It Could Happen Here - How Portland Beat the Proud Boys
Episode Date: September 7, 2022The gang sits down to talk about Portland's first Proud Boy free summer since 2017. Find Robert's article about it here: https://newlinesmag.com/argument/how-portland-stopped-the-proud-boys/See omnyst...udio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Ah!
It Could Happen Here is a podcast that you're listening to.
And, you know, mostly we talk about problems that you should be aware of.
Sometimes we talk about solutions. And today, we're kind of going we talk about problems that you should be aware of. Sometimes we talk about solutions.
And today, we're kind of going to talk about a solution.
Today is one of our famed Good News episodes.
So everybody, everybody celebrate and also give your name for the folks at home.
Yay, I'm James.
Yay, I'm Gare.
Yay, I'm Chris. Wonderful. That was beautiful wonderful guys that was perfect that was that was completely natural
just just like we practiced um so the thing that the thing that is noteworthy and the thing that
we're celebrating and also explaining today is that this summer we we're recording this
what like a day into sept, two days into September.
So we are we are.
Yeah, it's September 1st.
So we have officially gotten through the summer without a right wing rally in Portland that degenerates into a gigantic brawl.
This is the first year that has happened since 2017 so starting in 2017 patriot prayer and the proud boys and other
affiliated groups would very regularly and they would do it throughout the year but particularly
during the summers um hold protests and marches and these all had different themes they were
the second amendment rallies rally against marxism rally in support of the fucking cops
the him too rally all sorts of stupid, stupid
fucking names. But the main purpose of them all was so that there would be gigantic fistfights
between, you know, Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer Brawlers and anti-fascists. That was the reason
to hold these events. And they got increasingly gnarly and increasingly violent until everything
culminated in the summer of 2020 and this massive trump
caravan through the city with like thousands of trucks people shooting paintballs and
spraying mace and throwing shit off the back of trucks and then a patriot prayer member named
aaron danielson got his ass shot to death uh by an anti-fascist during a somewhat unclear
altercation outside of a parking garage.
Uh,
what I can say is that everyone involved was heavily armed.
Um,
and yeah,
after that,
uh,
there were some more very ugly fights,
but,
um,
an increasing like thing that happened was that there would be gunfire at
these protests.
And the next year,
um,
at an anniversary fucking fistfight thing uh
a right-wing demonstrator fired into a crowd of anti-fascists in downtown portland who returned
fire and drove him off he was arrested um a bunch of there was a big stupid fight at a k-mart in
another part of town the same day an abandoned k Kmart parking lot that held a massive brawl.
And several of them got, several of the Proud Boy types got real nasty charges from that one after the police, as they generally did, chose not to take any kind of action.
And then, you know, things kind of petered out and nothing, there have not been any right-wing
rallies since. There was one mass shooting attack on a weekly racial justice protest in Portland earlier this year, where a fascist fired into a crowd of women who were doing corking duty.
He killed one woman and he wounded four other people. And yeah, he was taken down, shot twice in the hip by a protester who was armed security for that march.
And after that, there hasn't really been anything.
And this is the interesting one of the things that there's a number of things that are interesting here.
But one of them is that this has occurred while Proud Boy chapters are recording record recruitment.
There's more new chapters of the Proud Boys than there were prior to January 6th. And there have been at least 200 something right wing gatherings around the country
with like Proud Boys and other affiliated groups in attendance since January 6th. So nationwide,
the kind of rallies that Portland's been seeing since 2017 got more common, and they didn't happen
at all in Portland this year. And that's what we're here to talk about today. I think there's a couple of things that are have contributed to the current state of affairs,
which I think broadly can be described as the right is kind of scared to do big events
in Portland.
There have been a couple of like sputtering attempts.
They drove through town on their way to Washington real quickly as part of this caravan once,
but they didn't go through downtown again. It wasn't like one guy did fire at people on a
bridge with a handgun, which the police did nothing about, but they're not willing to like
hang around. And I think there's a few reasons why they've been scared off. Number one, they
keep getting shot. That has happened several times now. Number two, the physical resistance
to them has been gnarly as of the fights people have
gotten smarter about how they do some aspects of the fighting involving like a lot of property
like spraying paint on people's fancy body armor and shit which is expensive and then after five
years of ignoring it the state has actually started charging right right wing brawlers with felonies, which has
scared, I think, a lot of them off.
And yeah, so that's that's kind of where we are now.
