Politico was right that Portland would get worse
A little over a year ago, Politico published an article on Portland.
How Liberal Portland Became America’s Most Politically Violent City
And it’s about to get worse, say protesters on both sides.
On a cloudy day in early November 1979, a caravan of Nazi and Ku Klux Klan members careened into Greensboro, North Carolina, winding toward a local Communist Workers’ Party protest that had gathered in the city to march against the state’s white supremacists. The communists, wearing berets and hard hats, spotted the fleet and taunted the new arrivals with chants of “Death to the Klan!” The KKK convoy slowed, and stopped. Far-left protesters, bearing both wooden planks and concealed pistols, began surrounding the motorcade, beating the doors. As TV cameras rolled, the trunk of a Ford Fairlane, stuffed with shotguns and rifles, popped open. Someone yelled from one of the cars, “You asked for the Klan! Now you’ve got ’em!”
Eighty-eight seconds and 39 shots later, five communists lay dead. Eight other demonstrators were wounded, some permanently paralyzed. For a brief moment, the Greensboro Massacre became one of America’s most notorious acts of political blood-letting. And yet, unlike Wounded Knee or Selma, Greensboro has over the decades largely faded from memory.
What do you call five dead Communists? A good start!
Except in Portland.
Among the fringe political groups currently waging battle in the City of Roses, Greensboro is well-remembered, even idealized. It is increasingly seen as the inevitable end of the escalating violence that has rocked this city since Donald Trump’s election in November. Left wing “antifas,” wearing red bandana masks alongside other far-left protesters, have rioted multiple times and caused millions of dollars of damage, with threats from left wing groups even forcing the cancellation of a parade because it featured a float from the local Republican Party.
Eager to push back against the opposition, white nationalists have begun mixing with anti-government militia members for “free speech” rallies. A man who attended one of these rallies would later stab to death two men on a train when they intervened to stop his anti-Muslim rants against two young women. The norms of protest and counterprotest—mostly verbal shouting and sign-waving—are quickly crumbling in Portland. The left wing antifa have even threatened preemptive violence in the name of the defending the city from groups they say promote violence.
In Portland, Greensboro isn’t a past mistake to be avoided, but a future clash to be courted. Both sides mention Greensboro in conversation. Both sides know the details and the death toll. And both acknowledge Greensboro as an event that may well serve as a model for what’s just around the corner. “My big concern is sooner or later is that we’re going to have another Greensboro Massacre type of event,” Mark Pitcavage, who researches domestic political extremism with the Anti-Defamation League, added. “This is so unlikely to end well.”
From this very long introduction, what we have learned is that Portland is fucking crazy. There is no better way to say it than that.
The people of Portland see the Greensboro Massacre as some sort of Bunker Hill. It was Communists vs. the KKK and American Nazis. Two sides that should never see power of be mainstreamed in America. It wasn’t a battle of an oppressed underdog fighting for its freedom. It was two groups of political extremists murdering each other.
The fact that Portland erupted as the epicenter in Trump-era political violence in the U.S. is, in a certain sense, surprising. A liberal nirvana, a crunchy, weed-and-hops city where Republicans and plastic bags alike have been all but evicted, Portland has embodied and outpaced many of the urban trends of the early 21st century: gentrification and co-ops, food trucks and footbridges, transitions to a bike-and-pedestrian economy. It is, as a conspicuous show has encapsulated, a progressive paradise.
Which means that the only way to stand out is to become more and more Progressive. That is the ultimate problem with one party or one ideology rule, it breeds extremism.
How does a Lefty politician stand out in a place like Portland or California? By out Lefty-ing his opponents. If a 5% tax increase is good, a 10% is better. If making recycling mandatory is good, than banning disposable plastic items is better. There is no competing ideology to appeal to moderates and drag the Overton Window to the middle.
