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Fear Grows as Armed Trump Supporters Escalate Threats Against Progressives
By Rick Perlstein [1] / The Washington Spectator [2]
April 15, 2017
Afriend writes, For basically the past six months or so Ive been trying to
tell my lefty friends in so many words, Hey, there are a bunch of people on
the Internet who are waiting for someone to tell them its okay to start
shooting at you. He became concerned when a thread at the non-political
firearms-enthusiasts website he regularly follows became filled with
comments in all caps referring to liberals as enemies who must be shot.
Developments both online and off following Donald Trumps election have
caused me to share his concern.
In December, an author at the biggest and most explicitly non-political gun
site, the Firearms Blog (its tagline is Firearms, not politics), recounted
his experience with an outfit that offers tactical training based on the
methods of the Israel Defense Forces. The moderator soon had to begin
deleting comments. One that remains protested, as if through the millennia,
hundreds of nations, principalities and city-states reached the same
conclusions, and urged the curious to check out Judaism.is/genocide.html
where one can watch the film Jewish Ritual Murder Revisited: The Hidden
Cult.
Four days after Donald Trumps inauguration, a community member on a
moderate firearms law site, PAGunBlog, a civil redoubt welcoming active
participation by both firearms enthusiasts and people who hate them,
described his shock from that mornings web-surf when a long-time commenter
who I recognized as right-leaning but mostly moderate commented that The
Jews own and control everything in America
Not many months ago no one
except a flaming neo-Nazi would have dreamed of expressing such an opinion,
but today it seems to have become an acceptable element of our discourse. I
noticed that no one replied to or castigated the comment.
Then came February 1 in Berkeley and things really started getting scary.
The saga of what happened when Milo Yiannopoulos came to speak at the
flagship campus of the University of California has since become
foundational, not just with the alt-right but with quite nearly the entire
right. Alt-right provocateur Yiannopoulos was turned back by violent
protests, which culminated in the burning of a portable generator. Stuffed
down the wingnut memory hole are the events that preceded the mêlée. The
violence was, in fact, preceded by peaceful protests by approximately 1,500
Berkeley students, until they were waylaid by a tiny handful of off-campus
Black Bloc and antifa, or anti-fascist, cadres who believe racist speech
licenses violent resistance. It was also preceded, less than two weeks
earlier, by the shooting of a Milo protester in Seattle, by a gunman who has
yet to be charged with any crime.
The Battle of Berkeley accelerated the construction of a body of mythology:
the left has escalated its resistance to Trump into literal war, so Trump
supporters must be prepared to resort to violence to oppose it.
How afraid of this should you be? The most interesting answers to that
question do not come from the left. They come from concerned voices on the
right, whove been monitoring the chatter with mounting alarm, going public
with pleas to liberals to still the antifa renegades before bodies begin
piling up. The most convincing evidence that they have a point comes in the
ensuing comment threads, where the need to prepare for armed force is taken
as gospel.
The proprietor of Being Libertarian, a Facebook community with 438,888
likes, wrote of Berkeley, This was a riot, and urged liberals to BE LOUD
and renounce the rioters: Conservatives are going to have a field day with
this. If you just sit there quietly, youre essentially letting yourself be
associated with campus-pillaging barbarians. He added, You should consider
yourself lucky nobody shot you.
Clearly, this man knows his audience. The comment, When someone has set
your car on fire and is chasing you around with a blunt object, you get to
make an executive decision regarding your continued existence, got 1,403
likes. The conviction that this would be acting in self-defense was affirmed
by the man who wrote, these riots that have been occurring are what got my
ass in gear to get the final steps of my pistol permit application
completed. My unrestricted carry permit cant come soon enough. Someone
reminded him a gun license is not a license to kill. His response: Yes
Im aware. I just refuse to end up a helpless victim when crazy shit like
this goes down.
Oleg Volk is an advertising professional and Second Amendment activist based
in Nashville. He wrote on a Facebook wall about the Berkeley events:
Rioting? Thats how you get Freikorps reenacting the demise of the Bavarian
Republic with full approval of the majority of the population. The
Freikorps were volunteer paramilitaries set up by German World War I
veterans that violently put down Communist uprisings, piling up bodies by
the thousands; the movement officially came to a close in 1933 when
Freikorps leaders surrendered their battle flags in loyalty to the Nazi
command. Volk made it clear that he was opposed to such escalation.
Commenters responding to his post were not. Trying to decide if I will be
unhappy or happy to don Freikorps attire. Then what to bring to the party,
said one. Others discussed appropriate armamentsIll see your 308 and raise
you a 45-70 [sic]until one Richard Carter trumped them all: see you all
that crap 50 bmg. He was referring the .50-caliber Browning machine gun, a
weapon useful for downing low-flying aircraft. After all, another commenter
observed, The Brownshirts are all liberals now.
Another commenter offered a Side note: Ever notice they dont try that shit
somewhere like Texas or Florida, where the odds are good that Joe Public
will ventilate their asses when assaulted. As it happened, one month later
events provided a natural experiment to prove or disprove his hypothesis.