And I think one of the things people should be paying attention to is what Portland had
to do and and both how long it took, but also like what kind of things were involved to
actually get to this point, because other folks are going to need to be willing to do some of the
shit people had to do in portland for years which includes like fucking strapping on gear and going
out to confront these people in the street yeah i think um it's really interesting right because
i just i know you've written a piece about this uh for new lines if i remember correctly yeah yeah
yeah that'll be up by the time this runs. Cool.
Yeah, I just read it.
I thought it was really good.
It reminds me of like when we talk about anti-fascism historically, right?
We sort of talk about the high points a lot.
And the one that at least I see most people going back to
is the Battle of Cable Street in London in 1936,
which people will probably,
I know you've had it in Bastards episodes before.
Yes.
And it's a very similar thing, right right like it's a broad intersexual coalition of people who are like we
will not let you do this shit in our space and we will physically fucking stop you and if the police
try and protect you we will stop them doing that as well there's incidents between mostly fascists
and anti-fascists like throughout the 30s and a lot later in british
history but it's a very similar kind of playbook i guess right it's like physical force opposition
to fascist gatherings like not letting them feel safe in your space yeah not letting them feel safe
and not letting them go unopposed because i mean one of the things that was kind of repeatedly a
factor in portland is that when the anti-fascists outnumbered
the right from the start and significantly there was a lot less violence on on the days when that
happened um and so it wasn't always a matter of people needing to show up to literally fight there
are times when like a show of force can work i think a good example of that in recent times in
texas in the dfw area obviously is a hot point for
different right-wing groups including the proud boys harassing lgbt events stuff like drag queen
story hours and that sort of thing and members of the elm fork john brown gun club who we've had on
the show and and other affiliated groups have been showing up armed in an armor most recently to
protect like a drag brunch um that was being counter-protested
you can see like photos of like there's a fucking proud boy with a bat with fucking barbed wire
wrapped around it yeah and they're there and in this like you don't show up with the bat wrapped
in barbed wire unless you're hoping you're going to get to bash somebody's fucking head in and that
guy wound up standing off at the sideline all day long because a bunch of people were there with rifles.
I think that guy may not legally be allowed to possess firearms.
Yes, I also suspect that guy has a felony record.
Yeah, because he also had a nightstick and like several other like more ninja like meme tier weapons.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Those say to me.
And look, if I'm going to be totally fair,
meme to your weapons, no, no side in this fight,
because for a long time in Portland, there was an individual who would bring a pair of samurai swords
to every one of those demonstrations.
And we are talking gas station grade samurai swords.
Yeah, does it have the oil slick effect on them?
They must have.
They must have.
No, he never drew his blades because of
course then he would have had they would have had to taste blood that's the rule yeah that's
illegal yeah ramification there yeah also it's impossible to take the swords out when you have
them mounted on your back it's also possible it's literally impossible to take this out
let's do the tactical uh back scratch it's It's an offensive position. But no, I think it is worth talking about the types of other cities
where there have been a sizable amount of far-right protests this summer,
especially targeted at queer people,
and how Portland is one of the cities where that did not happen.
I mean, we've seen a lot of stuff in Dallas,
and the Umfork people have been doing a pretty good job and both denying the
right ground to game but also denying them any of their like fight footage that they love to gather
yeah yeah they've they've done a really good job at balancing that aspect which is very very
challenging it's very challenging and it takes a lot of discipline and obviously when we think
kind of tactically about what guns mean in a situation like this, they're tools that have ups. The downside of guns is that if things go wrong and everybody's strapped, the potential is for things to go very fucking wrong. Indeed.
and batons and shit are a hell of a lot less likely to want to start a fucking fight because it's the the consequences are immediately obvious you could look at it as kind of like
the protest equivalent of mutually assured destruction of sort of the old internet like
of how the u.s of the soviet union managed nuclear tensions um yeah but it it has been very effective
in dallas for that reason and i think it's I think the fact that protests became increasingly armed in Portland and also that there are, by my count, at least three cases of fascists being run off or injured or killed by protesters with firearms.
That is part of why they they didn't want to do that shit so much anymore
i think that part's important too because like i i think there was a real danger after written house
that right-wing protesters were going to see this and just be like no we can just shoot these people
right because you know you have a situation where suddenly it becomes very clear that
the state is not going to prosecute people if right-wing protesters are shooting people.
But, you know, okay,
if the deterrence is not the state,
if the deterrence is if you're going to get into a gunfight,
you're going to lose and get shot,
that I think has been extremely effective
in a lot of ways.
That earlier sort of hadn't.
