Black-bloc-clad antifa protesters carrying guns, bats, skateboards attacked cars and trucks participating in a freedom rally caravan in front of the Oregon State Capitol building on Sunday afternoon. No one called the massing of weapons, personnel, offensive weapons, defensive gas masks, and ballistic vests an insurrection, however.
Except for military expert, retired US Army Reserve Lt. Colonel, Tony Shaffer, who wondered, perhaps tongue in cheek, where the National Guard was to put down the planned violence by antifa.
Vehicles bearing Gadsden and American flags were attacked, including a pickup truck bearing a window sticker reading Dont Portland My Oregon.
The truck was pelted with paint and beaten with bats. The driver got out and brandished a gun. As antifa called gun! gun! police, who had up to this point remained on the sidelines hoping for peace, moved into action, ordering the man to the ground.
That man was stopped but not arrested. Nor was he shot by the taser-wielding police officer, which upset at least one live-streamer who cried, if he were black hed be dead by now!
Antifa insurgents smashed the drivers side window of another truck flying the pro-police Thin Blue Line flag. Later, they used a large branch to impale the windshield.
Police say the antifa members planned the assaults in advance, urging people to come to create a fascist free 503, the 503 referring to Oregons legacy area code, to counter-protest the freedom rally. The latest clash was planned to stop the flag-wavers known by antifa as fascists proving again that antifa isnt anti-fascist as much as its anti-First Amendment.
Salem Police said in a news release that the fenced-off capitol building was becoming a draw for demonstrations and protestors.
The first event billed as the Freedom Rally appeared on social media streams in February. A second event appeared soon after, named Fascist Free 503, indicating a counter response to the Freedom Rally. Social media posts connected to the group indicated their intention to prevent the Freedom Rally caravan from meeting at the state capitol.
Shortly before noon, approximately 100 individuals wearing black clothing and ballistic vests and carrying firearms, bats, skateboards, umbrellas, shields and gas masks arrived on the capitol mall grounds. Some individuals from the group carried Youth Liberation Front flags, a group known to espouse leftwing ideologies. The group congregated along Court Street in front of the capitol building.
You can argue the wisdom of the man getting out of his truck to confront the people attacking attacking it, but this, as well as the case of Michael Strickland before it, points to a deeply troubling question revealing itself in America: what is happening to self-defense?
Media executive Tom Elliott said, self defense, a human right dating back more than 2,000 years, has been rescinded.
While I pointed out that the man had not been arrested yet the point should not be lost. Self-defense is on trial in America. Its on trial in Missouri with the McCloskey case. In the Michael Strickland case in Portland, Oregon, in which he pulled a gun (never firing) to stop an advancing antifa mob, the judge determined that what antifa did didnt matter, Strickland pulled a gun inappropriately and that made him guilty. Self-defense was essentially tossed from the courtroom.
The Oregon man who got out of his truck to brush back the mob by brandishing his gun may find out that self-defense is on tenuous grounds in Wokeville. But his Dont Portland My Oregon sticker shows he more than understands the stakes.
Victoria Taft is the host ofThe Adult in the Room Podcast With Victoria Taft where you can hear her series on Antifa Versus Mike Strickland.Find it here. Followher onFacebook, Twitter,Parler,MeWe,Minds@VictoriaTaft
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Armed Antifa Attack 'Freedom Rally' at Oregon's Capitol ...
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