Demonstrations during the day in Portland are mostly confined to large marches where participants chant and give speeches.
When night descends, everything changes.
“As the night goes on, the rioters become so hateful it is surreal. Their voices hoarse, their sentences jumbled, they seem almost catatonic with hate,” a federal agent on the scene in Portland told the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
Rioting in Portland has gone on for 60-straight nights.
“A totally surreal experience. You get large, nonviolent demonstrations where people march, they chant, they give speeches, then shortly after are replaced with a smaller crowd, though still large, who immediately start trying to break into and destroy the federal courthouse. They have transposed their hatred for the president and for law enforcement onto the physical structure of the federal courthouse, and the uniformed personnel whose job is to protect that courthouse,” said the agent, who is assigned to protect Portland's Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse.
“They throw homemade Molotov cocktails, try to set the walls on fire, try to cut and pry through the plywood covering the glass walls, all the while screaming vitriol until their voices are cracked and hoarse,” the agent said. “When DHS personnel are visible, they throw frozen water bottles at them, canned goods, paint, and gasoline. They try to shine high powered lasers into our eyes, which can cause permanent damage. They chant and spray paint 'feds go home' as one of their slogans, and that could be easily achieved. If they could prove they wouldn't destroy the courthouse, DHS personnel would go home. It is that simple.”
The agent said the hate drives many rioters to rage against the police and federal agents.
“Some of the things screamed at us, ad nauseum: ‘Go home! You're Nazis, racists, the Gestapo! F--- you, f--- your mom, you suck! Quit your job and go f--- yourself! I'm going to get all your f---ing names!’ ” the agent told CIS.
The agent added, “I'm seeing African American Federal Protective Service inspectors, 20 year's [a] law enforcement officer, being called the N-word to their face for the first time in their careers, by a scrawny, pasty white booger-eating communist shithead.”
Major media continue to downplay Portland violence
As anarchists have rioted in the Portland streets for two months, the major media have downplayed the violence.
CNN's Brian Stelter claimed that it’s simply the “right-wing media” playing “up Portland protest ‘violence.' ”
“Right-wing media ramped up its coverage of scattered unrest in Portland, Oregon last week at roughly the same time that federal officers descended on the downtown area,” Stelter wrote on July 20. “[Fox News’ Sean] Hannity and other Fox hosts evidently decided that a small group of self-described anarchists suddenly deserved national news coverage.”
The Oregonian pushed back on claims of violence with a July 18 article titled: “Feds, right-wing media paint Portland as ‘city under siege.’ A tour of town shows otherwise.”
“And they occur exclusively during late-night hours in which only a couple hundred or fewer protesters and scores of police officers are out in the city’s coronavirus-hollowed downtown,” according to the newspaper, which described the violence as coming from “a small number” of “20- and 30-something demonstrators.”
Print newspapers such as the New York Times also pointed to “right-wing outlets” as seizing on the protests to push a narrative.
“Right-wing outlets and conservative media stars have seized on the weekslong protests in Portland as a rallying cry for law and order, instructing their followers to fear for their safety and blaming Democratic leaders for failing to restore peace,” the Times wrote on July 22.
Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak noted:
The media have typically taken the protesters’ “peaceful” pretensions at face value, despite glaring evidence to the contrary. The Associated Press has described the Portland riots as “racial injustice” protests.Free Press International
But on Monday, the Associated Press took the rare step of publishing an account that included the federal officers’ point of view, noting that they were being constantly targeted inside the courthouse by laser beams, fireworks, and ball bearings.
As public awareness of the true nature of the “peaceful protests” seeps to the surface, Democrats may begin backtracking on their support for the demonstrations. The question is whether Americans will find such denials credible after so long.