March 4 was national March 4 Trump Day. It was also Confederate Flag
Daythough whether coincidence or not is always a difficult question to
answer in Trumpland, where what the presidents respectable partisans
would prefer to keep hidden in the basement is only a dogwhistle away.
A prelude to the March 4 Trump events played out on February 19, when a
complement from the III% Security Force armed with rifles stood guard over
a pro-Trump rally in Atlantas Centennial Olympic Park. The next day,
National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre went online with a video
advertising his appearance at the following weeks Conservative Political
Action Conference. The video opened with the words THEY COULDNT HANDLE
IT, interposed with clips of Michael Moore calling Donald Trump a fascist
and Nancy Pelosi intoning white supremacist, then the words, SO THEY
STARTED A WAR, AGITATION, INSURRECTION, and ANARCHY. All this was
interspersed with chaotic images of fire, vandalism, and Madonna at the
Womens March explaining, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the
White House. Thereupon LaPierre pledged the NRA would be the spearhead of
the counter-resistance: On Friday, February 24, we fight back.
Then in Austin on March 4, a blogger who calls himself Morgoth, after the
J.R.R. Tolkien character often interpreted as a stand-in for Satan, filed a
dispatch from the pro-Trump rally at Wooldridge Park, sprinkled with
pictures of dudes with signs like the one featuring the alt-right iconic
image of Pepe in a pilot outfit with the legend FREE HELICOPTER RIDES and
the silhouette of a woman falling from the sky. The only contribution we
received from the Republican Party was some Trump Pence and MAGA signs, he
boasted. Quite unlike the AstroTurf leftist protests where professional
agitators are organized, bused in and often paid by shadowy group funded for
George Soros or the Democratic Party. [sic] Morgoth was impressed with
organizers doing everything possible to dispel the notion that Trump or his
supporters are in any way racist. After all, speakers at the event included
a black woman . . . and a Mexican woman who had just obtained U.S.
citizenship. Amusingly, the Mexican ladys speech was largely drowned out by
long and raucous chants of build the wall, build the wall!
Morgoth estimated the alt-right contingent at 10 to 20 percent of the crowd.
He celebrated their chants, including Free helicopter rides for commies
and One people, one nation, one leader. He reported, The Alt Right were
well turned out, many wearing shirts and ties, well groomed, well informed,
physically fit, and well versed in their arguments. They stood in stark
contrast to the weak degenerates of Antifa . . . He said the whole thing
made him feel as glorious as when he participated in an Orange Walkthose
marches where Ulster unionists would parade menacingly through Catholic
neighborhoods to celebrate the 1690 defeat of Irish Catholics. He thrilled
to what he claimed was evidence that even mainstream conservatives were
moving toward us.
He also confirmed the accounts of about a dozen anti-Trump protesters that
one of them, Austin radical journalist Kit OConnell, received a concussion
when he was smashed against a post by a former Marine after touching his
flag.
OConnell was arrested and charged with a crime. The attacker was not.
OConnells assailant, wearing an American-flag windbreaker, carrying an
American flag, and sporting two small American flags in his MAGA cap, can be
heard in a video boasting, He was so light, I thought he was a girl. But I
hit him against the pole, and I felt sorry for him so I stopped. . . How do
you justify attacking somebody with an American flag? . . .They went after
my flag.
Morgoths blog post in praise of this fine patriot featured a screen grab of
OConnells Facebook message. Morgoths comment: Here is a post of the
glass jawed communist made on Facebook the next day showing him still in
this hospital bed whining about his treatment at the hands of the fascist
police state. Youd need a heart of stone not to laugh. . . . Antifa pussy,
straight from central casting. The screen grab contained the name of the
hospital, should any local neo-Nazilike the fellow who recently charged
into an Austin anarchist bookstore and threatened to burn them outwish to
visit him. When I reached OConnell by phone, he told me, Theres a real
feel in the Austin left, especially the far-left, that this
counter-resistance is becoming frighteningly organized.
And why not? They believe theyre only fighting back.
A Morgoth commenter who calls himself Gentleman Jim Crow praised the virile
young Alt-Rights clashing with clapped out retrograde commies. The future
belongs to us. Another commenter responded to that, They will still
escalate. Morgoth himself wrote, While looking for footage of the Austin
march to accompany this post I came across this footage of the violence at
the March 4 Trump in Berkeley, California. . . the Trump supporters seem to
be more physically capable, but the weaker leftists are prepared to up the
ante by introducing cowardly devices like tasers and pepper spray.
Students of fascism will recognize the fantastical confusion of tropes: the
enemy as a terrifying horde, raising the stakes ruthlessly beyond all civil
bounds; but also the enemy as pitiful (glass jawed) weaklingssometimes
both within the same utterance. Such language is how students of fascism
know that they are in its presence.
Ive seen the Berkeley footage Morgoth is referring to. Thats how I made
the acquaintance of Stick Man.
Berkeleys March 4 Trump was organized by a man named Richard Black, who
announced that members of the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists
were banned. Among those who did not get the memo were Moshe Daniel, who
goes by the nickname Kilt Man. Daniel depicts himself on Facebook with a
giant serrated knife and a T-shirt featuring the face of the late Chilean
fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, the legend PHYSICAL REMOVAL, and
another of those silhouettes of people being dropped from helicoptersa
Pinochet-favored method for dealing with dissenters.
