A few things about the "Antifa Honeypot" being censored off the web
You probably didn't see the news today, because this is yet another vast censorship apparatus in operation, but it actually illuminates a lot about radical liberalism in Portland
A friend texted me today to wish me a happy Veterans Day and asked if I had reviewed “the new Antifa Dox.” I have a strong predilection for studying political extremists groups of all variety and a bit overjoyed to get the opportunity to learn more. I’ve been deeply investigating radical and extremist groups for almost 15 years now including first hand surveilling these groups out of my own personal interest in understanding their dynamics. My studies in this regard have looked at both the extremist right and left wing movements, including the more benign socialists to actual communist revolutionaries, to white supremacists, fascist organizations, secessionist groups, and just kind of anyone who has really crazy ideas I find interesting to study.
So, an “Antifa Dox” is a welcome surprise and curiosity to me. Though, this has been an incredibly difficult journey to go down and find the actual documents. There’s a level of censorship behind the spread of this file far more vast than what happened with Hunter Biden’s laptop and the New York Post being suspended on Twitter. With no surprise at all, the Twitter account announcing this file was suspended quickly, however then the additional file hosts (outside of Twitter) were taken down by unknown parties. Mega.nz, the file hosting/pirating website run by the notorious Kim Dot-Com, also reacted surprisingly quickly to censor the files. Even PasteBin censored the files quickly. The generic image hosts censored the files. Even 4Chan, yes, 4Chan, is allegedly censoring this. The only places I could track down any sort of rudimentary discussions of this file was on a gun forum.
With the speed in which these files have been cenosored, it’s made me truly wonder if FBI, DHS, or NSA has a hand in actually removing these documents. There’s potential reasons for this, including that one or many of their assets/informants have been named and they have security concerns, or that the Feds are concerned that a foreign entity might exploit this information, such as blackmailing people the documents. I don’t know, I just know that it’s fucking weird to see Mega, PasteBin, 4Chan, and Twitter all aligned on what can’t be shared. The only other hypothetical reason these groups would agree on is if they believe there’s child exploitation within this content. In part, the files I recieved do “dox” a minor insofar as naming them and essentially asking “Where’s the parents while this kid is being indoctrinated?”
Censorship aside, what’s in the data dump isn’t what you’re thinking.
I’ve only been able to track down and review one portion of the original files and “investigation” by the person who authored it. Once you open the introductory PDF you’ll find an explanation:
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to track down the high-resolution social network analysis map generated by these researchers (if you found it, please leave a comment).
The actual content of this document and the subsequent information contained in the zip file is amateurish at best. It’s a disorganized catalog of pictures that isn’t any more useful to an investigator than mug shots and finding people on Facebook.
Importantly, most of these people are not core “antifa” organizers, but just activists who show up to some or most of the events of the radical liberal events.
In addition, very importantly, the people identified in the documents are from an “investigation” caried out in 2018/2019, and are not all the same group of activists responsible for the George Floyd protests, BLM protests, and other large protests happening in 2020. Most of the people in this “doxing” are in people who were involved casually or overtly in protests last year and the year prior.
The current round of protests/riots in 2020 are being spearheaded by a different subsection of the radical community. Most notably the long riots over the summer were largely affiliated with the same group who organized the Occupy ICE protests in 2018, and working largely with the Don’t Shoot PDX leadership, and a handful of grassroots leaders from Portland’s black community. The protests throughout 2020 in Portland have gone through many iterations of leadership. In truth, there really hasn’t been any sort of “organization” behind the 2020 riots in Portland, just a surprisingly small handful of people who are very easy to identify based on their social media and writing patterns. There’s been a more profound and noticeable lack of leadership in the 2020 protests.
Portland’s radical community is very small, and so no surprise there’s a lot of overlap and it can be difficult to tell these groups apart. But within these small groups there’s very different and competing ideological movements that do not go well with each other. Just as a short list you’ve got extremely different camps of people:
3 different flavors of Communists, everything from “Stalin was totally right” to “Stain was a traitor to Marx’s ideas” to “What we really need to emulate is Communist China.”
Anarcho-syndicalist, who are essentially a different flavor communism, but more of a “libertarian” communism and are Wobblies, basically.
3-5 flavors of Socialists who have complex different ideas on private property, private businesses, the role of government - and all of these Socialist groups largely disagree with eachother.
Anarcho-primitivists who believe we should abolish the industrial revolution and live in a pre-industrial society kind of like a libertarian version of Amish…but ya’ know, with like happy Gay couples and stuff.
“Antifacists” and “Black Bloc” who really don’t have any sort of economics or public policy concepts
Crust Punks who smell like vomit, are addicted to drugs, and beg for change outside of 7-11, but with signs saying things like “Fuck Nazis” and “Overthrow Capitalism”
Secessionists of at least 2 or 3 varieties who believe in various reasons to overthrow the government in Washington DC but all have very different plans of what can/should happen afterwards.
Environmentalists of at least 10 varieties, in a long spectrum of political thought from advocating violence against anyone who uses oil, to more sober varieties of people that just want to use less plastic, and then this cult of apocalyptic worshipers who believe their fear of Climate Change justifies any radical action under the sun.
