Joe Flood

While it ended very badly indeed, 2024 did have its pleasurable, or at least, memorable, moments. Photos, fuckery and more – this was my best of 2024.

Photos

Early in the year, we had one of those blink and you’ll miss it DC snowstorms, little more than a dusting that rapidly melted but not before I got the dramatic photo of the sunset above. It was one of those lovely off-season moments, too cold for tourists, when it feels like you have the city to yourself. Like most of my photos, it was shot with an iPhone.

I was brought back to reality by January 6th. A dozen insurrectionist supporters from the J6 vigil outside the DC Jail (the Chuds of Freedom Corner) marched in the freezing rain, shouting their demands for freedom for the men who attacked the Capitol.

With my Canon Rebel SL2 (an ancient by digital standards camera), I captured Patricia Eguino aka “The Commish” in full death metal rage. “Traitors!” she yelled as the J6 supporters rallied on Pennsylvania Avenue. Eguino followed the insurrectionist losers as they trudged around the Capitol, heckling them all the way.

Later in the year, I got a photo of another powerful woman who has been a scourge of the right: Anarchy Princess.

After becoming famous for trolling Trump advisor Peter Navarro, she combined activism and reporting as she covered the J6 trials, the Presidential campaign and other events in DC and elsewhere.

I like this portrait of her because she’s set up to livestream and is sitting next to a really interesting work of public art: the Golden Spike by HYBYCOZO in Dupont Circle.

Bad weather makes dramatic photos. After a thunderstorm in July, I rushed down to catch the surreal golden light at the Washington Monument. This was taken with a Canon EOS RP, a mirrorless camera.

There were lots of student-led protests against the war on Gaza this year, including the occupation of the University Yard at George Washington University. One of the most dramatic moments I witnessed was outside the White House Correspondents Dinner, where people protesting genocide confronted members of the media.

DC isn’t all politics. One of the most interesting things I saw all year was Dvorak Dreams at the Kennedy Center, an outdoor video display on massive screens that paired music and flowing imagery,

My ability to quickly get around the city and take photos is only possible due to the bike.  I am Red Bike Guy so I used Capital Bikeshare a lot but also spent a lot of time on my Brilliant Cooper, which I like because it uses a belt instead of a chain (no maintenance required).

Fuckery

We love fuckery.
– Anarchy Princess

Trump cultists love to dox people. It’s what the right does.

Doxxing means that they will flood your social channels with threats and try to get you fired from your job. They target not just you, but anyone connected to you, including your family.

The chuds of Freedom Corner threatened to dox my friend Biketifa, an “agitator” who angered them with his mocking posters on a dumpster outside their vigil.

With my help of myself and Anarchy Princess, we decided to get ahead of the story. She interviewed him on YouTube and I wrote a profile in Biketifa Exposed.

Now it can be told: not everything in my article is true. I planted half-truths and lies to send the chuds off-course as they tried to find out his employer and spouse. And it worked! We watched them conspiring on Twitter as they went down rabbit holes in the wrong direction.

As AP stated: We love fuckery. It was not the only bit of misinformation I created to disrupt the insurrectionists. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

And Biketifa turned his trolling into an art exhibit at Artomatic, the massive temporary art show in downtown DC.  His posters mocking the chuds went from the side of a dumpster to being framed and sold to collectors.

Early in the year, I wrote a lot about the Take Our Border Back Convoy because it was so much damn fun.

This was quite a con, a convoy that raised money with the aim of putting bodies on the border to stop immigration. Instead, it was a live-streamed farce as a parade of personal vehicles broke traffic laws in multiple states before reaching a compound that was near the Texas border, but not on it. Participants were fleeced of their money and baptized in a horse trough.

And I continued to cover the ongoing failure of Freedom Corner, including how they inadvertently ensure that J6ers get longer sentences, lie about their violent activities, are unable to attract a crowd and continue to get even weirder in their cult-like devotion to Trump.

There was also a moment of justice, as Freedom Corner attendee Steven Girard was found guilty for assaulting Anarchy Princess. This was a fascinating lesson on the use and abuse of the legal system, as Girard delayed proceedings for a year before ultimately being forced into a court room.

How I Became Red Bike Guy

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
– Steve Jobs

In 2024, I published How I Became Red Bike Guy, a memoir of the Trump years in DC and my fifteen minutes of fame for mocking the Patriot Front.

It was a book that I tried writing multiple ways. During our chaotic times, I had written blog posts, articles and much more – how could I put them together into a book?

Becoming Red Bike Guy gave me the ability to bring these disparate experiences into a coherent narrative. It was what gave those moments meaning.

The experience of watching a Trump mob march down your street on the way to sack the Capitol – that changes you. As does photographing years of demonstrations in the nation’s capital.

