Heritage Folks Get Trolled in Houston
What goes good with riding the Hermann Park train with the grandkids on a Saturday afternoon? Shotguns and Confederate flags, apparently. (I’m not sure what “hanky code” the guy on the right is flashing, so maybe one of my readers will enlighten me on that.) Photo by Evan Mintz, Houston Chronicle.
You may have heard that there was supposed to be a big “Texas Antifa” rally at the Sam Houston monument in Hermann Park on Saturday, to call for the removal of Big Sam. Naturally, it provoked an immediate and angry plan for a counter-protest by various right-wing activists, including white nationalists, fascists, militia types, and a few assorted Confederate Flaggers. And, it turns out, the Texas Antifa rally was a hoax from the beginning:
“Texas Antifa” is an alt-right troll group that stole the name of a self-described anti-fascist group, Houston Antifa — a local chapter of a national grassroots movement — in order to… well, we’re not sure, exactly, but we think it has something to do with pissing off as many people as possible.
Unfortunately, KPRC and the Chronicle failed to dig a little deeper. If they had, they might have found the real Houston Antifa page, which has warned people to “unlike and unfollow this fake ass Texas Antifa page. Do NOT attend the June 10th Rally! This account was started a month ago and is in NO way, shape, or form affiliated with any actual Antifa Organization.”
A representative of Houston Antifa echoed the statement to the Houston Press via Facebook Thursday morning, saying, “We encourage folks NOT to attend this event whatsoever, on the Right or the Left.”
I do love me a good prank. And if it gets not-too-bright, easily-riled people to drop a little cash locally and spend all afternoon standing out in the hot Texas sun counter-protesting something that doesn’t exist, so much the better. Hope everybody kept hydrated, that’s really important.
In case anyone’s keeping score, there’s approximately zero local interest in removing the Sam Houston monument. It’s not a thing.
Still, lots a folks showed up to counter-protest the non-existent Texas Antifa protesters, including white nationalists supporting (according to their website) a new era of “American Fascism:”
As well as someone flagging for Kekistan, whatever the hell that is.
The two images above are by Yuri Peña, via the Houston Press.
And then there’s this lovely bit of foolishness, from one of the leading peripatetic beards of the Confederate heritage movement:
Arlene Barnum saw on Facebook there was group threatening to take down the Sam Houston monument.
She came to protest, fearing that removing the monument eventually would lead to changing the names of schools and streets.
“When I heard about this monument threatened to be taken down, I knew it wasn’t about the monument,” Barnum said. “They were probably going to go after the streets and the schools.”
The streets and schools were already changed, the latter more than a year ago. But bless her heart, Ms. Barnum wouldn’t know that, being from out of state and not particularly knowledgeable about the things she’s protesting in any case.
What a clown show.
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Update, June 11: Apparently there was a GoFundMe page that collected a few thousand dollars to support the struggle against the Texas Antifa protest that wasn’t actually a real thing. And now people want their money back.
Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 
Sam Houston: that well-known anti-Confederate. Truly, bless their hearts.
It’s always fun to watch the ignorant folks turn out for these things. I especially love how they display their command of historical knowledge about the history of monuments. I just ask the fools to explain the history the monuments represent. So far no one has been able to correctly explain the history. They usually answer, “It’s history!” They cannot explain what they don’t know.
What they are really objecting to is change. They do not understand that change is part of life. For them, they reject change at all costs, but fail to understand how their very actions and everyday choices cause the changes that they detest.
I think what a clown show about sums it up
Sam Houston…isn’t this the guy who didn’t want to pledge allegiance to the confederacy and subsequently got removed from office?
Yes, that would be the guy.
See my point?
The “Texas Antifa” prank was called out by the Houston Press on June 1, more than a week before the event. Actual Antifa groups in the Houston area (yes, they do exist) denounced it almost immediately when it first appeared. There’s no reason anyone should have been fooled by this, especially to the point of driving in from out-of-state.
Due diligence, and do diligence, people.
The Houston Press must be the part of the main street media, therefore any mention of this being a prank would have been considered “fake news”.
Kekistan is another weird alt-right neo-nazi thing like Pepe the frog. http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2017/05/what-kek-explaining-alt-right-deity.html
Yeah, I was beginning to get some of that. It took about 30 seconds to figure out what that flag was of, but after further 10 minutes of trying to figure out what Kekistan was, I decided I wasn’t really that interested.
Looks like the green wing of the kkk (my apologies to the green party).