I think it's probably worth
noting as well that where it's been effective,
it's been effective because it's been organized and like like I don't want to use the word discipline because maybe
discipline implies authority that doesn't exist but like there's been some kind of collective
restraint and agreement on rules of engagement and stuff which yeah uh because I've also seen
folks try to do this unilaterally that does not fucking end well like if you're the if you're the
one person open carrying uh respecting the state where that's not legal like well like if you're the if you're the one person open carrying uh
expecting the state where that's not legal like you're just a one person going to prison yeah and
obviously open carry protests only work in states where that can be done legally yeah doing that in
texas is different than doing that in california yeah that's what i'm here to tell you yeah but
yeah i think it's a force multiplier right like these
guys have i think especially people on the right have like absorbed so much like of this sort of
like there are types of male as delineated by the greek alphabet bollocks and they've convinced
themselves that they are alphas and they can win a fist fight no james i've seen more sigmas than
alphas at protests oh so many sigmas i more sigmas. Oh, so many sigmas.
I've seen a few epsilons, man.
I don't know if that's a type of male.
I met a real sigma at an anti-mask protest in 2020
who brought his AR and a 60-round drum
and bragged that he had 500 rounds loaded into magazines
as he protested masks in front of the state capitol.
And it was like the people he was
protesting were specifically like about a dozen nurses who were standing around with say it was
like you got you need those 500 bullets for those unarmed nurses wearing signs telling you to mask
he's ready for when the shit hits the fan and robin no med kit i'm guessing oh i i don't believe
i saw a med kit i used to try to make a note of it
i will say the right in the last year i've noticed more med kits and pictures that i've seen
so good good i guess yeah but yeah like if you are a person who's not like physically enormous
or like like i said these guys have convinced themselves that like they are somehow like
top tier brawlers even though we've seen the patriot front videos and they're very funny like it's like a force equalizer i guess right it allows people to sort
of enter that space without having to be 500 or like you know massive dudes
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I don't want to focus too much on specifically firearms because I think that's less important than and not the primary lesson of Portland, which is what is necessary to stop these people from showing up is consistent shows of force. military strategy, right? For every like guy who's actually kicking in doors, getting into
firefights in the field, you have, you know, nine or 10 people behind him who are responsible for
logistics, right? That's the only way a modern military works. When you don't have a logistics
train set up like that, things go like they did for Russia at the start of the invasion of Ukraine,
where you have like hundreds of tanks without fuel and shit.
When in Portland protests, an average for a large protest, I would say the average was around 1000 people. Now that's a large protest, often they were smaller. But when you would get these big
hyped for a couple of weeks, the Proud Boys are coming to town, you'd easily get 1000 or 2000
people counter protesting. And, you know, it would be probably 10 or 15% who were who were
showing up specifically ready to kind of throw down and ready to throw down and also with some
experience doing it. And a much larger number who were some of them were there as medics,
some of them were handing out water or other beverages, they were handing out food. There
were people who were there just to yell and chant with signs to like be you know moral support there were people there doing transport blocking roads um people there doing
you know um intel and stuff filming things um people who were there uh you know doing stuff
like um covering up live streamers cameras with with bubble wrap sheets or we used to have a band
full of people who dressed as bananas who would oh yeah kind of kind of try to distract and drown out the far
right there was one beautiful individual i saw a couple of times who was in black block except for
they wore a kilt and they carried a pair of bagpipes and when like you would get a couple
of fascists approaching a protester and like trying to get into an argument he would walk
right up and he would just start playing the bagpipe so that they couldn't... That's an offensive weapon.
Yeah, yeah, it was beautiful.
But kind of
more important than the specific... You do need
and I don't want to distract you with this, you always
need a core of people who are willing
and ready to get into a fucking fight
when you're doing this kind of activism.
But the biggest thing is that people
show up consistently.
And one of the things, Portland had a number of different organizations like Pop Mob, Popular Mobilization, that kind of existed to organize less radical, or at least kind of not necessarily less radical sometimes people who were just like because of whatever in their life were much less interested in the actual getting into a fight thing but understood that the more
people show up the safer it is and succeeded in ensuring that there was like a larger body of
people at all of these events and that along with more rat groups like rose city antifa who kind of
particularly earlier in the fights was a big street presence as well as did a lot of research
and then other kind of newer um and often kind of smaller anti-fascist collectives that would
organize people to straight up fight. It was this mix of all of that that allowed it to be that
whenever they showed up, there was always a group confronting them, and it was nearly always larger.
And it got to the point at the height of 2020, you know,
there was this right wing protest beforehand.
Nobody quite knew how bad it was going to be.
Garrison,
you and I got there right as things were starting.
And it was the,
the anti-fascists were outnumbered kind of at the beginning of the day.
