Fash Tactics 2: The Five Karens of Fox || plus3 reacts

The Psymposia crew deconstructs dog whistles, false claims, and fascist overtones of Fox News' "The Five" as they discuss the recent shooting death of Aaron Danielson (a supporter of the violent, far-right group, Patriot Prayer) by anti-fascist Michael Reinoehl, in Portland.

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For more information on Patriot Prayer see: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/08/31/what-we-know-about-patriot-prayer

For more information on Chandler Pappas (the Patriot Prayer member that Danielson was with when he was shot) see: https://twitter.com/PNWResistance/status/1300204337071681536

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.

[00:00] Okay hey so we're gonna jump into some discussions as we want to do we're somewhat new to youtube but that doesn't mean we aren't the same opinionated jerks that we've been for a long time we try and approach these things from shall we say an enlightened left perspective and we don't know about enlightenment [Laughter] fair and post left oh my god this is a circular firing squad y'all anyway we're gonna be talking about some recent shootings actually so might as well get into it while we go through this I'm here with dr michele devnow I'm here with brian norman and I'm here with dave nichols and my name is brian pace the man accused of gunning down a pro-trump supporter in portland is now dead federal officials say agents shot and killed him while trying to make

[01:00] An arrest in washington state the suspect had said he is quote 100 antifa and defended his actions during an interview that aired yesterday what I will say is that I felt that my life and other people around me's lives were in danger and I felt like I had no choice but to do what I did if that man was a cop he'd be off scot-free right there he said the magic words I felt scared for my life stand your ground's pretty clear I'm pretty sure that oregon's not a stand your ground state but ultimately we're talking about self-defense right we have multiple armed individuals different factions running around this around portland yeah and within the context of the carceral state right this is something that would get sorted out in a courtroom

[02:01] In theory but to do what I did that development coming as portland nears 100 nights of protests and other big cities are bracing for the possibility of more violence this weekend including in new york city and certainly others jesse let's go to you first this is a man who is a father of two and he had been protesting you know all summer I understand that he felt really committed to his cause but he was making a choice and the choice ended in his death god rest his soul I know he leaves behind two children but my goodness just do one google search on this guy it's I don't want to speak badly of the dead but it's not a pretty picture and to a certain extent it's not only wheeler's fault who's a total failure out there in portland this guy was picked up on gun charges just a couple weeks ago and he they dropped the charges they didn't even prosecute him he would have

[03:02] Been in jail jesse waterman ladies and gentlemen yeah it's worth pointing out like the disingenuity around like you know god rest his soul and all that or at least the apparent disingenuousness of that but then beyond that like if we're talking about perceptions and conceptualizations of gun rights and gun ownership within the u.s I don't want to engage in what a baptism however like I suspect if we look at some of the positions that he's espoused in his career about second amendment rights and who gets to carry and when the fact that there were past gun crimes is not necessarily relevant to whatever went down on that night much of which is still being discussed additionally this conceptualization of violence right as cities brace for violence tonight usually what these folks are talking about is property destruction right this is there have been protests in which private property corporate private

[04:04] Property has been destroyed the people who've actually been engaged in violence against other people right have been police have been white supremacists have been groups like the proud boys and patriot prayer which we'll get into as they continue yeah jesse waters I misspoke earlier but jesse waters is somebody who frankly I mean this is fox news none of these people are particularly reliable narrators that said you know there it's been said anything that you say after but is meaningless and so he says you know god rest your soul and I don't want to speak poorly of the dead but and then we go towards speaking poorly of the dead what about ism but you know sure whatever do this to get on vice while there's a fugitive task force looking to arrest you and try to plead your case shows how arrogant and emboldened antifa has

[05:04] Become they think they can get away with that okay so just you know emboldened antifa has become on that point like he from the advice interview was saying he's against fascists but he's not formally identified with any kind of specific antifa organization and his sister has also spoken out about the fact that he's kind of an impulsive you know person who acts kind of you know in the moment and when you're amping up these sorts of you know clashes you'll end up with people who are a little maybe even unwell and are trigger happy and you know that doesn't necessarily mean it's this part of this larger plot to you know a representative of antifa whatever that means so the fact that they're kind of riffing on this is disingenuous generally yeah and for those of you who don't know antifa issues cards so it actually

