Over the last half decade a vast amount of in-depth prestige press coverage has been devoted to the so-called “alt-right” while almost none has been devoted to “Antifa,” despite the latter being vastly larger and more favored by government officials, as we’ve seen this year in unfortunate cities such as Minneapolis, Madison, Seattle, and Portland.
For example, today in the New York Times, we see headlines:
And:
From this NYT Magazine article:
By Leah Sottile
Illustrations by Tomer Hanuka
August 19, 2020
… Antifa — shorthand for antifascist — can be used to classify anyone who opposes fascism. But there also exist loosely organized antifascist groups that have made their presence known at the street protests of the last few years, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Media exposure has fueled the creation of an absurd caricature on cable news and in the minds of Republican politicians, of a well-funded nationwide organization of combatants.
Wolf’s comments that day at the news conference were, perhaps, one point of origin for an Antifa panic that then began rippling out across the country. Soon, rumors were proliferating on social media: Vans filled with destructive antifascists were coming to small-town America, spreading looting and chaos. That evening, President Trump tweeted that he would be classifying Antifa as a terrorist group (something he does not have the authority to do). The next afternoon, Trump spoke at the White House Rose Garden as the sounds of tear gas and flash grenades echoed, scattering peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square. “Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa and others,” he said. He vowed to send federal troops to “stop the rioting and looting” and “to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.”
But numerous reports in the past year asserted that violence from right-wing “homegrown terrorists” was now an equal or greater threat than attacks from foreign jihadist groups. Christopher Wray, director of the F.B.I., told the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on F.B.I. oversight in July 2019 that his agency had recently arrested just as many domestic terrorists as it had foreign terrorists, and that a majority of the domestic terrorists investigated were white supremacists. And by this February, Wray said the F.B.I. had placed “racially motivated violent extremism” at the highest threat level and that “lone actor” terrorists were of top concern to the agency. He said that 2019 had been the deadliest year for domestic violent extremism since 1995, the year of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Amid the hysteria about nonexistent vans full of Antifa supersoldiers, actual heavily armed militia groups around the country stepped in to provide what they saw as protection to communities, often with the encouragement of lawmakers. In Montana, State Senator Jennifer Fielder took to Facebook on the night of June 1, warning her followers to be on the lookout for Antifa. “There were multiple reports from credible witnesses of five white panel vans filled with people believed to be Antifa,” she wrote. They had been spotted in a grocery-store parking lot in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, she wrote. No one got a photo. Her post went viral.
In reality, Antifa have been rioting for 83 days straight in downtown Portland.
But to the Newspaper of Record that’s not the point, the point is that the Real Menace is people who are worried about Antifa.
One possibility is that Oregon’s expansive transgender rights policies draw in crazy people from around the country (or world). From Wikipedia’s article “LGBT Rights in Oregon”:
In January 2013, as part of an out-of-court settlement in a discrimination suit with a public employee related to medical insurance coverage of a gender assignment surgical procedure, the state agreed to provide full medical insurance coverage for all such surgeries, drugs, and related treatments for individuals covered on public employee health plans.[19]
Since 2014, sex reassignment surgery has not been a requirement to change the gender marker on an Oregon birth certificate. Transgender individuals can apply to change legal gender solely by request.[20] In addition, in August 2014, state officials announced that Oregon Medicaid would shortly begin covering hormone therapy and other treatments related to sex reassignment.[21]
On June 10, 2016, an Oregon circuit court ruled that a resident could legally change their gender to non-binary. The Transgender Law Center believed this to be “the first ruling of its kind in the U.S.”[22] Since July 1, 2017, the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles has offered a third choice for gender on licenses and IDs: “X” designating a neutral or non-binary gender identity.[23] The “X” option is also available for birth certificates.[12]
In May 2017, a bill passed the Oregon Legislative Assembly to abolish the 1991 requirement for transgender people to publish their names in newspapers before they can undergo a legal change of sex on government documents. This requirement was viewed as a breach of privacy and a safety risk for transgender people.[24] In January 2019, Representative Karin Power introduced a bill to amend a 1951 Oregon mental health law that equated “transvestites” with paedophilia. In April 2019, the bill passed the Legislative Assembly by a vote of 58-2 in the House and 29-0 with 1 excused in the Senate. Governor Kate Brown signed it into law on May 6.[25][26][27]
It would be reassuring to think that there is a fixed number of deranged people in the population and that Oregon has generously offered to take on more than its fair share. And that the men who claim to be women who have thus relocated to Portland are also attracted, due to their general viciousness of character, to Antifa.
But perhaps, more alarmingly, Oregon’s Transgender Privilege policies are creating more violent maniacs?
Does anybody know? Is anybody interested in finding out?
