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Idaho state Rep. Heather Scott at Candlelight Christian Church in Coeur d'Alene in December. Scott draws her world view from her Christianity, which tells her that even believing that the earth is millions of years old is a "direct attack on God."

At these gatherings in northeast Washington, the jackboot of tyranny is always said to be descending, the hand of the federal government always inches away from stealing your guns, your land, your freedom to speak or to pray.

But at this particular "God and Country" celebration in June of 2016, the sense of impending doom among these self-proclaimed patriots has a grim weight to it. Blood had been spilled. Cops had gunned down militia member LaVoy Finicum during the armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.

Washington state Rep. Matt Shea visited Malheur during the occupation, and now at this gathering in Stevens County the following June, he's leading a roundtable titled "You Should Be Scared," warning the crowd that what happened to Finicum could happen to them.

"That could be any single one of us that just says 'no' one day," the Republican Spokane Valley legislator says. "Any single one of us!"

But then Shea introduces one of the reasons he's hopeful: The "finest legislator of the state of Idaho," a woman who "has people so scared in Idaho that even the speaker now is afraid to have her in his office."

"Representative Heather Scott, get up here!" Shea yells, and the crowd whistles and cheers.

Scott, a small woman with long brown hair and just a hint of Holly Hunter in her voice, tells the crowd that some people think Idaho is safe because it's dominated by Republicans.

"No, we're not safe," Scott says. "We're allowing refugees into our state. Last week, we lit up our Capitol with rainbow colors."

She used to be complacent, she says. A few years earlier, she didn't know anything about politics or even bother to vote. A message from God changed all that.

"I called Matt right away," Scott says. "God's telling me to run for office."

Ever since, the fates of Scott and Shea have been intertwined. Shea has feted her with awards and praise and invited her to secret meetings.

Each has zig-zagged from one controversy to another, feuding with the press and their own party. And then in December of last year, an independent investigation commissioned by fellow state lawmakers alleged that as a leader in what some call the "patriot movement" a loose network of militiamen, sovereign citizens, rural survivalists and anti-government conspiracy theorists Shea had fomented multiple "armed conflicts." His role in the Malheur standoff was tantamount to "domestic terrorism," investigators concluded in the report.

In Olympia, Shea has subsequently been booted from the Republican caucus, but also cheered by hundreds at a recent gun rally on the capitol steps. Scott can relate. When Scott was temporarily stripped of her committee assignments three years ago, a wave of her own supporters rallied to her defense.

Shea and Scott exist in two realities the world of the Legislature and the world of incendiary self-proclaimed patriots. The tactics and mindset that can make you famous in one world can make you infamous in the other. Shea has been the star of a Rolling Stone feature, a podcast series and international news stories, and Scott is following in his footsteps. Even if Shea and Scott never are able to reshape the Inland Northwest's identity, they can still reshape its reputation.

"My goodness, just one person can make a huge difference. And you have done that," Shea tells Scott in a 2016 podcast. "To the point that, I think, they're kind of afraid of you right now."

"And I think a lot of people feel the same way about you, Matt," Scott responds.

A BUG OR A FEATURE?

Heather Scott knows how to make a first impression.

During Scott's very first week in office in 2015, representing the northernmost part of Idaho, from Sandpoint up, fellow lawmakers watched her climb on her new desk in Boise and ask them if the little black object hanging from the wire on the ceiling could be a "listening device." She then pulled out a knife and cut it down.

But it wasn't a bug.

"We later learned that the object was believed to be a part of the Capitol building's fire suppression system," Idaho Republican state Reps. Caroline Nilsson Troy and Don Cheatham said in a statement.

Scott, for her part, has never confirmed their account and denied ever causing damage to the statehouse building. The fire suppression incident, long whispered about in the halls of the statehouse, first became public knowledge in 2017 when then-Idaho State Rep. Christy Perry wrote a letter summarizing her "serious, if not grave, concerns regarding the behavior patterns of Representative Heather Scott."

Rampart Report photo

Coalition of Western States members (left to right) Shelly Shelton, Michele Fiore (both of Nevada), Heather Scott and Matt Shea at Marble Community Fellowship's 2016 "God and Country" rally. Marble founder Ann Byrd is second from the right. RAMPART REPORT PHOTO

Perry wrote that Scott's "escalating pattern of behavior" meant that some female members of the caucus "do not feel safe working in her presence."

It wasn't just that Scott carried a gun into the Capitol. This is Idaho after all. Perry says she personally kept two Smith & Wesson lightweight revolvers in the statehouse.

The difference, Perry says, is that there was a paranoia that came out in everything Scott did.

"When you couple odd behavior and aggressive behavior and know that person does carry, that raises a concern to a different level," Perry tells the Inlander.

Scott declined to be interviewed for this story; like Shea, she says the media is part of a coordinated conspiracy, driven in part to silence people like them.