And things got really violent very quickly within an hour or two though,
about somewhere around a thousand people had showed up on the anti-fascist the day and things got really violent very quickly within an hour or two though about
somewhere around a thousand people had showed up on the anti-fascist side and were organized
and fighting it was a very impressive response time yeah and i think it is it's the actual it's
the i mean people use the word like the term the diversity of tactics often just to kind of
defend actions that are more radical um and there's the there's the other
side of diversity of tactics which is pulling in all of the background support that creates the
sustainability for more radical actions like showing up and actually being a frontliner to
get into fistfights with proud boys then there's all of the other stuff like whether that's like
medics other support teams uh people playing doing like queer
dance parties to push fascists out of areas all those types of things not only make the environment
more sustainable so people can show up over a larger period of time because they don't get so
burnt out because all they're doing is fist fighting um so i think those actions are another
i think that's it's it's worth not just ignoring those and not just discrediting those because once you have that type of presence
and people know that you're going to,
that those are the types of environments
that you're able to create,
when you're outnumbered by fascists
and you need to put out a call for support,
if you have this kind of reputation,
that can help get a lot of people out very quickly
and help with the,
that actually is like popular mobilization. that right that's what that's what that it's what that actually means so that's how you can get the anti-fascist side to outnumber the fascist side
like we saw in 2020 um despite that not being the case when it when it started yeah and i think because the main thing that ended that fight was the was the anti-fascist side just
moving as a massive massive block and just pushing the fascists out of the area like there's as soon
as the fascist line broke and you have like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people
in portland streets directing the flow of movement you can't you can't
stop that the force the force is too great um and that requires there to be a large amount of people
including people who are not gonna get into a fistfight with someone three times their size
yeah i think another thing um that that maybe is important is that like and it's kind of at the
core of anti-fascism, right?
It's possible for people who have not just different tactics,
but different opinions to create this broad-based alliance
and not get cross with each other for not agreeing on everything.
Yeah, or at least stop fighting with each other long enough
to drive the fascists out because portland
by the way another thing we should acknowledge the portland anti-fascist community it can be
quite messy um there are a lot of different factions and disagreements and there have been
a lot of arguments up to the present day but you know as a general rule when the right showed up
people mobilized and and threw down against them you know despite
the fact that it was a mix of folks who were libs and folks who were radicals and folks who were
you know um something in between um it was uh and again i don't this was never a particularly
clean process and it didn't have to be you know you could point out and and if we had longer we could
point out all number of different like flaws and shortcomings and like things that were were done
that were wrong or unfair to somebody but what was kind of more important than any of the ways in
which the movement was flawed was at the end of the day that it persisted that it kept bringing
people out and that it kept resisting and that the right seems to have kind of blinked
before the left did here like that's what what matters more than anything
about Portland people felt comfortable enough to continue to come out and it
felt worthwhile enough yeah but for the anti but specifically for the
anti-fascist protests they were able to create those environments that peep that
that families were felt totally comfortable coming out to and people
felt that it actually was worthwhile.
Like there was,
it was,
it was worth it to take an afternoon out of your day to show up and say,
no.
And,
and,
and if you're able to physically display,
no,
you can't,
you can't come here.
Yeah.
And that was,
you know,
obviously when we talk about like the difference between doing that against
the police,
as opposed to the right, you know, the police have talk about like the difference between doing that against the police, as opposed to the right,
you know,
the police have more in their current form,
have like a hundred,
150,
they've had 150 years or so to dig in,
you know,
it's a harder target,
but yeah,
I think the fact that,
I think the fact that I think one of the strengths of the movement in
Portland was that as a general rule, a lot of people who had a pretty diverse set of beliefs all felt this is a thing I can do and should do.
This is worthwhile and important. These people need to be opposed in the streets, and that's worth some time out of my very limited fucking free time to go do.
out of my very limited fucking free time to go do um and that that is kind of i think the primary lesson if you want to know what other cities should take from portland it's the importance of
developing a community like that a community information network like that but also just
like a community where people can all kind where people feel like yes it is actually it is worthwhile for me to show up and
participate in this right like that's the hard thing is getting across when there's um you know
a book reading at a library that the proud boys are going to show up and protest it's it's getting
getting the message out to people in the area and getting a couple of hundred folks to show up.
Because if you can get 200 people to show up to something like that,
there's never going to be that many fucking Proud Boys at the event.
It's going to be 30 or 40 of them or less, maybe a dozen.
