Even on the road in Texas, Patriot Prayer draws extremists to its 'free speech' event
'March For Trump' in Austin features Northwest 'Patriot' Joey Gibson, but thin crowds accompany the usual lurking far-right elements.
Faced with declining crowd sizes on his home turf in the Northwest, 鈥淧atriot Prayer鈥 leader Joey Gibson took his far-right 鈥渇ree speech rally鈥 act on the road Saturday, all the way to Texas. However, it was not the solution to his problem.
A crowd turned out Saturday in downtown Austin to participate in a 鈥淢arch 4听Trump,鈥 ending with a gathering on the steps of the state Capitol while a procession of speakers 鈥攊ncluding Gibson, as well as an unintentionally comedic pair of 鈥渕illennial conservatives鈥 鈥斕齢eld forth.
They encountered a steady stream of small groups of counter-protesters, including some black-clad 鈥渁ntifascists鈥 who were kept separated from the rallygoers by police barricades. And joining the marchers鈥 ranks, as at most Patriot Prayer events organized on the West Coast, were a number of identifiable white nationalists and neo-Confederate groups. Some waved Confederate flags.Along the way, someone was also handing out flyers for the explicitly neo-Nazi organization Patriot Front to rally observers.
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The pro-Trump rally on the Capitol steps wound up with a smattering of listeners, including reporters from Infowars (who breathlessly reported on the march every step of the way, seemingly in hopes of spotting left-wing violence) and Tusitala 鈥淭iny鈥 Toese, a fixture at Patriot Prayer events who spoke to an Infowars reporter and said he was there 鈥渓ooking for antifa.鈥
Gibson 鈥斕齱ho to run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican in Washington state 鈥斕齮ried out his latest avenue of appeal on the Austin audience: Namely, calling for a 鈥渟econd revolution鈥 that recruits dissatisfied citizens from the left as well as right.
As has been the case in recent events, Gibson鈥檚 speech was more incoherent than invigorating, drawing only a smattering of applause, except for those moments when he unabashedly expressed his contempt for 鈥渓iberals鈥 and 鈥淪JWs.鈥 But then he followed that by saying: 鈥淲e in this revolution, we gotta take this revolution to the next level. We don鈥檛 wanna have to pull out our guns. But in order to take it to the next level, we gotta reach out to the left. We have so many moderate Democrats who think they鈥檙e Democrats but they鈥檙e not. The Democrat Party has gone so far left, they have lost their mind.鈥
Far more popular with the crowd were Haley Adams and Ashton Whitty, two young 鈥渃onservative millennials鈥 from Berkeley, California, who had traveled to Austin to participate. They finished the day鈥檚 speaking events with a roaring attack on feminists, which was nearly derailed mid-speech when a tiff nearly erupted over the cell phone that Adams wound up reading from.
But according to Whitty, the problem they saw for their generation extended beyond feminists:
It isn鈥檛 just women. It is the black communities. It is the Mexican immigrants. The same people that are using 鈥 ironically enough, most of those antifa kids are white 鈥 the reality is, they are trying to use these groups against us. They are putting us in smaller boxes to make us feel weaker, making us easier to control. And millennials are one of those boxes. The only difference with millennials is that they are your voters. They are the future. And if you want to keep this country intact, with every right under the Bill of Rights, teach your children.
Adams wrapped it up with one of her favorite lines: 鈥淲omen, it鈥檚 time to get back into the kitchen! Where you belong!鈥
Afterward, Whitty slyly directed a wink-and-nod at the fascist Patriot Front flyers by posting 听鈥斕齱hile holding one of the flyers in her hand, just along the edge of the camera鈥檚 view for everyone to see. When she was , she doing any such thing and protested both her innocence and that of the rally organizers.
鈥淭he most fake of fake news!鈥 she wrote. 鈥淭his was for a march in Austin with Texans United for America, not only one of the most diverse groups I鈥檝e ever met, but a group that has disavowed the Vangaurd [sic] multiple times.鈥