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Trent Sutton, 45, a Marine veteran of more than 20 years service living in College Station, seeks to be the Republican nominee in the general election to succeed Bill Flores in representing Congressional District 17. The retired master sergeant recently graduated with a masters degree in international affairs from the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Sutton supports the building of President Trumps border wall; supports repealing Obamacare; supports subsidies for crop insurance; and supports expanded forms of energy production such as nuclear energy. Besides his commendable military service, Sutton represents an engaging, knowledgeable example of how the Republican Party of Texas has dramatically changed from the GOP of President George H.W. Bush, whose statesmanship and public service inspired Sutton to enroll at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, to the party of President Trump, whom Sutton strongly supports and defends. Ironically, the elder Bush regarded Trump so antithetical to Republican principles that the former president in 2016 voted for Hillary Clinton, wife of the man who kept Bush 41 from a second term as president.

QHow crazy is it with a filing period ending in December and early voting beginning in mid-February? Do you enjoy this hectic time period? With 12 Republican candidates, they have barely enough time for people to even know them except for former Congressman Pete Sessions.

AI do kind of enjoy the fast pace of it, but when you look at it from a practical standpoint, its not enough time, especially with the size of this district. Getting everywhere that you want to go to, you just dont have an opportunity to adequately parse yourself out to every county and every town and meet every individual that you want to.

QDo you have a favorite American hero?

AOh, I have several. Im not even sure which one I want to go with at first. Im going to go with Ted Williams as a Marine. [A Boston Red Sox standout ballplayer, Williams served two stints as a Marine Corps pilot, including a combat assignment during the Korean War.] Im very drawn to individuals like that, for his service both in World War II and Korea. Of course, he had a somewhat adversarial relationship with the media, but all the while he was constantly working behind the scenes with the Jimmy Fund [for cancer research and care] in taking care of kids with cancer. I like him both because of his patriotism and his service. Normally Id give the answer of President [George] H.W. Bush, who Ive long been an admirer of. That was very much the reason I chose to go to the Bush School of Government and Public Service. I didnt go to the Bush School and then become an admirer of President Bush. I was an admirer of him long before I attended the Bush School.

QWhy President George H.W. Bush?

AI was in high school during the first Gulf War and of course the fall of the Berlin Wall. So I was kind of coming of age and was really in tune with all the activities that were going on. I saw his leadership. He was probably one of the first ones where I saw his leadership firsthand. And then, of course, as I grew older and started studying more and learning more about him, and his service with the CIA and the Navy, I saw that he truly embodied servant leadership. I really appreciate his diplomacy and the way that he approached very complex issues, leaving multiple solutions on the table and ultimately giving all of them time to play out, especially going into the Gulf War.

QThat was a long period of preparation for war, a very short duration of actual war, probably because of that preparation.

ARight. But he gave the economic and the political realm time to work well before we went to war.

QYouve spoken to me about the need for more conservative veterans in the political realm and how the Marines serving under you represented a certain constituency. Was there a defining moment that prompted your decision to run?

AHonestly, public service is something that Id always had an interest in. Obviously, my service in the Marine Corps I view very much as a big public service, even though I was working in a very different capacity than what I would be now. But it was when Congressman Flores announced that he wasnt going to be seeking reelection, and some of the things that he had said, I realized how aligned I was in my thinking with him and the folks here in the district. I believe in what he talks about all the time, being a citizen legislator, and I feel very much I am one of those citizens and could well represent us as a group.

QCongressman Flores told me hes tapped several people to encourage them with the idea of running. Are you one of those?

AYes, not initially. Initially when I first met with him, it was at his workshops [on congressional service] that he had done. But since then, he has openly supported the campaign.

QWhat is the best takeaway you had from his workshop?

AI think a lot of it I was already prepared for. A lot of the things that he talked to us about in that workshop involved the time requirements and what the job really means the long hours, the time away from home and how the pay and the benefits arent what a lot of folks think they are. I think those were things that I was already kind of geared towards. You know, you mentioned that theres a lot of freshman congressmen who sleep in their offices and work long hours. And in my mind I was like, Well, theres nothing about that scenario thats going to be worse than living in a can in the 130-degree desert in Iraq.

QResearch indicates that lawmakers who have served on a city council, a school board, a planning and zoning commission or a philanthropic board demonstrate superior results in terms of passing bipartisan legislation. Do you have any experience like that?

ANot directly as an elected official, but one thing about being in the military is you have to work with folks from diverse backgrounds who dont necessarily agree with you to get a mission accomplished. So the dynamic in the military is really no different than in any of those elected positions. I may be new to politics, but Im not new to politicking.

QTell us about where you were born and raised, your upbringing.

AI was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas, and thats where I lived until I joined the Marine Corps. Of course, all of my family is still there, so thats where, ideally, you would think that I wouldve gone back to, but it wasnt what I identified as home anymore. But I was raised in a working-class family. I spent several years living with my grandparents. My grandfather was a surveyor for [Schlumberger], worked in the oil fields in Kansas and Oklahoma, and my grandma taught Sunday school. So that was kind of the environment I was largely brought up in.

QTell us about your 20 years in the Marines. First of all, why did you get in the Marines?

