In which I attempt to answer the questions: Who are the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer? And, What Does It Mean For Our Country When We Speak the Same Language But Can No Longer Understand Each Other? And Have We Forgotten How To Belong to Each Other?

September 25th 2020

            Tomorrow there is another chance for extreme violence in Portland, Oregon as the Proud Boys (a “Western Chauvinist” and far right neo-fascist group) plan to stage a demonstration in Delta Park on Saturday September 26th.[i] The location itself is an affront to anyone who supports the black community of Oregon as it is where the former historic black neighborhood of Vanport used to be located before it was demolished by a flood. These Proud Boys are demonstrating for “Love for American and Western values” and protesting the death of a member of Patriot Prayer who was shot last month in downtown Portland. They also want to free Kyle Rittenhouse (the teenager who murdered two protestors in Kenosha last month, who then walked towards the cop with his hands up and was politely cuffed).

Meanwhile,counter anti-fascist protestors are holding a community solidarity eventagainst fascism in Peninsula Park, so while the groups should be separated by afew miles, there is also talk of a smaller counter protest against the ProudBoys that is going to take place in Delta Park, and it’s also possible that theProud Boys will drive over to the counter protestors site. Who knows what’sgoing to happen (I plan on going to the event at Peninsula Park and will letyou know!)

It is important to note that many of these Proud Boys and members of Patriot Prayer (more on them in a sec) are not even from Oregon—though some of them hail from Vancouver just over the Columbia. Some of them are literally traveling to Portland looking for a fight. And while the City of Portland has denied them a permit to gather, they are coming anyways. Whenever these types of events happen, violence is sure to follow.

Theviolence and guns brought to the streets of Oregon since early August have onlyincreased. Last month, after over 90 days of protests, a caravan of over athousand Trump supporters in big lifted black trucks with blue flags came to downtownPortland from Clackamas to instigate violence, (shooting BLM and anti-fascist protestorswith paintball guns and spraying them with gas) when someone finally ended updead. The man who was killed was a member of Patriot Prayer. His killer, aself-described Antifa member, was later shot and killed by police when theycame to arrest him a couple days later.

Thesesame Trump supporters, Proud Boys, and Patriot Prayer members showed up theweekend before to pick a fight and the Portland Police Bureau were nowhere insight, only showing up to arrest those on the left later in the evening (PPB claimedthey were “understaffed”).

Unfortunately, these street brawls between Antifascist groups and alt-right groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer are nothing new in Portland, they’ve been going on since Trump was elected. But last month ended in the first death of a member of Patriot Prayer. Patriot Prayer is an alt-right “Christian” group, mostly from Vancouver, WA, who have ties to white nationalist ideology. As a Christian myself, as someone who truly does his best to try to follow the way of love and of Jesus, the group makes my blood boil (I haven’t even been able to write about them before this because of how angry and depressed I know I will become just thinking about the group’s existence.)

Theleader of Patriot Prayer is Joey Gibson, a controversial figure to say theleast. A man whose failed bid for public office seemed to lead him to a darkerplace of political organizing. The group claims to be about “freedom,” and someother fairly generic, conservative talking points, including, of course, thesecond amendment, but for some reason wherever they go, violence follows(though they say the same thing about “Antifa”). Patriot Prayer rallies wereonce attended by Jeremy Christian, a man who later slashed the throats of twomen on the Max train who stood up to defend the two Muslim women he washarassing (though Patriot Prayer distanced themselves from Jeremy Christian andclaims he was not a member, still, there had to be some sort of rhetoric thatdrew Christian to Patriot Prayer in the first place). Many of these people wearcross patches stitched onto their bulletproof vests while holding AR-15s, literallyclaiming allegiance to God, Guns, and Country.  

            IfI can take a step back and look at it objectively (and not see Patriot Prayer’sown twisted nationalist version of faith as a personal affront to the God andJesus I know and the entire message of the Gospel), I find the groupobjectively fascinating. Sergio Olmos, an incredibly brave reporter who hascovered the Portland protests nearly every day for Oregon Public Radio sincethe spring, spent some time getting to know Patriot Prayer and “freedom fighterJoey Gibson,” last year finding that “those in Gibson’s orbit find a sense ofpurpose, camaraderie in violent right-wing nationalism.” In an article for TheColumbian Olmos interviews Brad Galloway, who for 13 years led the Canadianchapter of Volksfront, a violent neo-nazi gang founded in Portland:

“They’reseeking belonging, identity,” Galloway says. “there’s this sense of loneliness,especially in this age of the internet, sitting around hour upon hour, in echochambers online. And they find (their identity) in the collective identity ofthe group.[ii]”

InOlmos’s article, Gibson talks about how he used to be a football coach andmisses that comradery and team effort. Now he gets the same solidarity bybleeding in the street with his Patriot prayer brothers battling Antifa: “So,at a rally, you show up, right, and you yeah, when you bleed together over andover again, you build that camaraderie.”

