu-or.org/en/sunday%E2%80%99s-protests-portland-were-trial-first-amendment-and-policing>said 
of the incident, “No other police force in America uses crowd control 
weapons with the regularity of the Portland Police Bureau.”

Just over a year later, on August 4, 2018, the police launched an 
unprovoked assault 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/04/patriot-prayer-to-carry-guns-at-portland-rally-as-fears-of-violence-rise>against 
peaceful protesters, nearly killing one 
<https://www.thedailybeast.com/portland-protester-wounded-by-police-i-thought-i-was-going-to-die?ref=author>when 
a flashbang grenade punctured his helmet, resulting in a brain 
hemorrhage.  And on May 1 this year, 20 Patriot Prayer members led by 
Gibson and accompanied by Ngo attacked antifascists at a ba 
<https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/08/07/26934813/portland-police-arrest-right-wing-protester-for-may-day-assault-at-cider-riot>r, 
fracturing the vertebrae of one woman (whose name was released by Ngo 
<https://twitter.com/antifada161/status/1145199931902189568>, leading to 
threats of violence against her, according to her friends). The bar 
owner claimed that it took police an hour to respond 
<https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-abram-goldman-armstrong-cider-riot-attorney-patriot-prayer-lawsuit/>despite 
numerous emergency calls. The police released a lengthy statement 
<https://katu.com/news/local/portland-police-defend-response-time-to-may-day-fight-in-northeast-portland>seeking 
to justify why they didn’t respond until after the fight had ended 
despite knowledge of the attack as it was happening.

After Ngo was attacked in June, the Portland police tweeted out 
disinformation 
<https://twitter.com/portlandpolice/status/1145106839618502656>that 
coconut milkshakes being handed out by antifascists were laced with 
concrete. Conspiracists 
<https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/how-conservative-figures-turned-flimsy-rumor-about-concrete-milkshakes-portland-meme>like 
Jack Posobiec helped the tweet go viral; it was turned into fact 
<https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/how-a-dubious-claim-of-cement-milkshakes-in-portland-became-a-right-wing-meme/>by 
right-wing media, treated as credible 
<https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/06/30/26731412/portland-police-offer-no-proof-that-protesters-had-milkshakes-with-quick-dry-cement>by 
mainstream media, and incited angry right-wingers to deluge antifascists 
with death threats 
<https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/07/15/26808599/activists-calls-on-city-to-retract-inflammatory-milkshake-tweet>. 
Days later, Portland City Hall was evacuated after a bomb threat 
<https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/07/portland-city-hall-evacuated-due-to-report-of-bomb-threat.html>, 
possibly related to the incident.

Police bias against the left is nothing unusual 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/nyregion/nypd-proud-boys-protests.html>in 
America. The difference is that Portland lacks a counterbalance. 
Following the June 4, 2017, rally, someone who worked closely with 
Wheeler told me, “The mayor’s office is scared of the police.” The 
source explained that inside the police control center that day, police 
said not to interfere with tactics even when members of the mayor’s 
staff said “that looks like excessive use of force.”

    “The mayor’s office is scared of the police.”

“There’s fear inside of the mayor’s office [that] if they pushed on the 
police, there would be a police slowdown or strike,” the source said. 
“Within the police department, there are institutional biases toward 
Patriot Prayer and white supremacy.”

Eileen Park, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, said, “Those 
allegations are false. The Mayor’s Office has always respected and 
supported the work done by the members of the Portland Police Bureau,” 
adding that “they are true professionals and can always be relied upon 
to do the right thing to protect our city.”

Contrast this with New York City. When 10 Proud Boys assaulted 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/nyregion/proud-boys-trial-gavin-mcinnes.html>antifascists 
in Manhattan last October, police “stood by doing nothing,” according to 
the New York Times 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/nyregion/nypd-proud-boys-protests.html>, 
and failed to arrest any of them. But in a city that is majority 
minority and home to more than 3 million immigrants, politicians were 
swift to blast the police inaction 
<https://www.thedailybeast.com/nypd-looks-to-charge-9-proud-boys-with-assault-for-manhattan-fight>, 
forcing the New York Police Department to start identifying suspects and 
making arrests.

In Portland, however, political cowardice is the rule. Evidence 
indicates 
<https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2019/02/20/portland-police-built-a-convincing-case-against-tusitala-tiny-toese-for-a-june-2018-assault-but-prosecutors-didnt-take-it-to-court/> thatthe 
Multnomah County District Attorney, which has jurisdiction over 
Portland, has been as lax in prosecuting far-right lawbreakers as police 
have been in arresting them. It’s not because the office doesn’t know 
who they are: Antifacist researchers in Portland have identified dozens 
of right-wing extremists 
<https://twitter.com/identifypdx/status/1160414066696830977>who 
instigated and participated in streets fights on June 30, 2018, 
including Tarrio, the current Proud Boys leader. More than a year later, 
not one of those identified has been arrested in conjunction with that 
rally. And Tarrio appears so unconcerned about arrest that he is listed 
as a leader of Saturday’s rally.

Media coverage hasn’t helped. Other than the alternative weeklies and 
The Guardian, reporting on the far right has been “both-sidesism” at 
best and cringeworthy at worst. The editorial board of The Oregonian, 
the main daily newspaper, has castigated anarchists as “punk fascists 
<http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2017/05/is_portland_done_with_punk_fas.html>” 
over relatively minor property damage (revealing that no one there 
apparently knows the history or definition of fascism), while allowing 
one of its columnists to act as a useful idiot 
<https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2018/10/elizabethhovde_the_misundersto.html>for 
Gibson by calling him a “modern-day prophet” preaching “love” and “unity.”

Lowndes said the problem of silence about the far right is pervasive in 
the state. “There has been nothing coming from the legislature, the 
governor’s office, congressional representatives,” he said. “It’s a 
white political culture that has a high tolerance for far-right and 
white nationalist organizing, and seems reluctant to address it for fear 
of alienating conservative voters.”

If violence is averted in Portland, it may be because of the white 
nationalist who allegedly massacred 22 people in an anti-Hispanic 
rampage in El Paso earlier this month. That appears to have motivated 
the FBI to visit Biggs 
<https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/08/will-proud-boys-antifa-showdown-mark-a-tipping-point-for-portland.html>, 
who then reportedly said that “he wants a peaceful demonstration and has 
told his followers to keep their weapons at home.”

Days after the El Paso shooting 
<https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2019/08/07/far-right-brawler-ian-kramer-arrested-for-felony-assault-and-other-crimes-for-may-day-attack-at-cider-riot/>, 
police began arresting Gibson and five members 
<https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2019/08/15/patriot-prayer-leader-joey-gibson-will-face-criminal-charges-in-may-day-riot-his-lawyer-says/>of 
his band for attacking antifascists at a bar in May, despite the fact 
that their faces and actions had been public for more than three months. 
This week, the leader of the Oath Keepers announced that his Northwest 
militia was quitting the rally, 
<https://oathkeepers.org/2019/08/oath-keepers-will-not-be-participating-in-the-august-17-rally-in-portland-or/> citing 
as one reason the work of antifascist researchers compiling violent threats.

Kristian Williams, author of “Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in 
America,” said, “If this crackdown is in response to El Paso, this fits 
a pattern of police giving latitude to right-wing violence until a 
threshold is crossed. The violence is allowed to go on much longer and 
cause much greater damage than would ever be allowed on the left.”

-- 
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