In Perry's letter, she wrote about Scott sneering and glaring at her colleagues, bashing them in events in their own districts, and claiming female legislators were given leadership positions if they "spread their legs." And while the frustration with Scott wasn't universal, Perry wasn't alone.

"Some of those concerns were shared by others," Idaho Speaker of the House Scott Bedke says. Bedke found the comment about female legislators to be particularly horrifying he suspended Scott from all committees until he felt she'd adequately apologized. Today he says she's "grown as a legislator."

From her first campaign on, Scott has portrayed the Republican-dominated Idaho Legislature as an "orchestrated circus" and a "swamp," beset by sell-outs, bullies, cowards and "evil people."

Sometimes those accusations get personal: When an affair between Perry and an Idaho state senator became public in 2016, Scott shared the news on Facebook and speculated about legislative corruption: "How many good bills backed by citizens were kept in committee chairmen drawers and why?" Scott wrote.

In Idaho, Scott has argued, the battle isn't between Republicans and the tiny Democratic minority. It's between the "gravy train" Republicans addicted, she claims, to federal bribes, beholden to crony capitalism and those working for the citizens.

Set aside Scott's views on abortion and same-sex marriage and transgender rights and Muslim refugees, you could almost consider her a hardcore libertarian. She believes the county government's job is to protect you from the state, and the job of the state is to protect you from the feds.

Scott imagines tyranny coming not from a bang, but a succession of whimpers.

"I think a lot of people are waiting for this big war, and they're hunkered down and they've got their food and they've got their bullets," Scott says in a 2015 YouTube video. "It's not how we're going to be taken. We're going to be taken one small battle at a time."

As a result, Scott and a few allies have turned even minor procedural votes updating the state's notary laws, for instance into tooth-and-nail battles where the state's sovereignty and the future of liberty is alleged to be in jeopardy.

Unlike Washington state, where Shea's vote is drowned out by Democrats, Idaho is conservative enough that Scott's vote matters. In 2015, Idaho representatives had to return to Boise for a special session after Scott's choice to help kill a child support bill citing fears about foreign tribunals and Sharia law threatened to cost Idaho $200 million in annual child support payments.

This approach has given her nearly perfect ratings from the libertarian Idaho Freedom Foundation. She's beloved by Idaho Second Amendment Alliance.

"She doesn't compromise," says Anna Bohach, a former constituent. "That's what I like about Heather. We don't compromise on our principles."

But more moderate legislators saw Scott as killing perfectly fine bills by spreading fear and falsehoods.

"There are people who get things done in the Legislature because they work well with their colleagues and come up with tangible ideas," says former Idaho Rep. Luke Malek, a Republican. "And Heather Scott is not one of those people."

Malek would work in the Legislature and then read one of Scott's newsletters roaring with inflammatory rhetoric and it seemed like she's coming from a different world entirely.

"There's like this alternate reality," Malek says.

Idaho wasn't even a state during the Civil War, but Rep. Heather Scott still stoked controversy when she placed a Confederate flag on her Timber Days parade float in 2015.

REDOUBTERS ASSEMBLE

That reality is called the "American Redoubt."

First dreamt up by survivalist fiction author James Wesley Rawles, the Redoubt calls for conservative Christians and Jews to escape ostensible government persecution in liberal areas and migrate to the Inland Northwest to turn the region into a bulwark against governmental tyranny even a fortress in the event of a governmental collapse. Scott's district is in the heart of it.

Last December, Rawles put both Scott and Shea on his list of "key leaders and promoters of the American Redoubt movement."

"The beauty of it is, we're all in the Redoubt," Scott tells Shea on Shea's podcast. "It is a place where people from all over the country have been fleeing."

The Redoubt movement has its own alternative media network, filled with some of Scott's most ardent supporters like Redoubt News blogger Shari Dovale "Patriot Journalist" on her business card and pseudonymous Radio Free Redoubt radio host John Jacob Schmidt.

The Redoubt is a haven for groups like the Oath Keepers, a loosely organized, militia-aligned patriot group of mostly law enforcement and military veterans who've vowed to defy unconstitutional orders. Shea's an Oath Keeper. Despite not having military experience herself, Scott took the Oath Keeper's oath, too.

"It was serious," Scott says in a YouTube video. "It was like when I got married."

But don't confuse the Redoubt with the sort of white ethnostate the Aryan Nations once dreamt of in North Idaho in the 1980s, members of the movement insist. The Redoubt, Scott wrote in a statement last month, is "not a hideout for racial supremacists, religious zealots, bigots, phobics or 'deplorables.'"

Yet, it's not hard to see why some people conflate the Redoubt movement with Idaho's ugly past. Montana pastor Chuck Baldwin the first on Rawles' list of Redoubt movement promoters celebrates the Confederacy and preaches anti-Semitic 9/11 conspiracy theories.