My rage at seeing DC attacked on January 6th and the experience of watching the trolling and fuckery of the Freedom Corner chuds made me the person to mock the Patriot Front. Biking, photography, humor – the dots connected. I am Red Bike Guy.

What Is Next?

I won’t make any predictions because I’ve been consistently wrong about well, everything, since 2016. Sadly, I overestimated my country’s commitment to democracy and basic sanity.

Anything is possible.

Contemplating 2025, all I can think is:

Being dumped by George Santos was a fitting end to a very bad, no good day for the chuds of Freedom Corner.

The nightly insurrectionist vigil outside the DC Jail has struggled to attract attention from politicians or members of the press. Where, they moan, is the Gateway Pundit or Tucker Carlson? The only TV crews who drop by the corner are the Europeans, who love to film the American freakshow for their snickering, continental audiences.

So, when disgraced former Congressman George Santos announced that he was now on their side, it generated real excitement. He starred in one of the most chaotic moments of Freedom Corner history when he dropped by the corner when he was still in Congress.

Now, he believed in their cause. Pardons for all!

So I’ve had a change of heart…

Pardon all J6 political prisoners on day one… NO exceptions!

This week on the 5th I will be visiting freedom corner in DC!

💪🏼🇺🇸

— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) December 3, 2024

Perhaps he suddenly understands the plight of prisoners because he is soon to be one. Santos gets sentenced next month for wire fraud and identity theft.

Santos went to DC. He attended a Christmas party at the Capitol. But he did not make it to Freedom Corner, despite his promise.

It was another failure, for a movement that specializes in it.

Earlier in the day, Guy Reffitt was resentenced. I’ll spare you the technicalities but it was an opportunity to see his sentence reduced. The chuds, ignorant of the law and drunk on the hopium of their QAanon news universe, believed, absurdly, that the judge would reduce his 87-month sentence to zero. He would be home for Christmas.

Any chance Reffitt had for a significant reduction was negated by his behavior. Appearing before Judge Dabney Friedrich, he launched into an obscenity-laden tirade. He did this in front of his family, who were removed from the courtroom, and his chud supporters, who flounced out. One of the chuds said that the judge was “mean” and that she had said a lot of things that were hard to hear, i.e., the truth.

After resentencing, Reffitt received 80 months instead of 87.

Anarchy Princess was there, too. Watch her report if you want to know what it was like in the courtroom on a day of high drama:

The hits kept coming. Also sentenced on Friday was Philip Grillo, who received one year and was taken into custody immediately – a highly unusual move.

Gabriel Garcia was also at the US Court House. The chuds are big mad that this J6er has been ordered to report to prison before Trump’s inauguration (and expected pardon).

The wheels of justice grind on – that is what angers January 6th supporters the most. They believe that the legal system should just let everyone go now. On the nightly calls to Freedom Corner, convicted prisoners fantasize about being released on January 20th and having front row seats at the inauguration.

The fact that the judges and juries stay true to their duties, not yet perverted by fascism, has sent them into fits of rage. Trump won so why even have these trials, they believe, thinking that they’re special people who are allowed to attack police officers and walk free.

At the end of their very bad, no good day, they let the frustration out by threatening a “reckoning” for Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has presided over many J6 trials.

Just Jenn Baker threatening federal judges by name.. ya know, normal stuff #FreedomCorner #reckoning #PrayerVigil #creepy pic.twitter.com/Hah3uW3ZV5

— Conald Rump (@realConaldRump) December 7, 2024

Later, Guy Reffitt’s wife, Nicole, made a threat of her own:

Drunk nicole reffit threats DOJ with an incendiary device 👀 @FBIWFO @FBI #maga #cult #freedomcorner pic.twitter.com/met2HYQWY8

— B$$$ (@Bossmoney8444) December 7, 2024

It was Nicole’s birthday too. She celebrated with a cake on a dead-end street next to a cemetery on a bitterly cold night. These are the rewards of being a MAGA celebrity.

And, as the hour grew late, it dawned upon the chuds that George Santos was not coming. He had ditched them. Santos knows a loser when he sees one.

After the election, I went to a graveyard.

The occasion was the birthday of John Philip Sousa, the legendary “march king” who composed the official march of the Marine Corps and other rousing, patriotic tunes.

He is buried at Congressional Cemetery and every year they celebrate his life with a program and a concert.

A John Phillip Sousa impersonator told some corny anecdotes about Sousa and his band (“Madame, please lower your hem and raise your C”) and then the Marine Corps Band marched into the cemetery, horns and drums playing in a tub-thumping beat.

I was leaning against a gravestone as I watched this. Congressional Cemetery is a “living” cemetery that encourages visits. Kids and families were sprawled among the marble tributes to long-dead politicians.

The band, known as the President’s Own, stopped at the grave of John Philip Sousa, and launched into “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

You’ll recognize the tune if you’ve ever watched the July 4th fireworks in Washington, DC. It’s played at the finale.

