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Sep 1, 20

This Week in Fascism #72: Police Giving Free Rein to Far-Right Leads to Multiple Deaths

Welcome, fellow antifascists! This week, we’ve got the police using far-Right paramilitaries to attack protesters, resulting in the deaths of two anti-racist protesters in Wisconsin and a Patriot Prayer associate in Portland; a coalition of Portland groups calling for the resignation of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Portland Police Bureau Chief Chuck Lovell; plus doxxes of Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys, and members of militias and Identity Dixie.

Without further ado, let’s begin!

News

Police Use Far-Right Paramilitaries to Attack Protesters, Three Anti-Racist Protesters Shot in Wisconsin, Patriot Prayer Associate Killed in Portland

This week, we saw an escalation of force of against anti-racist protesters from the far-Right. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse shot three protesters with an AR-15, killing two of them.

The protest was a response to the shooting of Jacob Blake. Just days earlier, Blake was shot four times in the back by Kenosha PD Officer Rusten Sheskey. Sheskey fired seven times at point-blank range, but only four shots hit Blake. Blake survived the shooting, but is paralyzed from the waist down, possibly permanently, according to his family. The Justice Department has opened an inquiry into the shooting.

Ryan Balch, a Wisconsin resident who patrolled with Rittenhouse that night, claimed both in a video taken at the scene of the shooting and in a later Facebook post that Kenosha police “told us that they were going to be pushing the protesters towards us because we could deal with them.”

On Sunday, Southern Poverty Law Center reporter Michael Edison Hayden revealed that Balch’s Twitter account shared Hitler speeches, retweeted white nationalist Richard Spencer, and posted anti-Semitic memes. And on Facebook, Balch uses a Boogaloo-themed header image.

Despite the fact that Rittenhouse was violating the 7:00 p.m. curfew put in place by the city of Kenosha, and illegally carrying a gun (18 is the minimum age for possession of a long gun in Wisconsin), police not only didn’t arrest him prior to the shooting, but actually thanked him, and offered him water at one point in the night to stay hydrated.

Rittenhouse is facing five felony charges, including first-degree homicide, but quickly attracted the support of the far-right. Michelle Malkin, a 20-year contributor to white nationalist outlet VDARE, is assisting with fundraising efforts for Rittenhouse’s legal defense. Malkin recently collaborated with far-Right personality Milo Yiannopoulos to create a syllabus for young conservatives that includes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic hoax. Malkin is also a heavy supporter of the white nationalist “Groyper” movement, which seeks to carve out an Alt-Right space within the Trump campaign.

Recent video has surfaced of Rittenhouse punching a woman in the back of the head in what appears to be an attempt to break up an altercation earlier this summer.

The state using the far-right as paramilitary proxies to beat, threaten, and even murder anti-racist protesters is a familiar tale to many activists. In 1979, members of the Ku-Klux-Klan and the American Nazi Party massacred five anti-racist protesters during a “Death to the Klan” march in Greensboro, North Carolina. Later investigation found that the Greensboro police had provided a map of the planned march route to Edward Dawson, a Klansman who also served as a police informant. And Bernard Butkovitch, a federal agent who had infiltrated the American Nazi Party, not only knew that the ANP members planned to disrupt the march and did not relay this information to law enforcement, but encouraged them to carry guns.

However, the strategy may have backfired on the police this weekend, when a Patriot Prayer supporter was shot to death after attempting to mace someone in Portland, video shows.

Patriot Prayer associate Aaron “Jay” Danielson was a regular at far-Right events in the Pacific Northwest. His name was originally reported by a number of outlets and social media accounts as “Jay Bishop,” a different Patriot Prayer associate.

Patriot Prayer associates Danielson (in black) and Chandler Pappas (no shirt)

Danielson attended a pro-Trump caravan rally in Clackamas, Oregon, earlier in the day, were “event organizers urged attendees to carry firearms, though not do so openly,” according to Oregon Live. Portland Tribune reporter Zane Sparling photographed Danielson and Patriot Prayer associate Chandler Pappas, who were armed with knives, mace, and paintball guns, preparing for the rally. In recently leaked audio discussing anti-racist protesters in Portland, Pappas claimed that, “I’m ready to start killing these motherfuckers.”

Researcher @Antifada161 posted documents appearing to show a protective order against Pappas from his uncle, claiming that Pappas had beaten him with a baton and hospitalized him.

Back to the day in question: though police were stationed at the junction between the I-5 highway – the stated route of the caravan – and the Morrison Bridge to downtown Portland, they appear to have made no attempt to stop vehicles leaving the caravan to cross to downtown Portland. Instead, as New York Times correspondent Mike Baker tweeted, “Police are focused on keeping protesters off the roadway so the caravan can continue.”

