How Portland Beat the Proud Boys

The 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 omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
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 to talk about a solution.
Today is one of our famed Good News episodes. So everybody,

(00:25):
everybody celebrate and also give your name for the folks
at home. Yea, I'm James, Yay, I'm Gare, Yeah, I'm Chris. Wonderful.
That was perfect. That was that was completely natural, just
just like we practiced. UM. So the thing that the

(00:45):
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

(01:08):
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

(01:28):
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

(01:50):
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

(02:14):
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,

(02:34):
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

(02:56):
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

(03:18):
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

(03:40):
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

(04:00):
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

(04:22):
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.

(04:42):
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

(05:04):
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

(05:27):
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,

(05:52):
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

(06:13):
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

(06:34):
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

(06:57):
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

(07:17):
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

(07:38):
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,

(08:01):
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

(08:22):
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

(08:44):
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

(09:07):
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

(09:28):
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

(09:49):
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

(10:12):
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.

(10:32):
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

(10:53):
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,

(11:14):
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

(11:36):
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

(11:58):
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

(12:19):
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,

(12:40):
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

(13:00):
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

(13:21):
people to sort of enter that space without having to
be five massive dudes. I don't want to focus too

(13:47):
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

(14:10):
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

(14:31):
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

(14:52):
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.

(15:15):
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

(15:36):
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

(15:58):
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

(16:23):
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,

(16:46):
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.

(17:07):
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

(17:30):
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,

(17:53):
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

(18:15):
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

(18:36):
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

(18:58):
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.

(19:20):
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

(19:43):
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,

(20:05):
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

(20:29):
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

(20:50):
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

(21:11):
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

(21:33):
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

(21:56):
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

(22:18):
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

(22:41):
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

(23:02):
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

(23:25):
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,

(23:46):
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

(24:22):
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

(24:43):
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,

(25:06):
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.

(25:27):
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

(25:47):
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

(26:08):
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

(26:32):
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,

(26:53):
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

(27:15):
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

(27:36):
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

(27:56):
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

(28:18):
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

(28:40):
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

(29:01):
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

(29:22):
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