Some in the crowd at the cemetery stood and placed their hands over their hearts.

I’ve been reading a lot of history lately, including the very lengthy but fascinating Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, which is history from a Native American perspective, with Native nations as protagonists and colonialists as “the other.”

Watching the Marines perform in blood-red uniforms, I was reminded that this patriotic tune would be heard quite differently from victims of American power.

These same Marines will perform at the inauguation of Donald Trump in January.

Owning the Libs

Later in the week, I was in Georgetown, walking behind a couple of young women. They were mocking their classmates for being upset by the election results.

“Oh no, I’ve lost all my rights,” one of them said, laughing.

They don’t have the rights to control their bodies that their mothers and grandmothers did; a source of amusement to them.

After the election, someone on Twitter said that he had voted for Trump since I referred to his supporters as “chuds.”

Well.

Congratulations, you threw away democracy to own the libs. I hope it was worth it.

Into the Memory Hole

I watched a lot of TikTok videos. The common theme, particularly among young white people, was that Trump didn’t do terrible things last time, so why would he this time?

This ignores two major facts:

1. He did do terrible things, like the Muslim Ban, putting kids in cages and inspiring the January 6th attack on the Capitol. A whole year of death and horror – 2020- has been placed in the memory hole, a passage of time that Americans never discuss as if under mutual agreement.
2. Democrats stopped him from completing his most horrible tasks, like putting his enemies in camps, surrendering Ukraine to Putin and abolishing the Department of Education.

Those guardrails are now gone. The Supreme Court eliminated our system of checks and balances by making the President a king.

Welcome to the Find Out Part

The mass delusion is astonishing, millions of people who think that the leopards won’t eat their faces.

I watched a news story about a Latino family who voted for Trump. This family had relatives who were undocumented yet, they naively believed that the INS wouldn’t deport them because they were good people who held jobs.

LOL.

An INS agent with a quota to fill won’t care. It will be a lot easier to find the “good” illegals because they’ll have homes and workplaces that can be raided.

Prison stocks are up. An American gulag archipelago will soon be constructed, filled with “good” immigrants. And a lot of companies will grow rich with government contracts.

Because we live in an oligarchy now. Musk, Thiel, Bezos and others have captured our democracy with doddering Trump at the helm, a useful idiot.

After the election, the chuds of Freedom Corner celebrated, dancing on the dead end street between the DC Jail and Congressional Cemetery.

Trump said he would pardon the J6ers with a typically meandering and vague promise.

Prisoners held in the jail called in to the corner and described how they would be walking out of the jail on January 20th. Some even fantasized about attending the inauguration. Imagine that: J6 criminals at the Capitol that they attacked.

But who will actually be freed? The J6ers can’t even agree among themselves who should get a pardon. All J6ers? Just the non-violent ones? What about the ones who are Nazis, child molesters and murderers? Should they go free? What about the ones that J6ers think are snitches or antifa?

I think that they will be disappointed. This is a government by and for the rich now. The J6ers are cannon fodder.

The Find Out phase will be brutal, as Trump voters discover that he wasn’t serious about lowering prices but he was serious about a nationwide abortion ban, deporting even the “good” immigrants and prison camps for anyone who speaks out.

Wonderland Ballroom

It was a very long week. One looked for hope anywhere you could find it.

I met friends at Wonderland Ballroom, which is not a ballroom, but a dive bar (by DC standards) in Columbia Heights. Located on a corner, with outdoor tables, it’s a good spot to sit and have a beer as the city streams by on bikes, scooters, cars and busses. There’s even a soccer field across the street. A lot to watch as your mind goes blank.

Trump voters deserve the consequences of their decision. Let them Find Out as family members get deported, OB-GYNs stop practicing in their communities and tariffs make everything much more expensive. It’s the only way they will learn.

We will be fine.

Located in the blue dot of DC, we won’t experience the horrors that will soon impact the rest of country. There is work that we can do, on the local level, to keep friends and families safe. We will retreat, retrench and wait for a better day.

Go to one of Donald Trump’s rallies. He talks about Hannibal Lecter, windmills causing cancer—and you will even notice people leaving early out of boredom.

The one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.

Kamala Harris, 9/10/24

With the media desperate to sane-wash Trump, it was smart for Kamala Harris to encourage people to watch one of the Orange One’s rallies of batshit insanity and flailing, incipient fascism.

Don’t read the quotes in the newspaper that editors clean up and turn into sane, coherent sentences. Instead, watch for yourself on YouTube, and try to make sense of the incoherent ramblings dished out by Trump to an audience of slavering cultists.

Kamala invited a comparison: a normal, kind person versus a delusional wannabe tyrant.

