@1:

Did you not just read "While most of the Proud Boys left the waterfront by 1 p.m., a few lingered and engaged in shouting matches and fistfights with left-wing protesters"? Or does your innate confirmational bias make words like that go invisible on the page when your eyes scan over them?

It's a pretty good strategy PR wise that the "Proud Boys" seem to be using.

Arrive, mill about for an hour and then pretty much just leave.

Antifa usually outnumbers them, so just leave them alone and eventually they will get bored just start violently attacking whoever is nearby, as is their MO.

This is what people will see, and it is what they are seeing, for the most part. The two videos which have the most views on YouTube are both Antifa just attacking people for seemingly no reason.

I kinda wonder which city they'll target next. Seems like it takes a local police department a couple-few years to figure out how to wrangle these fringe-of-a-fringe street theater troupes, but once they do, the events get a lot less thrilling for everyone involved, and it's time to move on to fresh pastures.

Fuck all these LARPing attention whores. They should just take their ridiculous political theater to a field somewhere away from everyone else and stop wasting taxpayer dollars for the police to referee their pointless impotent bullshit.

Does anyone remember the bumper sticker "What if they threw a war, and nobody came?"

That's what I feel like now. Antifa Protestors have raised Proud Boy's profile and raison d'etre like 1000x fold.

@4:

So, being a White Nationalist/White Supremacist/Fascist isn't enough? Funny, because we actually fought a couple of wars over precisely these things.

Will someone please explain to me what exactly the Proud Boys have to be proud OF? Have any of them accomplished anything? Are they at least keeping their moms' basements clean while they live there?

@ 10: They're proud of being born white. If that's not enough for you, you're a hater.

Anti=Anti
Fa=Fasciscts.

Antifa=Anti Fascists.

If you are pro "white culture" or any of that nonsense, you are a fascist. Thus, Antifa is on the correct side of history, and the "proud boys" are just the latest bunch of losers. Like those bores who dress up in confederate uniforms and pine for "the good old days"

@12 Stalin was anti-fascist and so was Pol Pot and Chairman Mao ..... lot's of horrid dictators just happen to be on the right side of history according to our own Catalina Vel-DuRay.

Democrats really are the worse kind of people....

pro "white culture" = fascist ?
Cat, we are disappointed in you.
You are a deeper thinker than that.

8
We fought those wars to defeat military aggression.
And allied ourselves with some of the most evil forces on the planet in the process.
Incidentally, the party of our hero FDR who led us in one of those wars was the epitome of violent White Nationalist/White Supremacist. You may have heard of it.
Now, Father Abraham (our first Republican president) did fight a war to defeat White Nationalist/White Supremacists, a pure holy crusade against evil. Which side was your political party on it that great struggle?

You should really pick up a history book sometime...

9
Good question.
What is the rainbow crowd proud of?
We missed the last parade.
Is it public nudity?
remind us.

Oh my, Proud Conservative dear. I hope you did some stretches before attempting that leap of logic.

It's not a binary choice dear. We have fascists (like the white supremacists) murderous dictators (like Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot), and other sorts of horrible people and regimes, all througout history. It's good to fight all of them, for they are all evil and counter-productive to a peaceful planet. Unfortunately we sometimes have to allign ourselves with them - at least temporarily (See World War II) but we did move on from that, didn't we?

And moral lessons dear, perhaps you are the one who needs to brush up on his history, for times change, as do political parties. Here's a hint - Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy. LBJ purged the Democratic party of its dixiecrats, and the Republicans were there to welcome them with open arms.

But at the end of the day, anyone who wants to gas on about the supremacy of "white" culture is a seriously deluded fellow. Maybe their mamas drank while carrying them, maybe they ate too many of those delicious paint chips back when they were toddlers. Whatever the reason, they're none too bright.

Looks like the Portland Mercury employs reporters who are skilled in actual fact-based, informative journalism. Much like The Stranger did in the old days.

@15 - what exactly IS "White Culture," anyway? I should at least know what it is of which I am supposed to be proud.

As for the "rainbow crowd," I suspect it is Pride Week etc. that has twisted your knickers. Not being a member, I can't really speak for them, but I always figure it had to do with enduring through millennia of persecution and standing up to claim nothing more than a place in society like straight people have always felt entitled to. But compared to the unbelievable persecution I face daily as a straight white guy . . .