As for Scott herself? There was the time a few weeks after a white supremacist who celebrated the Confederate flag shot nine black churchgoers in South Carolina in 2014 that Scott proudly flew the Confederate battle flag on a parade float, arguing it was a symbol of "free speech." And a day after the 2017 alt-right rally in Charlottesville, when a white supremacist drove a car into a crowd of protesters, Scott published a quote on Facebook arguing that a "white nationalist" was "no more than a Caucasian who [is] for the Constitution and making America great again." Scott later argued she was just starting a conversation about how liberals distort language.

In her statement, Scott declared that she rejects "ANY AND ALL forms of racial supremacy" and believes "as the late Lavoy Finicum stated, that 'Freedom is Color Blind.'"

In fact, some conservative critics of Scott believe that she and similar legislators deploy these sorts of controversies intentionally.

"The formula is simple. Use white nationalism stories to trigger the media, be the martyr and rally support from sympathizers who don't like to be called racists," an Idaho rancher wrote last year on the moderate-leaning Idaho Conservatives blog.

Put another way, she and Shea are looking for fights that, they believe, will portray themselves as victims.

THE STANDOFF THAT WASN'T

It was Matt Shea who made Heather Scott a star.

You can trace the moment back to Aug. 6, 2015 the day that Scott believed the government was coming to take a veteran's guns. A year after John Arnold, a Vietnam veteran in North Idaho, had a stroke, he was informed by Veterans Affairs that he was no longer able to handle his own finances or possess a gun.

And so Scott called up Shea.

Shea, a veteran himself, knew a thing or two about showdowns with the United States government. In 2014, Shea had gone down to Cliven Bundy's ranch in Nevada to support the armed protesters and militiamen who had come to Bundy's defense when the Bureau of Land Management started taking Bundy's livestock because he'd refused to pay grazing fees.

Shea had even formed an alliance of state legislators and other leaders called the Coalition of Western States that's COWS, for short dedicated to fighting against the federal government's so-called "war on rural America."

Jay Pounder used to be part of Shea's informal security detail and, breaking with the lawmaker, he leaked hundreds of pages of internal Shea documents to the media. Shea's ultimate goal, Pounder says, goes beyond concerns over public land: The showdowns themselves are the point.

Daniel Walters photo

Washington state Rep. Matt Shea was accused of taking part in an act of "domestic terrorism" in an investigative report released in December.

"They always want these flashpoints," Pounder says. "They have to have a flashpoint in order to have the holy justification in order to start shooting back."

When Scott tells Shea about how Arnold might lose his gun rights, Shea leaps into action. He writes up a formalized operational plan, dubbing the tactics "Operation Armed Backyard."

He outlines principles like "Expose them as tyrants, by making them act like tyrants" and "human life is more important than stealing guns."

The goal, Shea writes, is for the VA to back down without anybody getting hurt, according to leaked documents. He wants hundreds to attend and for other states to join the fight.

He doles out assignments: Schmidt would be in charge of "secure communications and intercept." Shea ally Anthony Bosworth who'd been arrested for standing with his AK-47 in front of Spokane's federal courthouse and refusing to leave was to conduct site-recon, set up early warning observation posts and establish evacuation routes. Scott's job? "Identify patriot bail bondsmen," and contact law enforcement and local elected officials.

The document also included a long list of unassigned potential tasks, including identifying "available patriot aircraft" and "multiple resupply routes" and organizing "civilian action teams."

Scott and Shea put out the call on Facebook.

"THE SEIZURE OF THE GUNS OF ONE OF US...IS THE SEIZURE OF THE GUNS OF ALL OF US," Shea writes.

Infowars, Alex Jones' right-wing conspiracy website, hypes it as a "showdown."

And so in Priest River, a town about 1,800, a hundred protesters some armed, a few carrying large wooden crosses gather to stand in support of the veteran. Members of the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters of Idaho, another patriot group, both show up. The Bonner County sheriff stands in solidarity with the protesters.

"I'm here today because I believe Priest River is the next battleground for the federal government," Scott announces at the start of the rally. "It's a war against our vets."

But the VA didn't come to take the veteran's guns the VA doesn't do that. Instead, Bryan Hult, Bonner County's local advocate for veterans, arrives and suggests there'd been a misunderstanding.

"I called [Arnold] to visit with him to clarify what the letter said, period," Hult tells the Inlander.

Scott later reports that the VA was working with Arnold to restore his gun rights.

Shea is ecstatic.

"They ran in fear from Heather Scott!" he proclaims on a 2016 podcast.

Accolades shower down. The American Legion gives Scott a "Certificate of Appreciation." Shea and his Washington legislator allies give her their "2015 Statesman of the Year Award," featuring a Don't-Tread-On-Me rattlesnake coiled against an American flag backdrop.

In this YouTube screengrab, Heather Scott sits with Vietnam Vet John Arnold after a rally in support of Arnold's Second Amendment rights.

Ben Olson, publisher of the Sandpoint Reader in Scott's district, says the Priest River rally significantly raised Scott's profile in the Redoubt.

