Siege Notes, August 17: Lost Boys and Larpers

Antifa’s presence downtown has shrunk to dozens hanging about the jail and federal courthouse at night. Last time I checked on the after-midnight crowd the night before last I saw not even a dozen hanging about the old Elk Fountain. In the two blocks north of antifa territory–those park blocks are ghostly and threatening in their emptiness–rabble take advantage of the newfound liberation from police attention spitting distance from the city jail.

Last week twice I saw crowds of very young black kids swarming something in the street. Someone posted video to YouTube of feral-looking black and brown middle schoolers clashing with adults at Salmon and Fourth, where the boarded-up and battered 7/11 operates all night, an inverted frontier outpost, civilization not coming along behind but having receded past. But there are crowds. Business is good because everything has gone to shit, say the weary eyes of the Arabs–blessed immigrants!–behind the counter.

Tonight just passing through I happened upon a nursery beatdown, involving girls.

More serious beatdowns went down elsewhere; an arguable attempted murder that likely won’t be considered by new woke DA Mike Schmidt. It remains to be seen how much shit non-crazy Oregon is willing to eat.

The earnest and opportunistic elements swelling protest crowds early on and through the campaign on the federal courthouse are gone. A dedicated remnant of committed antifa musters in the hundreds to assail police targets in the north and east, such as the police union headquarters (denying police union representation is a main goal of the abolition movement) and last night they were zombie-furious attacking the cops and beating suspect citizens in their midst.

The goal remains provoking police into media-plausible excesses with low-level violence, property destruction and the verbal mob-psych warfare of chanted death threats.

Haley Adams is an Oregon activist associated with Patriot Prayer, the group of supposed white supremacist provocateurs that glommed on to antifa’s increase and campaign of street intimidation (in which the present rioting is culminating) following the 2016 election of Trump. She organized events such as a “Him Too” rally opposing Me Too, one that seemed to strike a nerve.

It was all heavy larping, especially at first; at an early event “Based Stick Man” stumbled through a speech that was like being hit over the head with a stick. A series of “rightwing” and “white supremacist” rallies were met with antifa-led counter protests, really the whole point for the unsophisticated and enthusiastic Adams and Patriot Prayer (led by a six-foot-six Samoan street fighter named Tiny, recently busted for violating probation by poking around the autonomous zone in Seattle Formerly Known as CHAZ).

The series of nationally mocked street battles happened because in the quaint days before George Floyd even here in Portland didn’t feel confident denying even “white nationalists” a public demonstration permit. So several times the city issued permits knowing it meant throwing platoons of cops on overtime in between the self-described patriots and hostile antifa. No one was seriously injured because of the efforts of the police–but antifa’s irrational hatred of the cops, culminating right now, was cooked over the series of confrontations, which early on became as much about berating and protesting the cops as trying to get at Patriot Prayer.

Perversely antifa gradually acquired respectability in the media by comically overreacting to the laughable “white supremacist” threat that was Patriot Prayer–because the media, under the influence of Trump, had to cast their’s as a genuine fight against genuine white fascism.

Serious injury the whole time was checked only by the thankless efforts of the police–those efforts only over time hardened the individual and collective psychology of the rioters and drove them further into irrational hatred of the police in the dumbest negative feedback loop ever.

The group madness of antifa and elite forbearance of it, now open manipulation, co-evolved through, among other things, the series of Trump tantrum and then Patriot Prayer riots. The Trump years demonstrated to those behind the current hoax the possibilities of American endurance–the extent to which local authorities for instance would accept violence. They truly think they’re capable of getting away with anything, and presently are.

Adams returned yesterday (Saturday) to lead a pro-police rally that turned out maybe two dozen, about half of whom were outfitted with defensive gear and weapons–including paintball guns firing small plastic rounds (about half the size of police and feds’ “rubber bullets”).

Larper grade
Federal grade

They were set upon by a larger, motley crowd of antifa and familiar fringe players, harassing them just like old times. The Adams Fam decamped after a short stand in front of the Justice Center getting heckled. Antifa trailed with the usual threatening behavior as they left. Adams’ group took two or three laps around a two-block radius trying to shake off their antifa stalkers who pressed on them the whole time.

A tiny man in a wheelchair with some sort of degenerative disorder and volcanic rage, a regular, railed against the tall and imposing leader of the Adams group–another regular from early on–decked out in riot gear, carrying a staff (with a tiny American flag on it that he forget about as he brandished it before antifa bearing down–taunting him for dragging the flag), bear mace, which he deployed I think alone, and a paint gun.

