An Afternoon With Portland’s ‘Multiracial’ Far RightTo broaden their appeal, some right-wing groups are ditching overt racism for their version of diversity.They’re also shifting from ethnically defined nationalism to a version that purports to target outsiders based on their legal status, not the color of their skin. Significantly, the presence of people of color in this coalition allows Gibson and the Proud Boys to “prove” that they aren’t racists at all.
Gibson, for starters, identifies as Japanese American; his deputy, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, is American Samoan. Both vehemently deny that either the Patriot Prayer or the Proud Boys are white-supremacist organizations—though local anti-fascist and anti-racist organizers have identified neo-Nazis and other organized white supremacists in their midst. One masked Proud Boy present on Saturday, who said his name was John, told me that anyone in their crew who expressed racist views would be stomped out—but “not literally,” he quickly added.
But for every masked John, there’s a “General Graybeard”—an older man who, on Saturday, led members of the “Freedom Crew” and “Hiwaymen,” two patriot groups from Arkansas, wearing tactical gear and bearing shields emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag. He explained that the imagery was about honoring the South’s history. “We fly it so people know it’s not racist,” the self-proclaimed general explained. “It’s about heritage. It’s about the Constitution.”
When I asked masked John whether he accepted this explanation, he shrugged. “I gotta take that at face value,” he said.
“We’re here to support the Constitution of the United States of America, which is all about free speech and being able to assemble peaceably and talking about the things that we support,” a Patriot Prayer supporter also named John told me. What exactly those things are proved more difficult to articulate: “It’s a call to action. We believe this is a time to act in our country.” The second John kept gesturing at Lionel, a recent immigrant from Cameroon, to prove his point.
“I believe in peace, freedom, and everything else,” Lionel concurred. “Me, I’m black. We are also human. We have our voice too.”
While the majority of uniformed and armored Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer affiliates on Saturday were white, a half-dozen people of color (including Lionel) were happy to explain what brought them to the Freedom March. One 40-year-old black man named James first started supporting Joey Gibson about a year ago. “I admire people like Martin Luther King when they fought for civil rights and stuff like that,” he said. “These guys, they look like they’re taking a stand, and I want to take a stand with them.”
“There are no white supremacists here,” James told me. “I get nothing but love. White supremacists don’t let minorities into their ranks.”
And about those Confederate battle flags? “All it represents is the Southern states. It’s just a flag,” he said.
The left, he continued, was being paid by George Soros to spread disinformation. “I’m not getting paid for this. I’m here of my own accord. We’re a diverse group,” he continued. “We’re all Trump supporters.”
Leonor Ferris, a 75-year-old immigrant from Colombia, laughed when I asked about the accusations of white supremacists in Patriot Prayer’s midst. “I’m a Latina! How could they be white supremacists?” she asked. “Look at my skin! I’m not a white supremacist. I love people. I love every color.” Ferris was not the only one to treat my questions as preposterous. “Do I look like a white supremacist to you?” Will Johnson, the black owner of a small videography business, asked me. “I got dreadlocks!”
Johnson went on to claim that Hillary Clinton is so pro-abortion that she supports killing newborn children. “The liberal media—which is against this country, which is the enemy of the American people—they covered it up, because they don’t want people to know,” he said.
Enrique Tarrio, president of the Proud Boys’ Miami chapter, told me that he has visited with members in Portland, Austin, New York, North Carolina, and Georgia. “Not once have I dealt with race,” he said. “We have a diversity problem in our Proud Boys Miami chapter—which is that we don’t have enough white people.” His Instagram account, which includes group photos of the chapter’s mostly white members, suggests otherwise.
“I’ve got my ‘Made in Mexico’ tattoo. I go out with these people. There’s no white supremacists here. They just want to protect their country,” Fernando, a 36-year-old Mexican immigrant who works in a warehouse, told me. “Every country should have people like that. If you fight for your country, no matter which country it is, the world will be strong. There will be no suppression, no corruption.”
Patriot Prayer’s ultranationalism comes out most vigorously when its supporters talk about immigration. “We do need a wall,” Johnson, the black videographer, said. “We have walls in our homes. The elitists have walls around their neighborhoods—gated communities. But they don’t want to do one for those of us who don’t have that.”
James, the black scrap-metal worker, echoed this sentiment: “You came here illegally, you break the law, you gonna be punished.”
As an immigrant herself, Leonor Ferris understood the desire to come to the United States. “America is the leader of the good countries. Freedom, you know? That’s what I believe in,” she told me. However: “We are used to certain things. I’m very clean and very picky. I don’t want people that come here that trash the streets,” she continued. “I see people trashing the country. And not only that, they’re dirty—the germs and everything.”
Nearly everyone at Saturday’s Freedom March seemed as worried about the threat of the rising American left as they were about immigrants. “We don’t want communists,” Ferris told me. “I came here legally and I don’t want to see what happened to Venezuela.” She continued: “The only thing communism brings is poverty. They can’t even eat over there. They don’t have nothing in Venezuela. I used to go to Venezuela to go shopping—beautiful stores.”
Toese, Gibson’s deputy, and several others sported T-shirts, manufactured by a white nationalist clothing company called Right Wing Death Squads, reading “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong,” referring to the Chilean dictator under whose rule tens of thousands of socialists and other dissidents were murdered and tortured. “Make Communists Afraid of Rotary Aircraft Again,” read the back of the shirt (Pinochet’s soldiers were notorious for throwing enemies of the regime out of helicopters).
Small-business values were what drew the Cuban-American Enrique Tarrio to the Proud Boys in the first place. Most of the Miami chapter’s members run their own companies, he told me, and one of the fraternity’s primary tenets is “Glorifying the Entrepreneur.”
“My family came from a communist country,” Tarrio said. “The only way to true freedom is entrepreneurship.” Then he invited me to follow him on Instagram. There’s a link to his company’s website—and posts about killing communists.