"That really launched her within the patriot movement and the Christian conservative crowd," Olson says. "They look to her for guidance."

The next flashpoint, however, wouldn't be so bloodless.

CODE NAME: GREENBEAN

On Dec. 11, 2015, Shea sends out a COWS press release, decrying the imprisonment of Dwight and Steven Hammond, two ranchers in Harney County, Oregon. The release which lists Scott as the group's Idaho coordinator accuses the BLM of waging a "war on rural America" through "bureaucratic terrorism."

That same day, COWS works with Cliven Bundy's son, Ammon Bundy, to publish a "Redress of Grievance," demanding Oregon and Harney County officials intervene to help the Hammonds.

And then on Jan. 2, 2016, Ammon makes a move even the Oath Keepers organization condemns seizing Harney County's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters with a group of armed protesters.

The next day, Shea puts out a Facebook statement once again accusing the BLM of "bureaucratic terrorism," but noting that the Hammonds have "rejected any help from COWS" so their "vast network of patriots" has not been involved.

But behind the scenes, Shea has a plan. COWS has "intelligence assets," he writes in one internal message, "on-site providing real time intelligence."

Read more:
North Idaho Rep. Heather Scott reaps the glory and the consequences of being one of Matt Shea's biggest allies | Local News | Spokane | The Pacific...

You'd think that when Donald Trump won the White House, in large part by bullying the press, journalists would have woken up to the fact that the culture war was already at their door, but, apparently, Charlie Warzel at the New York Times only just realized this week that the culture war, whatever that means, is already here for the media.

"The culture war will come for us all," Warzel writes in an opinion piece reflecting on the fracas surrounding reporter Felicia Sonmez. The Washington Post suspended Sonmez for sharing an old story about a rape allegation against Kobe Byrant just hours after his death, and, although the rest of the internet excoriated the reporter for insensitive timing, the Washington Post newsroom rallied around Sonmez, leading the paper to reverse its decision. Warzel astutely notes that newsrooms often hire writers specifically for their public profiles but then leave them out to dry when they err on social media, but it's his commentary on the internet mob, not media bosses, that's all the more telling.

"While the internets culture war dynamics are fraught, theyre not all that hard to understand," Warzel writes. "They come in the form of intimidation and threats toward journalists and angry campaigns toward advertisers and executives. Some of the responses are posturing and some are real, but all are engineered for maximum virality and outrage. Everyones exposed. But theres an asymmetry to that exposure."

Yes, there absolutely is an asymmetry to the exposure of social media, that fertile ground for bad-faith rage to fulminate, but it's not biased against journalists. It's biased for them.

To understand the nature of this exposure requires understanding that, unlike culture clashes of the past, our contemporary "culture war" is more tribal or mob-driven than a sparring of values. There's a reason why the same mob that rails against Ben Shapiro, a conservative Orthodox Jew, also has knives out for Joe Rogan. It's also why alt-right and a specific, vitriolic wing of the Left so often join forces to try and take down figures such as Meghan McCain and Kyle Kashuv. Central to this culture war is not winning votes or hearts or minds. It's cancellation, or using social, economic, and litigatory forces to scare and shame people from any sort of civil discourse.

Consider, for example, when CNN bravely investigated the identity of an anonymous Reddit user whose GIF Trump later retweeted. The organization wrote that it wouldn't publish his identity because the Redditor seemed genuinely remorseful, but "CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change."

At least they never actually followed through on the threat. When the Daily Beast found the Bronx forklift operator who posted a "doctored" video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Facebook, it doxxed him.

But cancellation often has nothing to do with Trump or even with conservatism. When Carson King of Iowa, who had unexpectedly earned a million dollars from strangers for beer money donated it all to a children's hospital, Aaron Calvin of the Des Moines Register decided to dig up old racist jokes he had tweeted as a high school sophomore. Anheuser-Busch dumped its partnership with King as a result.

At least Calvin faced a reckoning when there was a widespread backlash to his hit job. After journalists botched the case of the innocent Covington Catholic High School students, many in the media continued. Further video showed that the students were victims of harassment, not perpetrators, but that didn't stop writers at Slate and Deadspin from vilifying them as "privileged" and "smug."

A free society requires a free press to serve as a check on the powerful, but for a free press to survive the passions of the people, it must remain fair. That doesn't include using massive public platforms to bully and harass anyone, especially private citizens and nobodies, who commit wrongthink.

And Warzel is absolutely correct that "angry campaigns toward advertisers and executives" damage democracy. Then why are the same activists screaming that Sonmez's life is at risk also rallying behind Media Matters's calls to shut down Fox News programming?

The media may not have started the culture war, but they made it metastasize. Maybe now that they're getting a taste of their own medicine, they'll reconsider if it's worth it.

Continued here:
The culture war has come back to bite the media that made it - Washington Examiner

A number of posters with the phrase "it's okay to be white" have appeared around Bristol city centre since Monday.