Antifa is never sated or appealed to, but when the big fellow, who seemed to be the leader of Adams’ group, let off some bear mace they were like disturbed bees. I caught a good dose just being downwind, and at one point was staggering regrettably toward the 7/11 to buy–buy!–water to pour on my burning eyes when a histrionic Mexican teenager, raging about getting bear sprayed, threw a full, and capped bottle of water into the street. It hit the ground and didn’t burst, rolling toward me almost miraculously. I scooped it up and doused my eyes and even took a drink. I offer the kid his water back but he says go ahead and takes off raving about getting back at them.

A big guy with burns over his entire body–today he’s masked up and you can’t see his entire head is scarred, but he’s another regular and I sworn before I know him from all the way back in Seattle, but then I realize every poor bastard burnt all over looks the same. But I can’t help but wonder if this furious and scary antifa troop (he’s filming and carrying a good camera and lens, and I think he was marked “press” somewhere, despite his effective intimidating posture) isn’t the same guy that I used to see at Boeing and the veteranarian.

The Adams Fam was forced to enter the parking garage in the middle of downtown where they–right wing terror masterminds they are–parked all their cars together with antifa swarming.

Not able to shake their tormentors Adams and crew finally just ducked into the parking garage, firing off some plastic to delay pursuit; antifa followed eventually up the stairs winding up either side of the building.

Antifa scrambled back and forth from an exit on one street to an exit on the next, waiting for their enemies, under the direction of a tiny, raging black woman with a bullhorn (at the end of the video below) who demanded random motorists escaping the parking garage repeat “black lives matter” to pass. She was shadowed by a tall white female conspicuously playing the role of defender of a threatened black body–standard antifa playacting.

As I staked out one side of the building with antifa a convoy of six cars purportedly escaped out the other. At one point loud shots could be heard coming from within the garage; some antifa who’d been making their way up the stairs to seek out the Adams Family rushed out, warning everyone to take cover because it was gunfire. On Twitter later antifa circulated photos of a car and its license plate number, purporting to show someone pointing a gun out the window.

Police were nowhere to be seen during my two hours or so there.

Clown and Out in Portland

Rumor has it antifa will return to downtown Portland tonight (Wednesday) to assail Portland Police at the Justice Center. It’s been over a week since they’ve all but abandoned downtown–not entirely, keeping a continuous vigil. They had seemed to wring all they could out of their campaign to portray federal agents as occupying jackboots. The federals’ restraint meant quickly diminishing returns, and an agreement between Trump and the city to pull back allowed antifa to declare victory and get some rest, while casting the relative quiet as evidence Trump’s troops started the whole thing.

Yet all the while they’ve still mustered hundreds nightly to harass the police union building and now the Multnomah Sheriff station–presumably because they’ve dared help out Portland Police along with the State Troopers–and even prompted Ted Wheeler to complain in harsh terms when they went too far even for him.

If they are returning to downtown it might be by design or inspiration following a remarkable lawfare salvo on their behalf by freshly minted Soros-funded District Attorney Mike Schmidt. He speaks entirely in the language of progressive theory and his first call of congratulation on election last May came from San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin.

First he announced that in light of the understandable rage of protesters public order is no longer policy:

We will presumptively decline to charge cases where the most serious offenses are city ordinance violations and crimes that do not involve deliberate property damage, theft, or the use or threat of force against another person. Crimes in this category include:

● Interference with a police officer, ORS 162.247

● Disorderly conduct, ORS 166.025 ● Criminal trespass, ORS 164.245 and 164.255

● Escape III, ORS 162.145 ● Harassment, when classified as a Class B misdemeanor, ORS 166.065

● Riot, ORS 166.015 – Unless accompanied by a charge outside of this

Police were not consulted. Smith crafted the policy with input from select “community leaders”. Thus teed-up, the boy DA then crushed what was left of police morale by knocking hundreds of arrests back in their faces:

Of the 550 protest cases that have been referred to the district attorney’s office between May 29 and Aug. 10, 417 were misdemeanors, and 133 were felonies. The most common misdemeanor charge was interfering with a peace officer (313 cases), and the most common felony charge was riot (44 cases).

After reviewing the 550 cases, the DA’s office now plans to prosecute 47, all of which are felony cases. An additional 86 felony cases are still pending.

“The district attorney’s office will presumptively decline to pursue criminal charges which result solely from the participation in a protest or mass demonstration,” Schmidt said.