But, for newbies, encountering the unfiltered Trump world can be shocking. From chemtrail conspiracies to chugging raw milk, you have no idea how crazy some of your fellow Americans have become.

Those of us who have been watching “the chuds” as we call Trump supporters, can be a guide. We know the d-list celebrities, bizarre theories and cult-like language employed by Trump and his followers.

I’ve been watching for years. There’s a whole group of us online who monitor a rump offshoot of the cult called Freedom Corner in Washington, DC, which demands freedom for January 6th rioters and the hanging of Nancy Pelosi.

Every night, they chant the name of Ashli Babbitt, read out a list of insurrectionists with the benediction of “hero” and swear allegiance to Donald Trump.

The things I have seen on their livestreams! George Santos posing for selfies. Megaphone wars with counterprotestors. Cult members arrested for assault. Bizarre song and dance numbers. Arguments with the police. Hidden bottles of wine. Cardboard forts. Chalktifa.

It’s been a wild ride, with so many hard-to-believe moments that I created a glossary to keep track of the people, places and things of the chudoverse.

I’ve also watched plenty of his rallies, for many of the DC-area chuds attend them and livestream from the audience. (The dirty secret of Trump events is that he’s not attracting new followers but just getting the same olds again and again.)

But for newbies, watching a Trump rally, like his recent salute to fascism in Madison Square Garden, can be disorienting, like being thrown into an insane asylum where all the inmates think that you’re the crazy one.

Here are four tips to watch a Trump rally without losing your mind:

1. Watch on YouTube. Do not watch live on TV. You need the ability to pause and rewind (did I just hear that?), as well as being able to fast-forward through the hours of dead air and filler that comprise these poorly-managed affairs.
2. Take breaks. Crazytown is addictive. Once you’ve seen Trump swaying on stage to YMCA and Ava Maria, his brain an empty shell, with hundreds of people following along in a Pennsylvania gymnasium as if this is perfectly normal, it can be hard to pull away.
3. Be careful with RSBN. You can find Trump rallies on many platforms but the most dangerous is the Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), which makes North Korean state media look subtle. This YouTube channel is for people who think Fox is too liberal.  They fill the breaks and dead air during Trump rallies with commentators praising their god-king interspersed with ads for coronavirus cures and MAGA coins.
4. Let someone else do the work for you. The best/worst parts of any Trump rally are quickly clipped and shared online. You do not have to watch the whole thing or even watch it live. Follow @atrupar or @acyn on Twitter for those viral moments.

Win or lose, the Trump cult isn’t going away. Millions of Americans believe that the government can control the weather and that January 6th was a setup. And that they are the rightful masters of this country, with democracy a mere fiction to be discarded when it gets inconvenient.

Know your enemy. Watch the cult.

As we approach the election, things are getting weirder in Washington, DC.

Even the skies have gone crazy, featuring a colorful display of the Northern Lights seen as far south as the nation’s capital.

Though I didn’t see it. Looking for the aurora borealis, I wandered the National Mall at night searching the sky for a trace of pink. I found the darkest spot I could find but me or my iPhone couldn’t pick it up.

However, I did discover a sport I didn’t know existed: night kickball. It’s kickball for adults but with glow sticks and a light-up ball, part of a very social league for young people. There were games all over the Mall, with bouncing neon lights in the darkness making a surreal sight.

At the National Gallery of Art, they were having a party, with a DJ blasting tunes and well-dressed folks spilling out onto the street. It’s National Gallery Nights, a free after-hours program with live performances and gallery tours.

And amid this fun, a lone woman on megaphone screaming about damnation. Hearing her from afar, I thought she was part of the kickball fun. Nope. She was a lone preacher in town for the Million Women March, standing by the 20-somethings and yelling about their future in a lake of fire.

The next day, the Mall was filled with Christian extremists just like her. Not a million, and they weren’t marching, but far more than attended the recent Rally to the Save the Republic. A message of Christian hate is an easier sell than the raw-milk drinkers, QAnon fans and oddball Canadians that RFK brought to town.

And it was hate. This wasn’t the gentle Christianity of “love thy neighbor.” This was a Trump-supporting call to impose a religious dictatorship upon United States and smash Democrats, immigrants, trans people and anyone different.

Rolling by, I heard a story from a women who rescued her daughter from the school guidance counselor, after the girl had gone to her with questions about sex.

And it was weird, with the highlight of the rally being the ritual smashing of a shrine to Ashtoreth, the demonic goddess that they claim secretly runs this country.

That’s right: they built a pagan mini-temple (like Stonehenge in Spinal Tap) and then broke it apart with sledge hammers, while Christians in the audience blew shofars.

The apex of the spectacle was Jonathan Cahn (wearing has tallit as a cape) smashing a reconstructed altar to Ashtoreth, an ancient Canaanite goddess they claimed was a demonic principality dominating modern America.

