Wednesday, June 24, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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President Donald Trump whistles, thugs of the extreme right respond, and good people get hurt.
In the 29 days since Americans began protesting over the death of George Floyd, a string of violence and terrorization by right-wing extremists has destroyed Trump’s lies that leftist radicals are responsible for problems at demonstrations.
White nationalists, militia members, agitators in the Boogaloo Boi movement and others have been arrested or implicated in incidents snaking through cities across the U.S., including Las Vegas. In some places, police officers committed galling acts toward protesters, no doubt emboldened by Trump’s bloodthirsty call to “dominate” the demonstrators.
Meanwhile, there still has not been an arrest of any known antifa member for a significant act of violence related to the protests.
“The numbers are overwhelming: Most of the violence is coming from the extreme right wing,” Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who studies extremist political activity for the think tank Foreign Policy Research Institute, told The Washington Post.
The looting and destruction that Trump ties to the left occurred only in the early days of the protests, and the demonstrators themselves have helped tamp it down. But the far-right’s efforts at terror go on. Who’s turning up at protests armed to the teeth? Not the peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
As far as antifa, it’s being villainized because it does one thing: It responds to the physical threats of the far right. That’s all. And the reason Trump targets the loosely based organization is because the far right is frightened of people standing up to them. Federal authorities have offered no evidence to back up the contentions from Trump and Attorney General William Barr that antifa organized the rally. That stands to reason: antifa members say the scale of the demonstrations is far beyond what they could have organized.
Contrary to Trump’s characterizations, here’s a sampling of what’s really happening on the streets of America:
• In Oakland, Calif., authorities filed charges against an adherent of the Boogaloo movement and an accomplice for killing a security officer and critically wounding another outside a federal building. Officials say the men intentionally timed the attack during protests, knowing law enforcement would be busy responding to the demonstrations. The suspects escaped after the shootings, but eight days later the white van in which they allegedly carried out the attack was spotted, leading officers to the property of Richard Carrillo in nearby Ben Lomond, Calif.
Sheriff’s deputies approaching the home were ambushed and shot. One deputy died. Carrillo, an active-duty Air Force sergeant, was wounded. According to reports, he escapes and stole a car, then abandoned it after writing Boogaloo-linked phrases on its hood in blood. When he tried to steal another car at a nearby home, the homeowner tackled him and held him until police arrived and arrested him.
Authorities say Carrillo’s motive was to advance the Boogaloo movement, whose adherents seek to incite an overthrow of the U.S. government and start a second civil war. Police say they found a boogaloo patch, firearms and bombmaking equipment in vehicles Carrillo used.
• In Albuquerque, N.M., a former city council candidate was arrested alongside members of a militia group after allegedly shooting and wounding a protester. Witnesses say the shooting occurred after the arrested man, Steven Ray Baca, intimidated protesters planning to topple a statue of the murderous Spanish conquistador Juan de Onate outside the Albuquerque museum. People monitoring police radios via scanners say police called the militia “armed friendlies” before the shooting.
• In Bethel, Ohio, population 2,800, a crowd of about 80 protesters was met by a horde of 700 armed counterprotesters. During the demonstration, smartphone video captured a peaceful protester being punched in the head by a counterprotester who was later identified as a member of a motorcycle gang that had turned up to antagonize the crowd. The assault happened directly in front of a police officer, who did nothing. “Sir, I just got punched right in the back of the head,” the man says to no avail. The officer’s response is drowned out by counterprotesters screaming at the victim.
• Militants clad in military fatigues and carrying guns, baseball bats, hammers and axes lined up across the street from a group of about 200 peaceful protesters in downtown Coqueville, Ore. The armed counterprotesters said they were there to protect businesses from antifa, citing a conspiracy theory that the group is sending busloads of its members to small-town protests to cause violence. The local sheriff fueled the situation by repeating the theory. No buses showed up in Coqueville or in any other small community. In Hutchingon, Kan., the hoax prompted threats to protesters, and caused numerous businesses and county offices to close. The police chief used the threats to pressure protesters into calling off their demonstration, which they declined to do. Instead, they moved it to a Saturday afternoon and about 100 people marched peacefully down Main Street.
• In Forks, Wash., seven or eight carloads chased a multiracial family of four out of town, accusing them of being members of antifa. The townspeople, some of whom were armed with semiautomatic rifles, followed the family to a camping area, where they cut down trees to prevent the family from leaving. The family was helped by a group of local high school students who used a chainsaw to cut through the felled trees. No one was hurt. An investigation is ongoing.
• In Loveland, Colo., a gunman confronted a Colorado State University football player who was working for a roofing company, accusing the player and another employee of being members of antifa. The gunman, 65, held them at gunpoint, jamming his knee into one man’s neck and the gun into his back. The player and his colleague, who were going door to door for work while wearing masks, were not injured. The gunman was charged with two counts of felony menacing and two counts of false imprisonment.
• According to the Sacramento Bee, protesters in several small California cities have encountered milita-type individuals carrying firearms and claiming they’re present to protect property. In one example, as 200 peaceful protesters gathered in Arroyo Grande, midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, armed gunmen patrolled the roof of a nearby gym.
• Twitter revealed that a post from the account @Antifa_US calling for protesters to “move in to the residential areas … the white hoods … and take what’s ours” was run by white supremacists posing as antifa.
• In Minneapolis, state troopers and deputies from the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office were caught puncturing tires of 20 to 40 vehicles in the protest areas. Authorities gave various excuses for their actions — some cars were in the way of police operations, some contained sticks or rocks, etc. — but a tow truck driver told a documentary filmmaker that he got “call after call after call” from “everybody.” “Medics over there. News crews. Random people that were just here to protest and ... tires slashed,” he said.
• The situation stretches beyond U.S. borders. London Mayor Sadiq Khan issued a warning that further protests could lead to violence and disorder due to the presence of extreme far-right counterprotesters to anti-racism demonstrations.
• Then, unfortunately, there’s Las Vegas, where three men with ties to the Boogaloo movement were arrested with firearms and materials to make Molotov cocktails. Authorities say the men came to a rally with the intent of inciting violence by hurling the explosives at law enforcement, but were caught before they could carry out their plan. Days later, authorities arrested a man on suspicion of falsely impersonating a law enforcement officer after he had shown up heavily armed at a protest and claimed to be a federal agent. The man bears a tattoo of the Nazi SS force. Authorities say he is the husband of a Metro police officer, who knew he was impersonating a federal agent.
That’s reality. Yet Trump continues to demonize peaceful protesters, including as he was exposing thousands of his followers to the threat of coronavirus Saturday in Tulsa, Okla.
“All of these places I talk about are Democrat,” he said, referring to places where violence has occurred. “You know that, every one of them, every one of them.”
The goal with these types of comments is clear: Trump wants to conflate any protest with violence and fear. The result of this agitation from the top plays out in the panicked reactions of militias who finally think they can go beyond pretending to be military personnel and become macho men toting guns to protect the world ... from peaceful protesters.
Let’s not forget, Trump’s own father was arrested during a Ku Klux Klan riot in New York. Fred Trump would be proud of the videos his son tweeted Monday showing random black-on-white street crimes in an obvious attempt to rev up white nationalists. Amid a climate with rising racial tensions, Trump is more concerned about the toppling of a few Confederate statues and the prospect of rechristening military bases named for Confederate leaders. This is what he considers our “Great American Heritage,” to grab a few words from one of his tweets.
Trump is giving aid and comfort to the true enemies of America: violent racists, far-right militia, the Klan’s fantasies about a glorious history of defending slavery.
That becomes clear in the official record, as told by reports from law enforcement authorities nationwide.
