By Arun Gupta

Understanding who Patriot Prayer's Joey Gibson is, who he represents, and what he wants is easy. Understanding why he's been allowed to turn Portland into a carnival of mayhem is harder and far more disturbing than the violence the City of Roses is becoming known for.

Gibson professes "freedom, peace and love," proclaims to be a free-speech warrior, and plays the street preacher. But it's an act no more honest than the cat professing concern for the mouse.

Gibson is the press-friendly frontman for bloodthirsty gangs who use Portland as a fascist recruitment center. He is associated with fights so brazen that dozens of YouTube videos glorify his henchmen beating anti-fascist opponents. For that he's earned the status of third-tier right-wing celebrity and left-wing boogeyman.

Gibson is better understood by the company he keeps. Country-club Republicans are not joining his fight club. In Portland, Patriot Prayer rallies have attracted violent far-right street fighters and white nationalists.

Having encountered Gibson and his crew only a few times reporting across the country, I have not witnessed the violence first-hand. Here's what I have seen.

On the last night before the #OccupyICE camp was evicted from outside the ICE facility near downtown Portland, Gibson and a dozen supporters arrived in body armor and helmets. They spent hours there, with Gibson and others threatening to "clean up" the camp if the city didn't and his followers yelling about pedophiles over the border.

At the Aug. 4 waterfront rally, hundreds of far-right partisans jetted in from across the country. Portland police warned protestors to "not bring any weapon" as there would be "weapon screening stations." I spotted only a warning sign as right-wingers breezed into the park clad in helmets, armor and shields. Many had fighting gloves, including illegal "sap gloves" with weighted knuckles. Others carried knives, baseball bats, canisters of bear spray, axe handles and fighting sticks posing as flagpoles in view of police.

Gibson's main enforcer, Tusitala "Tiny" Toese, wore a t-shirt referencing right-wing death squads and calling for the murder of leftists. Tiny has been filmed throwing punches in nearly a dozen incidents, most in Portland. Yet he freely roams the streets here.

Gibson is best described as Portland's "stochastic terrorist." This means using media to incite random actors to carry out violent or terroristic acts that are "statistically predictable but individually unpredictable." It's akin to global warming. Warmer oceans will spawn more hurricanes with greater intensity, but no single storm can be attributed to it.

Patriot Prayer's Facebook pages teem with conspiracy theories, Islamophobia, "Jews run the world," calls for violence, and hate aimed at immigrants, feminists, Black Lives Matter and the LGBT community. Before the brutal June 30 rally, Patriot Prayer supporters threatened on Facebook: "the stench-covered and liberal-occupied streets of Portland will be CLEANSED. CLEANSED I say."

Last June, Gibson co-organized an anti-Muslim rally in Seattle. Participants called Islam a "cancer," said refugees seeking asylum here are "fighting-age males for Jihad, to establish a caliphate," and obsessed over Muslim-only zones spreading around the United States.

Weeks before police say he murdered two men in Portland, Jeremy Christian attended a Patriot Prayer rally where he threw a Nazi salute while yelling, "Die, Muslims." Patriot Prayer members have said they evicted Christian from that rally. Gibson may not have told him to threaten a Muslim woman on a train, which authorities say precipitated the killings. Gibson may not spout extremism, but he is the impresario for hate festivals. This allows him to evade responsibility and continue stoking hate and violence, just like Trump and FOX News.

It's a mistake to focus on Gibson, however, as the organized violence is a uniquely Portland problem. The far right has tried, and failed, to make battlegrounds out of liberal cities such as Berkeley, New York, Seattle, Boston and Charlottesville. As the whitest big city in America, Portland has proven unwilling to protect its racial, religious and sexual minorities who are the prime targets of the far right.

The contrast with New York City is instructive. Last month, a gang of Proud Boys punched, kicked and choked counter-protesters in Manhattan. (I exposed the role of neo-Nazi-linked skinheads.) It looked like an abbreviated replay of Portland. The perpetrators were caught on camera, as police rolled up on scooters, watched the beatings, and failed to detain anyone.

But then the story veered sharply away from Portland's descent into mob violence. After local critics, media and politicians slammed police for failing to act, the NYPD began rounding up Proud Boys, several who were charged with crimes that could lead to civil lawsuits that decimate the organization.

The New York incident lasted a minute. Portland's have gone on for 18 months. Those who claim Portland police and prosecutors don't have the tools to arrest, charge and prosecute perpetrators caught on camera engaging in gang assaults, some with illegal weapons, deserve only howls of outrage and derision.

Arun Gupta is a New York-based freelance writer who has been published in The Daily Beast, The Intercept, The Nation and The Washington Post.

Editor's note: Gupta said his partner was one a counter-protester who was injured by an explosive device fired by police at summer rally. She has filed a tort claim against the City of Portland.

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