If you thought Charlottesville was bad, then brace yourselves — because Portland could be even worse.
The violence at Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017, was the direct result of far-left thugs refusing to allow far-right protesters to peacefully assemble in support of preserving a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. It shouldn’t need to be stated — but it does — that under our Constitution, everyone has the right to free speech and, accordingly, the right to be wrong.
If the hate group Antifa had not turned up in Charlottesville to confront the Unite the Right rally, which included a variety of participants including neo-Nazis, then the rally would have drawn a few hundred participants and ended not with a bang but a whimper. The racist far right is a tiny fringe element that has almost no support, and virtually all Americans would have been repelled by their Swastikas and Nazi affiliation without being told to do so by the masked club-wielding Antifa thugs.
The main point, which is glossed over by the Mainstream Media, is that the Antifa thugs provoked the violence. As soon as they arrived with their counter-protest, it was predictable that violence would ensue. It was also obvious that the police were entirely unprepared and were not taking steps to calm the situation down. As a matter of fact, while watching news coverage of the event that Saturday morning, I turned to my then 7-year-old son and told him that a riot was about to happen and that someone was going to get hurt.
Charlottesville was a tragic and avoidable violent confrontation. It is famous for its conclusion when a schizophrenic neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd of people, injuring several dozen people and killing Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal. No one could or would or should ever forgive the murderer, James Fields Jr., who is rightly serving a life sentence for killing Heyer.
But no one should ever expect to avoid violence when the police surrender their authority to the mob, as happened in Charlottesville.
A similar confrontation in Portland, Oregon, on June 29 led to the beating of journalist Andy Ngo by Antifa thugs who had arrived similarly to protest against a rally by the Proud Boys, a far-right group that believes Western values are under attack but which also has violent tendencies of its own. Once again, the police did virtually nothing to prevent the violence by making arrests, providing adequate manpower to separate the two groups, or by exercising authority in any way.
The recipe for disaster is clear: Far Right + FarLeft – Police Presence = Violence.
So that brings us to this coming Saturday, August 17, when the Proud Boys intend to hold a rally in Portland to condemn Antifa. The event is styled as an “End to Domestic Terrorism” rally, and yes Antifa has established itself as a force of domestic terrorism. Not only have individuals like Ngo been brutally attacked, but an Antifa member attacked an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington, with guns and firebombs last month, and was lionized as a martyr by Antifa. Also, the Dayton shooter was inspired by Antifa to commit violence.
In case you missed it, Antifa gets its name from its supposed mission of being Anti-Fascist. The fact of the matter is that the group is the most fascist group active in the United States. If the masks and the clubs didn’t give it away, then you could just watch the attack on Andy Ngo, a Vietnamese American who has made it his life’s work to document the threat of the progressive left to the peace and freedom of Americans.
If the Portland Police respond to the large demonstrations expected Saturday with the same lack of vigor that they exhibited in June, then you can be sure of one thing — someone is going to get hurt. I hope and pray that no one dies at this rally as happened in Charlottesville, but violence is the natural result when people are allowed to form a mob. And when two mobs form on opposite sides of the street, the violence promises to be 10 times worse.
It was Joseph Conrad who reminded us, in “The Heart of Darkness,” that the only thing between civilization and savagery was having “a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another.” If we take away the policeman, we are one stop away from collapse. Hopefully, Portland got the message from its failure in June, and will respond appropriately this weekend.
To read more of my columns about the Dishonest Media, the Deep Swamp, the failed presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Trump’s war to restore American greatness, read my “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” They are available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle editions. My new book is “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake?”