[06:05] Looks like this so if you've got one of these you're part of the club and for whatever it's worth right this clash was provoked by a caravan of far right and trump supporters that were cruising through portland right if we want to talk about the outside agitators narratives that have been spun throughout various protests of late and historically like it's quite clear that this was provoked by violent white supremacists and neo-fascists coming into portland yeah he's also making the assumption that this guy's going on vice because he's just arrogant about what he did not that oh I am thinking I am concerned that I'm going to be murdered by cop well and he did say he was concerned about getting arrested he was concerned and part of the reason he ran if I recall correctly was that he was concerned that if you were

[07:05] Arrested the cops who have been documented in numerous cases to be working say with the militia in kenosha and with other far-right groups in the case of the la sheriff's department they've got the executioner's gang and numerous other gangs in the police department or in the sheriff's department you know he was concerned for his safety if he were taken into custody which seems quite valid absolutely you know I should mention that I grew up in the protest culture of portland I haven't lived in portland in about 10 years but there were always elements like patriot warrior and patriot prayer and these far-right provocateurs that were spoiling or spoiling for a fight all the way back to the 90s with you know skinheads running around attempting to you know provoke people and stir up unrest and all of these elements have been completely emboldened and given explicit license by president donald trump

[08:06] So we're seeing there's a long history of nazis going into leftist neighborhoods to essentially declare that they are violent while they're effectively provoking fights none of these you know chuds are from portland well it plays into this larger narrative about there being this kind of dark money deep state funding antifa and this was even you know as I was chatting with you guys about a few months ago like even erdogan and turkey was trying to say like oh the kurds are like behind you know they're scheming they're part of this international you know dark money attempt to overthrow states and it's just I mean that's it's yeah it's not the funny thing is well while trump talks about planes full of dark clad black-clad you know antifa protesters getting ready to throw soup cans the reality is if we look at the one of the proud boys protests a couple weeks back in portland there was actually a bust or sorry

[09:09] A train the train that comes from the max the train that comes from the airport full of proud boys who had come to portland specifically for that event so those dynamics are there just not in the way that gets discussed and certainly not about antifa in that context let's get back to the video stuff the video evidence and the eyewitness testimony tells a completely different story about that shooting from everything we know this was not an act of self-defense he wasn't saving anyone's life this looks like cold-blooded murder he would have gone away for life if he hadn't been shot by deputies but he was shot by deputies right and on top of that like the actual case so so aaron danielson who was the person who was killed in portland was found you know not only was there a can of bear mace that

[10:11] That it looks like he pulled in the video not only was there a metal baton that he had been using throughout the day but he was also found to have a sidearm and I think at least three additional clips or three sorry magazines alongside him in his pockets things like that he was also out and we'll probably get back to this later in the video with chandler pappas who is a violent right-wing advocate member of or at least affiliate of the proud boys somebody who's been involved with people like hayley adams with taylor jernigan who fired a sidearm out of a car you know several weeks back at the end of a protest after he and alan swinney were involved in macing and using paintball guns loaded with all sorts of wild you know hard munitions or whatever in them

[11:11] These are people who have track records of engaging in violence against anti-fascists again you know basically showing up at protests in order to engage in violence against human beings and let's just clarify here like violence against anti-fascists these people show up at protests and beat the crap out of anybody that they can corner from the other side so I mean I was making a joke earlier about you know being a card-carrying member of anti- anti-fascism and the joke is that I'm actually the leader of antifa just kidding no I mean like you know if you are against fascism then you're you know you are antifa but like there are a lot of just citizens concerned citizens coming out to protests with no organized affiliation at all and then they're getting the crap kicked out of them by you know proud boys wearing steel-toed boots and bear mason you know

[12:12] Spiked bats and all the things that you were mentioning earlier well as I saw someone point out online a few days ago like there's been a lot of talk you know even I've experienced since I was a kid learning about the holocaust and having people say oh if I was back then like you know I wouldn't have gone along with it I would have stood up to the nazis etc and yet people standing up to stuff right now is portrayed as an unbearably horrible thing to do which like you know you can't have it both ways no and he was shot because he pulled out a rifle as they approached him we warned this was going gonna happen what did we say about chop or chaz you let this thing go someone's gonna die and they died we've been saying for a hundred days it's important quick just two seconds it's worth noting that that that someone did die at chop or chas and that's a huge problem and something that the left or post left or anarchists particularly white anarchists have done a pretty shitty job of