They staged it w/ WWF-style hype. 7/ https://t.co/kriQ3n61bM pic.twitter.com/Wmzc7wFVn2

— Matthew D. Taylor (@TaylorMatthewD) October 13, 2024

Equating Democrats with Satanism, they believe that the election of Kamala Harris will result in Armageddon.

After seeing something like that, you might need a drink. Fortunately, a block away was Snallygaster, a huge beer fest on Pennsylvania Avenue, leading to comical scenes such as drunk bros and women in “Jesus 2024” shirts mingling on their way to the Metro.

This kind of diversity, with events for everyone, will disappear if the Christofascists take charge. There will be no public beer drinking.

Unsurprisingly, the Million Women March was choked with January 6th insurrectionists, including some from the local Freedom Corner vigil outside the DC Jail.

The embrace of apocalyptic language indicates desperation among the MAGA crowd. It’s no longer about winning the election by getting more votes; it’s about doing whatever it takes to stop a demonic takeover of America.

They’re losing and they know it. A confident movement wouldn’t be calling for divine intervention.

No matter the polls, MAGA is old and tired. You can see it at the Trump rallies, where people trickle away after hours of the orange one rambling about sharks and Hannibal Lecter – that’s why Kamala Harris’s line in the debate about crowd sizes wounded him so deeply.

I see it in the livestreams. People in the crowd (including some of the Freedom Corner chuds), film from the rallies. This isn’t the carefully-framed view presented to the mainstream media but the blurry cam from the audience, where you can see the empty seats, the small crowds and the people slowly making their way out.

Trump speaking in what looks like a high school auditorium to a rapidly thinning crowd pic.twitter.com/pyeH7qj96y

— Joe Flood (@joeflood) October 10, 2024

And it’s the same people all the time at the rallies. Watch enough of them, and you’ll recognize the same set of characters again and again – the Wall Suit guy, Blacks for Trump, the die-hards covered in MAGA merch. He’s not getting new people at his rallies. Instead, it’s a nostalgia tour for fans. That’s why he does rallies in places he’s doomed to lose, like California. It’s about building the brand and getting another payday, not winning the state.

You can see the desperation at Freedom Corner. Two years on, this nightly vigil demanding the release of January 6th prisoners has freed no one. Last year, minor celebrities like Matt Gaetz showed up; now, the vigil has dwindled to three or four livestreamers on a lonely corner next to a cemetery.

They’ve begun what I call, “The Ghost Dance of the Chuds.” Like the doomed Native American prayer ritual, they hope that if they dance hard enough, they can bring back all that they lost: white supremacy, Christian domination, women and gays in their place.

#weird goings on at #maga #cult #freedomcorner #stabbingwestward #saveyourself “Just save yourself” 1/2 🤪 pic.twitter.com/tdgEgwsI8c

— B$$$ (@Bossmoney8444) October 12, 2024

The Aurora Borealis. Night kickball. A Spinal Tap-style smashing of a pagan shrine. The Ghost Dance of the Chuds.

Things in DC have gotten weird. And with the election just weeks away, it’s just going to get weirder as we accelerate toward political Armageddon.

Democracy or dictatorship. To be decided on November 5th.

What kind of America do you want? Dueling events in Washington offered competing visions of the future for this country.

The Rescue the Republic Rally featured an appearance by RFK Jr and a libertarian program of anti-vax, pro-Putin, bitcoin-friendly speakers while Fiesta DC brought a joyous celebration of Latino culture to the streets of DC.

I went to both; here’s what it was like.

Rescue the Republic was, above all, boring, with an exhausted, stale quality to the presentation, ideas and attendees. They constructed a massive stage with towering speakers that could be heard from blocks away. Blue port-o-potties lined the sidewalks in every direction.

Rescue the Republic promised that 100k people would attend this rally to take back this country and “Make America Healthy Again.” Instead, maybe 3k showed up in DC on a Sunday for a free rally.

There was so much time to fill in the seven-hour (!) program that many of the speakers, like Canadian “man expert” Jordan Peterson spoke multiple times. Joining him on this “America First” platform were other foreign imports like Russell Brand, who became a covid-denying conspiracy theorist in 2020. Robb Schneider added his comedy and late in the day, when the audience dwindled to the hundreds, there was a musical performance from “Plandemic: The Musical.”

I missed most of this because I was at Fiesta DC, which was far more fun. This was a parade on Constitution Avenue with bands, floats and dancers which went on for hours; there were more people parading than had attended Rescue the Republic.

Nation after nation was represented – Chile, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela – each proudly celebrating their unique contributions to global culture. Kids on horseback, couples doing the tango, Mad Max-style cars with massive speakers, hamster and condor costumes, a float with a volcano on it – Fiesta DC had it all.

