“I think he is looking for an image, an optic that projects the image that he is trying to retain,” said Seth Mandel, executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine. “‘Law and order’, as he says”.
Meanwhile, there is another image of Portland that has emerged outside of Trump’s echo chamber. Local Portland media, as well as most news organizations, have shown a scene featuring mostly peaceful, albeit vocal, protesters occupying some square blocks, spraying graffiti, and setting fires on fire. But the main debate has been over the right of unmarked federal officials to enter the city, fire tear gas at unarmed protesters, and throw protesters in unmarked vehicles without formal arrest. In short, they say, it is the America that Trump has created.
It is the last split-screen reality of the past four years.
And it’s the culmination of years of narrative building by the Republican Party, said Jared Holt, a reporter for Right Wing Watch, a nonprofit organization that tracks conservative media and far-right groups.
“These kinds of messages have been going on for years, either in Berkeley or on the streets of New York City,” he said. “The instances in which we see anarchist or anti-fascist protesters taking to the streets to oppose what they believe to be intolerant or fascist political movements or actors have been spun and regurgitated before the right-wing public as an imminent threat against any supporter or conservative from Trump, who loves the country. “
And Trump is trying to use that division to his advantage.
Over the past month, as jobless claims have risen again, new hotspots for coronavirus and Biden emerged pulled later In polls, Trump has resorted to several different culture war issues to shake up his base.
He has called the Black Lives Matter movement “A symbol of hatred” it focused intensely on the protesters who defaced and demolished the statues and repeatedly called for the amorphous concept of “antifa” to be classified as a national terrorist group despite not having clear authority to do so. She tried to portray the Seattle Capitol Autonomous Zone, a six-block area outclassed by anti-police activists, as a breeding ground for mass anti-mass violence, only to see it dismantled without much incident by local officials.
In his description of Portland and other cities, Trump also joins a long-standing attempt to demonize American cities as lawless wells, from tweeting about “sanctuary cities” invaded by immigrants and threatening send undocumented immigrants to San Francisco, to their Claim That homelessness only started two years ago because of the “liberal mayors” who run these cities.
“We can intercede,” Trump told Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson in 2019. “We can do something to clean all of that up.”
The recent escalation of protests has only fueled the right to portray city leaders as complicit in antifa or unable to resist violence.
And Portland has become the perfect setting. While the city’s protests had lessened before Trump sent federal troops, the region already had a reputation in conservative circles as a focus of anti-violence, mainly due to the presence of far-right militia groups protesting there. over the years, and media coverage of his subsequent confrontations with left-wing protesters and anti -ifa groups.
The 2019 assault by conservative journalist and Quillette writer Andy Ngo presented Portland’s narrative to a broader conservative audience, Holt said.
“All of this bait of fury coming out of Portland, causing the right-wing public to get excited and go crazy about antifa – we are now at a tipping point in the equation where the Trump administration is using government force to get involved in this kind of outrage cycle. “
Alexander Reid Ross, an adjunct professor at Portland State University and author of “Against the Fascist Creep,” added that Trump’s intercession was seen on the ground as an escalation. In particular, federal officials reminded locals of far-right militias, such as Patriot Prayer, who had previously descended on the city.
“At this point, people are just looking at that and saying, this is just Patriot Prayer with an appearance of legitimacy,” said Ross. “So even though they wear badges and wear camouflage uniforms, they still look like militias.”
Meanwhile, Trump has portrayed the interventions as just an offer to restore order.
“We want to go in and help the cities, we want to help Chicago, we want to help them all,” Trump told Sean Hannity. on Fox News recently. “We will go to all the cities, any of the cities. We will put 50,000, 60,000 people who really know what they are doing. And they are strong, resilient, and we can solve these problems so quickly. But as you know, we have to be invited in. “