Once in downtown Portland, the caravan began attacking journalists and anti-racist protesters with paintball guns and mace. Journalist Cory Elia reported that he was hit with what appears to be a hard plastic projectile from the paintball guns. Elia’s video shows the caravan trucks, stripped of license plates, driving through crowds of protesters, attempting to hit them. Police made no attempt to intervene.

Writing in Bike Portland, one local Portland resident placed blame on the Mayor and the police for their facilitation of the far-Right and pro-Trump groups coming into Portland:

Do Mayor Ted Wheeler and Police Chief Chuck Lovell think we’re just going to forget what happened over the weekend?

On Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people drove cars and trucks into downtown Portland with “Trump 2020” and USA flags flying high. As they powered through the streets, some of them sprayed bear mace and shot paintball guns indiscriminately on people in the street. In the clip above you can see drivers and huge trucks barreling through an intersection against a red light as people try to slow them down and/or scamper out of their way. Other clips showed a bicycle under the wheels of a car and a souped-up sedan driver who raced, full-throttle, through a busy street.

Amid this chaos a man was shot and killed on SW 3rd and Alder (and he might have survived if overly aggressive Portland Police officers didn’t shove away a medic who was administering first-aid).

The trucks were part of an un-permitted “Cruise Rally” whose organizers said it would be a parade to show support for Donald Trump. You have to be extremely naive and/or willfully ignorant to think this wouldn’t have ended like it did.

What’s just as shocking and scary as the criminal behavior of some participants was how the Portland Police Bureau failed to protect us from it. There were only a few arrests made and the PPB didn’t intervene strongly until after the caravan left. The official PPB statement offered only a very sanitized summary: “Pedestrians and vehicle occupants periodically exchanged words. At times fights broke out; there were some minor collisions.”

This was nothing short of intentional vehicular assault on our public roads. These people used their vehicles as weapons to terrorize Portlanders and they faced no repercussions for doing so. After it was clear criminal acts were taking place, why didn’t PPB lay down a spike strip to stop the drivers? Or slash tires to disable the vehicles — like they’ve done so many times to vehicles that support nightly Black Lives Matter protests?

This was disparate policing on full display. White Trump supporters are treated with kid gloves while anti-fascist, Black Lives Matter protestors are subdued by any means necessary.

At approximately 9:00 p.m., video shows Danielson approaching someone on the street and attacks him with mace. The person draws a gun and shoots twice, as Danielson collapses to the ground. An anti-racist medic reported that Danielson was alive immediately following the shooting and that they attempted to render aid, but were pushed away by the police and hit with batons.

Following Danielson’s death, President Donald Trump offered a brief eulogy on social media, tweeting: “Rest In Peace Jay!” Many Right media outlets, who only days before were praising Kyle Rittenhouse, were describing the killing of Danielson as an “execution” because Danielson was a “Trump supporter,” removing any context of his participation in armed far-Right groups or the violent Trump caravan that attacked people on the street. Trump also shared posts from Alt-Right trolls and outright neo-Nazi Brandon Farley, discussing events in Portland.

Following the shooting, members of Patriot Prayer have attempted to paint themselves as simple “conservatives” and the “Multnomah County Republican Party, which since the shooting has called for the president to crack down on Portland anti-fascists,” helped local far-Right supporters of the group set up a press conference to whitewash the group’s image.

The police facilitation of far-Right Trump supporters swarming into Portland’s downtown appears to be part of a wider pattern being utilized by police forces across the US. Last weekend, we saw as police stepped back and allowed the far-Right to attack people; only sending in DHS agents to declare an unlawful assembly after the far-Right had been run-off to their cars. This strategy was also clearly on display in Kenosha, as militaried police worked openly with far-Right militias, leading to two dead.

Also recently in Modesto, California, police told protesters at a recent far-Right rally that they would not police the crowd as they didn’t want it to turn into an “anti-police protest.”

Portland Orgs Call for the Resignation of Mayor Ted Wheeler

A coalition of anti-racist and civil rights organizations in Portland has issued a call for Mayor Ted Wheeler and Portland Police Bureau Chief Chuck Lovell to resign.

“The conditions that have been created, and have persisted over the past couple of years, that have allowed for lack of oversight and accountability for law enforcement, continued violence from law enforcement, and also the increased presence of vigilante justice by alt-right groups, has created conditions that can no longer be sustained,” said Oregon Justice Resource Center Executive Director Bobbin Singh in a Zoom press conference.

The OJRC was joined by CAIR-Oregon, Next Up, the Portland Democratic Socialists of America, PopMob, and Portland Resistance in their call for new city leadership.

