I get this question a lot from my friends and family back in Tennessee. They want to know why people are rioting in Portland. Who’s stirring up all the trouble?
Here’s what I tell them. We’ve got four groups on our streets here. The first group wants to change the world for the better – they’re the people who leave their comfy, air-conditioned homes in the summer heat and walk the streets to support Black Lives Matter. They hope that demonstrating will alert police to the reality that we don’t want them killing unarmed black people. It’s a pretty good reason to hold demonstrations.
The second group wants to use the cover of the demonstrators to vandalize and loot. They are opportunists, criminals, thugs – the cockroaches of society. They’re thrilled that people are demonstrating because they lay low until the focus is on other groups, then break a store window and steal what they can. They destroy property so they can profit. Black lives don’t matter to them. They need to be sent to jail, the sooner the better. Almost as bad are the vandals and scum who spray paint our buildings and everything else with their stupid giant letters. It’s ugly. Just stop it. Put them in jail, too, after the judge makes them remove their awful graffiti.
The third and fourth groups are vigilantes here to fight each other. One is the white-supremacists, the Skinheads and Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer and other modern-day fascists. They want every race except whites to be somewhere else, preferably dead. Let me refresh your memory about fascists. They were in charge in Germany during the 1930’s and 40’s. They called themselves Nazis, and Hitler was their leader. He started World War II. In the meantime, the Nazis practiced their white supremacy by killing six million Jews in Germany’s concentration camps, not to mention anyone they deemed inferior, such as handicapped people.
Today’s white-supremacist, fascist, hate groups in America call themselves Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer and other names, because the word Nazi has such inconvenient connotations. I call them Profa – short for Pro-fascists – they are the opposite of Anti-fascists, or Antifa.
Antifa is the fourth group here in Portland. They oppose white-supremacist, fascist groups, for, what I think, are obvious reasons. (See paragraph above about Hitler, Nazis, murdering innocents, and World War II).
The question is, why are these two groups, Profa and Antifa, in Portland? Pro-fascist groups are okay with the police shooting someone as long as the victim is not white. They certainly aren’t here to support Black Lives Matter. Antifa is here to stand up to the white supremacists. Antifa is like the kid in school who gets between the bullies (white supremacists) and the kids being bullied (everyone who isn’t white). So Pro-fascists and Anti-fascists clash. Violence ensues. Opportunists break into stores and steal. Demonstrators keep marching.
I’ve heard people say, “Antifa is a terrorist group. They’re bussing in people and paying them to riot.” This makes no sense to me. Antifa, remember, are anti-fascists, the far left – they’re on the side of Black Lives Matter. They are against police brutality. The only people they’re fighting are the white supremacist fascist groups.
What makes more sense is that someone is bussing in the pro-fascist groups, the far right. But who would want pro-fascist groups in Portland? Hmmm, the Proud Boys and all the rest of the pro-fascists have Trump’s name plastered all over their banners while they parade through Portland. Maybe that’s why Trump keeps calling the anti-fascists, Antifa, a terrorist group, but sympathizes with the white supremacist pro-fascist groups.
If I were a president whose ratings are down, I’d spend some of my millions or ask my rich friends to rent a few busses so the Proud Boys, Skinheads, Patriot Prayer and other fascists can come to Portland where they make Black Lives Matter demonstrators angry. Anti-fa comes to stand up to Pro-fa. Fights break out. People get hurt. It’s cheap advertising. It’s almost the only thing they talked about at the Republican National Convention – IF YOU DON’T RE-ELECT TRUMP THE WHOLE COUNTRY WILL BE LIKE PORTLAND. What name is on the banners of the fascist, white supremacist, hate groups as they parade in Portland? It’s not Biden.
If a person wanted to stay in power, wouldn’t it be in his best interest to stir up trouble, to manufacture fear, to pit people against each other? And then spend day and night Tweeting that the whole country will be like Portland if he’s not re-elected?
But wait. Isn’t he the one in office right now? And isn’t the country already like this? Right now? Could it be his “divide and conquer” strategy? Divide us to the point that we’re so angry we can’t even talk to our own family members or our best friends from high school without getting into a shouting match. We may have disliked other presidents, had political debates, agreed to disagree, but we can’t even talk now. He has definitely divided us.
But will he conquer? Not if we vote. Actually vote. Not just not vote. Many people didn’t vote in 2016 because they thought Trump was a joke, but they couldn’t support a Democrat, or a woman with a trumped up email scandal. Hilary won the popular vote, but Trump ended up in the White House. Please don’t let it happen this time. I know he’ll whine and cry and say it was rigged and we’ll have to endure his pouting, vengeful tweets about how he’s a genius and everyone else is a loser and blame it on fake news and on and on and on, but who knows what will happen to Democracy, to America, if he gets another four years? If you don’t vote for whatever reason, or vote by writing in the name of someone who can’t possibly win, Lord help us.
What’s happening in Portland? Who’s stirring up trouble?
Do you really even need to ask?