The posters, which feature no other messaging or branding, have been criticised on social media and by residents.

Students from the University of Bristol have taken to Twitter to express their anger.One said: These posters have been put up on campus. My university, ladies and gentlemen.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

A University of Bristol spokesperson toldThe Independentthey were asking people to take them down and contact security services if seen on university premises, although said currently they are only aware of those in the wider city.

A lecturer in criminology from the University, Dr Victoria Canningtold The Independent that she first saw one of the messages on a lamppost in Park Street in central Bristol on Tuesday morning. She walks the route regularly and hadnt seen it before.

I really dont want to give it airtime but this is obviously following on from things like the appearance of Laurence Fox on Question Time, there is a correlation, she says. Dr Canning says she heard other posters were elsewhere but were removed quickly by students.

A young boy holds a placard reading 'migration is beautiful' during the march against racism demonstration in London.

Getty

Protesters rally in Warsaw under the slogan 'Tired of racism and fascism'.

AFP/Getty

An anti-racism demostrators chants with chains around his neck during a march against racism.

Getty

People getting ready to march against racism in Vienna.

Twitter/Wriseup

Anti-racism demonstrators take part in a rally through the city centre of Glasgow.

Getty

An anti-racism demostrator holds a placard readin 'Laundry is the only thing that should be seperated by colour'.

Getty Images

Thousand of protesters demonstrate against police brutality and in defense of migrants and those without papers in Paris.

EPA

Anti-racism demostrators hold placards and chant during a march organised by the group Stand Up to Racism as an expression of unity against racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

Getty

A girl poses for a photo during a rally against the EU-Turkey deal blocking mass migration into Europe in Athens.

AP

Aamer Anwar a prominent Scottish lawyer joins an Anti-racism rally through Glasgow city centre.

Getty

Anti-racism demostrators hold placards and chant in London's march against racism.

Getty

A man in Glasgow holds a banner reading 'refugees welcome'.

Getty

Anti-racism demostrators let off flares during the march against racism in London.

Getty

A protester in a grim reaper disguise holds a shield reading 'State racism, no impunity for police brutality against those without papers' in Paris.

EPA

Migrants who live in Greece chant slogans during a rally against the EU-Turkey deal blocking mass migration into Europe, in Athens.

AP

A young boy holds a placard reading 'migration is beautiful' during the march against racism demonstration in London.

Getty

Protesters rally in Warsaw under the slogan 'Tired of racism and fascism'.

AFP/Getty

An anti-racism demostrators chants with chains around his neck during a march against racism.

Getty

People getting ready to march against racism in Vienna.

Twitter/Wriseup

Anti-racism demonstrators take part in a rally through the city centre of Glasgow.

Getty

An anti-racism demostrator holds a placard readin 'Laundry is the only thing that should be seperated by colour'.

Getty Images

Thousand of protesters demonstrate against police brutality and in defense of migrants and those without papers in Paris.

EPA

Anti-racism demostrators hold placards and chant during a march organised by the group Stand Up to Racism as an expression of unity against racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

Getty

A girl poses for a photo during a rally against the EU-Turkey deal blocking mass migration into Europe in Athens.

AP

Aamer Anwar a prominent Scottish lawyer joins an Anti-racism rally through Glasgow city centre.

Getty

Anti-racism demostrators hold placards and chant in London's march against racism.

Getty

A man in Glasgow holds a banner reading 'refugees welcome'.

Getty

Anti-racism demostrators let off flares during the march against racism in London.

Getty

A protester in a grim reaper disguise holds a shield reading 'State racism, no impunity for police brutality against those without papers' in Paris.

EPA

Migrants who live in Greece chant slogans during a rally against the EU-Turkey deal blocking mass migration into Europe, in Athens.

AP

The its okay to be white messaging originated on internet forum 4/Chan in 2017 and was conceived as a US poster campaign to create a left-wing media backlash in response to a harmless message.

The posters appeared at universities across America, including the University of California, University of Washington and University of Regina in Canada.

They were widely supported by neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups, as well as alt-right figures including former Klu Klax Klan grand wizard David Duke.

The sightings in Bristol are the first time they have appeared in England, after a brief spate in Scotland: in Dundee in September 2019 and then Perth in December. Police Scotland confirmed they were looking into the matter.Scotland's deputy first minister John Swinney condemned them.

Dr Canning says the posters need to be criticised even if outrage does play directly into the hands of the creators.

She says: To try and orchestrate outrage to then suppress it is a form of social silencing the very people who point the finger and say you are hysterical are the ones creating these mechanisms to silence us because no one wants to speak out against them.

She also disagrees with the idea that the slogan is a harmless message. This is only a harmless message if we choose to ignore structural inequalities. We dont live in an era of equality.