AThe short story is, I had a couple of friends who wanted to join and I told them I thought it was a horrible idea and a week later I was sitting in the recruiters office. Again, growing up as a kid, especially having been in the military now, I know how horrible of an idea it might have seemed. But I also was a product of the 80s, so Top Gun [a film about naval aviators] was one of those movies that really resonated with me. So I envisioned myself, when I was younger, standing on a flight deck, waving at airplanes. Im glad I didnt do that. But because of my friends, I took that first enlistment. One of them ended up finally coming to boot camp about two months after I did. The third one, whose idea it was in the first place, never went. I thought that after that first four years, I might get out and go back home. But for job opportunities, I decided to stay in and I reenlisted, made a late move into aviation. And, of course, during that enlistment, 9/11 happened. As you know, 9/11 changed the world for a lot of us, whether those who were in the military or those who werent. So I made my first deployment. We were in Pakistan, flying operations in Afghanistan. I got there at the end of February of 2002, then turned right back around and went to Iraq in 2004.

QHow did your service shape your outlook in foreign affairs? What do guys and gals in harms way, or near it, think when they hear the latest decision by the president or what somebody in Congress has said?

AIt influences everyone differently. I talked about working with individuals inside the military from varying backgrounds. The same holds true for individuals from other countries. During my time, both in the Marine Corps and doing some private travel, Ive been to 45-plus countries. I dont know the actual count anymore. But along the way, I met a lot of individuals from, again, varying backgrounds and ideologies who dont necessarily agree with me.

Fundamentally, you learn in meeting all those individuals that everybody at the end of the day has the same hopes and dreams for their families, to make their lives better. And again, I think I view things in foreign policy a little different. Im a very large proponent of engagement and maintaining our alliances. But I also believe that we need to be very cautious as far as getting militarily engaged with opponents around the world.

QKimberley Field, a retired Army brigadier general and executive director of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, wrote a piece for the New York Times saying the aftermath of the presidents killing of this Iranian general proves we have a very fractured, inconsistent foreign policy. Is she right?

AOne of the challenges we face is that and this is just because of the way that the American presidency and the legislative system is set up we have a shifting of parties [in power]. Its more difficult for us just as a nation to have a real coherent long-term strategy, and I think thats something that we desperately need. I think thats one of the problems that we have as a society right now. Of course, after 9/11, we got to rally around the flag. Now weve kind of separated and become more tribal, and were losing a lot of our national identity. And because of that, it influences our foreign policy.

QI dont want to get into the impeachment here, but President Trump was impeached over matters relating to the delay of military assistance to Ukraine, an ally under erratic attack by Russia. Do you support the freezing of congressionally approved funding by this president, and all future presidents, Republican or Democrat, going forward?

AI think the reason that he froze them involved wanting to make sure that, especially with [newly elected Ukrainian President] Zelensky, corruption had been truly rooted out. There has been a lot of foreign aid that has gone to Ukraine that has gotten misplaced. So I think wanting to ensure that, with this new presidency, under this new administration, they legitimately were on the up and up and that those funds would go to the correct place, because were absolutely

QEmails and reporting indicate Republicans in Congress were shocked to find out that the funding they had approved did not in fact go to Ukraine [for 55 days]. Is that appropriate?

AAgain, its difficult to say that without getting into the impeachment. But I dont want my money, as a taxpayer, going someplace where it could be mishandled. So Im looking at it from the very lowest level of that being our money. There was $1.8 billion, I believe, that disappeared into Burisma and I can draw the whole map, but that would take far more time than were going to spend here.

QSo in other words, you think the president should second-guess Congress?

AAgain, I think the job of Congress is to second-guess the president sometimes and to support the president sometimes. And again, at the executive level, I think hes looking at things differently sometimes than all of the individuals in Congress are.

QSo you would have supported the freezing of military aid to Ukraine.

ATo find out what the actual situation was, yes. Its not something that should be a routine process. But I think there were very real concerns that he raised about Ukraine, and once those were addressed, then sending the aid on as it is. And I very much do approve of sending military aid to Ukraine because, although Russia is not, in my opinion, the No. 1 adversary, they are very much a problem.

QThe 2015 agreement with Iran took it off the table as far as progressing with its nuclear ambitions. Even the Trump administration acknowledges that the Iranians had lived up to the agreement, leaving us with North Korea to contend with. We abandoned the 2015 agreement. Now weve had this recent dustup with Iran. And now we have two renegade powers with nuclear ambitions, both a threat to the United States. Was it a smart move to abandon the 2015 agreement, one we negotiated with our allies?

ANorth Korea could have been potentially stopped as a nuclear power going as far back as the Clinton administration. And Clinton himself had kind of contemplated taking military action against North Korea. So thereve been several failures along the way that have allowed it to become a nuclear power. I would argue that regardless of what the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [with Iran] was, Iran still had the ambitions to become a nuclear power.

QBut we had them off the table [as a nuclear threat] for a pretty good period of time.

AI dont think we did. Going all the way back to Ruhollah Khomeini, he said, The only reason we will ever negotiate with America is if it is in our best interest. So they saw it in their best interest and I believe that was very much so they could continue to pursue their ambitions.

QWell, theyre going ahead with their nuclear ambitions now.

AThey were going ahead with their ambitions before.

QNot according to the Trump administrations own assessments. The last assessments were the Iranians were living up to the agreement.

AFor the time, but it was a very temporary agreement. [Note: Iran on Jan. 5 announced it would no longer adhere to the 2015 nuclear deal, shortly after President Trump ordered a strike that killed its top general.]

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Offering a global perspective from overseas duty: Q&A with Republican congressional candidate Trent Sutton - Waco Tribune-Herald

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. ..."

Continue reading here:
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