And what other country could put on this kind of celebration but America? We’re a nation bound by an idea, not a race, that welcomes all that are willing to work hard for democracy.

Caught up in the pageantry, I nearly missed RFK, Jr.

There was no written schedule but I assumed RFK Jr., the headliner, would speak at the end.

Nope. Why are chud events so poorly planned? He spoke in the middle of the afternoon at Rescue the Republic, leaving me scrambling to bike back to catch the last few minutes of his gravelly-voiced lecture on making America healthy again.

RFK Jr., with a worm in his skull and a taste for roadkill, is the health expert, online chuds lectured me after I questioned their laughable crowd estimates.

Without the Kennedy name, he’d be considered a nut. The wacky uncle who posts conspiracy theories to Facebook. Your high school classmate who followed a rabbit hole from macrobiotics to MAGA. The guy outside the White House ranting about vital fluids.

If Trump is elected, this man, who once strapped a dead whale to the roof of his car, will be in charge of CDC and NIH.

Once Kennedy finished his stump speech on female puberty, people began to leave- that’s why you don’t put the headliner on in the middle of the show.

Various and sundry aggrieved white males then got up to lecture us about the importance of the First Amendment, claiming that they had been cancelled for their views. They all have YouTube or Rumble channels, get paid for speeches and make $$ in merchandise. I’d like to be cancelled, too.

In fact, the only person cancelled at Rescue the Republic was a protester: Patricia Eguino aka “The Commish.” She’s an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in DC.

She was in the crowd for the RFK speech with a Simpsons-themed sign reading, “Mess with our democracy? That’s a paddling.”

Eguino was representing the people of DC, like me, who had been victimized by the Trump mob who attacked our city on January 6th. We will never forget and will always oppose you.

The organizers of Rescue the Republic, who talked about how their free speech rights had been violated, kicked out this little lady with a sign because this reminder of insurrection made them mad.

And, despite their supposed hatred of the Deep State, they used the Park Police, a federal agency, to remove her from the venue.

Fucking hypocrites.

Kicking her out wasn’t enough. Standing with her outside the fence, I saw a parade of “speak to your manager” types come up to the Park Police to demand that she be silenced. These were red-hatted MAGA chuds who wanted the Park Police to use violence against Eguino.

Included among them were a shirtless bro in a mohawk who came to the fence all full of aggro. The Park Police talked to him for several minutes as we shouted, “Put on a shirt!”

The day ended as a farce. After Kennedy left, it was b-list and below celebrities, including another foreigner, Lara Logan, to angrily shout at the Make America Great Again crowd. Immigrants are needed even in the chud rallies; another job Americans won’t do.

Nobody seemed very interested. Lots of people came over the to the fence to watch Eguino and listen to hear death metal screams of, “Traitors!”

Including some of the veterans of Freedom Corner, the nightly pro-January 6th vigil outside the DC Jail. Two years ago, there might have been some shouting back and forth; now everyone just kind of looked over and nodded, like you would when seeing a work colleague.

Anarchy Princess appeared on the other side of the fence, having infiltrated the rally. She interviewed one of the leading lawyers for January 6th defendants. He’s failed his clients 100% of the time in court, a feat that he blamed on DC juries rather than the fact that J6ers are guilty as fuck.

We pretended not to know AP so as not to blow her cover. Biketifa rolled up and yelled through the fence at her, “No filming! It’s a violation of my HIPAA rights!”

He also held up a sign revealing that one of the Freedom Corner livestreamers, GloryBeef, is in fact an antifa agent.

Not that much of our nonsense could be heard over the punishing sound system.

The audience trailed away, trekking through the muddy grass of the Mall.

At last, this got boring even for us. We left as Canadian weirdo Jordan Peterson got on stage for the third or fourth time of the day, replaying his chauvinistic schtick again, like a rerun from hell.

This is the end. Or very close to it.

 

Modern journalism is access journalism, in which reporters surrender their objectivity to get “scoops.” We’ve seen it with Trump-whisperer Maggie Haberman, RFK-enraptured Olivia Nuzzi and now with Lauren Ober and Hannah Rosin of The Atlantic with their podcast, “The Insurrectionists Next Door.”

I won’t link to it, because it’s fash-simp trash in which these two women sat down with Micki Witthoeft, leader of the Freedom Corner cult, to gently sob with her across the kitchen table and uncritically broadcast her perspective that the 2020 election was stolen, January 6th was justified, her daughter Ashli Babbitt was innocent and that Nancy Pelosi should hang from the neck until dead.

The podcast deliberately omits, well, everything, to paint Witthoeft and her cult as worthy of our sympathy.

A simple Google search or a glance at #freedomcorner on Twitter would reveal the truth. And I know that they looked – Ober and Rosin used video clips (unattributed) that are only available on Twitter.

