The co-opting of every cause by shameless Hamas supporters is ridiculous. They lost my support forever, across the board. The Palestinian flag seems to be the flag of the 'progressive' Democrats, and for that reason alone, fuck them.
Thanks for writing this piece. Helped tie together a lot of what made me uncomfortable about Saturday’s protest, which felt very thinly veiled under being anti-Trump (understandable), and yet was full of keffiyahs and Palestinian flags.
You know. All this is so disturbing, knowing (or not knowing) the agendas of groups behind public demonstrations of various stripes. I rarely go to demonstrations, partly because I don’t like to be led by mobs, but I felt I needed to go to the one this past weekend just to add my body to the picture of those worried about our country’s future. I remain so.
Thank you for the comprehensive report on our local communists and anarchists. I still cannot believe how much influence and support they have in this city, and how weak the normal populace is.
Thanks for this. I can relate. My local protest (on Chicago's south side) was organized and sponsored by a neighborhood "peace group" that takes strange delight in tweaking our Jewish community with their brand of "anti zionism is not antisemitism" and continued sponsoring of JVP "discussions," showing "documentaries" by Al Jazeera, and all the other expected bingo squares. As the saying goes, this is why we can't have nice things. Unless one walks in strict accordance with the bylaws, you can't really belong to the club.
Antisemitism BINGO is a great mental image. I’ll probably end up stealing it to explain some of this to people because it’s rarely any one thing. It’s a collection of several issues co-occurring.
Thank you for breaking it all down! I just want some way to fight for our Park Rangers, and my USAID friends, and NOT deporting innocent people, but I don't to mistakenly align with anything to do with these bad actors.
I also stayed away from from the march, even though an awful lot of my friends participated. Even though a lot of my Jewish friends participated.
I asked the organizers on their Reddit post about RCIs connections with orgs have been identified as supporting terror activities. I got no response. I decided I didn’t need to support an org that couldn’t or wouldn’t answer my questions.
My hunch was confirmed as I enjoyed a bicycle ride along the Eastbank Esplanade. I lost count of the number of large Palestinian flags I saw across the river. I lost count of the folks walking past my bench on their way to the Hawthorne crossing, so many of them carrying signs that were literally all about Palestine (wait. I thought this was about Trump and DOGE). I’d felt so conflicted about staying home until I actually did so and saw the throngs across the river. Then I calmed down, finished my sack lunch and continued on my bike ride.
I appreciate your clarity and honesty, and your willingness to call out the incongruencies in the hard left’s acceptance of or discomfort with anyone who’s not as “radical” as they are. It’s a crazy time to embrace calm and nuance.
Naive comment 'o' the day: "It’s not a vast conspiracy. It’s stupid people..." Which ignores the rich history of false flag ops, embedded provocateurs, flipped informers, back-channel finances, foreign influences...have we left anyone out?
I well recall (back in the last radical upheaval in the early '70s) how a Black Panther named Fred Hampton "was drugged, then shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office."
When it finally wobbled into court, it turned out that Hampton was virtually the only Panther not on the FBI's pad.
It's never stopped: feds cluttering up the J6 festivities. Proud Boys on the pad. The opaque finances of BLM.
Anyone think Antifa isn't heavily infiltrated and/or financed by certain dark players? (If they aren't then the FBI and other 16 intelligence agencies ought to be summarily Eloned.) Ditto the rest of the doily-radicals cluttering up Portland's streets. The Hamas lovefest at PSU. The sudden campaign success of nutty "socialists"--don't ask where the money comes from. And, remember, not a single nonprofit must disclose on its IRS form 990s the origin of their astonishing amounts of income.
Okay Richard, I will acknowledge many different converging plots and conspiracies.
I still don't think it's a vast organized network.
I think between the Soviet agitprop, the FBI & CIA, China, and various other monied interests there are, and have been, many shadowy hands moving pieces around over the decades. We could also look to the cartels and how they benefit from Portland's drug markets and sidewalk asylums.
But just because many of these fools are carrying out plans first dreamt up in the USSR or an agitprop office of the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't mean they are in on the game. Most of them were probably just brought up on nonsense.
They are true believers in these ideas (Israel is a settler colonial outpost of the great American Empire, cops are exclusively a tool of state sanctioned murder, capitalism is the greatest barrier to utopia, etc). They're just idiots. It so happens that their idiotic beliefs were either made up by, or spread globally by malicious actors.
They may be serving dark players, but they are just idiots at the end of the day. The antidote, in my mind, is to call it out and to move our society back toward the moral consensus most of us already privately operate under. I think just because we became weak at defending our moral framework, and now various predators are picking at the edges of the herd, doesn't mean they are all aligned. They simply all smell the same blood.
The money... now that's a different story. We should absolutely root out where all of this money is coming from. If that proves impossible, it becomes a moral imperative to marginalize these groups.
The co-opting of every cause by shameless Hamas supporters is ridiculous. They lost my support forever, across the board. The Palestinian flag seems to be the flag of the 'progressive' Democrats, and for that reason alone, fuck them.
Thanks for writing this piece. Helped tie together a lot of what made me uncomfortable about Saturday’s protest, which felt very thinly veiled under being anti-Trump (understandable), and yet was full of keffiyahs and Palestinian flags.
You know. All this is so disturbing, knowing (or not knowing) the agendas of groups behind public demonstrations of various stripes. I rarely go to demonstrations, partly because I don’t like to be led by mobs, but I felt I needed to go to the one this past weekend just to add my body to the picture of those worried about our country’s future. I remain so.
