No, there wasn’t a threat to burn down the theater, but saying there was made for a good lie to rally the troops, not to mention recruiting at the last minute the only Black man in what was billed as an anti-racist conference. But we rallied our troops too, and we give mad props to the people of Pitman, NJ for turning this conference out!

PITMAN, NJ – If activist Daryl Davis, known for befriending Klan members in an effort to convince them to renounce those ways, was not invited to speak at a conference sponsored by the social platform Minds.com days after controversy engulfed the event, there would not be any Black person to speak at a conference titled Ending Racism, Violence and Authoritarianism.

Indeed there would have been but Canadian political commentator Josephine Mathias bowed out the day before citing family obligations as well as a concern for safety at the event, a concern that was heightened when co-organizer Tim Pool, a onetime liberal videographer that since his days of covering Occupy Wall St. has gravitated more to the far right, reported to his followers that antifa threatened to burn down the Broadway Theatre in Pitman, NJ, the original location of the venue. No evidence could be found sustaining such claims, and Pool eventually said that the threat might have been done in jest, but by that time the far right echo chamber had spread the story, causing alarm that resulted in Mathias and a few other speakers canceling out.

It was with this backdrop of lies, propaganda and subterfuge from the organizers that a far-right conference was held, but it was not without headaches for them. After the Broadway Theater shut their doors to the event, they managed to find a new venue in the Sugar House Casino in Philadelphia, PA, a location they kept secret until two hours before the doors opened. Still, they came back to Pitman where a bar called the Human Village Brewery Company hosted their afterparty, and when the conference attendees arrived approximately 50 persons, most of them from Pitman held vigil and watched the spectacle that came to their town.

The conference drew concern when it was learned that a number of right-wing trolls and provocateurs known within neo-fascist circles were among those invited to speak. Among them included misogynistic YouTuber Carl “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin and Aydin Paladin, another You Tuber with antisemitism and Holocaust denial in her history, both along with Mark “Count Dankula” Meechan participants at the 2019 International Conference on Men’s Issues which is organized every year by the group A Voice For Men. As that particular group is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to its founder Paul Elam defending rape and violence against women, it is particularly laughable to expect a true dedication to rights and freedoms from the assembled at the Aug. 31 conference.

It became even more unbelievable given another speaker was conservative propagandist Andy Ngo, who saw fame and profit over the summer from having milkshakes and silly string thrown on him by unknown persons at a rally in his native Portland as he attempted to cover them at a rally in June. Before that incident however, Ngo was seen as someone who targeted Muslims, transgender persons and especially antifa in deceptive reports and videos for the benefit of the right, particularly the neo-Fascist group Patriot Prayer, whom he works closely with, so much so he has been accused of not reporting on that organization’s violence while being on the scene while that violence was committed, and even being seen in a video laughing with the group as they plotted attacking antifa at a cidery in Portland called Cider Riot on May 1.

When it came time to defend the conference however, little was said about these individuals by organizers, who attempted to place the reputed liberals they had invited – especially Daryl Davis – front and center as a shield against the charges of platforming fascists. One of those reputed liberal speakers, Melissa Chen, did this for her article about the conference for the right-wing magazine the Spectator, also repeatedly noting how the owners of the Human Village Brewery were Jewish which, while little is known or discussed about the owners’ political leanings, would not mean much in a political climate where neo-fascists of many faiths cultures and colors have been prevalent. For those who opposed the conference that and the many other ruses served to be of no defense at all. Coincidentally, Andy Ngo has also contributed articles to the Spectator, one attacking Muslims, one attacking antifa in Portland and one published a day before the conference where he denied knowing of any planning for the May 1 Cider Riot attack, that he merely “caught snippets of various conversations” from the group he was with and “was preoccupied on my phone”.

While there wasn’t a demonstration at Sugar House, where over 400 attended, protesters did gather in Pitman across from the brewery – a sign on the door indicating it was closed for the Labor Day weekend – to greet the conference attendees. Unlike those attendees, many of them were from town and were annoyed that such an event caused many of its downtown businesses to close for the evening. There were few chants and a lot of discussion among those who participated, but no violence or arrests, despite the pronouncements that there were threats, the biggest one being the one where an unknown person said in a tweet that the Broadway Theater will be burned to the ground. Curiously, a man wearing a cowboy hat stood at the theater for much of the day and evening as if standing guard, but there were no incidents reported there.

Even conversation with the random conference attendees who came and spoke with the protesters, including one that identified himself as a member of the neo-Fascist Proud Boys, remained civil. Internet entrepreneur Bill Ottman, who is also the CEO and co-founder of Minds, as well as a co-founder along with Tim Pool of a new online media outlet called Subverse, was turned away by protesters when he came to speak with them.

Pool, a Chicago native who is currently reportedly living in Deptford, NJ, has said in a recent video that he plans to travel the country doing media reports from a van. Meanwhile, despite Pool saying that the threat might have been done in jest, Daryl Davis still asserted that antifa threatened to burn down the Broadway Theater as recent as a Sept. 6 Facebook post. Last year, Davis saw controversy when he brought Baltimore, MD Klan leader Richard Preston to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC just days before he was sentenced to four years for shooting at a Black man during the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville the year before. Davis also testified as a character witness for Preston during his sentencing.