Hank Gilbert, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Louie Gohmert in Texas’ 1st congressional district, held a rally in Tyler, Texas, on July 26 against federal law enforcement agencies’ recent intervention in Portland, Oregon. But armed participants of a “Back the Blue” counter-protest crashed the event, beating and robbing attendees in the park. The attack injured a number of rally attendees, including Gilbert’s campaign manager Ryan Miller, resulting in at least two police reports being filed so far.
Supporters of Donald Trump menacing attendees at a rally for Louie Gohmert’s political opponent (YouTube, 7/29/20).
Videos (KETK, 7/26/20; Tyler Morning Telegraph, 7/26/20; YouTube, 7/29/20) from the scene show the majority of counter-protesters wearing Trump attire, with many also carrying American, Confederate and “Thin Blue Line” flags. In images posted to Facebook by Gilbert, one counter-protestor’s “white pride” tattoo is clearly visible. Many can be seen toting military-style rifles. Counter-protestors consistently expressed pro-Gohmert sentiments, at times drowning out Gilbert’s attempts to speak with chants of “Louie.”
But you wouldn’t know any of this from following major media outlets. Since the attack, we could find no major national newspaper or TV outlet coverage of it at all.
Beyond a handful of local stories, the only media attention we found came from two liberal-leaning news sites (Salon, 7/27/20; Talking Points Memo, 7/27/20) and nine sentences at the end of an Associated Press article (7/27/20) on a similar attack two-and-a-half hours west in Weatherford, Texas.
The city of Tyler has made national news twice recently. NPR’s “In East Texas, Death of George Floyd Brings Activism to a Region of Rare Protest” (6/13/20) exposed the country to Tyler’s current political happenings and the long history of white supremacist violence there. The piece described an activist named Blue speaking at a Black Lives Matter event, wearing a bulletproof vest that extended to her knees while addressing threats on her life.
Only weeks later, a protest by student-athlete Trude Lamb against the name of her school, Tyler’s Robert E. Lee High, was featured on CNN (6/24/20). Both articles show that events in Tyler, a small East Texas city, are the results of national events, and also have implications for the rest of the country.
Likewise, armed supporters of a far-right politician holding Confederate flags and attacking people in broad daylight in front of police, in a place like East Texas with a history of white supremacist violence, is an important event with national implications about the growing boldness and militancy of the far right. It is a critical example of the white supremacist violence that has skyrocketed in response to the George Floyd uprisings.
Major media’s silence is also striking in light of Gohmert’s infamy across the country for a number of incidents which include, in the last year alone, being one of the four (out of 414) votes against an anti-lynching bill, outing an impeachment whistleblower on the House floor, drafting a resolution to ban the Democratic Party for its “loathsome and bigoted past,” and, most recently, testing positive for Covid-19 after refusing to wear a mask.
Gohmert supporters’ July 26 armed attack of his opponent’s rally came just three days after Gohmert’s July 23 resolution to ban Democrats, and three days prior to his July 29 Covid-19 diagnosis.
In addition to the lack of national coverage, much of the local coverage of the attack portrayed the events as a “clash” (Dallas News, 7/27/20) or “brawl” (KETK, 7/27), as opposed to the targeted political violence that it was.
Terms like “says” (Houston Chronicle, 7/27/20) and “claims” (CBS19, 6/29/20; KLTV, 6/26/20) are also used to make events that are recorded in readily accessible and verifiable videos seem disputed, murky or complicated.
The Tyler Morning Telegraph (7/27/20) reported that supporters of candidate Hank Gilbert like the one at left “felt they were attacked.”
This was typified by a lead from a piece in the Tyler Morning Telegraph (7/27/20) which read, “A small group of people…felt they were attacked Sunday by a large crowd with Trump signs and shirts.” The reporter who wrote the article was there live-streaming the event as the attack happened (Facebook, 7/26/20—see 16:00); he should be able to confirm whether or not Gilbert’s supporters were attacked. (The header image for the article provides an additional clue, showing one of those supporters being choked by a man in a Trump hat.)
Gohmert himself deploys these same tactics. In a statement to the Morning Telegraph (7/30/20), he says of the attack and the videos, “It is difficult to tell, from what I understand today, who started what.”
Whether this obfuscation comes from Gohmert or reporters, it has the same effect: It creates and deploys a narrative of “both sides” to justify the political violence of one side, and it ignores facts and uses neutered language to cloud who actually perpetrated the violence.
The end result of national media’s neglect and local media’s muddling is the erasure of right-wing political violence, sending a message to would-be future attackers that there will be no consequences for their actions.
Compare this to the reams of corpress castigation and cop cover coming out of Portland et alia.
“Corpress castigation”? My aren’t we pretentious! We don’t see much about the actions of white supremacists attempting to look like protesters starting fires, breaking windows, and instigating violence against the police. I wonder why that is?
Indeed. And the rightwing snowflakes still like cry about how the media is biased against THEM. So silly.