“As a person of color who resides in the metropolitan area in Oregon, when I see these alt-right groups come in to Portland with these flags – Blue Lives Matter flags, Trump flags – it is no different than someone coming in flying a Confederate flag and burning a cross on our front porch,” said Singh. “The lack of leadership that’s existed with the city and the Mayor’s office has allowed this to fester, and allowed these groups to be able to come in an feel like they can do whatever they want.”

“What we saw last weekend, when there was this big far-Right rally, where they brought firearms, they were shooting paintball guns, they were shooting actual firearms at left-wing protesters, the police stood by and did nothing. But as soon as those right-wing protesters left, the police and the federal officers came out in full force, declared it a riot, had plenty of energy and fumes for that part of it, and just stood by to allow these right-wing protesters to intimidate and attack left-wing protesters. And I think that is what the dynamic was last night. They wanted there to be conflict last night. They wanted these two groups to clash last night. They wanted to stand by and allow these Trump protesters to come in and do what they were going to do, and that ended in someone dying…. It’s part of an intentional strategy,” said Olivia Katbi Smith, Co-Chair of the Portland DSA.

Doxxes

Chad W. Feldman, Proud Boy of Vancouver, Washington

On Saturday, August 22nd, far-right organizers including members of the SPLC-designated hate group, the Proud Boys, converged on Portland to intimidate and assault Portland residents. Rose City Antifa were able to identify a man who was filmed punching an antifascist protester in the head as Chad W. Feldman of Vancouver, Washington. Feldman’s Facebook profile hosts photos of him providing security for a Nike store on May 31st.

Feldman attended the August 22nd rally alongside violent neo-Nazi and Proud Boy Tusitala “Tiny” Toese. It appears that as of recently, Feldman has joined his fellow Proud Boys in publicly glorifying Kenosha, WI far-Right shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two anti-racist activists who were protesting police violence in response to the police shooting of Kenosha resident Jacob Blake in the back, paralyzing him from the waist down.

Feldman is employed by AJ Melino & Associates, Inc., a security firm that includes Nike among its list of high-profile corporate clients. Comrades are encouraged to contact Feldman’s employer and ask them why they employ violent, racist reactionaries. You can reach them by emailing [email protected].

Gabriel “Gabe” Nicolas Mercado, Three Percent Militia Member of Winnemucca, Nevada

Reno Antifascists discovered the identity of Winnemucca, Nevada Three Percent Militia member Gabriel “Gabe” Nicolas Mercado. In addition to his III% connections, he also operates the Twitter account, “Exposing Reno Commies.”

Gabe’s social media accounts are full of references to the boogaloo movement, of which he is a supporter, and photos of him making the “okay” hand symbol. He regularly glorifies violence and has expressed his support for Kenosha far-Right murderer Kyle Rittenhouse.

The Twitter account he operates is used to identify anyone from the Reno area that he perceives as communist, typically labeling them as pedophiles, pedophile-sympathizers or rioters and he’s been known to post pictures of his targets with their children. The avatar for his account is a reference to helicopter rides, an ode to former Chilean Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet’s brutalization of leftist activists and political dissidents by throwing them out of helicopters. It is a symbol that is frequently used by members of the far-right.

Gabriel’s is currently employed by Nevada Gold Mines, based in Elko, NV. You can reach out to Nevada Gold Mines to voice your concerns by calling their Elko office at (775) 778-4000 or by reaching out to their Facebook page. Reno Antifascists suggest asking Nevada Gold Mines how they feel about employing a right-wing extremist who supports white nationalism and political violence.

You can read the full dox here.

Ronnie Evans aka Uncle Dad aka Joseph Goebbowls, Bowl Patrol Member of Dayton, Ohio

Antifascist activist Anonymous Comrade identified Bowl Patrol member Uncle Dad aka Joseph Goebbowls as Ronnie Evans of Dayton, Ohio. Bowl Patrol is an accelerationist group of individuals who have deified Dylann Roof. Roof is responsible for the racially motivated killings of nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. The name “Bowl Patrol” is a reference to Roof’s bowl cut hairstyle.

Evans identity comes on the heels of other Bowl Patrol member doxxes like Andrew Richard Casarez aka “Vic Mackey”, the de-facto leader of Bowl Patrol, David Fassler aka “Wignasty” and Benjamin “Cheddar Mane” Lambert. Like the other Bowl Patrol members, Evans harbors racist, antisemitic and violent views that spill over onto his social media pages. Evans has a Youtube channel where in one video, he observes a woodchipper, a theme that comes up frequently in Bowl Patrol conversations as the preferred method to exterminate anyone who is non-white or deemed a “race traitor.”

To view the full report, please follow this link.

Jordon Lee Sherperd, aka “Squid,” Admin of Patriot Wave, One of the Biggest Boogaloo Groups on Facebook

Twilight Zone AFA uncovered the identity of Patriot Wave founder and owner Jordon Lee Sherperd. Patriot Wave is one of the largest Boogaloo groups on Facebook. Sherperd is a member of the US Navy reserve which makes his involvement in the Boogaloo movement all the more concerning.

