This is going to be a short one with an easy call to action at the end. Stay with me – let’s go!
This weekend the Nebraska Freedom Coalition is hosting the “Freedom Festival 21” at the Round the Bend Steakhouse in Ashland. The guests of “honor” at this festival include:
- Omaha chiropractor Ben Tapper who was named as one of the “disinformation dozen” and who has been deplatformed from Twitter for being one of the 12 people most responsible for spreading dangerous misinformation about the COVID vaccine,
- New Jersey gym owner Ian Smith, who is “famous(?)” for defying the New Jersey lockdown order and giving free gym memberships to anyone who refuses the vaccine (and who also killed a kid in a drunk driving accident in 2007 and who has been banned from flying),
- Head of the California School Choice Foundation Corey DeAngelis (who, in addition to being bent on destroying public schools, of course rails against what he calls “sexxx education“), and
- Bryson Gray, a Trumpist whose Black Panther grandmother is surely absolutely spinning. I can’t really find much else about this guy so I presume his big pull is that he is a Black man who is also part of the Trump cult.
The event has already been taken down by Eventbrite, who has been cancelling these disinformation hoedowns and fascist festivals since Trump was still in office.
So why should we care about this? Why can’t we just let them have their dumb little party and give each other COVID? Because when you pack a building full of people whose minds have already been rotted from years of FOX, Newsmax, and OAN and you tell them trans commies are coming to inject their children with 5G, tofu, and “sexxx education”, it leads to violence. These concerned parents will do anything to “protect their kids”. These “antivaxx” and “freedom” rallies have been getting increasingly more violent with more and more people going absolutely off the rails, and that is exactly what these folks want.
Antimaskers have threatened school principals with zip ties, sent teachers to the hospital, and have teamed up with violent far right extremist group the Proud Boys to fight school boards over Covid restrictions. If you have been paying attention to who has been arrested for storming the Capitol on January 6, you know that in addition to the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, and the Patriot Prayer militia members, you have your “regular” violent Trumpists, antivaxxers, anti maskers, and others who were radicalized by talk radio, YouTube “news” hosts, and the people coming to Nebraska this weekend. Local antivaxx asshole Fanchon Blythe was at the insurrection. The local events are being hosted by Deb Smith Portz who shills for bull jizz billionaire Charles Herbster (who met with the Trump crime family the night before the insurrection), and who has teamed up with the kids at Toilet Paper USA for this weekend’s “fest”.
And yet, nobody here in Nebraska has said a word about it. It is bad enough that we are living in a state governed by a dead-eyed undescended testicle who was barhopping unmasked at the height of the pandemic last year and who has done literally jack shit to keep the residents of his state alive. It’s worse that our small towns are being invaded by out-of-state paid actors who are filling the heads of our fellow Nebraskans with lies and hysteria and nobody is standing up to it. Nobody is saying, hey, this is fucked up! So here is your call to action: Contact the Round the Bend Steakhouse and let them know we are not going to stand for this kind of misinformation and indoctrination being spread through our communities. Their phone number is 402-944-9974 and their email address is info@roundthebendsteakhouse.com .