[13:14] Engaging with this isn't to say that that that resistance to fascism is straightforward or simple there are things to work out in autonomous zones but also like equating this and presenting themselves as somehow morally outraged around this just doesn't seem coherent oh I want to interject that what are you talking about somebody's going to die the entire movement the cause of this whole thing is is that black lives are being murdered at an unacceptable like there's no acceptable level for extrajudicial murder in the united states people are already dying that that's the whole point yeah and this came after the written house murders right even in the rnc like it's been pointed out that I think it was pence who referred to like our black neighbors you know making a clear distinction between his audience as being not black and the neighbors so it's like there and also that was in the context of americans

[14:14] Right it was like americans and our black neighbors exactly right you know so it's like it doesn't mean the same thing to you know a lot of these people someone's gonna die and now they're dead and it's funny the way the media characterizes this the media speaks it's just so funny to hear these people who are like on television major I mean they're not indie they're not like some kind of they're the biggest cable they're the it's like biggest are you even doing speaks nicely about the shooter and kind of denigrates the guy that was shot dead they're calling this guy labeling the dead guy like some right-wing trump-supporting militia patriot member and then they whitewash this guy who's about as radical as they come it's sad they're lying to you whatever it's worth you know danielson was wearing a patriot prayer hat he was out in the streets with papas like these are people who have established histories of engaging

[15:15] With far-right groups I think the notion that this is somehow an inaccurate portrayal just isn't the case well when you label yourself it's pretty hard like look the guy who you know had a fist tattoo on his neck who was just gunned down by police he labeled himself as antifa it's fair to say that he was anti the guy wearing a patriot play prayer hat it's fair to say that he was affiliated with that group and this is exactly what goebbels did in the rise of the nazis he would when there was the clashes between the nazis and the socialists or the nazis and the communists they would pick a specific killing and you know at the time the nazis were out of control in the build-up in the 30s with violence in the streets and you know goebbels would take a case like this make that guy like he was a martyr or a hero and then amplify that to

[16:15] You know to draw more of you know these younger kind of lost guys into the priority this is very standard you and I think it's really going to backfire greg what about the fact that a lot of these gun crimes basically don't get prosecuted they let them go and then it exacerbates the problem is this the first time that fox news has gotten upset about the prosecution of gun crimes or is it just that the individuals involved are white that that's ringing my bells here like what there's going to be there's an explicit part where they make a very clear dog whistle I think down the line about urban gun owners in a way that yeah I think you've hit the nail on the head let's get there yeah it's not just this guy you know he was busted and let go this happens a lot in other cities with handguns especially if they can't control the handguns in

[17:17] Inner cities how are they going to get a national gun control plan is what I don't understand I applaud the feds for making the world safer by eliminating an armed murderous hooligan okay yeah dylan roof countless other you know white supremacist gunman have been brought in without being murdered extrajudicially the notion that that somehow this is what needed to go down in rifle in hand it relates to if anyone hasn't seen it contra points his recent video on justice and just the kind of emotional satisfaction that you know the cops identifying with I forget the superhero who was like you know oh punisher yeah punisher exactly which is ridiculous but this is the exact vibe that she was talking about it's like you know the laws get in the way here you know when it when it's this kind of situation but you know when the tables are turned

[18:18] They have a completely different set of talking points right I only say it's ridiculous because the creator of the punisher has come out and said that he absolutely abhors the fact that his character is being used as a police mascot because in the backstory of the punisher yeah he does not like corrupt cops at all what's you sorry I'm a nerd involved in his life whether he was a family man or involved in a cause I don't care I really don't care I think the lesson every group needs to learn is that you don't have to glorify a martyr because of their skin color you I am not going to call in sick over this guy because he's white that line like that's one of the lines like I was like we got to talk about this video it's like making an equivalence between anyone kneeling on a football field is like the same as him you know because it connects to the talking points about the nba these privileged people who like don't are able to just decide not to come into

[19:20] Work today because you know they're you know he's like I'm gonna still come into work just because this is a white guy and like you know should I be calling out sick no it's not the same thing at all no it isn't and it's pretty ridiculous seeing that played out all right he murdered a citizen and jesse's right I've already seen certain kinds of language that are being employed to kind of portray him as a martyr because he believed in a cause I'm sorry you know this started when the media deliberately mislabeled violence's protest justified the actions of miscreants we knew the violence was happening we were told by people in the media that we were crazy even as the killings spiked like these issues of violence and how violence functions as a floating signifier I mean fox news has repeatedly championed imperial wars has celebrated all sorts of you know

