How Portland Beat the Proud Boys

just like we practiced. UM. So the thing that the thing that is noteworthy and the thing that we're celebrating and also explained today is that this summer we were recording this what like a day into September, two days into September UM, so we are we are Yeah, it's September first. So we have officially gotten through the summer um without a right wing rally in Portland that degenerates into a gigantic brawl. This is the first year that

has happened since two thousands seventeen. So, starting in two thousand seventeen, Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys and other affiliated groups would vary 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 and support of the fucking cops, the hymn to rally, all

sorts of stupid, stupid fucking names. Um. But the main problem, 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 and this massive Trump caravan through the city with like thousands of trucks, people shooting paintballs and spraying mace and throwing

shipped off the back of trucks. And then a Patriot Prayer member named Aaron Danielson got his ass shot to death by an anti fascist during a somewhat unclear altercation outside of a parking garage. What I can say is

that everyone involved was heavily armed. Um. And yeah, after that 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, a right wing demonstrator fired into a crowd of anti fascists in downtown for Portland,

who returned fire and drove him off. He was arrested. Um, a bunch of There was a big stupid fight at a kmart in another part of town the same day, debandoned kmart parking lot that held a massive brawl and several of them got. Several of the proud boy types got the old nasty charges from that one. After the police, as they generally did, chose not to take any kind of action. Um, and then you know, things kind of peat it out, um 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, UM, where a fascist fired into a crowd of women who were doing corking duty. Um. He killed one woman, UM, and he wounded four other people and UM, 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's 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 six. And there have been at least two hundreds something right wing gatherings around the country with like Proud Boys and other affiliated groups in attendance since January six, um so nationwide, the kind of rallies that Portland's been saying since 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 um 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 it 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 um. That has happened several times now. UM. Number Two, the physical resistance to

them has been gnarlier as of the fights. UM, 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 ship, which is expensive. And then after five years of ignoring it, um, the state has actually started charging right wing brawlers with felonies, which has scared I think a lot of them off. Um. 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's 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 ship 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 for New Lines. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll be up by the time this this runs cool

and yeah I just read it if it was pretty good. Um. It reminds me of when we talk about anti fascism historically, right We we sort talked 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 which people will probably I know you've had it in Bastards episodes before, yes, And it's it's very similar thing, right, Like it's a broad inter sexual coalition of people who are like, we will not let you do this ship

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 most of these fascists and anti fascists like throughout the thirties 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 and 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 violets 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, and 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 protest. And you can see like photos of like there's a Proud Boy with a bat with fucking barbed wire wrapped around it, and there there and in this like, you don't show up with the bat wrapped in barbed wire unless you're hoping you're gonna 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 meamed here weapons. It was yeah, yeah to me, and look if 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 sorts to everyone and we're we are talking gas

station grade samurai. Yeah, they have the oil slick effect. 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 the legal ramification that. Ye. Also, it's impossible to take the swords out when you have them mounted on your back. It's literally possible to take this sort the

tactical backscrip. It's an offensive position. But no, I think it's worth talking about the types of other cities where there have been a sizeable amount of far right protests this summer, especially targeted at queer people. Um, 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 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. 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 up. The downside of guns is that if things go wrong and everybody is strapped, the potential is for things to

go very fucking wrong. Indeed, Um, the upside is that when you have a line of people with rifles, the dudes with knives and batons and ship are I hell, have 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 of how the US of the

Soviet Union managed nuclear tensions. Um. But it 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 account at least three cases of fascists uh being run off or injured or killed by protesters with firearms. That is part of why they didn't want to do

that ship so much anymore. Mm hmm. I think that part's important too, because, like I I think there was a real danger after written House that right wing protesters We're gonna see this and just be like, no, we can just shoot these people, right, because you know, you have a situation where suddenly becomes very clear that the state is not going to prosecute people if like right

wing protesters for shooting people. But you know, okay, if if the if the determince is not to say, if the insurance is if you get her to get into a gunfight, you're gonna lose and get shot like that, that I think has been extremely effective in a lot

of ways. Yeah, early sort of hadn't. I think it's probably worth noting as well that like where it's been effective, it's been effective because it's been organized and like I don't want to use the word discipline because maybe discipline imply the authority that that doesn't exist, but like there's been some kind of collective restraint in agreement on rules of engagement and stuff, which because I've also seen folks try to do this unilaternally, that does not sucking end well,

Like if you're if you're the one person open carrying expecting the state where that's not legal, like you're just the 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. But yeah, I think it's a it's a force multiplier, right, Like these guys have I think, especially people on the right, have absorbed so much like this sort of like varo types of male as delineated by the Greek alphabet bollocks, and they've convinced themselves that they are alpha's and they can win a fight. Now James, I've seen more Sigmas than Alpha's prote So many sigmas. I've seen a few epsilons. Man, I don't know that's

the type of male. I met a real Sigma at an anti mask protest in who brought his a r in a sixty round drum and brag that he had five hundred rounds loaded into magazines as he as he protested masks in front of the state capital. And it was like the people he was protesting were specifically like about a dozen nurses who were standing around, let's say, it was like you got do you need those five

hundred bullets? For those unarmed nurses were signs telling it a mask he's ready for when the ship hits the fan romic. I'm guessing, Oh, I I don't believe I saw a MED kid. I used to try to make

a note of it. I will say the right. In the last year, I've noticed more MED hits 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 somehow like top tier brawlers, even though seeing the Patriot Front videos 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 five massive dudes. I don't want to focus too much on specifically firearms because I think that's less important than and not that the primarialisson of Portland, which is what is necessary to stop these people from showing up,