The march turned into a small riot, as gun-rights blogger Bob Owens, one
of the most widely read on the web, and a cool and clear-thinking moderate,
described it after reviewing the available documentation. Both sides came
to this incident prepared for a fight, he wrote, concluding it was
impossible to see who threw the first punch. In my mind, however, there
were at least two moments where the person who threw the first punch was
starkly evident. In both cases it was an individual who wore all black, from
boots to baseball cap, and carried a distinctive black shield emblazoned
with a V for victory, and an American flag. The man in black also wore a
gas mask, surely in response to a widely disseminated urban legend that
antifas are routinely attacking protesters with pepper spray. In one video
he whacks a downed anti-Trump protester with the long wooden stick he
carries (with two tiny American flags attached, thus he can call it a
flagpole). In another, he can be seen smashing his stick down so hard on an
unarmed protesters head that the stick breaks in half.
Hes since become a right-wing folk hero, and, after Berkeley police
arrested him on several felony charges, naturally, a right-wing martyr.
Morgoth declared an image of Stick Man in his getup to be his picture of
the week. Wrote the proprietor of a blog called Ride the Bomb!, who calls
his hero Captain America: For those who are not aware, the Antifa jerks
have been bringing flags to violent protests so that they can use the flag
poles to beat Trump supporters over the head. This gentlemans flagpole
was a great FU to all of them. My personal favorite video . . . shows
Captain America breaking his flagpole over the head of an Antifa member. .
. . Let us hope now he understands that it was foolish to think that a beta
male Liberal wussy boy like him who has never been in a fair fight in his
life could brawl with men. I believe that going forward Captain America will
serve as in [sic] inspiration for us all. More than anyone else he will be
remembered as the symbol of the turning point represented by the Berkeley
March 4 Trump.
Stick Mans real name is Kyle Chapman of Daly City, California. On Facebook,
he can be seen dipping bullets into bacon, apparently for use against
Muslims. His favorite books include March of the Titans: A History of the
White Race. He likes the Nordic-Germanic Front, Nordic Beauty, Soldiers of
Odin USA, and RT. He also has a long criminal history, including felony
convictions for charges that include robbery and grand theft. Following a
crowdfunding campaign to aid with his bail and defense, he wrote, The out
pouring of support has nearly brought me to tears. I do not consider myself
a hero. Im a patriot that loves freedom and my fellow countrymen. I have
long embraced my inner warrior as many of the warrior patriots that have
fought along side me. Could not have done it without them. The decadence of
the West has made us soft. We must reverse this if our republic is to
survive. Let 3.4.17 be the beginning of a new revolution. Among those who
have joined the crowdfunding crusade is Richard Black, the organizer of
March 4 Trump, who had banned white nationalists and the alt-right.
Bob Owenss post about the March 4 Trump in Berkeley is entitled Can Trump
Supporters Legally Shoot Left-wing Antifa Attackers? He wrote it in
response to a Tweet directed to him, noting a moment where three antifas got
in three light kicks at a downed Trump supporter, asking, Looks like lethal
self-defense could be justified. Opinions? Owens assured his readers this
was indubitably not so. He reviewed Californias statute on the use of
deadly force, which requires a shooter to reasonably believe he or she
was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury,
then to use no more force than was reasonably necessary to defend against
that danger, and that belief in future harm is not sufficient, no matter
how greatly or how likely the harm is believed to be. He concluded, Both
sides acted childishly and violently, but there was no violence that came
close to justifying the use of firearms to stop a deadly force attack,
Introducing firearms, he wrote, would have been frankly stupid, as youre
much more likely to hit innocent bystanders downrange than you are likely to
hit the person youre shooting at in such dense crowds.
To which his commenters replied: to hell with that, were shooting anyway.
Theyre not ashamed. They use their real names, and sometimes list their
hometown; and, in one case (a firefighter in a small Florida town), their
employment, which I confirmed. Then, they say things like this:
[W]hen the law says you must die why would you care about the law.
Its far better to be judged by 12, then carried by 6.
If you physically attack someone you can legally be shot. Doesnt matter
what Kool Aid you drink.
[I]f a person, or persons, are a threat to you or someone else . . . Act
accordingly to protect life. Everything else, including the targets well
being, is a by product that is not my concern.
If deadly force isnt reasonable then why do the cops show up armed???
And last but not least: But lets face it legalities put aside, killing
these ANTIFA douches would probably make America a better place.
Just chest-thumping boasts? My friend, a liberal and a Second Amendment
advocate, isnt sure what to think. He hopes they have jobs and mortgages
and kids and so on . . . They have way too much to lose to start shooting at
anybody.
But then theres another part of me that knows how men (and theyre mostly
men) of this type are. When you have that much invested in some hardware,
and they do have a lot invested as a percentage of income, then you want to
use it.
Maybe its all just idle Internet chatter. But didnt they used to say that
about Munich beer halls once, too?
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Trump Supporters Escalate Threats Against Progressives
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