Gravel-voiced shouts to “Be gone!” mingled with homophobic slurs this weekend as local Proud Boys confronted a group of neo-Nazis trying to join their protest of an Oregon Pride event. The confrontation included Proud Boys unmasking neo-Nazis, possibly based on the belief that they were secretly FBI plants.
The two white nationalist organizations exchanged blows down the street from the first-ever Pride gathering in Oregon City, held to raise money for LGBTQ+ youth in Clackamas County.
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Juicy Garland tweeted from the event, “Golly, I didn’t order those.”
“You fu**in’ racist piece of shit!” one Proud Boy can be heard shouting incongruously at a neo-Nazi. Both groups are known for their racist ideologies.
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“Be gone!” another, older Proud Boy yelled repeatedly at the neo-Nazis as though casting out demons.
The groups came to blows as Proud Boys pushed the neo-Nazis down the block, with calls to “demask them!”
According to Mediate, the black and tan-clad Nazi interlopers were members of a local organization known as the Rose City Nationalists.
About a half-dozen neo-Nazis had their masks ripped from their faces as the two groups tussled.
As video of the confrontation went viral, the far-right finger-pointing began, with conspiracy theorists positing the neo-Nazis were FBI plants sent to surveil and undermine the Proud Boys’ “pro-America” work, not a turf battle among otherwise natural allies.
The unmasked Nazis “panicked,” “cried,” and “trembled in fear” because they were Feds, according to one right-wing podcaster who claimed to know the true story from his perch over a keyboard.
The Proud Boys came to national prominence in 2020 when Donald Trump famously asked them to “stand back and stand down” at a presidential debate against then-candidate Joe Biden, following a summer of violence in cities across the country, including Portland.
The group was instrumental in storming the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021. Four members of the group, including former leader Enrique Tarrio, were convicted of seditious conspiracy in May.
Neo-Nazis made news last week when about two dozen members of a chapter of the Nationalist Social Club of Massachusetts, or NSC-131, harassed attendees at a drag queen story hour in Concord, New Hampshire.
Members of that group had recently been acquitted of charges after hanging a banner reading “Keep New England White” on a freeway overpass.
A day after the story hour protest, the group’s 35-year-old leader, Leo Anthony Cullinan, died of unknown causes.
The white nationalist clash in Oregon happened about a mile down the road from the small town’s Pride event at the Good Burger Shack, and didn’t seem to affect the atmosphere. A banner reading “Love Always Wins” hung across a fence on the patio.
“Obviously, I’m super excited and so is everyone else here,” organizer Ecstasy Inferno told a local TV station. “It’s long overdue. We’re here, we’re queer, and not going anywhere, booboo.”
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