is consistent shows of force. And I think one thing that I just kind of always found intellectually interesting is that you know, when you when you read about like military strategy, right um, for every like guy who's actually kicking indoors getting into firefights in the field, you have you know, nine or ten people behind him who were responsible for logistics. Right Um. 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 start of the invasion of where you have like hundreds of tanks without fuel and ship. Um. When in Portland protests, an average for a large protest, I would say the average was around a thousand 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 a thousand or two thousand people counter protesting, and you know, it would be probably ten or fiftcent who were who were showing up specifically ready to kind of throw down, um 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. Uh. 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 they're 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 rap sheets. Or we used to have a band full of people who dressed as bananas who would 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 bagpipes so that they couldn't an offensive. M Yeah, yeah, it was beautiful, um, but kind of more important than the specific you do need and I don't want to like distracted this. You always need a cor 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. Um. And one of the things Portland had a number of different organizations like pop Mob, Popular and more Mobilization that kind of existed to organize less radical um or at least

kind of and not 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 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 UM. And it got to the point at the height of you know, there was this right wing protest before time hand, 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 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 side and we're 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 used the word like the term to 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 this the sustainability for more radical actions like showing up and actually being a frontliner to get into fist

fights with proud Boys. Then there's all of the other stuff like whether that's like medics, other support teams, 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 our thing. 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 gonna that, those are the types of environments that you're able to create when you're outnumbered by fascists and you need to call and need to need to put out a call for support if you if you have this kind of reputation, that can that can help get a lot of people out very

quickly and help with the that actually is like popular mobilization. That right, that that's what that's what that's what that actually means. So that's how you can get the anti fascist side to out number the fat side like we saw in um, despite that not being the case. When when when 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 of 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 fist

fight with someone three times their size. Yeah. I think another thing, um that that maybe it's important is that like and it's kind of at the core of anti fascism, right, It's it's it's possible for people who have done just different tactics but different opinions like to create this broad based alliance and not get cross with each other and

not agreeing on everything. And yeah, or at least um, stop fighting with each other long enough to drive the fascists out because Portland's 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 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 done that we're 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's people felt comfortable enough to continue

to come out and it felt worthwhile enough. But for the anti specifically for the anti fascist protests, they were able to create those environments that people that that families were felt totally comfortable coming out to UM 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 yeah and if you're able to physically display no, you can't,

you can't come here. Yeah, And that was um. You know, obviously when we talked about the difference between doing that against the police as opposed to the right, you know, the police have more in their current form a hundred and fifty have They've had a hundred and fifty years or so to dig in, you know, Um, it's a

harder target. But yeah, I think the fact that um, I think the fact that 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 um and that that is kind of I think the primary lesson if you want to know what other cities should take from Portland's, 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 of where 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, the proud boys are going to show up in 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 two hundred people to show up to something like that, there's never gonna be that many fucking proud

boys at the event. It's gonna be thirty or forty of them, or less, maybe a dozen. And if you're a fucking library and twenty proud boys show up to like cause a problem, and you've got like a dozen kids inside of getting read of book or some shit or it's a brunch, and yeah, thirty Proud Boys show up, you have a huge problem. People would get really hurt. They could get fucked up heading to their cars, they

can get harassed. It's scary. If that number of Proud Boys shows up and a hundred a hundred and fifty 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 to feel it like fuck even even here, we're even in Dallas right

where we we might be out numbered. You know, I think because a few other cities where protests have continued and where they haven't, they haven't in Portland, I think yet we've we've seen a decent amount of activity this year in Salem, um a lot of blood and and there have been far right protests in Salem ever since

seen as well. Yes. And the other place that because because I just because I just did a deep dive into this is there's been a lot of people from the Portland area, from Vancouver um planning to go up to port Towns in Washington, and it's been interesting talking with the people up there about this is the first

time they've really seen a large influx of people. Well, and it's it's people who don't it's and 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 ten thousand people. Um. And then watching people in this 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 for queer people who live in the town. Uh. There's been meetings between bipoc groups and like more like gun based queer groups about how they can mutually support

each other as the far right descends on their city. UM. And in some cases, you know, there was people in certain groups who at 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 UH like support, kind of like UH support like areas and even 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 it's going to help you out if you need anything. Um. So, all the various ways that you can, you can incorporate a diversity of strategies and different type of groups into

countering something that's moving to your city. Now. Um, just an interesting note based on how much I've I've heard people talk about you know, proud boys coming up from Portland and and and Vancouver just ending up feeling they have to drive three hours to other cities to get you know there, whatever 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 in

their gear, get covered and fucking paint or something. Um, and they lost six hours of time on a fucking Saturday. And if that kind of happens repeat eatedly, maybe they'll stop, you know which is which is again, the goal is for them to uh, feel like it's not worth coming out, you know, like that's what that like people. It's often said like, you know, make racists afraid again is a statement you heard a lot, particularly after 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 feel 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 that's above everything else, is making them feel like there is no hope for their movement. I think that the most recent as as a time of recording, there was there was this protest on the Um that was a mix of like turfs

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 um that he was organizing some people to go up and don't it's it's it's there was like yea, it's like thirty people, lots of them from out of state who have traveled up as a part of this like turf anti trans side, and there was like three hundred to four hundred people from the local area who showed up and we're like, no,

you're not going to do this of And ever since then there's been a lot of infighting between the Turfs and the kind of more far right people because it sucks. It's it sucks that you have three hundred people from the actual city that show up and go no and

try to like physically remove you from this space. And I think you can sort of see mirrors of this and like the way left, just like protest 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 moment things start going wrong, like all of the infighting comes back and you know the entire movement will just tosittegrate 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 uh go go yellow at a fucking Nazi. Um go go damage a fascists body armor by spraying them with paint from a great distance. You know, go go Uh,

I don't know. Do something else. Uh bide