The Spectator.
In recent years this city in the Pacific Northwest has become famous for a variety of reasons — none of them good. As one long-term resident said to me last week: ‘This used to be a very civil town.’ Not any more.
Of course, like every city in the west, the madnesses that already existed here have been exacerbated by the coronavirus and the ensuing decision to lock down the population and shutter the economy. As in cities across the UK, the businesses here are mainly closed, many for good. Some were able to get through one lockdown but very few can get through multiple lockdowns or the depression to come.
As a result, downtown Portland is a desolate, dangerous place, populated by homeless people who flooded into the area over recent decades, incentivised by left-wing administrations that allowed them to pitch their tents wherever they liked. In the main squares, unattended tables of food and drink are set out for them to pick at.
But it isn’t just the virus or the reaction of the authorities that led to this wasteland. The giveaway is the status of the few shops that are still open. Almost all have hardboard affixed to their remaining windows. Some have bullet-holes in them, not fired by the police. The businesses that do still operate do so as in a city under siege.
Portland has been the epicentre of a confusion that has afflicted a smaller number of activists in our own country. That is the taught perception that they live in a patriarchal, unequal, cis-heteronormative, irredeemably racist society. In time this defamation sank in and caused a reaction. For years, the city has seen regular rioting by the far-left group ‘Antifa’. In the name of pursuing non-existent fascists these activists laid waste to their city, dragged passing motorists from their cars, hospitalised journalists whose reporting was disobliging and otherwise turned the city into a first-world slum.
After the killing of George Floyd at the end of May, protests in Portland were among the most violent in the US. They are still going on. The left-wing mayor forbade the police from working with the federal authorities to act meaningfully against the rioters and at the forthcoming mayoral election the only candidate running against him is an open supporter of Antifa.
Recent successful operations carried out by this candidate’s favoured militia include the pulling down of almost every statue and public monument in the city. The weekend before last it was Abraham Lincoln who fell. On another occasion — in a quasi-pagan ceremony — rioters repeatedly set a monument of an elk on fire and then pulled it down. A tour of the sights in Portland now comprises a huge variety of empty plinths. Few tourists will be returning for that. The remaining state and federal buildings are boarded up, graffitied over and abandoned.
Over the summer the President sent in federal guards, against the wishes of the local authorities. Today the remaining federal agents are among the few targets Antifa have left. I joined Antifa-BLM activists for a couple of nights this week.
First there was a ‘Fuck Gentrification’ march (my first). With no policemen in sight, the activists used their own police force, including outriders on motorcycles, to block off roads and then parade through the streets screaming through megaphones at customers in the remaining bars and at the residents of an area which they claimed had once been lived in by black and indigenous families. The people who lived in many of these houses came out and put their fists in the air or waved in solidarity. Most had BLM — or ‘Don’t hurt me’ — posters in their windows. All were accused of living on ‘stolen land’ by the mostly white marchers, whose other chants included ‘Wake up, motherfucker, wake up’.
This is a pregnant bit of prose and deserving of more time than I can give it, but the thing that particularly struck me was bold (by me).
People may think that alignment with Antifa/BLM will keep them out of trouble (the alligator ate me last), but they don’t care.
Antifa/BLM wants them in poverty first, and then dead.
And you too.