And if you're a fucking library and 20 Proud Boys show up to like cause a problem
and you've got like a dozen kids inside getting read a book or some shit
or it's a brunch and you have 20, 30 Proud Boys show up, you have a problem and you've got like a dozen kids inside getting read a book or some shit or it's a brunch and yeah 20 30 proud boys show up you have a huge problem people who get
really hurt they could get fucked up heading to their cars they can get harassed it's scary
if that number of power boys shows up in 100 150 people show up to counter them um then suddenly
number one all of the people who are being threatened by the fascists get this feeling
that like oh my god i'm actually supported by the community that like people are willing to come out and defend me and defend people like me.
And number two, the Proud Boys get the feeling like, fuck, even even here, even in Dallas, right, where we we might be outnumbered, you know.
Welcome.
I'm Danny Thrill.
Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?
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I think because a few other cities where protests have continued and where they haven't in Portland,
I think we've seen a decent amount of activity this year in Salem.
And there have been far-right protests in Salem ever since 2017 as well.
Yes.
And the other place, because I just did a
deep dive into this is there's been a lot of people from the Portland area, from Vancouver,
um, uh, planning to go up to, uh, port towns in Washington. And it's been interesting talking
with the people up there about, um, and this is the first time they've really seen a large influx
of people. And it's, it's people who don't, it's the Proud Boys who are not comfortable
showing up to Portland anymore,
but instead they're going to drive three hours
to go to this small town of 10,000 people.
Yeah.
And then watching people in this local area
figure out how they're going to respond to this
has been super intriguing.
There's been a whole bunch of people,
there's been affinity groups in the area
setting up medic trainings for queer people who live in the town.
There's been meetings between BIPOC groups and more gun-based queer groups about how they can mutually support each other as the far right descends on their city.
And in some cases, there was people in certain groups who at previous
protests that's happened the past month, they did not feel comfortable going out to the front lines
of this type of thing. But they were able to work with other organizers to set up kind of
like support kind of like support like areas. And even you kind of kind of like they described it
as like a picnic that's like a quarter mile away, and it creates like a buffer zone in between people who want to go to the front lines
and this whole background of people that's supporting you
and is going to help you out if you need anything.
So all the various ways that you can incorporate a diversity of strategies
and different type of groups into countering something that's moving to your city now.
Just an interesting note based on how much I've heard people talk about,
you know, Proud Boys coming up from Portland and Vancouver,
just ending up feeling they have to drive three hours to other cities
to get, you know, whatever they want to do.
Yeah, the ideal thing is that they walk away not even beat up as much as demoralized and feeling like it was a waste of
time and money.
Ideally they and their gear get covered in fucking paint or something.
Um,
and they lost six hours of time on a fucking Saturday.
And if that kind of happens repeatedly,
maybe they'll stop,
you know, which is which is, again, the goal is for them to feel like it's not worth coming out.
You know, like that's what. Yeah. Like it's often said, like, you know, make racists afraid again is a statement you heard a lot, particularly after 2016.
But it's a little more complicated than that. It's not purely about fear. It's also, it's hopeless.
You want to make them hopeless.
You want to make them to feel like
there's no fucking point in showing up.
And that's the most valuable thing
is a victory condition.
That's above everything else
is making them feel like
there is no hope for their movement.
I think that the most recent,
as a time of recording,
there was this protest on the 15th
that was a mix of like TERFs and then a mix of far-right people. There's this guy from Vancouver
called the Common Sense Conservative who runs a little like video blog thing that he was organizing
some people to go up. And I don't know, it's, there was like, yeah, it's like 30 people,
lots of them
from out of state who traveled up as a part of this like turf anti-trans side and there was like
300 to 400 people from the local area who showed up and were like no you're not going to do this
um and ever since then there's been a lot of infighting between the turfs and the kind of
more far-right, because it sucks.
It's like,
it sucks when you have 300 people from the actual city that show up and go
no,
and try to like physically remove you from this space.
Yeah.
And I think you can sort of see mirrors of this and like the way leftist
like protests work,
right.
Where it's like,
it's,
it's a lot easier to hold together coalitions when you're winning.
And the moment you start losing the moments and things start going wrong like all of the infighting comes back and you know entire movements will just disintegrate and this
this works the same way on the right if you can if you can actually beat them consistently
a few times and you can start like holding on long enough for their their internal group dynamics to unravel like this this is a way to beat them yeah yep um well that's about all i had to say
not a complicated topic anything else all right well well as uh yeah anyway, go, go yell at a fucking Nazi. Um, go, go damage a fascist's body armor by spraying them with paint from a great distance.
You know, go, go, uh, uh, I don't know.
Do something else.
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