Downtown Portland again plagued by invasion of Proud Boys attached to 'Christian' anti-maskers
Following their emerging post-Jan. 6 strategy of attaching themselves to local events, Proud Boys in Portland, Oregon, tangled over the weekend with counterprotesters and antifascists in the downtown area. It led to a number of ugly scenes with armed and armored men in masks pointing their rifles at journalists and onlookers.
The clashes originated on Saturday, when a far-right evangelical preacher using Proud Boys as “security” held a rally downtown at the city’s waterfront park. This naturally attracted counterprotesters and resulted in some fights and tossed fireworks; those conflicts later spread downtown, where a group of Proud Boys tangled with antifascists briefly. Then, on Sunday evening, even more Proud Boys prowled the downtown streets with weapons and roaring pickups, but the confrontations remained brief.
The weekend’s violence was sparked by a warmup act for a weekend waterfront rally by right-wing pastor and Christian rocker Sean Feucht, who has been organizing anti-COVID-measure protests as part of a West Coast tour. Canadian preacher Artur Pawlowski, another anti-masker, was setting up to speak to a small crowd on Saturday when the event was broken up by antifascists.
While Fox News and others portrayed the Saturday brawls as an attack on a Christian group by antifa (Andy Ngo described it as “a coordinated violent attack on Christian families”), the conflicts appear primarily to have begun between protesters and the “security” team, which was populated primarily by Proud Boys and militiamen.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/9/2044764/-Proud-Boys-follow-their-new-script-by-using-Portland-anti-mask-rallies-to-crank-up-fresh-violence
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