[20:22] Violence as perpetrated by the state I mean this guy literally just celebrated the extrajudicial killing of rhino like the notion that he is somehow opposed or morally offended by violence is simply a non-starter it's about these issues two seconds ago yeah right it's about where it's directed it's about who gets to use it it's about you know this is why this is what we get into when we talk about police having a monopoly the state having a monopoly on violence and cops representing the manifestation of that monopoly on violence that is legitimate violence that is good violence that is you know the violence that these folks want to see and think should be normalized that's the violence that maintains so-called social peace well in legitimate violence the root word for legitimate means lawful yep I think we have now a 50 increase in murder in new york which we mentioned yesterday and we are told that we are just

[21:23] Sensationalizing this if people listen to us the outrage like he's like we were calling this you know as we were helping to fan the flames we knew this was coming and we should have been listened to it's like it's almost karen like that even like body language this guy is putting off be two men alive right now that guy and the trump supporter geraldo what are your thoughts well I don't miss him I think jesse's way too compassionate this was a confessed killer you live by the gun you die by the gun you pull a gun on a federal fugitive task force and you expect to survive I mean that's what happened to this guy what happened to this guy go back to getting chairs thrown at you opening empty safes this is the thing you live by the gun you die by the gun except that that's not you know if we assume that that they believe in the law

[22:23] And order which certainly doesn't seem that way that's not how the judicial system is supposed to function it's not let alone the whole layer of like mental health and like people you know being able to de-escalate situations where unwell people are around weapons in this country because they're everywhere you know it's like it shouldn't just be a okay you get to die now and we have numerous cases of you know we can look at the aurora colorado shooter we can look at the texas the el paso walmart shooter we can look at case after case of white supremacist shooters who have been taken into custody while armed without an issue those people may have lived by the guns so to speak but they certainly didn't die by the gun right breaking gun crimes or breaking gun laws still means that you know you go to like a court of law in theory last time I checked you know

[23:24] They are so living in their own bubble you didn't want to blame mayor wheeler but they've allowed for a hundred days this anarchy this disorder this disruption this violence this mugging this usurping of private property trashing everything you know let's stop here the usurping of private property is the thing that they're mainly concerned about this is the main issue this is the disorder there is a whole bunch of chaos that the these are the people who don't care about climate change these are the people who don't care about bombing entire cities there is a certain kind of disorder that that fits into their orderly world view and then there's the usurping of private property that gets geraldo frothing at the mustache right and gets him to invoke some false notion of a hundred days of muggings you know as the police are actively

[24:26] Beating people night after night like if you've seen the footage from portland like you know it's quite clear who is committing violence against human beings again the notion of violence against property particularly private property particularly the violence that it takes to maintain corporate private property it's an absurd prep proposition in the first place and the fact that these guys get so amped up as you point out pace over you know and advocate for these extra judicial or killings or illegal wars or drone strikes or what have you the fact that then they go around thumping whatever about law and order it's nonsensical it's not law order it's their hierarchy yeah so one more thing which would be that the usurping of private property even that just as we've revisited with the violence discussion about who it's directed against quantitatively if we're talking about mugging and usurping private property police have seized more in civil

[25:26] Seizures civil seizure laws forfeiture forfeitures thank you more private property than all burglaries and muggings combined in a quantitative monetary value so yeah I don't sorry yeah and if we wanted to broaden it as far as other things you know we can look at wage theft as being a far larger theft you might call our crime employers and then if we wanted to get kind of absurdist and funny as far as like human and broader ecological costs we can look at forest fires from gender reveal parties doing more damage than anti-fascist protesters so you know oh killing someone in cold blood at point-blank range this is where you end up this should have happened 50 I mean but what about the kenosha kid like isn't that like what are you just saying don't worry about it look he drove from out of the state carried a long rifle

