Reflections on the recent revolution in Portland

by Fergus Downie

“When it comes to anti-fascism in most of Western Europe, there would appear for now to be a supply-and-demand problem: the demand for fascists vastly outstrips the actual supply.” – Douglas Murray

It was a good line by Murray and nothing highlights the truth of it more than the bewildering seriousness with which the Southern Poverty Law continues to be treated in America long after its raison d’etre died out. The chance of seeing a Klansman in 2019 let alone being killed by one is vanishingly remote, but then as we are all obliged to say everything is ‘on a continuum’ and to judge by the Centre’s annual ‘hate map’ there’s enough near misses to keep them in business for a while yet. It is a bizarrely amateurish if earnest endeavour, and many of the ‘Hate Groups’ listed are so self parodying one suspects they’re glad of the publicity. After you have had your fill reconnoitring the existential threats posed by the ‘Sacred Truth Publishing Ministry’ in Tennessee, even the most ardent anti-fascists will sense an anti-climax beating its wings. As a former insider Bob Moser has admitted the SLPC runs a highly profitable scam – but its doubtful his revelations will put them out of business for long. Gullible northern liberals were, after all, taken in by phantom Christian fundamentalist bogeymen because they wanted to be, and in our therapeutic culture of cultivated vulnerability the appetite for this self-inflicted trauma is insatiable. These days everyone can be a victm, and as the Smollet case showed, even if you’re a fake one the lie still honours the greater truth that America is incurably racist. When you have a business model like this the recessions are never that deep and the effects are serious particularly when the underlying pathology is so deeply rooted on the left.

When Marcuse set about crafting his sinister justification for political violence much of the justification hinged on a collapsing of essential distinctions. Critically violence became nebulously structural and, wait for it, discursive, nowhere more so than in the new fetish of hate speech, and once he had hollowed out the term’s meaning, the lessons to draw were obvious. Tolerance was repressive, and, given the correct views you could be actually violent to people who would never throw a punch in anger. Words matter, and the SPLC has played its part in butchering them. Barely a day seems to goes by without a gratuitous act of violence being indulged by the herbivore left, and the case of the diminutive gay Asian Trump supporter mercilessly pummelled under the apathetic gaze of politicised police officers is a particularly worrying symptom of this collapse in civility (it is indicative of the hardening line in America that our puerile British milkshaking agitprop is now reinforced by concrete in smug bobo sanctuaries like Portland). Given different attackers and different views Andy Ngo’s travails would have made him a cause celebre on the Left, as it stands his fate has drawn deafening silence from Democrats who have been playing with fire for too long