There has to be a recognition by society that although white working classes can experience problems, such as the impact of austerity, these are largely economic problems. For non-white people they experience additional problems of criminalisation and racism, like stop and search.

Saying that is not to say that [white people] dont experience social harms but there are specific things that white people do not experience, she says.

Dr Canning says it concerns her that the white victim construct - which was previously restricted to far-right narratives - is becoming more widely accepted by disillusioned people.

In times of austerity we arent looking up for the people causing us problems but looking around us and those fractures grow.

I remember years ago there were protests at the suggestion Nick Griffin would go on Question Time as a representative of the BNP. Things have shifted since then, she adds.

Dr Canning says it is also interesting that they have chosen to post them in Bristol. It is interesting that someone has chosen to put it up in Bristol which is generally seen as a liberal, left-leaning city, she says.

The slogan was also used on t-shirts sold by British far-right political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, and has been tied to the All Lives Matter campaign.

Read the original here:
Its okay to be white posters put up in Bristol city centre - The Independent

Patriot Prayer leaders insist they're not racists, but they continue to draw praise from white supremacists

Part three of a series.

Part One: Making of a street brawl

Part Two: Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer

Editor's Note: For much of last year, Underscore reporter Sergio Olmos was granted on-the-record access to Joey Gibson, founder of Patriot Prayer, one of the violence-prone, far-right groups that have turned Portland into a cage match with violent liberal groups.

Steven Stroud is sitting across from me, opening a bag of Reese's Pieces in the visiting room of a prison in Oregon that has been his home for the past 12 years. He's agreed to an interview but asks that the institution not be named.

In a past life, Stroud was a Nazi skinhead, making it his business to create a white homeland in the Pacific Northwest. Now he's extending his hand to offer me, someone who would have been excluded from his white homeland, some candy.

Years ago, he renounced racism and dedicated himself to working against hate. I've come to visit him to ask about Patriot Prayer, and how the movement led by Joey Gibson is seen through the eyes of a former Nazi.

"They're nativist bigots," he says. "But because they're multiracial, they're more popular than we ever were."

Indeed, Gibson, who grew up in Camas, Washington, often notes that he's part Japanese. And, one of the most prominent Patriot Prayer brawlers, Tusitala "Tiny" Toese, is from American Samoa.

This article is part of a series on Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer

Part One: Making of a street brawl

Part Two: How Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer found meaning in violent right-wing extremism

Part Three: Joey Gibson and the new face of 'nativist bigotry'

Part Four: Joey's business

"White supremacists that I've spoken to don't know how to take Gibson, because his message is familiar, but his look isn't," Stroud says.

Though white supremacists have attended Patriot Prayer events, Gibson often has defended himself and his movement against claims that he's aligned with white supremacists, in part, on the fact that he's a person of color.

Stroud doesn't buy it.

"Take the color out of your skin and look at the rhetoric," he says. "Nazis would see this and say, 'Those are good values.' Almost identical beliefs in different packaging."

I ask him what supremacist gangs think of Gibson.

"He's not a player," he tells me, curtly.

"But," he quickly adds, "if I was still in command, I would look at him as useful."

The neo-Nazi propaganda website Daily Stormer has written at least 10 favorable articles about Patriot Prayer over the past few years. Below is an example from 2018, but understanding them requires a crash course in supremacist slang:

"56%" refers to the alleged percentage of mixed-race Americans who view themselves as white.

"88%" is a reference to "Heil Hitler." H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 = HH = Heil Hitler.

"Goblinos" is a derogatory term for mixed-race Americans.

"Brown privilege" is a reference to the idea that people of color are unfairly favored by society and can get away with things their white peers could not. It is a common talking point among white supremacists.

"I couldn't find one thumbnail of Patriot Prayer that isn't 56%, but don't be fooled-These are /our guys/. ... I'm 88% certain that there are ...white aryan master race Nazis in shades and three-piece suits, whispering into their earpieces and coordinating everything. They have learned that it is only by fielding goblinos on the front line that they can weaponize brown privilege, which is the only plausible defense of their first amendment rights in the current year."

Undisclosed bar, Vancouver, Washington

Billy Wilson, the man charged with reckless driving after turning his truck into a crowd of leftist protesters in September 2017, sits by himself on a barstool. Across from me is Gibson, a few tequilas deep. Sitting at the table next to us is Russell Schultz and Steve Drury, sort-of-lieutenants of Patriot Prayer.

Gibson invited me to join him and others at a Patriot Prayer-friendly bar in Vancouver. He's asked me not to disclose its name out of concern activists will pressure the owner to ban him.

"I can't go into most Portland bars for that reason," Gibson told me earlier that day. We were walking away from a City Council meeting in Ridgefield, Washington, where Gibson gave a speech on gun rights.

I'd met Gibson a year earlier and asked him if he would let me shadow him for a longer interview.

Gibson agreed, and allowed me to record portions of the evening for my notes. He invited me to the bar to see him and other Patriot Prayer members in their element.

