Portland Riot

In my speech at the 2018 League of the South conference, I cited the toleration of violent Antifa in Berkeley and Portland as the beginning of a trend where police are given stand down orders at free speech rallies in Democratic-controlled cities:

“PORTLAND, Ore. — Two opposing protest groups — Patriot Prayer and antifa — clashed in downtown Portland Saturday, CBS Portland affiliate KOIN reports. Portland police said failure to leave the area could leave to arrests, calling the demonstration a riot.

More than 100 members of Patriot Prayer group gathered at Terry Schrunk Plaza for a “freedom rally,” while more than 100 counter protesters with an antifa group gathered across the street at Chapman Square for rallies before a march. Police revoked Patriot Prayer’s permit for the rally after the two groups began to clash. …

Patroit Prayer organizer Joey Gibson told KOIN the clashes “good in terms that we showed that there’s a political move right now to have the police stand down in order to impact free speech in some of these big cities.”

“Portland’s the last city on the West Coast that’s doing that, so we just have to keep hitting it — I don’t see what else to do other than that,” Gibson said. “We’ll make Portland so ugly in terms of how they allow these protesters to charge us when we have a permit. The police stood down, we were told they would not stand down, so we have to challenge it.”

Sounds familiar.

I said that this was happening and as if on cue to prove my point violent Antifa were allowed to incite a riot in Portland while police stood down and watched. It appears that several supporters of Patriot Prayer were also arrested for the crime of self defense.

This is what happened in Charlottesville too last summer. It noticeably doesn’t happen in smaller cities like Pikeville, KY, Shelbyville, TN or Newnan, GA because police are allowed to do their jobs there. In Pikeville, Shelbyville and Newnan, Antifa came to town and created a siege mentality, and the result was we were confined to freedom cages and prevented from engaging the public.

The Proud Boy who knocked out this Antifa won the fight. It is a pyrrhic victory though. I believe he has been charged with a crime. The goal here is lure us into their political strongholds, incite violence and drain us fighting charges and frivolous lawsuits in expensive court battles.

We shouldn’t make the same mistake again. As I said in my speech, we should have private, unannounced, invitation-only public events that deny violent Antifa intelligence, targets and the time to mobilize. If we want to go somewhere in the future, we should just privately make arrangements and go. There is no reason we have to tell the world about our plans months in advance. In such a way, we can cut violent Antifa out of our events and organize without any interference.