Crimes that will not be prosecuted include: interfering with a peace officer, disorderly conduct in the second degree, criminal trespass in the first or second degree, escape in the third degree, and harassment and riot when it isn’t accompanied by a charge separate from this list.

Schmidt has been issuing his proclamations standing before the mural “There Are No Impossible Dreams”, one of five done by a local Artist of Color in collaboration with youth suspects awaiting trial.

Apparently displayed at the courthouse where citizens await jury duty, it features a court jester driving a chariot filled with Diverse Americans through a circus landscape.

There-Are-No-Impossible-Dreams-Arvie-Smith-mural-225h.png

We’re in for a ride I suppose.

Sunday Night Chicago

The first two hours of this marathon stream are cut off. It may be that YT is still processing the video. We monitored the sacking of upscale downtown Chicago via several livestreamers, some recording themselves in the act of looting.

Several instances of shots fired were reported and at least one shooting–of a security guard.

Washington Post headline this morning: “Looters smash business windows along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile after police-involved shooting”. Nothing in the New York Times online.

As it turns out the initial reports circulating in the black community that a fifteen year-old was shot and killed by cops is misinformation. Police say a grown adult fired on officers, was injured in return fire and is recovering in hospital.

The clips at the beginning are from the fine 1991 documentary “Appalachian Journey” by Alan Lomax.

More Moral Holiday

It’s common to refer to recreational violence (of the sort American blacks are notorious for) and rioting as “senseless” or “irrational” as if the impulse descends upon the unwitting violent from without. But leaving aside those suffering from psychosis no behavior can be truly said to be psychologically irrational or generally illogical. It has its own logic, and it’s only socially irrational.

The thought came to mind as read an old study on the subject of “moral holidays”:

Are violent moral holidays enclaves of decivilization? Fletcher (1997: 176-84) gives the following features of decivilizing processes, which are based on Elias’ understanding of the Nazi-terror. First, they comprise a shift in the balance between internalized social restraint (self-restraint for short) and direct social constraint by others in favour of the latter. Second, they entail a desensitization towards violence, indicating that in processes of decivilization, people find violence less difficult to bear, and are less likely to find it repugnant and shameful. Third, mutual identification between groups diminishes.

Before considering how these three features of decivilizing processes may appear in moral holidays, let us first conceptualize what drives violent moral holidays forward. A useful point of departure is Elias and Dunning’s The Quest for Excitement (1986). Here the argument is that in overall pacified societies with a high degree of civilization, people and young men in particular, still feel an urge to experience the excitement that stems from competition, rivalry and danger. This is provided for by institutionalized and regulated surrogates: activities such as sports, which offer room to engage in controlled violent competition…spectator violence arguably offers even more intense opportunities to experience the sensation of rivalry and domination than the more regulated and controlled forms of aggressive competition provided by sports.

Football hooligans as I see it are those who are no longer satisfied with the merely vicarious experience of the competition and violence on the field; they want to participate . Antifa can be seen perhaps in a similar vein–except the dehumanizing of the targeted other is given a logical and moral gloss through theory and political demagogy. Antifa are like football hooligans on the steroids of moral hysteria.

Relating violence to a quest for intense bodily and emotional sensations approaches Collins’s (2008: 98-9, 242-53, 320-2) micro-sociological explanation of violence during moral holidays.[1] Collins (2008: 130) indicates that some violent situations are driven by intense feelings of group membership: ‘outbursts into collective violence, and especially in the rhythmic, repetitive pattern that constitutes the overkill and the atrocity, is so compelling to its participants because it constitutes an extremely high degree of solidarity’. Here, the violence is driven by ‘audience/team entrainment’ and turned into a ‘Durkheimian solidarity ritual’ (Collins 2013: 143).

The seemingly mindless chanting is not an exercise in expression but in group solidarity; they are talking to themselves, and the insipid nature of repeating dull slogans over and over is a feature of this process. Its very obtuseness is there to shield the individual from doubt and external input. The “peaceful protesting” that goes on around the individual acts of violence isn’t peaceful at all–it is the crowd compelling the team to greater acts of violence and bravado.

