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The takeover, according to Mike Carter’s excellent reportage for the Seattle Times, began with far-right “Patriots” organizing pro-Trump events on the island, which is home to the Whidbey Island Naval Station at its northern end near Oak Harbor. Over the next several months, the Deer Lagoon Grange—located farther south, near the town of Langley—was flooded with new memberships, all of them far-right activists associated with the Washington Three Percent, a “Patriot”/militia organization.
The new membership then used the Grange to organize an October 18 “Freedom to Worship” rally in the nearby town of Freeland—an utterly mask-free, pro-Trump, pro-Republican candidates event featuring a slate of speakers from the far right, including Joey Gibson, founder/leader of the street-brawling proto-fascist group Patriot Prayer.
“Throughout history tyrannical regimes have sought to restrict, outlaw and persecute the faithful, regardless of the specific faith or denomination,” an announcement read. It urged participants to bring food for a potluck and promised patriotic fare and speeches.
Organizers rebranded the rally a “protest,” one that was part evangelical Christian tent revival, part pro-Trump political event, all wrapped up in patriotic bunting to disguise the ugly proto-fascist politics lurking just below the surface. Among the speakers that day was a man in a Revolutionary War costume with a tricorn hat.
Some current and former Deer Lagoon Grange members told Carter that meetings—which traditionally have involved workshops and discussions around agricultural topics—have more recently turned to “crowded, mask-free affairs involving topics like disaster preparedness and first-aid, including how to treat gunshot wounds.” They reported that newcomers have come to meetings armed.
The takeover simultaneously drove out longtime residents. “A lot of the old members are leaving,” Grange caretaker Dan Abat told Carter, adding that he’s quitting both his job and the Grange itself: “I have no idea who they are. I just don’t want to be hassled.”
Grange members aren’t the only longtime island residents who have been impacted. One of its longtime local institutions, the Bayview Farm and Garden—located near the Grange—has been subjected to ongoing harassment because its owner has been outspoken about following Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 mandates, particularly enforcing the wearing of masks. Owner Maureen Murphy notably published a Facebook post calling out the hate symbols sported by the “Trump train” caravans that became regular weekend fixtures on the island, including MAGA hats. The post sparked a threatening backlash: “Trump train” trucks parked in front of her business and revved their engines. Her business was vandalized. The Latino man she employed as a door greeter was repeatedly harassed and threatened.
“We were in the crosshairs,” Murphy said. “There were some really vicious phone calls, and not just from people in this community. I took calls from as far away as New Hampshire.” She took the post down and told Carter she regretted it: “I thought I was doing something good. What I ended up doing is putting my staff at risk.”
The majority of the island residents voted 54%-42% for Joe Biden in the November elections. Whidbey has a history of dealing with far-right extremists already: In 1984, the leader of the murderous neo-Nazi gang The Order was cornered by the FBI at a home there and killed. To this day, neo-Nazis make an annual pilgrimage to the island to honor his memory, which continues to anger longtime locals.
The men organizing the takeover shrug off the politics of intimidation they have brought to the previously peaceful island community. The Washington Three Percent member leading the takeover, an island resident named Erik Rohde, told Carter that he has been actively encouraging members of the militia group to join the Grange.
“It’s been frustrating,” Rohde said. “We have no racist ideology; that isn’t allowed in our organization. It’s not what we’re about. We have people from every walk of life.”
Matt Marshall, one of the state leaders of the Washington Three Percent, trotted out the same defense during the October 18 “Freedom to Worship” rally/protest, according to a reporter from Boise State Public Radio, Heath Druzin, who attended the rally and reported on it. Marshall was one of the speakers that day, along with Gibson and a far-right Republican write-in candidate for lieutenant governor, Joshua Freed (who eventually garnered 0.12% of the statewide vote).
“I am frequently discounted as a far-right extremist,” he told the crowd, which numbered about 150 people, all maskless. “I also get small-town redneck, leader of a militia and various other things that are used to discredit me and my qualifications and the Three Percent.”
What Marshall neglects to mention is that his group is closely affiliated with Gibson, whose own background is rife with associations with violent extremists and white nationalists, as well as far-right ex-legislator Matt Shea, whose eventual departure from the state legislature was the subject of a protest Marshall organized in January 2019. Moreover, Marshall has been an outspoken advocate of the “Boogaloo” movement—having shown up to protests in Olympia (including one that turned out to have been a Sacha Baron Cohen prank that in fact is featured in Cohen’s latest Borat film) and elsewhere wearing the movement’s trademark Hawaiian shirts and spouting pro-“Boogaloo” rhetoric.
Since then, the “Boogaloo” movement has inspired multiple acts of domestic terrorism by right-wing extremists:
- The 14 Michigan militiamen arrested by the FBI in October were all “Boogaloo Bois.” Their initial plot involved taking over the state Capitol in Lansing and holding televised executions of state officials; they later defaulted to a simpler plot to kidnap the governor at her summer home and execute her after a “citizens court” trial.
- An Air Force sergeant in California who was a “Boogaloo” fan shot two federal officers at an anti-police protest in Oakland, one fatally. Two days later, after being tracked to Santa Cruz County, he shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy while being arrested. During the rampage, he scrawled the word “Boog” in blood on the hood of the car he was driving.
- The three Las Vegas-area “Boogaloo Bois” arrested for building Molotov cocktails as part of a larger campaign to wreak havoc around the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests over police brutality did not plan to attack BLM—as most “Patriot” and “Proud Boy” groups have done over the past three years—but instead sought to use the BLM protests to target police officers and power infrastructure, as a way of ramping up the violence around the protests.
- A Texarkana, Texas, man who intended to spark the “Boogaloo” by ambushing police officers, was caught by officers who were alerted by his attempt to livestream his planned killing spree. They went to his location and arrested him shortly thereafter.
- A “Boogaloo” enthusiast who posted comments on Facebook about bringing his rifle to an anti-stay-at-home-orders protest in Denver attracted the interest of FBI agents, who upon visiting him at his home discovered a cache of homemade pipe bombs. The man openly expressed his intent to use them to kill any federal agents who tried to invade his home.
- Another “Boogaloo Boi” planned to livestream his ambush on police officers at an Ohio national park, but was arrested by FBI agents before he could pull off the plan.
It may be worth noting that at the October event on Whidbey Island, Marshall no longer wore a Hawaiian shirt and made no mention of the “Boogaloo.” But by then, the politics his organization embodied had already made itself all too plain to the residents of an island who know all too well how to spot a fascist.
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