"Jeremy Christian is not a racist," Gibson says, apropos of nothing. I give him a blank look because the name doesn't register.

"How long have you lived in Portland?" Gibson asks, suspicious that I don't know the name.

I tell him it's been a few years. He leans back and tells me to look it up. I do:

Jeremy Christian is accused of fatally stabbing two men and wounding a third onboard a MAX light-rail train on May 27, 2017.

Christian allegedly shouted hate speech at two teenage girls, one African American and one Somali, who wore a hijab. Three men, Ricky Best, Taliesin Namkai-Meche, and Micah Fletcher, rose to their defense.

Christian allegedly pulled out a knife and killed Best and Namkai-Meche. His trial is set to begin soon.

It was later reported that a month earlier, in April 2017, Christian attended a Patriot Prayer event.

I look at Gibson.

"Nobody knew him," Gibson says. "He showed up to one event and the media made it seem like he was a member of Patriot Prayer."

"He was a Bernie supporter," Gibson continues, noting that Christian's social media trail suggested he supported dozens of conflicting causes, including Democratic-socialist Bernie Sanders, and was too scattered to have a real ideology.

Still, I'm confused about why Gibson would volunteer, unprompted, to defend Jeremy Christian against charges of racism. I tell him he can't be serious; the MAX stabbing was obviously racist.

But Gibson is adamant that Christian is not racist.

"They call me racist," Gibson says, and then challenges me, with a glass of tequila in his hand, to name one racist thing that he's ever said.

I let him continue.

He reminds me that he is not white and points to what he sees as an absurdity of mostly white anti-fascist activists calling him, a dark-skinned man, a racist.

I've heard this before. I keep turning over the phrase "Jeremy Christian is not a racist" in my mind and wonder what a person would have to do to meet Gibson's standards of racism.

And I have a related question: Though Gibson has distanced himself from Christian, and video shows members of Patriot Prayer asking Christian to leave the April 2017 rally, why do white supremacists keep showing up at Patriot Prayer rallies?

"You're not going to find too many white supremacist groups going out in public to rally," says Brad Galloway, a former member of the Oregon-based neo-Nazi gang Volksfront, who now works with groups like "Life After Hate" combating racism and hate. "Instead you'll see them blend into these palatable groups, like Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer."

Proud Boys is a gang started by Vice magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes. Members describe themselves as "Western Chauvinist" and have a history of violence. At one time, Proud Boys provided informal security at Patriot Prayer events and the two groups shared a few members, including Russell Schultz. According to Schultz, a falling out led Proud Boys to dissociate and pull out from all future Patriot Prayer events.

Groups like Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys "make a public display of American, Christian values," says Galloway, who is based in Canada, where he was once a leader in the skinhead movements in Toronto and Vancouver. "These events attract neo-Nazis, skinheads, militia groups, the hardcore guys that show up. It's like a convention center for white supremacists."

Stroud, the former skinhead I interviewed in an Oregon prison, agreed, saying that Patriot Prayer rallies offer a relatively safe environment for people whose views are not welcome in a place like Portland.

"How do you find like-minded people when your views aren't popular?" Stroud says. "It's not like having other hobbies, where you can talk about it at work. So where do you go?"

June 1, 2019

"The Lars Larson Show," with guest Joey Gibson. Portland.

Larson: "I appreciate what you're doing for this reason. For the most part, conservatives are not confrontational. The left, liberals tend to be confrontational. I could give you a thousand examples where leftists have taken to the streets of Seattle, Portland, Eugene, other cities, Spokane. They've caused riots, they've confronted the police, they've physically assaulted people, they've damaged property, they've set fire, they've done all those things and, yet, conservatives just don't tend to roll that way. And so, to some extent, that tends to work against us.

"When the left wants to make a ruckus and get some coverage for their issue, they just go out and do it. Conservatives tend not to. But I think you've found a way to do this, and do it within the law, and within what I would consider proper behavior, pure civil disobedience where you show up and people begin to blow a gasket, because, as you say, they know who you are and they know what you stand for."

Patriot Prayer events have played out with a similar plot line for years:

Gibson announces a rally in a liberal city.

Anti-fascist activists show up.

Gibson wanders into their ranks in the expectation that one of them will attack him.

They do.

He streams video of it online, garnering sympathy and donations from the audience at home.

Repeat.

I ask Gibson whether invoking violent reactions against him is part of his plan, and we talk specifically about the Aug. 4, 2018, rally at which he walked across police lines to immerse himself in the antifa crowd. Antifa stands for "anti-fascist." Some members wear all black clothing and mask their faces at protests.

You walked across to the other side, I say.

"August Fourth? That wasn't a beating because I got out," Gibson says.

I ask: When you went over to the other side, ostensibly the intention was to talk, right?

"No."

What was the intention of going to the other side?

"The intention was to go to the other side," he says, "to allow them to do whatever they wanted to do to me, without fighting back."