Which means that they deliberately omitted:

1. The Nazi Problem. Micki named her house “The Eagle’s Nest” like Hitler’s Alpine retreat, she supports violent J6er Brian Jackson (a white supremacist covered in swastikas) and receives funding from a Chinese-MAGA woman who thinks Hitler was right about the Jews.
2. The Funding. How do three jobless women rent a house in pricey DC? Ober accepted Micki’s lie that it was thanks to small-donor donations. Which is absurd – how do you go to a landlord without a verified income? The truth, which easily findable online, is that Micki received $50k from Patrick Byrne, the Overstock guy who was part of “Team Crazy” that tried to stop the certification of the 2020 vote with Trump and Giuliani. And Micki has received much, much more, with the donations raised on behalf of J6 prisoners going straight into her pocket. Something that is very controversial among the insurrectionists. Follow the money is a basic tenet of journalism yet Ober was curiously incurious about this subject.
3. The Violence. In the first episode, Ober included a brief snippet from when Micki attacked local activist Anarchy Princess. “I’ve watched a lot of bad clips about my neighbor.” Ober doesn’t bother to interview the victim or even mention her name. The DC residents who oppose Freedom Corner are treated as background figures, “harassing” Micki and her cultists. They don’t get names and we don’t hear how Micki has organized her cult to stalk, dox and attack opponents. Numerous members of her cult have been arrested for assault and even sexual violence. Do we hear their stories? No, instead we get a crycast with poor abused Micki.

This is just a short list of the problems with the first episode.

There’s a whole community of people who have been following, monitoring, reporting on and disrupting the fascists of Freedom Corner. We’ve interacted with the cultists online and in real life. We know their names, backstories – everything about them. You can find us all on #freedomcorner on Twitter.

It’s a fascinating story that touches every hot-button issue in America these days: social media fame, dangerous conspiracy theories, political violence, loneliness and a search for meaning.

It’s personal, too. I live in DC; I saw January 6th. When you see a red-clad mob march down your street, it changes you.

That’s why I’ve written so much about Freedom Corner. It’s a big part of my book, HOW I BECAME RED BIKE GUY. I never would’ve become the person who mocked the Patriot Front without the experience of seeing how protest and counterprotest worked at Freedom Corner.

And being doxxed by Micki’s cult made me angry and fearless.

For the podcast, I wasn’t interviewed; none of us were.

Ober called our work a “hobby.”

She, the professional journalist, who spent 20 hours with “Mama Micki,” knows best.

But the truth is that the “hobbyists” are clear-eyed and honest about the threat of fascism in the Nation’s Capital. Not seeking a podcast deal, we reported the truth about Freedom Corner – the Nazis, the money and the violence.

We didn’t trade our objectivity for an Oprah-style weepathon with a cult leader. We’re not sane-washing terrorists.

Freedom Corner is a pathetic, squalid little nest of traitors. The Atlantic should be embarrassed that they’ve uncritically given them a platform to spread lies and conspiracy theories.

What if I told you a real cult adopted a song by a fictional cult as their anthem – and didn’t know it?

That’s where we’re at with Freedom Corner, the pro-January 6th meetup that is slowly wasting away outside the DC Jail. Every night, they chant the name of Ashli Babbitt and other insurrectionist “heroes” while they await the second coming of Donald Trump.

And every night, at the end of a dead end street next to a cemetery, they sing:

They’ll look high and they’ll look low
They’ll look everywhere we go
But when the sinners find us, we won’t hide
They’ll come loud and they’ll come fast
We shoot first and we can last
Keep your rifle by your side

The song is “Keep Your Rifle by Your Side” from Far Cry 5, a video game in which players battle a doomsday cult. The song is the theme song of the bad guys; the people you’re supposed to kill.

Somehow, this got into the Freedom Corner playlist and, unaware of its origins, “Keep Your Rifle by Your Side” has become of their favs.

Rebecca, the mysterious Chinese-MAGA funder of Freedom Corner, even translated it for the benefit of her audience.

For anyone who doesn’t know this is fictional doomsday cult music from Far Cry 5 to make fun of people just like the #FreedomCorner. They play the song all time now. pic.twitter.com/MM5Gh2xlNM

— Justalazygamer (@justalazygaming) September 17, 2024

Yes, this is the same Rebecca who filmed the assault on Anarchy Princess and is a fan of Der Fuhrer.

And I thought Thomas Pynchon wrote some wacky stuff. But he’s got nothing on the mind-twisting absurdities, contradictions and far out weirdness of Freedom Corner.

I couldn’t make this shit up in a hundred years. It’s beyond life imitating art or life is stranger than fiction. It’s nothing that a rational mind can comprehend.

A whole new genre is needed, one that is nonlinear and nonsensical, an entirely new art form that can describe what is happening with Trump supporters as they leave reality behind to descend into their own conspiracy-laden multiverse of madness.