Fascism is bad. Nazis are bad. White supremacists are bad. White nationalists are bad.

If you feel like those statements are too simplistic, lacking in nuance, and you are compelled to argue that those of us who express blanket condemnation of them, wholesale, are being unfair, are being prejudiced, then you're one of them. There is no difference between defending fascism and doing fascism. If you're sticking up for the rights of fascists, you're not a fair, unbiased third party intervening to help an underdog. Only fascists stick up for fascists.

"B- b- b- but...!"

"Welllllllll, actually..."!

NOPE. Let me stop you right there. It ain't like that. If we were talking about Al Qaeda instead of fascists, this wouldn't even be a discussion. The reason is that none of us are Al Qaeda. Only a literal terrorist, someone literally helping Al Qaeda, would see any nuance. There is no difference between helping Al Qaeda and being part of Al Qaeda. Same with fascism.

Fascism is that simple. It's always been that simple.

This website documents Joey Gibsons threats in his own words and tweets, so that you can decide if he's a violent fascist.

https://itsgoingdown.org/proud-boy-leaders-tone-down-after-fbi/

"survey shows that majority of Americans feel we made enough progress toward racial equality"

"A majority of white Americans feel we've made enough progress toward racial equality" is, um, a limited endorsement of the situation. Check out the racial crosstabs on your survey, my dude:

https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/04/09/race-in-america-2019/

Raindrop dear, you undoubtedly know that there are long-established limits to freedom of speech. If not, look up the history of Supreme Court rulings surrounding the terms "fighting words"

As for the fascists on the bus that you are undoubtedly still wringing your hands over.: Calm down. No one is saying it's OK to damage a bus. But maybe you should expand your horizons on this issue.

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/08/1-hammer-1-antifa-mob-chase-a-closer-look-at-portlands-viral-protest-moments.html

I hate Illinois nazis!

@24 Japanese hate Koreans. Koreans hate Japanese. Thais hate Burmese. Burmese hate Muslims. French hate Belgians. Danes hate Swedes. Nigerians hate Ghanaians. Brazilians hate Argentinians. English hate the Irish and French. Finish hate themselves. Nobody hates the Italians except some Ethiopians. Chinese hate everyone. Everyone hates the Germans.

But 20 political cosplay morons in downtown Portland?

The world is ending!

Raindrop:

If the sacred cow of free speech can survive the rape of Congress perpetually extending copyright protection to Mickey Mouse, preventing anything from entering the public domain ever again, if free speech is not insulted by us casually throwing government whistleblowers in prison and throwing away the key, then I see no reason why we can't tell fucking Nazis to shut their fucking Nazi faces and not say another fucking Nazi word.

We tracked down "radical Imams" who "radicalized" young men who later joined Al Qaeda. We through them into Gitmo forever with no legal recourse. We were totally comfortable with that. Nobody complained that freedom of religion and freedom of speech would cease to exist if we persecuted religious leaders for saying what we didn't want to say. If an Imam said "God wants you to murder infidels", we punished the fuck out of them. Any Muslim who didn't rush to condemn that Imam might as well have been aiding terrorism. Fuck speech. Fuck religion. America decided that we could put these boundaries around speech and religion, and while on one side of that boundary we all enjoyed maxim freedom to debate and criticized, anything on the other side of that boundary was a ticket to nonpersonhood. We swallowed that. We saw it happen and figured it was the price we had to pay.

The main thing was this: sure some speech was crushed and persecuted. Some people -- Muslims -- lost their freedom. But the rest of us, regular people, were fine. So it's all good.

Now a fucking Nazi says "Jews will not replace us"? A fucking fascist speaks of "white genocide"? Calls Mexicans "rapists"? And you suddenly want to bleat that we have to protect that fucking Nazi fascist's speech? Guess what? Nazis are not regular people. Fascists are not us. Fascists are the other. WE normal folks can and do exercise our freedoms just fine while fucking fascists rot in a cell. It happens all the time. Look around. Most normal democracies everywhere int he world silence Nazis. Yet they continue to have at least as healthy a civic life as we do.

