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Last night, protesters were gathering in a Portland park to prepare for a march against police violence when an irate local man reportedly emerged from a nearby house with a gun; according to witnesses on the scene, he got into a confrontation with several of the protesters before opening fire on the group, killing one woman. One of the protesters reportedly fired back, injuring the shooter. Four others were wounded.
The police and some in the press are presenting this as just the tragic escalation of an argument between protesters and a “local homeowner” over protesters blocking traffic. But this statement from one of the alleged victims, reposted by a friend on Twitter, paints a rather different story.
Naturally, a number of those on the far right are doing their best to muddy the waters and not-so-subtly suggest that “antifa terrorists” were the ones responsible for the shootings.
The Daily Stormer declared in a headline that “Blacks Do Mass Shooting at Protest Against Police Killing a Black Guy.” This seems to be a complete fabrication on Andrew Anglin’s part; the race of the shooter hasn’t been reported anywhere and even if he were black, he would hardly represent “blacks” collectively.
The Gateway Pundit, somewhat more subtly, declared in a headline: “One Woman Killed, Five Others Injured in Mass Shooting Involving Portland Antifa,” making it (deliberately?) unclear as to who was responsible for the death and injuries; most of the Gateway Pundit’s readers, hearing that “Antifa” had been “involved” in a shooting in Portland no doubt assumed this meant they were the killers. While the story itself made no such claim directly, it did cast more aspersions on the protesters, describing them as “armed Antifa terrorists.”
Meanwhile, “journalist”/ideologue Andy Ngo used similarly misleading wording in his tweets on the subject:
(I’ve clipped out the portion of the tweet containing a graphic photo of some of the victims lying on the ground after the shooting.)
On Twitter, some on the far right have simply started asserting that “Antifa” is responsible for the shootings. Some don’t quite state this outright, but come awfully close.
Other have simply been making up their own versions of events:
(I clipped off a screenshot attached to this tweet that seemed to be spreading an unfounded rumor possibly started by trolls.)
I think we’re watching the birth of what will become the standard right-wing version of events in Portland. Who needs facts when you’ve got a narrative? Just wait until Tucker Carlson gets hold of it.
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(Bleep) Tucker Carlson and the jackboots he marched in on.
“Antifa fascists”? Do these people not know what the “fa” bit is short for?
My heart is breaking.
There’s a half decent chance I know some of those protesters, unless the group was REALLY small. Now, I also probably don’t know them well, but I know a lot of the people who are really active in anti-violence circles in Portland just by face and first name to say hi.
I mean, even if I don’t know anyone, it’s still a ridiculous, horrible tragedy. But that feeling that I might know them, and if I don’t, I probably know someone who knows them is haunting me right now.
@Crip Dyke: I can imagine. I hope everybody who was injured will pull through. And that it doesn’t leave them in unpayable medical debt.
‘Accuse them of what you are about to do to them’ has always been reactionary ethos as far as I can remember. Never stops being tasteless.
@Crip Dyke
All the hugs if you want them 🙁
And gods above, this is so bleak. Just like antifascists have been warning us for years, lethal violence against protesters is being normalized. I’m so tired.
@Crip Dyke
I’m sorry that this keeps happening. The hyper-nationalists responsible for the rumor campaign against antifascists need to be exposed for what they are.
@Battering Lamb: Projection is all the right wing can do to distract from their own flaws.
I join in your wishes for @Crip Dyke and friends, although the bad part of me hopes the guy who started shooting protesters DOES end up with an unpayable medical bill (ONLY if he has insurance and doesn’t just dump it on the taxpayers like most of those types do; otherwise I hope it’s just a scratch).
Depressing and disgusting, but not at all surprising at this point.
Good.
Let me be clear that I abhor gun violence and I’m so completely revolted by the gun worshipping cult
urehere in America these days, which is only getting worse (fuck the NRA and fuck everyone who refuses to support even the most watered down gun safety laws), BUT I am also sick of these violent hatemongers being able to injure and kill with near impunity in this country. I am glad when the victims get a chance to fight back. And of course the gun cultists HATE that (they’ll argue until they’re blue in the face about every ‘murrican’s god given right to own a gun… until it’s a non-white individual, especially from any other vulnerable group that they hate, trying to defend themselves), so of course they’re spinning bullshit narratives about “violent antifa” groups being the ones to start this. Of course.@Crip Dyke
Hugs if you want them.
@Battering Lamb, GSS
I’ve been saying that the GQP’s basic strategy now consists of 90% “NO U” responses and projection. Whatever they’re currently yelling the loudest about their opponents doing, that’s actually what they’re doing themselves. (See: Voter fraud/suppression/stealing the election.)
*Edit*
I apologize; I don’t know why my comment somehow managed to spam itself…
@Queen of the Harpies
While this is true and the plight that people of color who face and suffer gun violence and the responses they are saddled with by right wing reactionary gun cultists; left wing progressives also seem to be saddled with such rhetoric.
Such right wing gun cult-ilk basically demand both POC and left wing progressives be forced to be hemmed into the Gandhi Trap, where both parties gervicences and movemnts can only have any measure of “legitimacy”; when we are forced to just sit back passively and take truncheons to the head wielded by the hands of those who wish to place both parties into emergancy rooms at best to graves at worst. Part of me suspects that on some level it may be intentional. I may be the sort to regularly wish for and seek out peaceful solutions and non-violence and “talking things out”…. but even I know and recognize that their comes a point where such methods can and will either be exhausted or made to be impossible or otherwise be spurned at the end of those truncheons.
Thus, those who seek change and restorative justice should refuse to be forced into the Gandhi Trap by those who have a vested self interest on stacking the deck to impose us in such a position to be better victimized, who seek to bog down change and deny justice.
@TacticalProgressive
I’m sorry, I didn’t quite follow what you were saying. I’m not familiar with what a “Gandhi Trap” might be, and the video you linked is unavailable.
I’m guessing it was something about how the right-wingers and fascists basically want to deter liberals and progressives from ever fighting back, even in self-defense, while they actively try to harm us?
@Queen of the Harpies
Ah apologies, the video seems to not quite show up properly in the site comments for whatever reason. The video is still available on YouTube; it’s by Innuendo Studios and is titled “CO-VIDs: the gandhi trap” and recommend giving it a watch since it’s informative and goes into considerable detail on the subject.
But I guess to try and summarize The Gandhi Trap…
While this is a partial component of the Gandhi Trap; the other missing component is that the only form of protest to right wing eyes (wither in earnest or in bad faith) and seen as “legitimate”; is one where protesters are to sit possibly and take truncheons to the head (a standard that right wingers generally don’t tend to seem to hold themselves to). Though as of late; even this rhetorical tactic is being tossed out by the right wing given that even when left wing progressive advocacy moevement and protests are peaceful and non-violent; right wingers will still propagandize and deny that such peaceful and non-violent protest even were and lie and say they weren’t; casting doubt and distorting fact of even a movement and protest that operates inside the Gandhi Trap.
@QotH: That’s how I read it as well.
@TacticalProgressive
Ah, thank you for clarifying and summing up, I don’t watch many videos these days, but I can put it on the list.