So, you wanted them to attack you? To show: Look, this is who these people are?

"To say I wanted them to attack isn't true," Gibson says. "I wanted to give them the opportunity to do what they wanted. For them to not attack me, that's not a loss, that's a win. We're gonna go over there, let them do what they want to do, get it on film, let the world see the truth. The fact that I walked over there, that they didn't stab me, they didn't do things I expected them to do, that's a win. For everybody."

Daily Stormer, Aug. 18, 2019:

"Patriot Prayer really does do a good job of showing legendary Liberal/Leftist tolerance in action to the masses. ... I'd say that they unironically have a much better media strategy than any Alt-Right organizers. ... At least Joey Gibson understands that Americans don't like to see women and old men and Christians getting beaten up by fat college kids. ... It may suck for the individuals who take a ride ... to Portland only to get maced and set upon with hammers, but it does make for solid anti-Lefty propaganda."

Russell Schultz, one of the Patriot Prayer lieutenants, explains that the group needs a foil.

"If it wasn't for antifa, nobody would know who we are," he says.

"Yeah," Gibson agrees, "antifa made me."

Schultz ponders what would have happened if antifa had stayed home.

"Nobody would pay attention to us," he says. "In liberal Portland we would be a couple of crazies, nutcases carrying a flag. We wouldn't have a platform. We'd have been like four or five guys waving flags over an overpass. They're the ones that made us famous."

Describing Patriot Prayer has been challenging.

Is it a conservative advocacy organization? A right-wing America-First political movement? A white supremacist hate group?

Legally, things are a bit clearer. Until recently, Patriot Prayer was a company. And, one with loose ties to the Vancouver Police Department. Click here to read more.

Schultz explains how he encouraged the strategy to bring outsiders to provide muscle at rallies, and later came to regret the whole idea.

"We knew we couldn't go into Portland without (antifa) opposing us," Schultz says. "We needed to bring people in who would defend people aggressively. I begged him (Gibson) to do this, he didn't want to do it."

The idea, he says, was that antifa would start a fight, but the Patriot Prayer supporters would respond with "such an overwhelming force that once the punching started, these guys could finish the job. And that's what they did."

Schultz then tells me about the problems with "bringing people in."

"We can't do a rally in downtown Portland and have all these weird people (with us) just because they want to fight," Schultz says. "They aren't Trump people, they aren't Democrats, they just show up because they want to fight."

The kind of people he's referring to?

"We had people like Identity Evropa, whoever those guys are. And all these other groups I've never heard of," Schultz says.

Identity Evropa?

"Yeah, these, uh, I don't know if they're white supremacists, but they're white identitarian groups," Schultz says, using the term Identity Evropa uses to describe itself.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists Identity Evropa as a "designated white nationalist hate group," notes that "Identity Evropa members insist they're not racist, but Identitarians' who are interested in preserving Western culture."

The Anti-Defamation League characterizes Evropa as "a white supremacist group that is focused on the preservation of 'white American identity' and promoting white European culture."

I ask Schultz what it means to be an "identitarian."

"I'm not one of those people that thinks we need to preserve white people," he says, answering a question I didn't ask. "Because by the time white people are no longer on the planet, I'm gonna be dust and bones. ..."

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Band of Others: Joey Gibson and the face of 'nativist bigotry' - Pamplin Media Group

Playwright and MPAACT founding member Shepsu Aakhu was inspired to write this campus sexual assault drama by a conversation initiated by one of his two college-aged sons, "two Black males living a life completely free from my daily protection." The fear he has on behalf of his family is palpable and, regrettably, well-sourcedconversations about the prevalence of misogyny and assault on universities often sidestep the reality that young Black men in this country still live under an unjust cloud of suspicion. And yet, as justified as Aakhu's anxiety is, the politics and attitudes behind Spoken Word are virtually indistinguishable from those found on men's rights forum comment sections, amounting to a panicked screed against the very idea of verbal consent.

If that reads as loaded or unfair, consider the plot here: Izzy (Jelani Pitcher) and Paris (Nadia Pillay), two young adultskids, reallyhave a clumsy but ultimately consensual (if nonverbal) attempt at sex. Misinterpreting her roommate's caginess about that night, a white SJW caricature (seemingly inked by alt-right favorite Ben Garrison) puts Izzy on social media blast, making him a pariah on campus.

After days of silence, Parishand in hand with Izzynotifies the college administration that no assault occurred, but a cartoonishly villainous administrator admonishes them both and insists the young man face consequences despite the supposed victim clearly stating no wrongdoing occuredbecause the word "yes," this play's other antagonist, wasn't spoken. Director Lauren "LL" Lundy's production features some strong performances, particularly by Veronda G. Carey as a dean (who sees no conflict of interest in sitting on the board overseeing her son's case), but the script's improbabilities cast an ugly pall over the whole affair.v

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Spoken Word muddies the issue of consent - Chicago Reader