Fuck no Raindrop. Fuck your false equivalence. If you protect Nazis, you are a Nazi. If you make excuses for fascists, you are a fascist. There's no middle ground. You're either with those fucks, or you're not.

Catalina Vel-DuRay:

While I'm aware that that bus was full of armed skinheads, who chose to open the doors of their bus as a means to violently attack people outside, in retaliation for taunting their ugly fascist asses, I don't think that's a necessary justification. It was great that those fascist fucks got their own claw hammer thrown back in their fucking Nazi faces. But even without it, that bus was fair game.

You say "No one is saying it's OK to damage a bus" and I have to correct you: I am saying it's totally OK to damage a bus if it is a fascist bus. The fascists on that bus needn't have even initiated the violence. True, they did. But even if they hadn't, damage that fucker. Break that Nazi bus's windows.

I don't think Nazi property deserves the same protection as the property of people. Real people. A Nazi bus is dead meat. I hope more Nazi buses get their asses kicked.

The actions of the fascist dirtbags who were on that fascist bus are all the more proof of everything I'm saying. The fascists got mocked and taunted, and they came out swinging deadly weapons. Normal people don't do that. Fucking fascists do that. That's one reason why fascists don't have rights.

Kick those fuckers to the curb. I guarantee you, excessive suppression of fascists will in no way weaken America's democratic institutions. We've coddled the KKK and other fascists garbage people for decades and it has only brought America lower, and brought us closer to the end of our democracy. We can put a stop to that right now.

“If you protect Nazis, you are a Nazi.“

Tell that to the Illinois ACLU then.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn dear, I was mostly trying to placate Our Dear Raindrop, who - as you know - tends to clutch her pearls about things like vandalism.

But I will stand by my statement insofar as no one is saying it's OK to damage a bus. Buses, by definition, have no political affiliation.

But the passengers may be fair game. That's why I suggest that Raindrop look at some of the coverage.

Why is this happening in Portland? Not say, LA, SF, or here?

"Tell that to the Illinois ACLU then."

The ACLU always gets this wrong.

They make a big show of protecting the speech of the establishment's extremist auxiliaries, while ignoring loss of free speech among the very minorities the fascists threaten. The ACLU rushes to defend online harassers and terrorist radicalizes, while their victims have to live in fear, afraid to speak lest the right wing army doxes them, swats them, targets them at work. The ACLU likes to focus on the speech of celebrities and freaks in uniforms, not the ordinary people who lose when the fascists win.

We coddled Nazis, let them march, and where did that lead? White supremacy has only increased, violence and hate crimes have only increased. If falling all over ourselves to let fascists abuse the right to free speech is supposed to protect democracy, how has that worked out? Voter suppression is worse than ever. The government censors research into gun violence and pointedly refuses to root out right wing terrorism. Right wing terrorists recruit and rally openly, and that is tolerated. Trump became President because we let a right wing media machine lie and lie and lie and we called it "free speech". He uses his power to further destroy our democracy every day.

What do we have to show for all this pretense of protecting free speech? We should have the healthiest democracy on Earth, for all the times we rolled out the red carpet to the KKK and their fascist friends. But do we?

The US throws journalists in jail. Did you hear a peep about the First Amendment from the same creeps defending the fascists today when Judith Miller went to jail? Trump threatens the free press daily and the fascist's friends are too busy worrying over antifa to care about what effect that has on free speech in America. NFL players are publicly punished for refusing to support mandatory political speech, a mandatory show of support fo the government, and instead expressing the mildest dissent. And where were these staunch defenders of free speech? Too preoccupied pretending antifa was hiding under the bed ready to pounce to care.

The right to petition the government is at the heart of the right to free speech, and statute specifically protects the right of migrants to apply for asylum. Your government, in your name, makes a mockery of that, and where were you? Too busy defending fascist speech. Everywhere we look, the ones most concerned with protecting fascist demonstrations have no interest at all in anybody else's rights. It's obvious that they care nothing for speech. What they care about is protecting and promoting fascists. If you protect and promote fascists, you are a fascist.

This pretense is transparent. It's obvious that fascists put on a show of defending free speech, an ideal they don't share, purely to take advantage of liberal dupes. The grassroots defense of real free speech by anti-fascists is proof that not everybody is fooled by this game.