Outside of organizing in real life spaces, Patriot Wave have managed to evade bans on Facebook and Discord, which has allowed them to actively recruit followers to their accelerationist views. Jordon regularly posts civil war propaganda and right wing death squad memes to his pages. Twilight Zone AFA also indicates that Jordon has interest in and adherence to esoteric nazism and Odinism. Given Jordon’s military expertise and desire for civil war, he is most certainly a danger to the community and community members are encouraged to remain vigilant at rallies where he might show up.

Ian Weber aka Zev Hund aka Pancho Guillermo Lopez-D’Avila, Identity Dixie Silvern Circle leader from Tucson, Arizona

Antifascist researcher Identify Dixie recently exposed the leader of Identity Dixie Silvern Circle as Ian Weber. Ian goes by many names like “Zev Hund” and “Pancho Guillermo Lopez-D’Avila” and, as Identify Dixie indicates, he is not southern. Identity Dixie members are anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and racist.

Weber was previously a podcaster for “The Paranormies Presents,” whose host John Ramondetta aka Johnny Monoxide was on the list of speakers for the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally. Weber was featured on 28 episodes of “The Paranormies Presents” between 2017 and 2019. He also made appearances on Identity Dixie podcasts as well as “The Right Stuff.”

Weber is not shy about his racist views and regularly blames Jews, women and minorities for everything he’s not pleased with and he’s loyal to absolutely no one, as indicated in screenshots. Follow Identify Dixie for more information about Identity Dixie’s members.

Corey Eugene Jeffery Wyatt, White Supremacist Far-Right Organizer of Eugene, Oregon area

Antifascist activists Eugene 161 identified one of the participants involved in the far-Right’s response to anti-police uprisings in Eugene, Oregon as Corey Eugene Jeffery Wyatt. Corey, who sometimes goes by Agnarr Wyatt, was recently released from prison for his involvement in a string of white supremacist murders back in 2011. Toward the end of his stay in prison, Corey began connecting with “The American Patriot Society” or TAPS, in an attempt to rebrand himself as an anti-antifa American Patriot.

On July 10th, Corey traveled to Springfield, OR to attend and speak at an All Lives Matter rally. Corey showed up with a large bowie knife and a large stick with a “thin blue line” flag attached. On July 29th, Corey showed up to counter-protest a Black Lives Matter march that was held in Eugene, armed with his bowie knife. On August 5th, Corey showed up with his knife to counter-protest and instigate violence with anti-police protesters in downtown Eugene. Corey was also present at August 15th and 16th actions. On August 22nd, he showed up in tactical gear and a handful of weapons including “a flashlight taser, several batons, bear spray, a two-foot length of metal, and a large Bowie knife on his right hip.” Later that day as things escalated between the protesters, counter-protesters and police, Corey was caught on film assaulting someone with his metal baton.

Corey is a dangerous person with a long history of violence that spans multiple decades. He is martial arts trained, comfortable with weapons and has taken steps to make a name for himself as a prominent anti-antifa figure. Eugene residents are asked to be aware of his presence at actions as he is a danger to the community. Get the full picture by heading over to Eugene 161’s blog post.

Russell Bergeron, American Guard Colorado Chapter President of Colorado Springs, Colorado

Colorado Springs Anti-Fascist recently identified the Colorado chapter President of the American Guard as Russell Bergeron of Colorado Springs, Colorado. While Russell is the sole member of the Colorado chapter, he has connections with other far-Right organizers in the state. American Guard is a neo-Nazi organization that uses nationalism and patriotism to mask it’s violence and bigotry. It’s members are known for violently targeting immigrants and are overtly Islamophobic.

Before his accounts were banned, Russell used his Facebook to connect and support white supremacist organizing in the state including actions that were being streamed by Louie Huey and the Colorado Proud Boys, as well as making connections with neo-Nazi and current Boogaloo Boy Shane Reeves. Russell’s VK account boasts references to 88 (HH or Heil Hitler), swastikas and fervent use of the n-word.

His workplace is currently unknown but if community members have information about Russell, Colorado Springs Anti-Fascists ask that you please reach out to them either on Twitter (their DM’s are open) or via email: CospringsAntifa [at] protonmail [dot] com. Read more about Russell’s background and current whereabouts at Colorado Springs Anti-Fascist’s blog.

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Correction: This column originally included a video of a Patriot Prayer associate Jay Bishop, speaking in support of white nationalist serial killer Jeremey Christian, that was attributed to being Aaron Danielson.

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A weekly roundup of the latest and greatest happenings in the anti-fascist world. Each column features a roundup of news, actions, doxxes and current calls to action.

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