So here’s a thing we will have to watch unfold over the next several days or weeks here in Portland.
First there was a tweet from the Portland Police Bureau just sort of casually mentioning without even the suggestion of evidence that at the “Shake Back The Streets” protest today they’d “received information that some of the milkshakes thrown today during the demonstration contained quick-drying cement”.
Then, hours later within an hour, this became in a press release “reports of individuals throwing ‘milkshakes’ with a substance mixed in that was similar to a quick drying cement”, still with no indication that any officer had seen these alleged cement-shakes, or even any evidence of them, for themselves.
During these three hours this time, it’s already become holy writ in Twitter’s nazi circles that these cement-shake assaults happened.
Meanwhile, some redcap MMA fighter has been tweeting at the bureau photos and videos taken during the protest of vegan milkshakes being handed out, and photos of a GoFundMe page that’s actually about Slurpees and might not even be related, as if they were some sort of smoking gun or information previously being kept hidden.
Organizers and supporters have been tweeting for days (weeks, for all I know) about the protest and its vegan shakes (not Slurpees). They have a website, and a Facebook page, and a catchy promotional video.
There’s no secret being revealed here by your intrepid investigative journalism, redcap MMA lady.
Anyway, the point is that in three hours they went from “information” about “quick-drying cement” to “reports” only of something “similar to a quick drying cement”, but still without any assertion that they’d seen any of it for themselves.
Keep in mind that the PopMob video for today’s events literally warns that fascist groups like the Proud Boys show up in places like Portland specifically to manufacture propaganda. What are the odds, at this point, that weeks from now when no one is paying attention the Portland Police Bureau will admit these cement-shakes never existed?
But by that time the damage already will have been done by the bureau, and it long since will have become an established fact in alt-right circles and used in American profa propaganda for years.
Addenda
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Still without any evidence to back the bureau’s claims, NBC News picked up the profa line that we are talking about, essentially, concrete-block milkshakes. Others on Twitter have started pointing out that “quick-drying cement” probably means rubber cement.
Of course, even if it’s rubber cement, not, you know, Quikrete, there’s still been no indication, hours and hours later, as to what the police are basing this information on.
Let me make one thing clear, though: if some wingnut did for some reason try to use rubber cement as a weapon, that’s arguably more of an assault than just, you know, vegan milkshake. There’s just not yet anyone showing this actually happened.
But, and this a thing profa and redcap Twitter (or, say, “reporters” for The Daily Caller) will ignore, the organized PopMob milkshakes literally were being handed out for people to drink, not just potentially to use in a milkshaking. So there certainly was no grand conspiracy of rubber-cement-shakes going on out there.