As a story, it seems rather insignificant. Nobody died. Feelings got hurt. It’s Texas being Texas.
Um… What? Can’t tell if satire or stupid. But obviously, as you can see in the picture, it went well-beyond hurt feelings, and was certainly more newsworthy than most of the other junkfood journalism the media frequently spews forth.
This is a local story. In my locality we’ve had similar things happen between pro-police and anti-police activists. Most of the time I learn about it through social media. Local news often picks up the story from there, if it does. The left/right slant often goes according to the locality and the news organization. It’s not surprising that local east Texas news has a right-wing slant.
To make this a significant story, it would require aggregating a bunch of these instances of local violence into some sort of cohesive narrative. That would be newsworthy. It seems like something a Fair contributor could do.
This piece is just a local person ranting about a local problem.
Um, the point is that this same locality has been in the national news 2 times recently, for different, but similar political issues, yet, for some reason, Gohmert’s supporters actually physically assaulting people around these same political themes isn’t worth reporting.
So why did a town already in the news, suddenly not become news-worthy? Seems like it has something to do with Press continuing to ignore white supremacist violence, because if this were BLM protesters, everyone would have been there reporting on it.
Exactly.
LOL, by your logic all protest stories are “local”, and so are also undeserving of national attention…regardless of how many of them might be occurring at any one time. You’re disingenuously treating right-wing incidents of violence in East Texas as if they’re somehow isolated, despite the fact it’s occurring with increasing frequency nationwide, yet apparently doing mental gymnastics to justify the overwhelmingly negative media portrayal left-wing protesters. Doesn’t seem like something a reasonable mind would do…
I agree with the author that the wielding of firearms at protests is disturbing. Is this how the Weimar Republic started before it devolved into regular armed clashes between brown shirts and communists? Do we have to wait until some gun-nut goes off and shoots/kills 10 or 15 people at a protest before weapons at protests are prohibited?
“I agree with the author that the wielding of firearms at protests is disturbing.” I can only assume that Eddie posted the same thing when blacks showed up with guns at the “peaceful protests.” You know, the same protests where people were killed, stores looted or burned, cops hospitalized, etc.
I do not condone violence or theft , from either side (though only one side seems to loot). I don’t have a problem with guns (either side), though I wouldn’t bring one.
If somebody was hurt, this would have made national news. The violence right now seems to be coming from the left.
There is a picture of a trump supporter choking someone
I certainly don’t condone choking. Was the person hurt? Was the man who was choking arrested (he should have been)? Did you post about condemning ALL of that violence from BLM supporters?
Wow, that’s some pathetic whitewashing you’re doing there.
FAIR is usually right on point in its characterizations but in this instance, you & Mr. Brannon failed. This was not an instance of right-wing ‘militancy’ or ‘aggression’. This was an example of overt fascist voter intimidation exactly equivalent to the carried out by Eric Rohm’s ‘Brownshirts’ (the S.A.) on behalf of the Nazi Party to intimidate & suppress any opposition to Hitler & the Nazi Party. This event (and I suspect there are more like it around the nation) marks the descent of our political process into chaos. Failure to call it by it’s name “Fascism” is to smooth over the unacceptable reality of what’s really going on. Wiemar much?
In the past, I’ve held off describing Trump as a classic fascist due to the lack of para-military support groups. While not yet organized (that we are aware of) to the level of some historical fascists , they are fast approaching that level. The NAZI S.A. didn’t start out as a model of organization, for that matter.
This incident happened a little over an hour’s drive from my home, yet this report is the first I’ve heard of it. Now that I have had a little time to check some local media, I am shocked at how dismissive they are of the incident. Here we have a candidate for U.S. Congress – from a major U.S. political party – having his support rally physically attacked by an orchestrated group of heavily armed thugs, some in uniform, others in quasi-uniforms. Many were heavily armed with high power weapons.
There is no “two sides to the story” here. What we are seeing is 100% pure, unadulterated fascism at work. The entire episode should be banner headlines from coast to coast, as it is a bellwether event. Instead, the American press, even the local press – perhaps especially the local press – is afraid of its own shadow.
D’accord…
FAIR is usually right on point in its characterizations but in this instance, you & Mr. Brannon failed. This was not an instance of right-wing ‘militancy’ or ‘aggression’. This was an example of overt fascist voter intimidation exactly equivalent to the carried out by Eric Rohm’s ‘Brownshirts’ (the S.A.) on behalf of the Nazi Party to intimidate & suppress any opposition to Hitler & the Nazi Party. This event (and I suspect there are more like it around the nation) marks the descent of our political process into chaos. Failure to call it by it’s name “Fascism” is to smooth over the unacceptable reality of what’s really going on. Weimar much?
I can’t wait for the coming civil war to begin.
Carson City Nevada had huge number of heavily armed right wingers pushing around a small group of BLM demonstrators. Nevada City CA had a similar incident but well reported and addressed by government.