Portrait of a Punkass: How Joey Gibson Settled an Antifascist Lawsuit & Told the World He is a Damned Liar

The founder and leader of Patriot Prayer really didn’t want you to see that he was on the losing end to a lawsuit he dared to be filed, but that’s okay. We will show you!

On Dec. 22, Patriot Prayer’s founder Josh Gibson posted an important message on his Twitter account but one looking for it would have to shuffle through a number of screenshots of quotes by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the middle of them was a screenshot statement of his own: “I made a statement about Mr. Marquez based on statements to me by anonymous claimants whose claims I have been unable to verify, and I regret the publication of that statement.”

“Mr. Marquez” is longtime Portland, Oregon antifascist activist Luis Marquez and the statement was made at the time he settled his lawsuit with Gibson for an undisclosed amount. Marquez filed suit against Gibson for defamation after he posted a video on June 8, 2018 saying that Marquez was a pedophile and encouraged others not to associate with antifa for that reason. The video ended with Gibson saying,  “I don’t care. Bring the slander lawsuit!”

Gibson’s group Patriot Prayer, which is based in Vancouver, Washington, is a violent neo-fascist organization that was known for staging rallies in the Portland and Vancouver areas. a far-right group that has held multiple rallies in the Portland and Vancouver area, often in association with the Proud Boys whose local chapter was also based in Vancouver. Many of the group’s members have been and are currently in jail for assault and other crimes and one person who attended their April 2017 rally, white supremacist Jeremy Christian, is currently serving two life terms in prison for stabbing and killing two persons and injuring a third who came to the aid of two Muslim teenagers on a Portland train just over a month later. Patriot Prayer, who held a rally in Portland a week after the attack, denied having anything to do with Christian.

In recent months, the Patriot Prayer/Proud Boy rallies that were a regular occurrence in Portland from 2017 to 2021 had subsided significantly, with many of their members either incarcerated – some stemming from the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 – or dead. In August 2020, Patriot Prayer associate Aaron Danielson was shot and killed after participating in a pro-Trump caravan in Portland that he broke off from and got into a clash with counter-demonstrators. Gibson is still facing a $1 million lawsuit filed by the owner of Cider Riot, a Portland cidery that was a popular spot among antifascists, that alleges Gibson and other Patriot Prayer members conspired to vandalize the establishment on May Day 2019.

Marquez is currently working on a book about his time as an antifascist activist.