Ican only think that something is sincerely wrong with our society, (and men inparticular) when the only way for us to find belonging and community is bystreet fighting other groups of people. Yet in other ways, this is nothing new.Perhaps Portland’s return to a Gangs of New York-style-street-brawls arethe greatest indicator that modern society is not as “progressive” as we wouldlike to think, or that the United States of America has been built on a mythall along, one that is finally crumbling.

Inmy opinion, many people join groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayerbecause they are seeking this type of belonging. I mean, if the pull ofbelonging wasn’t so strong, I can think of no other reason why someone elsewould join a violent radical group like the Proud Boys. Belonging is sopowerful it not only makes you commit yourself to sex cults, but to groups thatshun masturbation entirely!

Yet,as polarization grows, it seems as if we have forgotten how to belong to eachother in this country. And if we don’t consider ourselves as belonging to eachother, than how are we to change our society?

As the activist Grace Lee Boggs says: “You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and taking responsibility for it.”

I am not very hopeful however.

In a New Yorker article titled “TheMyth of America,” writer and contributor Robin Wright says that after the Civilwar:

“The cultural divide and cleavages are still deep. Three hundredand thirty million people may identify as Americans, but they define what thatmeans—and what rights and responsibilities are involved—in vastly differentways. The American promise has not delivered for many Blacks, Jews, Latinos,Asian-Americans, myriad immigrant groups, and even some whites as well. Hatecrimes—acts of violence against people or property based on race, religion,disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or gender identity—are a growing problem. A bipartisan group in the House warned in August that, “as uncertainty rises, we have seen hatredunleashed.”

When Athens and Sparta went to war, in the fifth century B.C., theGreek general and historian Thucydides observed, “The Greeks did not understandeach other any longer, though they spoke the same language.”

If we can no longer speak the same language, if we live in our ownecho chambers and consume different types of media and news (due to social mediaalgorithms), if we can no longer agree on what is truth, i.e., facts, if we disagreewith science and can’t even agree to wear masks because we are so stubbornlyindependent, than what future do we have?

 Ironically, the same ideals of rugged Americanindividualism and freedoms we hold to so dearly, are now the same ones makingus incapable of adapting to the modern world. Yet the way in which we haveapproached politics and the various conservative/liberal ideological issues overthe past decade shows our lack of willingness to belong to each other. AsSebastian Junger says in his book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.

“Theeternal argument over so-called entitlement programs—and more broadly, overliberal and conservative though—will never be resolved because each side representsan ancient and absolutely essential component of our evolutionary past. So howdo you unify a secure, wealthy country that has sunk into a zero-sum politicalgame with itself? How do you make veterans feel that they are returning to acohesive society that was worth fighting for in the first place? I put thatquestion to Rachel Yehuda of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Yehuda hasseen, up close, the effect of such antisocial divisions on traumatized vets.‘If you want to make a society work, then you don’t keep underscoring theplaces where you’re different—you underscore your shared humanity,’ she toldme. ‘I’m appalled by how much people focus on differences. Why are you focusingon how different you are from one another, and not on the things that uniteus.” The United States is so powerful that the only country capable ofdestroying her might be the United States herself, which means that theultimate terrorist strategy would be to just leave the country alone … Theultimate betrayal of tribe isn’t acting competitively—that should beencouraged—but predicating your power on the excommunication of others from thegroup.” (Tribe 128)

I for one, am indifferent to thenotion of the “United” states. I say we break it up. Let Texas and Californiaand Alaska go. All hail Cascadia! Let’s make the U.S. into some sort ofAmerizone. That way people can move to whatever part of the country they findideologically drawn to and we can quit fighting with each other. I mean, atthis point, I don’t think a Civil War is that far away, seriously.

I still find it tremendously sadthough, that we have forgotten how to belong to each other in this country. I mean,what has happenend? It’s like a portion of the population is under some type ofdemonic force or dark, magical spell. Maybe that’s the spell of nationalism. Orjust plain stupidity. For as anti-Nazi theologian and martyr DietrichBonhoeffer once wrote about Hitler’s rise to power:

“Upon closer observation, it becomes apparentthat every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a politicalor a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … Thepower of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here isnot that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenlyatrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact ofrising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or lessconsciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emergingcircumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must notblind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him,one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, butwith slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He isunder a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thusbecome a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil andat the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the dangerof diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroyhuman beings.[iii]”

I can thinkof no better words that sum up those who have fallen under the spell ofnationalistic fervor and Trump devotion.

What do we do then? I struggle daily to notgive in to despair and defeatism, yet while there might be violence tomorrow, Ican only hope and pray that we can create a society in the future whereeveryone belongs.

If you don’t feel comfortable going to theprotests in person to protest fascists, one thing you can make sure to do is votethis November, and I would encourage you to look at your vote this year as notfor Trump or Biden, but as one for either autocracy or democracy.

[i] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-...

[ii]Olmos, Sergio, Idealistic ‘Freedom Fighter’ Joey Gibson Offers Inner Circle aKind of Kinship” The Columbian. September 19th 2019.

[iii]Holmquist, Annie. “Bonhoeffer on the ‘Stupidity’ That Led to Hitler’s Rise. https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/bonhoeffer-stupidity-led-hitlers-rise/