The Washington Post published a glowing photo essay on Saturday featuring Antifa protestors in Portland showing off their riot gear. The article fawns over the anarchists’ courage to maintain a months-long assault on the city in the name of social justice, violently attacking federal agents and holding public property under siege.
The piece, authored by Post protest reporter Marissa Lang prominently highlights testimony from several Portland activists sharing their one-sided experiences painting police as violent agents an oppressive state with no mention of word “riot” where protestors have sowed more than 70 days of perpetual unrest, including attempts to burn down a federal courthouse.
According to Lang, protestors merely “directed their anger at the federal courthouse where they broke windows and tagged the building with bright paint” which provoked White House action to send in federal law enforcement to quell the chaos.
Despite conceding that “federal agents and police officers say” they’ve been subject to violent attacks by demonstrators, Lang goes on to attribute that much of the violence is instigated by white supremacists seeking to exploit the crisis.
Here’s the only passage where the author uses the term, “violent.”
City officials and soccer moms alike readily admit to being ‘antifa’ – an abbreviation for anti-fascist that many conservatives and far-right groups have decried as violent, left-wing extremists prone to looting and fire-setting.
White supremacists and far-right militia groups have been drawn to Portland to stand against the anti-fascist movement. Extremists such as the Proud Boys, a group that espouses white nationalist ideology, have clashed violently with counterprotesters and anarchists.
The Post’s photo essay meanwhile, attempts to capture glory of the self-righteous organizers terrorizing the city by weaving in professional photos of the story’s subjects donning their riot gear as if it were a Maxim photo shoot, for social justice of course.
The Saturday fashion spread comes just a week after the Post declared an end to the Portland riots following the retreat of federal law enforcement.
Trump ordered federal forces to quell Portland protests. But the chaos ended as soon as they left. https://t.co/bvBTzYQmkt
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 31, 2020
Calm returns to Portland as federal agents withdraw https://t.co/FzAoyj3dFp
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 1, 2020
The withdrawal of sworn federal officers providing support for an overwhelmed police department however, has offered no peace to a city in peril. The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) have declared eight unlawful assemblies since the beginning of August and four official riots.
Even Portland’s progressive Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler, who once marched with the protestors demanding he resign, decried the never-ending unrest.
“You are not demonstrating, you are attempting to commit murder,” Wheeler said to those who tried to set fire to a police building, warning rioters they are becoming props in President Donald Trump’s bid for re-election. “You are creating the B-roll film that will be used in ads nationally to help Donald Trump during this campaign.”
