Patriot Prayer
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| “ | You’re gonna be getting knives put into your throat. You’re going to be getting bullets put into your head if you don’t stop this shit with us. | „ |
| ~ Skylor Jernigan, threatening Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler. |
Patriot Prayer is a far-right group founded by Joey Gibson in 2016 and based in Vancouver, Washington, a suburban city in the Portland metropolitan area.
Since 2016, the group has organized several dozen pro-gun, pro-Trump rallies held in liberal cities in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. Often met with large numbers of counter-protesters, attendees have repeatedly clashed with left-wing groups in the Portland area.
Various Alt-Right groups, such as the Proud Boys, have attended the rallies organized by Patriot Prayer, as well as white nationalists and white supremacists, sparking controversy and violence.
Patriot Prayer has focused on fighting Antifa and other leftist groups; the brutal street fights between the groups, which have taken place since 2017, have frequently been filmed and posted online by observers and members. After a brawl between Patriot Prayer and anti-fascist activists at Cider Riot in May 2019, Gibson was indicted on a felony rioting charge.
Patriot Prayer has described itself as in favor of free speech and opposed to big government. An infiltrator into Patriot Prayer said that the group had around 15 core members in 2019.
Background edit
Patriot Prayer was founded in 2016 by Joey Gibson. Gibson was motivated to become an activist after he viewed TV coverage of a June 2, 2016, Trump rally in San Jose, California, where protests turned to brawling.
Since early 2017, Patriot Prayer supporters have traveled to downtown Portland to hold rallies in support of Donald Trump. Patriot Prayer is a far-right group, part of the right-wing of American politics. It has held rallies in areas known for their liberal politics. It has also been described as anti-government. The San Jose Mercury News described Patriot Prayer as a "right-wing group", whose events "attracted white supremacists and ended up in violent confrontations among demonstrators on both sides."
In 2017, Gibson considered himself a conservative libertarian.
Patriot Prayer have been connected to the alt-right and other far-right groups. Gibson denied that the group was white nationalist and claimed that they supported "freedom, love and peace". The group's stated aim is support of the First Amendment, free speech and to "liberate the conservatives on the West Coast".
Patriot Prayer is known for being a "pro-Trump group". The Weekly Standard described early Patriot Prayer rallies as having "overtly pro-Trump themes."
Opposition to Gibson's rallies grew in May 2017, following the 2017 Portland train attack, a racially motivated double murder by Jeremy Joseph Christian, a man known to have attended Patriot Prayer rallies.
In August 2017, David Neiwert, writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), described Patriot Prayer as "trolling" the Pacific Northwest with the intention of provoking a response from far-left antifascists. Neiwert noted that Gibson denounced white supremacists and neo-Nazis after the Unite the Right rally and stated that he aimed to "actively exclude" white supremacist groups. Members of the Identity Evropa and the Ku Klux Klan have attended the groups rallies. The SPLC referred to Patriot Prayer as "violent extremists".
In 2018, authorities were prompted to conduct an investigation after Patriot Prayer called the Council on American–Islamic Relations a "Muslim extremist organization" and made online threats against the group. Patriot Prayer has harassed and assaulted Abolish ICE and other leftist activists.
The group has also attracted anti-government paramilitary groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters.
For a period of time beginning in February 2019, Patriot Prayer was a corporation, but on September 18, 2019, it was voluntarily dissolved. In October 2019, Gibson advised followers to send him donations through the Church of Faith and Freedom, an organization that officials who oversee charities and non-profits found no record of in the states it claimed to be active: California, Oregon and Washington.
Crosscut described Gibson as "the man who seems to run everything." An infiltrator into Patriot Prayer said that the group had around 15 core members in 2019. Members of the group have included Tusitala Toese, a one-time close confidant of Gibson who has faced multiple criminal charges for violence, and Chandler Pappas who was indicted by a grand jury on eight felony charges in 2021 for his role in the breach of the Oregon state capitol. Six individuals affiliated with Patriot Prayer, including Gibson, were indicted on felony rioting charges following a brawl between Patriot Prayer and patrons of Cider Riot, a Portland cider house, on May 1 2019; several members pleaded guilty to the charges.
Several crowdfunding websites have removed Gibson and Patriot Prayer from their platforms including GivingFuel in November 2018, Go Get Funding in September 2019, and GoFundMe (by October 2019).
Patriot Prayer had often used Facebook to recruit attendees. In September 2020, Facebook took down the pages for Patriot Prayer and Gibson as part of their efforts to remove "violent social militias" from its social networks.