{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Portland Republican says party should use militia groups after racial attack", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/161344535723/", "html": "Portland Republican says party should use militia groups after racial attack\n

dagwolf:

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White people see white nationalist violence and decide white people are under attack. Cool beans.

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Multnomah County GOP chair James Buchal, however, told the Guardian that recent street protests had prompted Portland Republicans to consider alternatives to \u201cabandoning the public square\u201d.

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\u201cI am sort of evolving to the point where I think that it is appropriate for Republicans to continue to go out there,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if they need to have a security force protecting them, that\u2019s an appropriate thing too.\u201d

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Asked if this meant Republicans making their own security arrangements rather than relying on city or state police, Buchal said: \u201cYeah. And there are these people arising, like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.\u201d

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Asked if he was considering such groups as security providers, Buchal said: \u201cYeah. We\u2019re thinking about that. Because there are now belligerent, unstable people who are convinced that Republicans are like Nazis.\u201d

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Can\u2019t make this shit up. Like this is a public call for armed white supremacists to show up to protests, rallies, marches and to\u00a0\u201cprotect\u201d Republicans from us. These white men cannot help but support racist violence even when confronted with its abject harm to all.

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Alright, I see this close up and I got sympathy for the Multnomah Republicans.

A thing to address the underlying \u201chow can they do X, and expect Y?\u201d is the people doing X and expecting Y here don\u2019t see themselves as the same. The MultCo Republican Party aren\u2019t behind the free speech-branded events designed to pit based stickmen v. antifa - that\u2019s a YouTuber from Vancouver WA.

(And BOTH these social media alt-righters AND the Republicans had independently told the slasher off when he\u2019d showed up to events, on the grounds he wasn\u2019t an ally, just a fighty weirdo asshole looking for a pretense. The Portlanders I know most involved in left protest have been trying to push back on blaming even alt-righters, cause they know that \u201cthat guy showed up, I hope no one holds him against us\u201d feel. Also they point out he\u2019s rootless and unstable, been shot in the face by cops and spent years in prison, maybe where he learned that deadly but unsexy down-the-jugular slash, and had the habit of latching on to any cause that lets him antagonize people.)

What the actual Multnomah Republicans have been up to lately is:

As far as the party\u2019s concerned, they\u2019re doing anodyne Norman Rockwell stuff - a picnic rally in a friendly neighborhood, marching in a civic parade - long accepted as perfectly proper. That at least violence-avowing skirmishers are harrying them isn\u2019t ideal, but when the authorities bother to keep the peace (as in Lake Oswego) things work. But when they don\u2019t, as in Portland, they don\u2019t. And so they\u2019re acting in reaction to that right now.

And yeah, if your major party can\u2019t even hold Norman Rockwell events because your rivals in city administration won\u2019t bother to defend them from political paramilitaries, cause maybe #resistance, that\u2019s a problem, and I sympathize with the notion that it\u2019s those guys\u2019 duty to address it completely at their own expense.

And the slashings aren\u2019t something that would make the GOP accept this, and they take claims that that makes it ok, or even necessary, as further provocation, an insulting non sequitur. The recent killer voting Bernie and Stein is way too thin a reed to pin it on leftism, but I\u2019ll say it\u2019s reasonable grounds for the Republican Party to not feel on the hook for a guy they specifically ran off on their own initiative long before.

If there\u2019s a lesson, as far as the Republicans are concerned, it\u2019s that heated tensions attract and empower hotheads, and that tensions should be calmed. And that while \u201cone major party, the currently ruling one, accepts that they cannot hold Norman Rockwell-type events in rival-administered cities\u201d might calm tensions on this subject, it is a wrong answer, un-American, and that \u201cpolitical and civic society institutions reaffirm and enforce that Norman Rockwell-type electioneering, even that which empowers rival forces, should be respected, even when disliked\u201d, which would also calm tensions, is right.

\nLiberalism! It has its charms. And yes, this particular communique is a threat, and the threat is \u201cif you abrogate liberalism, and backstop your rule with political paramilitaries it doesn\u2019t mean we roll over and you just win, jfc.\u201d

It\u2019s a Weimar escalation cycle all over again, for all that leftists fault the SPD for trying to reign in left-streetfighters, mainline rightists faulted it for not crossing their base to discipline the ruffians enough, \u201cwhat choice did you leave us but those who would?\u201d

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