[26:28] Illegally it appears like you know killed two people wounded another but you know he was doing it in defense of property again like he literally picked up a weapon to protect property so it's justified that becomes justifiable self-sufficient still at point blank like what he just said like still applies there so yeah property defense seems to be the defining difference two days ago or a hundred days ago this was you know this antifa thug is exactly what the president is complaining about these people flying between cities you're bringing their you know their violence with them conspiring with others to disrupt taking naive innocent protesters and bending them to their diabolical purpose this guy was a terrorist and he died a terrorist death outside agitators wow it's just like this sounds like a crazy person to your will yeah it's just it's so

[27:30] Like they talk about the bubble that exists in the media and stuff and it's like so clear what they're doing as being super biased and us versus like one law for me and one for thee or whatever it is you know it's like it doesn't the rhetoric just does belies their hypocrisy at every turn and yet if you scroll through the youtube comments I don't know it's people being like and can you believe that cnn people actually believe what they're seeing on cnn as if it's cnn that's I mean I'm not that I'm pro-cnn but I'm saying that they people seemingly buy fully into this very in my opinion biased perspective that fox well no cnn is too busy telling us how peaceful iraq war vote for joe biden was that I mean look we've all read manufacturing consent by noam chomsky it's not like we're big fans of

[28:31] Corporate media but what I gotta say is that like the rhetoric that mr geraldo is using is specifically designed to rile up grandpa who does not understand why the kids are doing unfamiliar things and it must be because an evil super villain anti-fascist bent them to their will well you know I mean and to that end like it makes me curious what laura ingraham would do in this context okay yeah not because I'm interested in what would laura ingram do but because we actually saw her push back against trump peddling very minorly very you know that sounds like a conspiracy theory right and like would she do that here or is this enough of a you know whatever fox circle jerk that that it wouldn't be an issue I just say settle down gerardo geraldo that's what she'd say thinking let's get a final thought from

[29:32] You the feds are on the case governor kate brown still refusing to call in the national guard and deportlet the d.a mike schmidt of multnomah county not prosecuting many of those people arrested but attorney general bill barr said earlier this week that they he talked about radicals crossing state lines and carrying out planned coordinated attacks on law enforcement public property and on private property guess what that means and andy mccarthy wrote about this that the justice department is going to be converting looking at these federal this is the same bill bar that doesn't know whether or not it's illegal to vote twice right like right this is the bill bar we're discussing you know the notion that that that he's anything other than a political operative the notion that there's any sort of judicial independence within the context of the trump administration you know again these are opportunists

[30:33] Who are recognizing that there is a political moment here and the opportunity to leverage some of these systems and push and advance certain narratives and that you know in the context of what we're seeing play out both in the streets and in the halls of government is kind of terrifying crimes converting state crimes into federal crimes crossing state lines coupled with kind of a loose criminal organization that's a racketeering enterprise so you're talking about the feds yeah no it completely applies to the far right like everything she has said there barge now we're talking about long sentences for these crimes to prevent murder potentially so sanctuary city no more that's a huge non-sequitur by the way because this entire conversation has nothing to do with illegal immigrants just wanted to point that out yeah yep I mean it also just ignores the

[31:36] Dynamics around portland it ignores like who came from where and for what purposes this notion of like trolling the libs or whatever while you've got masked up blacked out license plates and you're firing mace and air woody not airsoft and paintball guns and hopping out of your trucks to beat people I mean the amount of footage that came out from that according to trump paintball and pepper spray is just a defensive yes but if you put paint on a statue then it should be a federal offense and you should be looking at potentially decades in jail I mean again we're not expecting any sort of ideological consistency here but I've encountered a number of people in psychedelic spaces who are very adamant that there's some sort of I don't know they call it either over over wokeness or something like that or that there's this predatory wokeness that anti-fascists are the real fascists all of these lines where they talk about violence but it's not

[32:37] Violence in a systemic systemically understood historically contextualized manner it's this notion of this abstracted specter of violence as divorced from all contexts and those people who are railing against that violence like do they think violence would have been incorrect in overthrowing or resisting american chattel slavery or the nazis or like there are clear cases where I suspect most you know like pretty much and basically right now dave the some of the things that you're saying are making me feel uncomfortable and I don't like it and actually I don't think I want to have this conversation anymore because you're a little too woke so maybe we should just not agree to disagree you know [Laughter] anyway that's our little spool for today thanks for bearing with us this little outlet for crazy times we have a podcast

[33:39] We're occasionally doing stuff on youtube yeah follow us Psymposia plus three thanks see you next time