As Oregon state troopers, Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies, and Portland police officers deploy today in response to a Proud Boys rally in north Portland, the big question is whether the state will begin using all the legal tools at its disposal to defend Portland residents against these far-right extremists whose seek to intimidate and terrorize city residents. Governor Kate Brown has invoked emergency powers to centralize the law enforcement response, and some 15 Democratic elected officials in the state have released a statement criticizing the rally. The letter’s reference to state laws against private militias suggests that Oregon officials are finally beginning to take the threat of right-wing militias as seriously as they should:
Oregon law prohibits paramilitary activity. Organizers of and likely participants in the September 26 event have openly discussed tactical operations and military-style formations that lead us to believe that they are operating as an unauthorized private militia. Many of them are crossing state lines in an attempt to cause chaos and disrupt the peace. One regular at far-right rallies wrote this week on social media, 'We have a unit large enough now that we have specialized teams inside our unit. Combat and support.' Another wrote last month, 'Like we do in other states, tactical ambushes at night while backing up the police are key.’
Significantly, the law prohibits both the use and the intent to use firearms or explosives; the ability to prove intent would seem to be the key to whether the state could use this law before actual acts of violence occur. Additionally, the Oregon constitution states that “the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power,” which suggests that private militias not under government control would violate the constitution or any laws that enforce this concept.
The rally organizers claim to be gathering to “end domestic terrorism,” which to them is embodied in the anti-racist protestors who have demonstrated in downtown Portland and other parts of the city for more than 100 days in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. But their white supremacist rhetoric, weaponry of war, and prior record point to a different, obvious purpose: to intimidate Portlanders who oppose them by threats of violence, and to engage in violence. They are an illegal armed militia. Law enforcement needs to treat them like one. It is disturbing to see that the superintendent of state troopers was initially reluctant to send state police as part of the state response to the protest. He cited Portland’s ban on using one type of tear gas against protestors as his reason, but you have to wonder what sort of signal it sends to white nationalist extremists when a high-ranking law enforcement official shows a lack of enthusiasm for a state-level response to such groups.
While law enforcement has legitimate and pressing reasons to avoid escalating situations involving armed groups, one would hope that the fact that the heavy weaponry and propensity to violence of the Proud Boys does not effectively nullify application of anti-paramilitary laws. And if the current state laws are not sufficient to prosecute those who clearly use threats of gun violence to advance their agenda, then Oregon Democrats need to pass some new and improved ones. They will likely not be joined by their Republican colleagues, whose response to the Proud Boys rally has been at best muddled and at worst atrocious. The GOP minority leaders in the House and Senate released a statement denouncing “violence committed by any individual or group, no matter their perceived political affiliation.” GOP Representative Bill Post, though, was “less measured,” in the words of Willamette Week; he falsely asserted that the groups at the rally have no record of violence in Portland, and accused Governor Brown of not defending the city against antifa. (U.S. Attorney for Oregon Billy “not Billy Dee” Williams has a similarly Trump-inflected reaction, describing the violence of anti-police violence protests in Portland as the reason why Proud Boys have now descended on the city: “As a direct consequence of this criminal behavior and the media attention it generates, this community must now deal with the threat of even more outsiders traveling to Portland to participate in what they've been watching on social media and television for weeks.” Post and Williams demonstrate once again that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to get a Republican official to directly condemn violent right-wing extremists.)
But the inherently violent tactics and murderous ends of white supremacist paramilitary groups alone make any attempts to find equivalence with anti-racist protestors, even antifa, a false and pernicious one. Groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer are the modern-day descendants of white terrorist groups like the KKK, only garbed in transparent attempts to legitimize themselves as militias. They are in fact anti-militias, serving not the public defense but a violent, sectarian white supremacist vision that constitutes a deep offense against American government and the American people.
Given their paramilitary nature and clear history of seeking violence, it makes no sense for counter-protestors to show up to the Proud Boys rally. If the goal is to illuminate the presence of these white nationalist vigilantes, then that goal has already been accomplished. This rally is already national news. Rather than advancing a sense of how dangerous such groups are, direct confrontation with them invites a sense of equivalency, of two factions of the right and the left battling it out. Groups like the Proud Boys must be opposed by state and federal law enforcement, and all efforts need to be placed on our elected officials to turn this necessary strategy into a reality. They are not enemies of antifa, as they would like to claim, but enemies of the United States of America. Seeking confrontation with men carrying machine guns who are looking for an excuse to commit mass murder would be bonkers.
We can’t lose sight of the fact that groups like the Proud Boys are not simply responding to the existence of Black Lives Matter protests and demonstrations involving antifa. They are also responding to calls from President Trump for white vigilante violence, such as when the president excused the actions of the right-wing teen who killed two demonstrators in Kenosha, Wisconsin a few weeks ago. As the election approaches, we will likely see bolder and more frequent actions by right-wing groups, and state officials not just in Oregon but across the country need to establish a strategy to foil their attempts at intimidation and mayhem. This is not just a state issue; it’s a national one, with implications for the November elections.