Prior studies demonstrate the important role of that supportive groups in youth violence. They create a stage by watching, or more intensively, by scolding and yelling or joining in (Felson 1982; Felson and Tedeschi 1993; Sanders 1994: 88-92; Tomsen 1997: 98; Wilkinson and Fagan 2001). Jankowski (1991: 171-2) explicitly notes the link between feelings of group membership and violence that turns extreme: ‘when members [of a gang] act as part of a collective, they frequently go too far, becoming caught up in the dynamics of group action rather than considering the consequences of that action. Sometimes individual members and the group find it difficult to determine when enough force has been used, that is, when to quit’ (see also Decker and Van Winkle 1996: 24). Furthermore, my prior analyses of youth violence suggest that solidarity excitement, the experience of strong feelings of group membership prior to the attack increases the likelihood for violence to turn extreme (Weenink forthcoming). To conclude, these literatures suggest that the emotional dynamics that drive violent moral holidays are intense feelings of solidarity among the attackers and their supportive groups. Caught up in the collective violent action, they enter a state in which they are decontrolled by solidarity.

The three features of decivilizing processes can now be related to this emotional grounding of violent moral holidays. Consider first the shift from self-restraint to social constraint. When attackers are strongly attuned towards one another and their supportive group, the balance between self-restraint and social constraint shifts toward the latter, to the point of a dissolving homo clausus. Elias introduced this term to denote the specific image of the self that individuals tend to adopt as the civilizing process unfolds. The figurations that make up highly differentiated societies with relatively strong state monopolies of violence require personalities that are not impulsive but reflexive, and who are sensitive towards their own and others’ behaviour, particularly their bodies.

Following Elias, people in these societies start to treat their bodies and emotions and those of others as a constantly monitored ‘danger zone’ as a result of the anxiety that follows from their vulnerability to not only others’, but also their own inner drives (Elias 1994 [1939]: 445). Elias argues that this has two consequences, captured in the idea of homo clausus. First, human beings draw tight boundaries between themselves and whatever is ‘outside’. Second, there is a tendency to see themselves as free and unique, sovereign (and apparently also anxious) individuals. Relating the notion of homo clausus to group violence in moral holidays, it can be expected that individual group members who are caught in the collective action no longer (want to) draw tight boundaries between themselves and the other group members, and instead of seeing themselves as free, unique and sovereign, individual group members now (want to) direct their actions entirely towards the collective action, just like doing the wave in a football stadium.[2]

The other two features of decivilizing processes, the desensitization towards violence and the diminished mutual identification between groups, are probably strongly interrelated: violence is less difficult to bear, and people are less likely to find it repugnant and shameful when the victims are not considered as equally human. While violent moral holidays may not invoke categorical group boundaries necessarily, attackers still must find a way to negate their victims’ identity as fellow human beings, and they need to create a moral distance between themselves and their victims in order to be able to hurt them. Following Blok (2001: 109-10), ritualization is one way of doing this. Thus, attackers may invent special names for victims, and use other abusive terms to dehumanize them, to remove them from the moral community.

De Swaan’s (1997) conceptualization of disidentification processes that preceded the Rwanda genocide elaborates this further. The process starts off with projection: negative but still human features, which have been denied in oneself and other in-group members, are attributed to outsiders. As identification is still possible at this stage, the in-group recognizes these features as potentially their own, so that further distancing is required, by reinvigorating and exaggerating the prior projections. As the process takes full swing, the outsiders are dehumanized, and transformed into a general category that is abstracted away from specific personal relationships, places or experiences. Thus, it can be expected that, through processes of ritualization and projection, the victims in violent moral holidays are perceived as an abstract dehumanized category, that stands in hostile opposition to the attackers’ own categorical identity.

Siege Notes, August 3: Meet the New Boss

Portland is getting a new District Attorney five months ahead of schedule after lame-duck DA Rod Underhill announced his early retirement. He’s of the spawn of Soros class of prosecutors elected recently as part that figure’s campaign to elect progressive prosecutors nationwide:

Real Justice PAC, also co-founded by Shaun King, has supported 29 head prosecutors and state attorneys general since 2018, including several who were also backed by Soros, such as Gardner, Boudin, Rollins and Becton.

The organization is also backing the 2020 campaigns of Foxx and 13 other candidates seeking office. The organization’s goals include electing – and recruiting – candidates who would make changes to criminal justice systems such as ending cash bail and “rolling back practices that lead to mass incarceration.”

One 2020 candidate Real Justice succeeded in getting elected already is Multnomah County, Ore., District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who will be in a key position when he takes office on Aug. 1, given that his jurisdiction includes Portland, where riots have been taking place amid months of protests following Floyd’s death.

Schmidt has said that he would potentially drop charges against nonviolent protesters when he is in office, according to local NBC affiliate KGW.

Rod Underhill’s early departure paves the way for Schmidt’s intention to shield rioters from prosecution–those not charged with federal crimes at least.