Thank you for the comprehensive report on our local communists and anarchists. I still cannot believe how much influence and support they have in this city, and how weak the normal populace is.
Thanks for this. I can relate. My local protest (on Chicago's south side) was organized and sponsored by a neighborhood "peace group" that takes strange delight in tweaking our Jewish community with their brand of "anti zionism is not antisemitism" and continued sponsoring of JVP "discussions," showing "documentaries" by Al Jazeera, and all the other expected bingo squares. As the saying goes, this is why we can't have nice things. Unless one walks in strict accordance with the bylaws, you can't really belong to the club.
Antisemitism BINGO is a great mental image. I’ll probably end up stealing it to explain some of this to people because it’s rarely any one thing. It’s a collection of several issues co-occurring.
Steal away!
Love your comprehensive breakdown of the fuckery behind the performance in PDX 👏🍻
I wrote this before the President's Day protests. Not specifically related to Portland, but plug-and-play about the performative uselessness. https://open.substack.com/pub/therecoveringdemocrat/p/and-not-a-single-heart-nor-mind-were?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=n7kne
Thank you for breaking it all down! I just want some way to fight for our Park Rangers, and my USAID friends, and NOT deporting innocent people, but I don't to mistakenly align with anything to do with these bad actors.
It’s the institutions. They wouldn’t be able to do this if the ACLU, the teachers unions, etc said “no. That’s too far. We will march without you.”
That is quietly a bit of what we saw with East Portland and Washington County.
But damn them for putting people in this position.
Thank you for writing so honestly.
I also stayed away from from the march, even though an awful lot of my friends participated. Even though a lot of my Jewish friends participated.
I asked the organizers on their Reddit post about RCIs connections with orgs have been identified as supporting terror activities. I got no response. I decided I didn’t need to support an org that couldn’t or wouldn’t answer my questions.
My hunch was confirmed as I enjoyed a bicycle ride along the Eastbank Esplanade. I lost count of the number of large Palestinian flags I saw across the river. I lost count of the folks walking past my bench on their way to the Hawthorne crossing, so many of them carrying signs that were literally all about Palestine (wait. I thought this was about Trump and DOGE). I’d felt so conflicted about staying home until I actually did so and saw the throngs across the river. Then I calmed down, finished my sack lunch and continued on my bike ride.
I appreciate your clarity and honesty, and your willingness to call out the incongruencies in the hard left’s acceptance of or discomfort with anyone who’s not as “radical” as they are. It’s a crazy time to embrace calm and nuance.
I backed away in 2017 when it felt too hard. This is my teshuvah.
As long as you can make teshuvah without beating yourself up.
It’s a really weird time to be alive.
Making space for complexity takes enough energy as it is.
Thanks again.
“It’s not a vast conspiracy. It’s stupid people, with horrible politics, trying to manipulate you into giving them money again. “ Ayep.
Naive comment 'o' the day: "It’s not a vast conspiracy. It’s stupid people..." Which ignores the rich history of false flag ops, embedded provocateurs, flipped informers, back-channel finances, foreign influences...have we left anyone out?
I well recall (back in the last radical upheaval in the early '70s) how a Black Panther named Fred Hampton "was drugged, then shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office."
When it finally wobbled into court, it turned out that Hampton was virtually the only Panther not on the FBI's pad.
It's never stopped: feds cluttering up the J6 festivities. Proud Boys on the pad. The opaque finances of BLM.
Anyone think Antifa isn't heavily infiltrated and/or financed by certain dark players? (If they aren't then the FBI and other 16 intelligence agencies ought to be summarily Eloned.) Ditto the rest of the doily-radicals cluttering up Portland's streets. The Hamas lovefest at PSU. The sudden campaign success of nutty "socialists"--don't ask where the money comes from. And, remember, not a single nonprofit must disclose on its IRS form 990s the origin of their astonishing amounts of income.
Get real.
Okay Richard, I will acknowledge many different converging plots and conspiracies.
I still don't think it's a vast organized network.
I think between the Soviet agitprop, the FBI & CIA, China, and various other monied interests there are, and have been, many shadowy hands moving pieces around over the decades. We could also look to the cartels and how they benefit from Portland's drug markets and sidewalk asylums.
But just because many of these fools are carrying out plans first dreamt up in the USSR or an agitprop office of the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't mean they are in on the game. Most of them were probably just brought up on nonsense.
They are true believers in these ideas (Israel is a settler colonial outpost of the great American Empire, cops are exclusively a tool of state sanctioned murder, capitalism is the greatest barrier to utopia, etc). They're just idiots. It so happens that their idiotic beliefs were either made up by, or spread globally by malicious actors.
They may be serving dark players, but they are just idiots at the end of the day. The antidote, in my mind, is to call it out and to move our society back toward the moral consensus most of us already privately operate under. I think just because we became weak at defending our moral framework, and now various predators are picking at the edges of the herd, doesn't mean they are all aligned. They simply all smell the same blood.
The money... now that's a different story. We should absolutely root out where all of this money is coming from. If that proves impossible, it becomes a moral imperative to marginalize these groups.
I wish we could clone you, Max. We need you in our community and I don’t have the time to do this anymore.
Don't think of taking him away….he's the best thing going in Portland right now. :) Well except for DA Nathan Vasquez.
Portland is hell. How many tents, drug zombies, and piles of shit did the east Portland protest walk by to scream about orange man 3,000 miles away?