I've been thinking more and more about what happened recently in Oregon. While many will focus on an ANTIFA supporter shooting a militia member, I'd like to ask why hundreds of militia members and assorted rednecks drove into Portland from out of town in the first place./1

Let's be clear: these "militia" members came to Portland to look for trouble. And while the exact circumstances are unclear, they found it.

My family is from Oregon. We know this scene; my family was harassed for decades after my Swedish-American great aunt married a Hawaiian./2

Rural Oregon is a deeply racist place. These aggressive, gun-toting white men playing militia were in Portland to intimidate activists and people of color.

And let's call them what they are: brownshirts. Ideologically they are not fundamentally different. /3

All the dressings of protecting the Constitution that the oath-keepers and III%ers and associated military fetishizers pretend is pure horseshit; otherwise they would have been defending the people or Portland when they exercised their 1st Amendment Rights. /4

So we can call them white nationalists or we can call them militia... whatever. They are an armed, dangerous group that uncritically follows a mass leader and espouses, implicitly or explicitly, a racist, anti-Left ideology.

They are brownshirts. Different era, same group. /5

There is a white nationalist right-wing terrorist element among them, as exposed in recent mass shootings.

And like the brownshirts in the 30s, they have relationships with the police and are protected by them.

We have to start taking this domestic terror threat seriously. /6

They are a threat to our Democracy, and you can bet that we are going to see more of them around the election. We need strategies to deal with them. They cannot be ignored. History demonstrates that all too clearly. /7/end