The Clashes In Berkeley Weren't 'Pro-Trump' Versus 'Anti-Trump'

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  • April 16, 2017 at 9:34 pm #67545
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    The Violent Clashes In Berkeley Weren’t ‘Pro-Trump’ Versus ‘Anti-Trump’
    The media’s oversimplification of what happened during Saturday’s rally risks obscuring a long-brewing and fast-escalating conflict between the far left and the far right.

    According to reports in mainstream news outlets like CNN, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, Saturday saw pro-Trump demonstrators clash with anti-Trump protesters in Berkeley, California, while more placid “Tax Day” marches took place around the country calling on the president to release his tax returns. The news stories offer largely the same account and framing as that given by the LA Times: “hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators and counter-protesters clashed Saturday at a ‘Patriots Day’ rally… Both groups threw rocks and sticks at each other and used a large trash bin as a battering ram… Twenty-one people were arrested… Eleven people were injured.”

    All of this did happen. But such accounts missed the most crucial aspects of what was at stake in the Berkeley clashes, and thus fail to explain why there were aggressive altercations at all. To frame Saturday’s events as a fight between supporters of the president and his denouncers roundly misses the key tensions undergirding the confrontation: that of anti-fascists versus white nationalists.

    This is not to say that each or even the majority, of the hundreds of pro-Trump attendees sympathize with the Venn Diagram of white supremacist, alt-right, anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi groups which intersect with the president’s broader support base. But as firsthand testimonies, numerous images and videos shared on social media can attest, explicitly racist groups and individuals were present in force, some having traveled from out of state to attend. Equally, the masked, black clad anti-fascist protesters did not amass in Berkeley to confront a gathering of people who just happened to vote for Trump. Their presence followed calls to action, which had named the specific far right and neo-Nazi alliances that were planning to attend, and indeed helped organize, the “Patriots Day” rally. The violence from both the far left and far right rested on a fulcrum that, while emphasized in the Trump era, far predates his presidency; anti-fascist have long met white supremacists with force in the streets.

    Media reports relying on the “pro-Trump versus anti-Trump” framing missed some glaring and more subtle cues about the nature of Saturday’s protests. Multiple demonstrators, some of who donned Make America Great Again hats, performed Nazi salutes in full public view.

    https://twitter.com/NYCAntifa/status/853365863189270530/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.esquire.com%2Fnews-politics%2Fnews%2Fa54564%2Fthe-violent-clashes-in-berkeley-werent-pro-trump-versus-anti-trump%2F

    The sign reading “Da Goyim Know” is no dog whistle—it’s an anti-Semitic foghorn. And it was not a lone nut job carrying the sign to express his own fringe hate. The placard was a part of a series of banners made and carried by dozens of people, all in the same design and style, but some with more veiled messages, such as “Defend America.”

    Images from the day shared on Twitter also show the presence of numerous flags featuring Pepe the Frog (the alt-right mascot), as well as the flag of “Kek,” an alt-right, meme infused appropriation of the Nazi Ensign. A group of anti-fascist street medics who go by “Pastel Bloc” on Twitter told me that they saw members of the so-called pro-Trump crowd throwing bagels at counter-protesters as an anti-semitic taunt. One neo-Nazi, raising his right arm to Heil for the camera, carried a flag bearing the black sun of Odinism, a paganist symbol common in Nazi mythology.

    The Proud Boys, an alt-right subset boasting a philosophy of “Western Chauvinism,” handed out recruitment fliers and posed for pictures with members and leaders from the white supremacist group Identity Evropa, which preaches that America belongs to the white race.

    The group’s leader, Nathan Damigo, who was convicted in 2007 for pointing a gun at and and robbing a Muslim cab driver he believed to be Iraqi, made his presence known on Saturday. He was caught on video sucker punching a small, female-presenting anti-fascist protester in the face. Damigo has stated that, “black people are inferior to whites, genetically.”

    “The far right is holding it down in Berkeley right now,” tweeted Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer, who was at the scene, posting an image of demonstrators swaddled in Trumpist, patriotic and explicitly far right symbolism. “Hail Victory!” tweeted neo-Nazi Richard Spencer in response.

    Bauer also noted that a number of Trump supporters expressed discomfort at their co-protesters’ racist and anti-semitic views and demonstrations. But it was not for these more moderate Trump supporters that the anti-fascist and anarchist groups came. As was the case in two previous instances in Berkeley since Trump’s inauguration, anti-fascists were responding specifically to the presence of white nationalists and neo-Nazis. First, militant protests shut down a talk planned by far right troll Milo Yiannopolous, and then anti-fascists disrupted a March 4 rally organized by the alt-right Proud Boys.

    In advance of the “Patriots Day” demonstration, anti-fascist news and watchdog site It’s Going Down published a story detailing the connections between the organizers of Saturday’s rally and the right’s racist (not-so-)fringe. A group going by the name Liberty Revival Alliance called for the event in a YouTube video, and chose the venue—MLK Civic Center Park (of all places to beckon the far right). The group claimed to be non-violent but prepared to “defend” patriots. In a promotional flier, the group named a series of planned speakers, most of whom, according to research firm It’s Going Down have strong alt-right affiliations and have espoused white nationalist views.

    Brittany Pettibone, for example, is a contributor to AltRight.com, a white nationalist hub. Another, Tim Treadstone, who goes by the pseudonym Baked Alaska, once tweeted “Me: Upon research, I noticed Jewish people run 95 percent of American media that is very interesting; Internet: Why do you want to gas the Jews?” and has even been deemed too much of an explicit neo-Nazi for far right conspiracist Mike Cernovich. The white nationalist figure known as Based Stick Man, real name Kyle Chapman, was arrested at the event. It’s Going Down noted that Identity Evropa and the Proud Boys were planning to join the rally.

    It’s Going Down, a relied-upon source for anti-fascists around the country, warned that the event—which was not the first and will not be the last iteration of such tensions—would be a “crucible for a new fascist movement” hidden in the “smokescreen” of a diverse Trump support base. The issue is not whether the rally crowd also drew Trump supporters of color, or many Trump fans who claim to despise white nationalism. A media narrative that overlooks significant white supremacist presence de facto demonizes the counter-protesters who came to confront it.

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