The image with this article is of unidentified individuals that are holding up alarming signs that most civil people can recognize as violent, hateful and unconscionable. It has been floating around local Facebook groups for a little bit. The local right has conflated this image with local left activism and are using this image to fearmonger about our rallies/agenda.
Let me say now that this was not us, these signs have never been at our events, we do not even own those outfits, and I would absolutely never allow those signs at any of my events. We do not incite violence or intimidate. We don’t advocate for murder. The fascists do that, we don’t.
I do not know who did this event, but I suspect that this is a staged photo, a false flag action, by local fascists who specifically wanted to publicly connect this to us to fearmonger about us and to illicit opposition to us. Lately, they’ve had a hard-on for posting smears of us and our events.
They spun the incident at our October 2nd rally of a belligerent christian man disrupting our rally with aggressive transphobia and misogyny into a smear piece about a “mob” surrounding an innocent christian man and a non-existent connection with “antifa” up north (how funny for the folks that mob county government and school board meetings and showed up in the hundreds for a hoax about a bus-load of, again, “antifa” up north). They lie about the September 11th incident where I was chased, harassed, filmed and assaulted for filming the event for 5 minutes from a parking lot across the street and giving them the bird, much less than what the supposedly “innocent” christian man did. They lie about “critical race theory” being taught in schools and use the conflation with equity, systemic racism, anti-racism and a litany of other terms to do racist fearmongering about some form of “reverse racism” in the schools. They constantly misgender myself and others, deadname me, harass me in real life, mock the LGBTQ+ and ruminate on pushing for an anti-trans agenda.
The clear pattern of targeted harassment of myself and fearmongering about local leftist movements absolutely leads me to believe this was a staged photo by fascists.
If, on the very unlikely chance, that it wasn’t local fascists, we condemn this action. If somebody “left” or “liberal” did this, it did not do anything constructive and was an act of spontaneous irresponsibility. Doing such a thing makes the whole situation worse. However, the chances that it were not right-wingers is very slim in my opinion.
It is also apparent that these folks went to the “medical freedom rally” at the boardwalk at some point as a livestream screenshot shows. The rallies were attended by local fascists like Citizens Restoring Liberty. It has been very weird to me as well that after every rally of theirs, there have been fascist stickers and flyers left behind like “patriot front” stickers, “white rose” stickers and flyers with a fascistic skull symbol with the words “Your Liberties Aren’t Dying, They’re Being Killed By People With Names And Addresses.” How odd that while CRL has grown, blatantly fascist literature was dropped at local businesses.
I think we can see the fascist violence for what it is. There has been no violence from this side this year or any year. That christian man at our rally was never even touched. I was assaulted with my own car door on 9/11 by a person that could still face assault, and it is worth mentioning that that night my car was spray-painted in a drive-by from men in a pickup truck. They may have had randos come near their events, but we’ve had them too. We have not done anything wrong this year and we would not do some aggressive, shortsighted thing like what was shown in this image. We want to uplift our community and the different disadvantaged parts of it and make this a better place to live. The only violence here is from the fascists and the fascists are also the main obstacle to making this community better.
We say no tolerance for intolerance. That means negating and debunking fascist agendas and rhetoric in public, holding them accountable for their own words, actions and associations, and keeping the community inclusive by keeping the proponents of exclusivity out of community discourse and politics. You can call it being woke or politically correct or being a snowflake if you want, I call it keeping the community inclusive and principally opposing the forces that have sown hatred and bigotry here throughout our history. What you can’t call it is violent or hateful, that is the fascists.
This is fascist fearmongering that reaches the exact fears of conservative Americans. However, it’s not only wrong but it is hypocritical. We don’t advocate for kids to be stolen from their families, right-wingers do (family separation policy, deportations). We don’t defend the murder of those who don’t comply, but the right does everytime a police officer uses deadly force. We’re not against any of your rights, the right is against women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, labor rights…etc.
We have never intentionally lied (we corrected our incorrect information before). We’ve never said something of the fascists that they did not say or do themselves. They have lied and slandered and harassed and assaulted and vandalized and actively pushed for a fascist agenda. For this reason, folks should probably take anything they say with a whole bowl of salt and a firm grip on their legs because they excel in misinformation and smear pieces and their goal, what they want the most, is to delegitimize the voices that oppose them; the LGBTQ, the left, the BIPOC, the disabled, the immigrants etc.
They have accused the left of divide and conquer over anti-fascism and anti-racism, but fascism and racism, which they very clearly push whether they identify with those terms or not (Nazis didn’t call themselves fascists, some Klan said they weren’t racist. Characteristics matter, not labels) are inherently divisive and are where the division initially and inherently comes from. The division is not the fault of a people that has to resist and fight back. Anti-fascists in Europe and abolitionists in America are celebrated nowadays. We don’t (usually) equivocate their actions with those of the fascists.
They are very blatantly the dividers of this nation and they are using this false flag to further divide. Resist that and don’t let up on opposing their fascist agenda.