Identity politics based groups - far too numerous to speculate on the quantity - but importantly you’ve got some groups focused on skin color, others focused gender, and others groups/ideologies focused on sexuality. Then add in Intersectionality and you’ve got an infinite layer of idiocracy. While outsiders pretend the LGBTQIA+++++ movement is unified community, there is actually competing ideologies in this space, with most of these groups denouncing others and attacking their own allies.
Mainstream home-owning Progressives like Bernie Sanders voters who flagellate themselves over White Guilt.
Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers who don’t know what to do other than to express anger.
Then there’s the "Pretender” progressive who got “Woke” reading some Hillary Clinton biography and has no idea about all of these different levels of political extremism and deep ideologies they’re surrounded by. Ultimately they’re going to ask some bullshit question to a bunch of anarchists like, “Why don’t we just vote Democrat, guys?”
I write all of this to say that the “Radical Left” of Portland is not simply Antifa. “Antifa” as a concept is largely invention of the media. The actual groups like Rose City Antifa more resemble citizen activist journalism trying to “out” political opposition then they are a protest-focused organization. Portland’s radical left is actually divided into these little camps of people. The image below is allegedly the real social networking analysis map of Portland radicals based upon social media:
Within these little camps of people there’s a lot going on. First you have to understand that there’s actually a hilariously large amount of toxic people, backstabbing, predators, psychotic people, mental illness, dysfunctional rejects, police informants, obstructionists, idealists, and when you parse out all of those useless people you’re left with an incredibly tiny group of competent and smart people (these are probably the connectors/hubs). When you deal with any group of political extremists you’ll find that most of these people are very disconnected from rational thought and the common sensibilities of most people. Afterall, this is why they’re extremists.
There is that small group of competent and smart people though, and very often these people are the actual Organizers of these events/protests/movements. To be an effective Community Organizer or event host you need to posses a level of rationality, competency, and commitment that is usually beyond the standard activist. It takes a shitload of time, energy, and planning to put together an effective event that people want to come back to.
I’m not surprised to see images like this that depict a small group of people at the center of Portland’s radical movement, and the alleged 8,000+ activists.
When you look at political movements you have to consider there’s different types of actors, broadly speaking there’s:
Disorganized Supporters - People who are not apart of a group but do support a movement or cause, i.e., people who would argue about it at the dinner table, maybe retweet something, but they don’t actually DO anything.
Organized Supporters - People who support a movement and take actions such as donate money and go to events
Violent Actors - The extremists component, often so far out of touch with reality that they’ve sunken into conspiracy theories and blame their own allies and people within their movement for the failures
Actual Organizers - The rare lifeblood of movements. This is the people who put time and energy into events, strategy, and organization.
I’ve contended in the past that there’s some approximate ratio between the various actors that exist in political movements. For example, the ratio between Disorganized Supporters and Organized Supporters is approximately 10:1 or 20:1 or 100:1. The ratio between Organized Supporters and Organizers is somewhere between 50:1 or 100:1 and in some movements 200:1. Armed with this information you can make some educated guesses about how many organizers and supporters are really involved when you see “popular movements” through media. If 200 people show up to a political event, it’s very likely that there’s between 1 and 4 organizers working together to make that event happen. In addition, if 200 people showed up there’s likely 10x, 20x, or 100x the number of people at home who actually support that movement.
Key takeaway from this “dox” isn’t names. It’s pathetic operational security and a lack of commitment from many of these activists to take your stupid political movement seriously.
A couple years ago I was to talking to one of Portland’s most recognized and respected political activists and I was trying to get ideas from him on a political action I was helping organize. I informed this person that the young people I was working with wanted to organize this event on Facebook and Reddit and he replied to me:
“Don’t these activists know that Facebook is the enemy?”
No, they didn’t know that. A shitload of activists who think that they’re doing “revolutionary” activities are posting on fucking Twitter and Facebook. They’re bringing their goddamn cell phone to the protest and connecting to strange WiFi, then logging into their own social media. Any rational person should recognize the huge security problem. The security apparatus of our society is indistinguishable from Facebook & Twitter, they are the same thing, including here in Oregon it’s a primary tool of “counter-terrorism” investigators who harass liberals. But again, these people aren’t rational. Many of these groups are just a walking mob of mental illness.
It’s examples like this where I have a really hard time taking serious the hypothetical terrorism threats from the left-wing or Portland’s radicals. These people are overwhelmingly fucking morons - like the type of moron who would go yell “Fuck the police” while the digital tracker in their pocket is stil actively broadcasting. Dumb people can be very dangerous, especially when they’re in mobs, but when dumb people organize things you get dumb results, like CHAZ/CHOP. What happened at CHAZ/CHOP was the second dumbest culmination of an ideology that I’ve seen in my whole life - the first dumbest thing is that these useful idiots still cling to this idea as if it will work next time. Occupy Portland failed, Occupy ICE (in Portland) failed, CHAZ/CHOP failed, Occupying outside the Mayor’s apartment failed, other attempts to Occupy in Seattle have failed…..but maybe….just maybe…. the next time we do this it will bring down Capitalism. Comrades, the real thing we need to do is have stricter adherence to our ideology, and more racial, gender, and sexual diversity. That will bring down Capitalism, for sure. I’ll hit up Twitter/Facebook and let everyone know the plan. Make sure you Venmo me if you support overthrowing Capitalism, thx bb <3 <3
"“Antifa” as a concept is largely invention of the media." Bingo!
Do you still need the image file?