And Now We Know His Name

4 min readNov 26, 2020

I know more about JD than I ever wanted to.

I know he worked construction. Lives in Vancouver, Washington. I know what his wife looks like angry and what she looks like crying. I know what his breath smells like and what his eyes look like when he decides you’re less than human. I know what his back looks like when you follow him out of a screaming mob.

On November 14th, I flew to Washington DC to cover the Million MAGA March as a freelance journalist. I spent the day amongst the tens of thousands of Trump supporters who took to the streets of Washington DC. I listened to speech after conspiratorial speech about alleged election theft by the Democrats, “globalist” forces, and a complicit media. I saw a lesbian Trump supporter get into a shouting match with a homophobic street preacher and filmed the Proud Boys strut menacingly outside their favorite DC bar.

Which is also a cop bar. Go figure.

I listened to Nick Fuentes address his Groypers and, through his barely-disguised white nationalist rhetoric, began to see how this strange and doomed Hail Mary pass of a coup attempt could become a powerful weapon for the far right over the next four years. As Fuentes threatened to tear the GOP apart if they failed to fight and secure Trump’s victory, I knew the kind of article I wanted to write. National in scope, a vision of the future.

That article sits, half-finished, in my drafts folder while I feverishly write this one instead.

The thing that’s occupied most of my time for the past week happened late that night. As my colleague John and I observed the various street parties and celebrations that closed out the long and sometimes-violent day, we came across the Groypers chasing off a lone protester. We stopped to film, as we had done at several similar locations earlier in the evening.

And then I heard my name called out behind me. A protester from my hometown of Portland, Oregon recognized me as someone whose coverage of the far right is often less than flattering. Someone who’s been known to

What followed were fifteen of the most uncomfortable minutes of my life. We were surrounded and trapped by a furious and maskless mob that shrieked a seemingly-unending stream of obscenities and threats. “I’ve never been called a fag so many times in my life,” John remarked as we finally walked away. They challenged him to fight while they threatened and menaced me. Stepped on my feet and continuously jostled me, their constant unwanted touch a reminder of my precarious position in this frothing crowd.

There was nowhere to go — we were surrounded — and so we stood, back to back. I fought to keep my voice and hand steady as I continued to record. Our dual cameras provided an interlocking field of film against escalation into violence.

Maybe you’ve seen the video. Maybe you haven’t. You can see it here:

There’s a main character in this video. It’s the man in the American flag mask who threatens me and steps on my foot and calls me a stupid bitch about twenty-seven times. His name, for the purposes of this article, is JD.

I did not know his name when he approached me but I knew, as soon as he began to scream into my camera, that I would know it.

And surely, on some level, JD must have known this too. When the woman he was with pointed at me, a journalist visibly recording things with her camera, and identified me as “Antifa press,” he decided to move towards me without a mask. He then decided to say and do the assorted repugnant things he said and did.

When JD stepped towards me, we were both immediately cast in the three-act play of Internet justice served. In that instant, his exposure and loss of employment shifted from avoidable to preordained.

And Now We Know His Name

Written by Debrajohnson