According to politicians, activists and so-called “journalists” in the radically far-left metropolis of Portland, Oregon, the city is currently suffering from a wave of anti-LGBT violence perpetrated by “bigoted white men.” But according to the investigative work of an actual Portland journalist, Andy Ngo, this oft-repeated claim appears to be a false narrative.
In a piece for the New York Post published Saturday, Ngo recounted how this narrative came to be and how it’s since spiraled out of control, transforming the already radical city into a hotbed of dangerous anti-white paranoia and brownshirt-styled vigilante justice.
It started on Feb. 10, when local authorities received a report about a drunk gay woman found on the sidewalk with scrapes on her face and knuckles. Officers suspected that the woman, Sophia Gabrielle, had simply fallen and hit her head. She refused to cooperate with them and even reportedly threatened them, saying, “If you don’t treat me right, my people will get you.”
A so-called bias-crimes unit briefly reviewed the case but found no evidence to back up her claims, so the case was dropped. And yet the case wound up going viral because of Gabrielle, who launched a sensational GoFundMe claiming she’d been the victim of a “brutal and aggressively blatant hate crime” in which she’s been beaten unconscious with a bat.
A GoFundMe for activist Sophia Gabrielle Stanford went viral after it was alleged she was “violently attacked from behind with a baseball bat” by transphobes. That’s not at all what the police reports say. Read my story for the @nypost: https://t.co/UxkmKYxYEC pic.twitter.com/HeVI5eX6Ox
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) March 30, 2019
“In progressive Portland where the ‘#Resistance’ is mainstream, stories like Stanford’s feed into a whisper campaign of violent homophobes, transphobes and racists lurking on every corner. A moral panic had now been ignited,” Ngo reported.
He wasn’t kidding. Within days of Gabrielle launching her GoFundMe, “the number of alleged hate attacks ballooned through uncorroborated and vague online rumor.”
“These stories were then amplified by progressive media, nonprofit groups, businesses and politicians. Activists, driven by their own personal grievances, then launched a crusade to find the phantom suspects, doxing and targeting innocent people in the process.”
“Activists sent out ‘attack alerts’ warning the queer public to carry Mace and to travel in groups. Other activists circulated photos and addresses of the alleged attackers in flyers around town and on social media posts.”
Who contributed to the panic? @lyft. @portlandmercury. @lgbtqnation. @gaystarnews. Who else? Mayor @tedwheeler. His communications office ignored my repeated inquiries & his comm dir @eileenparkpdx hid behind security when I approached her for comment. https://t.co/UxkmKYxYEC pic.twitter.com/EGX6oo0MeO
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) March 30, 2019
But not once was an effort made to corroborate these claims. In most cases they weren’t even reported to the authorities; they were just posted to social media. Nor were there witnesses to the alleged crimes. Yet the panic grew, and the city’s far-leftists soon found a target for their rage: the Proud Boys.
According to the far-left, the Proud Boys is a far-right, neo-fascist, white supremacist group that aims to “Make America White Again.” Never mind that the Proud Boys is, in fact, a pro-free-speech, pro-liberty fraternity compromised of a bevy of minorities such as Enrique Tarrio, who was raised in a Cuban family in Miami’s Little Havana.
“As the number of shares and retweets increased on this post and similar posts, so too did the number of alleged attacks. What started off as two stories of hate crimes grew to 15. The claims grew wilder. The Proud Boys were accused of now using hammers and wooden planks as weapons. Also alleged: an attempted kidnapping,” Ngo reported.
And with the accusations came leftist-styled vigilante justice against folks like Robert Zerfing, a local conservative activist who used to attend the Proud Boys’ free-speech rallies, and who was accused of owning the same type of car used by one alleged victim’s attacker.
“Doxers identified that Zerfing owned a maroon SUV and used that as evidence he was involved in the attack even though that car was repossessed three months ago. He showed me one of the many death threats he now receives,” Ngo reported, adding that every Proud Boy member be contacted denied taking part in any anti-LGBT attacks.
In a statement to Ngo, Proud Boy member Fred Swink, an openly gay man, reiterated that, despite the left’s portrayal of the group as a hate group practically equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan, it’s not actually hateful: “The Proud Boys is the most welcoming organization that I have ever been a part of.”
It’s also the same group that went out of its way two years ago to help the victims of Hurricane Harvey:
#Antifa are having a MELTDOWN!
Proud Boys members stepped up & protected #Houston communities from Alt-Left lootinghttps://t.co/5NbpYAZvOc pic.twitter.com/zUyr1W3Y4c
— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) September 2, 2017
Hanging with the Florida Proud Boys Water Rescue Team in Angleton TX. #HarveyRecovery @Gavin_McInnes @unsavoryagents pic.twitter.com/vxHVIb1QVy
— Joe Biggs (@Rambobiggs) September 2, 2017
According to Wilfred Reilly, a political scientist at Kentucky State and author of the book “Hate Crime Hoax,” it seems unlikely that any of the alleged anti-LGBT crimes even occurred.
“If you were actually beaten by a group of homophobes, you’d go down to the precinct house before you’d go on Twitter and Facebook,” he told Ngo, adding that the lack of evidence, the refusal to cooperate with authorities and the sensational nature of the claims point to them being hoaxes.
But none of this matters to Portland’s radically far-left residents, who are so indoctrinated in far-left-wing orthodoxy that they’re incapable of looking past their anti-white/anti-conservative biases and paranoia.
It’s ironic. Portland is considered to be a utopia by the left because of its overwhelming abundance of left-wing policies, left-wing residents and left-wing lifestyles.
Yet thanks to the apparent delusions of grandeur boasted by the city’s virulently left-wing populace, it appears the city has transformed into a dystopian nightmare (of their own creation) where “violent homophobes, transphobes and racists lurk[] on every corner.”
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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.
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