And yet, as many within and without the city have begun realizing, Portland is a town leavened with a history of rampant racial strife. As the whitest major American city, Portland blossomed in the lone state that constitutionally barred blacks from living there through the 19th century, that acted as one of the primary concentration centers for incarcerating American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II, that redlined as severely as any major metropolis elsewhere. That in 1922 saw its chief of police posing alongside hooded Ku Klux Klan members. That brought Jim Crow to the Pacific shoreline.
And here comes the Nazis….
Didn’t just a paragraph before Politico say Portland has become a “progressive paradise.”
Locals began pushing back. In 2007, a group called Rose City Antifa took form, borrowing the shortened form of “antifascist” for its name. The crew pointed to similar European movements, which had, in places like Germany and Italy, arisen in response to the fascist movements that would eventually crater Europe in World War II. It also tapped into regional currents of anarchism and latent communism. These were the political strains that had sparked, among other things, the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” protests against the World Trade Organization, which resulted in millions of dollars’ worth of property damage in the city.
So the radical Left thinks that it is a force for social justice, fighting Nazis. Except the Nazis are gone. They are warriors against a fictitious enemy, causing real casualties.
I remember the “Battle of Seattle.” It wasn’t against Nazis or Fascists. It was against peaceful, mutually beneficial trade.
Remember the words of Frederic Bastiat: “When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”
Consider the recent videos of Antifa in the streets of Portland. They were calling a man KKK because he was from North Carolina. This is how radical they have become. They just assume someone from the South is a Klansman then they believe that gives them justification for violence.
But now, for antifa, it’s not enough to simply outscream their opposition; rather, those far-right forces must, in a bizarre nod to the Bush Doctrine, be preemptively denied a voice from the outset. “We are unapologetic about the reality that fighting fascism at points requires physical militancy,” Rose City Antifa’s Facebook page reads. “Anti-fascism is, by nature, a form of self-defense: the goal of fascism is to exterminate the vast majority of human beings.” The group does not specify what physical militancy means, but their page makes clear that the definition includes “any means necessary.”
But to any rational person, they are not fighting against genocide.
Rose City Antifa got the Parade of Roses shut down because the Republicans wanted a float in the parade.
They have gone off the rails as far Left extremists where anybody to the right of Marx is now a Fascist.
Then, in late April, organizers behind the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade—a spectacle through one of the more multiracial neighborhoods in Portland—received an email ratcheting tensions even further. Sent from an anonymous account, the email targeted the inclusion of a Multnomah County Republican Party float: “You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely. … This is non-negotiable.” Shaken, organizers canceled the parade; The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf wondered “who this faction on the left will next label a Nazi or a fascist in order to justify their own use of fascistic tactics.”
That’s the kicker. Antifa knew the police wouldn’t stop them.
Fast forward a year from then. Antifa were assaulting cars and threatening motorists. The police stood by and watched.
This is how the Mayor of Portland responded.
I was appalled by what I saw in that clip and I support the decisions of the @PortlandPolice. I trust them. I believe them as the law enforcement professionals who have to weigh complex legal and safety issues, not only for the people on the streets but also for themselves. -TW
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) October 12, 2018
He wasn’t appalled by what he saw. If he was, he was appalled at the old man who didn’t heed the Antifa mob.
Rational people would be appalled at letting a violent mob control city streets. They would be even more appalled by the idea of the police just watching it happen and not intervening.
The Chief of Police should be fired for inaction like that. Not in Portland. Letting patrol officers pull a Scot Peterson because they didn’t want to deal with Antifa thugs is acceptable behavior for the city’s leadership.
Politico said a year ago the violence would get worse, and it has. The article went into a lot of the politics but glossed over the most important factor.
The city management is on the side of the radicals. Starting with the Parade of Roses and going from there, the city has ignored, condoned, or supported Antifa in its actions. When the city allows protesters to occupy the grounds outside of a Federal building for an extended period of time, taking over a street is peanuts.
It’s not the last vestiges of the Right in Portland, it is the total one-party/one-ideology rule in the city that makes extremism the norm.
That the lesson wasn’t learned a year ago means it won’t be learned now. I don’t know how bad it will get before it comes to a conclusion, but it will be a lot worse than it is now.