Trumpism is more than just a racist, xenophobic movement that seeks to roll the clock back to 1859. It’s also about ensuring that the peasants shut the hell up and respect their betters.

Former Trump advisor Peter Navarro gave away the game in a recent encounter with a woman on an airplane.

As we’ve seen previously, he’s a self-important blowhard with poor impulse control and an inability to deal with powerful women.

He couldn’t keep his hands to himself when activist Anarchy Princess stood behind him with a sign reading, “Trump Lost.”

After a judge ruled against him in his criminal contempt case, former Trump advisor Peter Navarro attempts to snatch a “Trump lost” sign from a protester at his press conference.

This girl is AWESOME 🔥🔥
pic.twitter.com/8pbCnzPs75

— Skyleigh Heinen-Uhrich (@Sky_Lee_1) August 30, 2023

This backfired on him tremendously, leading to viral fame for AP and social media humiliation for Navarro, as his flailing impotency was broadcast around the world.

Despite this and his recent stint in prison for Contempt of Congress, Navarro has learned nothing.

A woman on a Southwest flight recently told Navarro to go back to prison. The indignity of encountering a member of the public with an opinion set him off, leading to an epic and revealing rant on his poorly-watched web show:

You can see his Trump-addled brain processing the encounter. A housewife! Talking to me in public! How dare she!

He reveals what Trumpism is all about: ensuring that the peasant class respects their betters and shuts the hell up.

His view is that a “housewife” should not be allowed to speak to great men like Peter Navarro.

When chuds say that they want to “make America great again” this is what they mean. They want an America where the police would arrest people for speaking truth to power.

“Anybody in this country now thinks they can say anything the hell they want to anybody anywhere” gives the game away completely. Trumpism is an elite-driven movement that would end our freedom of speech. Navarro and his like seek to rule us as feudal lords, immune from prosecution.

Trump said that he would be a dictator on day one. The chuds love this for it would mean squashing dissent so that Trump (and his supporters) would have unlimited power to jail and murder their enemies.

So, America, which country do you want to live in? A country where we’re all equal and anyone can say anything the hell they want? Or an oligarch-ruled state that imprisons people who criticize Peter Navarro?

Vote for democracy and free speech on November 5th.

You don’t need a podcast. You don’t need a YouTube channel. You don’t need, god forbid, Twitter.

All you need is a piece of chalk to make your voice heard during this pivotal election year.

Chalk the Vote is simple. Sign-up to get prompts from Chalk Riot, write your chalk messages on a sidewalk somewhere, share online and end Trump forever.

Chalk is cheap, accessible and fun for all ages. It’s a radically simple tool for activism that has been used for centuries.

I’ve seen the power of chalk in Washington, DC. Here’s some examples of what chalk can do.

Last summer, there were weeks of high-profile trials of January 6th insurrectionists, including members of the Proud Boys.

And throughout the trials, there was chalk commentary from local activists Biketifa and Anarchy Princess.

These messages irritated the chuds of Freedom Corner, a small group of January 6th supporters who came to the Court House to wave flags and try to appear to be menacing.

Blaming the chalk on antifa (or chalktifa, as online commenters called it), they’d demand that the police do something about these rogue chalk artists.  Then they’d film the chalk “for evidence,” calling the scrawls, “Our daily humiliation.”

In DC, chalk art is protected speech.

 

Sometimes, they’d even try to wash the chalk away. But it would always reappear the next morning.

The chalk heard their complaints and responded with personalized insults for the chuds:

But what really upset them was the Satanism, the demonic spells apparently created by Biketifa and Anarchy Princess:

What does the curse say? “Never going to give you up, never going to let you down.” It was a Rickroll in Latin.

I liked photographing the chalk. Every day was something new. It was a dynamic, interactive, open-air art exhibit with a political edge.

One time, I ran into one of the Freedom Corner chuds. I tried to tell him: chalk can’t hurt you. It’s just chalk, man. But he didn’t listen to me.

#FreedomCorner alum Jericho Steve didn’t even realize he had been stream-sniped by @joeflood in front of the DC federal courthouse this afternoon until it was over.

Bravo, sir. 🤘 pic.twitter.com/Z4UBfTy2l1

— Baldy Banks (@BaldyBanks) September 1, 2023

And the chalk continues to this day! There was a special Pride Month message for Freedom Corner that got them big mad:

Anddddd shenanigans 🌈🏳️‍🌈#FreedomCorner @DamnationDriveN pic.twitter.com/7mUuLo64QV

— Anarchy princess (@SatireAP) June 1, 2024

Chalk is a cheap tool that anyone can use. And a powerful one that can upset and distract your enemies. With chalk, the whole world is your canvas.

Use your First Amendment rights and Chalk the Vote!