Yesterday in the IE (inland empire, southern california, United States, for those unfamiliar) proud boys escalated their tactics significantly. The last several months they have been doing banner drops about once a month and have been thwarted by a rapid response network of local anti fascists who respond to remove the banners.
Yesterday they laid a trap. They put a banner up on a billboard slightly off the beaten path near an abandoned house. They have done this before, but this time they had lookouts and several members masked up and hiding near the banner waiting for anti fascists to come and remove it.
Anti fascists ran up and removed the banner once the lookout, IDed as local proud boy Louie Flores, left in his car to do a lap. Shortly after the anti fascists drove off with the banner, multiple black clad presumably proud boys emerged from hiding behind the billboard, possibly in the abandoned house or surrounding brush. They were seen getting into Louie's car when he returned and driving off.
If is unclear what they planned to do, or why they did not take action. It is possible that their lookout abandoning his post briefly once he'd been spotted meant they were not alerted about people approaching to remove the banner. It is possible that they were expecting a local anti fascist mom who bullies them on tiktok to be the person who removed the banner, and when different people arrived they abandoned their plan.
What is certain is that this is an escalation from their usual patterns, and someone could have been surrounded and seriously hurt had the situation happened differently. Luckily in addition to the brave folks who ran up the hill to grab the banner, several other anti fascists were also present nearby watching and filming. The decision to wait for backup before moving on the banner was a smart one, and no one from the anti fascist crew was confronted or attacked.
This is a reminder to use the buddy system, carry deterrents like pepper spray, and work together when taking risky actions.
Solidarity forever 🖤❤️🏴
It turns out you can simply serve a file from a domain to use it as your bsky handle.
So this guy is now S3. All of S3.
@hakan_geijer flattening the distinctions also obscures the fact that radicalization into naziism is an interruptable process and that long-term, you’ll find much more success disrupting that than trying to punch your way through everyone on that spectrum (though some certainly need that).
There’s also the practical matter of threat modeling. The kinds of threats posed by Q weirdos, Proud Boys, and accellerationist terrorgram types is wildly different and the way you deal with them will be likewise.
"One of us was inspired when an elderly neighbor came out of his house with bottles of water for the crowd. After talking to us, he emerged awhile later with an umbrella of his own and stood beside us. This is how it works. We are doing it. We keep us safe."
#Sacramento #Anarchist #Anarchism #MutualAid #Antifa #Antifascist #Antifascism #WeKeepUsSafe #CommunityDefense #LGBT #LGBTQ
https://itsgoingdown.org/proud-boys-and-neo-nazis-chased-from-another-drag-story-hour-in-sacramento/
Report on successful defense of a drag story hour event in Sacramento that was threatened by neo-Nazis and Proud Boys. Last Sunday in Sacramento, community once again showed up en masse to defend a drag queen story hour from Proud Boys and neo-Nazis. This was the latest in a series of far-Right attacks against the...
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