dinsdag 20 januari 2026

Rightwing influencer with White House ties turns focus to Minnesota

Critics draw ‘direct line’ between content by Nick Sortor and similar figures and violent actions of federal agents

A rightwing influencer, who appeared to admit that he recently drove his truck at protesters in Minneapolis, has for years cooperated with the Trump administration even while he has been repeatedly accused of escalating conflict for video content he pumps out to 1.2 million followers on X.

Nick Sortor has received full-throated support of the Trump administration after an October arrest in Portland, and attended an October 2025 White House influencer roundtable on “antifa”.

Sortor’s close relationship with the administration exists despite his previous DUIs and a misdemeanor conviction for criminal mischief and his having absconded from probation in his native Kentucky, where he was reportedly subject to arrest as of last November.

Sortor, 27 of Washington DC, is just one of a new crop of Maga influencers who monetize red meat content for audiences on X and other platforms, and whose depictions of protesters and immigrants as violent criminals appears to be feeding directly into the forceful escalation of Trump administration enforcement actions in Minnesota and around the country.

The Guardian twice emailed a detailed request for comment on this reporting to Nick Sortor on the address listed on his X account as his primary contact point. He did not respond by deadline.

Critics have drawn a “direct line” between the content produced by the likes of Sortor and other video influencers like Nick Shirley and the violent, and occasionally lethal actions of federal immigration agents in Minnesota and beyond.

Jeff Tischauser, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that for content creators like Sortor, “It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is. If they deem you to be un-American or insufficiently loyal to their goals they will drag your name, they will call you domestic terrorists, they’ll call you a criminal, they’ll call you a violent thug.”

He said the goal of such content creators was to engender “loyalty to Trump administration’s goals above all else. The script is to go out and create content that will falsely label their perceived enemies as domestic terrorists so that they can drum up support within Trump’s base”

A violent incident

Sortor recently posted a video on X which he claimed showed “anti-ICE rioters SURROUNDING my vehicle, smashing my windows, and attempting to kiII” him and fellow rightwing influencer Cam Higby.

He also added an apparent admission that he had driven at the protesters: “I was forced to drive away to save our lives, repeatedly warning those standing in front to GET OUT OF THE WAY. They didn’t listen, so I had no choice but to go anyway.”

Sortor’s version of events was amplified by fellow rightwingers on X, YouTube, and other social media sites. It was also uncritically echoed in many local news reports, and on Fox News.

Mercado Media founder Andrew Mercado offered a different perspective on the exchange of blows between the pair ahead of Sortor’s post.

In successive posts with videos embedded, Mercado first claimed that “NICK SORTOR HITS A FEMALE – she was seen blocking him from filming her friend with a plastic shield, Sortor then knocks it to the ground, blocks her from retrieving it and things escalate and flashbangs, pepper balls are deployed”, adding: “[Sortor] and Higby] have escalated every situation they have entered into. Whether it be Portland, Chicago, D.C. and now Minneapolis.”

Mercado then posted a different view of Sortor’s escape from protesters, writing: “Protesters called police after Sortor hit a female protester. They tried to block him from leaving until police arrived, but Sortor drove through them.” In Mercado’s footage, there are no protesters behind Sortor’s car, and Sortor is seen accelerating rapidly towards protesters in front of the car.

The Guardian emailed Mercado to clarify his understanding of events.

Sortor in Minneapolis

Nick Sortor’s social media feeds indicate he traveled to Minneapolis from Washington DC between 24 December, when he last posted a watermarked video in DC and 29 December, when he posted videos in which he followed DHS officers on door to door visits of “potential fraud sites”.

His visit came in the wake of fellow influencer Nick Shirley’s claimed exposes of day care center fraud by Somali immigrants, which saw influencers flock to the city along with more border agents.

Once there Sortor stood outside Tim Walz’s house with a plush pickle, published video of a Minnesota Hilton hotel that was refusing to book DHS agents, leading Hilton to withdraw the hotel’s franchise. He appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show.

He was also in the city when Renee Good was shot dead by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. In one of many posts responding to the situation, he wrote: “Liberal white women have been radicalized to TERRORIZE ICE.” In the wake of the shooting, Fox News treated Sortor in multiple broadcasts as an authoritative on the ground reporter.

He also had a post on the shooting, which blamed Walz, boosted by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff who is widely seen as a crucial architect of the deportation crackdown.

‘Keep pushing, ICE! Patriots have your backs’

Sortor bills himself as a fearless journalist. His X bio styles him as “On-scene covering stories MSM won’t”; on Linktree he is “An independent journalist taking deep dives into stories via on-scene reporting”; on TikTok he is simply a “journo”.

In Minneapolis, however, as in his previous excursions to Portland and Chicago, Sortor’s output has comprised little more than partisan cheerleading and celebrations of violence.

In recent days, Sortor has cheered on ICE brutality against protesters in a series of posts on X and Telegram, often reposting videos from a broader network of rightwing influencers, or from independent journalists who monitor protests.

In a Monday post, Sortor wrote in a post to Telegram and X: “LMAO! More and more leftists are getting SPRAYED in the face for harassing ICE agents in Minneapolis.” He added: “ICE agents have HAD ENOUGH, and they’re getting NO HELP from local police” and: “KEEP PUSHING, ICE! PATRIOTS HAVE YOUR BACKS.”

The video shows a plain clothes ICE officer pepper-spraying two people through the open window of his car. In the footage, the officer says “Get back” before spraying and “Get the fuck back, bitch!” after first spraying the people. This is followed by close-up footage of an elderly woman in visible distress.

His X post references a video posted two minutes earlier by fellow rightwing news influencer Eric Daugherty, who writes for pro-Trump website Florida Voice News and spinoff site Rightline News.

The same day, in another Telegram post, Sortor wrote: “ LMAO! A leftist agitator is in TEARS after being sprayed in the FACE by a DHS agent in Minneapolis”. He added: “I could watch this on loop. STOP IMPEDING, and you won’t get sprayed! It’s really pretty simple.”

In the video, an ICE officer pepper sprays a man at close range, incapacitating him.

His video references the original video posted by independent journalist Amanda Moore, who is well known for in-person coverage of protests and other events.

In another post, Sortor reposted a video from Fox News reporter Matt Finn adding: “BREAKING – FAFO IN MINNEAPOLIS: A woman HIT a Border Patrol vehicle with agents inside, while another spit on it, and BOTH of them felt the wrath of Border Patrol’s Tactical Unit”

The video only showed the violent apprehension of the protester, not the incident he claimed had caused it. Nevertheless he added: “This is SO satisfying to watch. NO MERCY!”

Apart from celebrating DHS’s use of force, Sortor has called relentlessly over the last year for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would permit the deployment of the US military to American cities.

On 12 December, he posted: “DHS agents are being forced to throw TEARGAS into INTERSECTIONS in Minneapolis to stop vioIent leftists from blocking them with their cars

He added: “This situation is CONTINUING to devolve. Agents are sitting ducks right now. We need TROOPS here!”

Arne Holverscheid, a PhD candidate in Political Science at Northwestern University, who has published research on the relationship between fringe political actors and mainstream politicians in the US, said that the relationship between rightwing “citizen journalists” and the Trump administration was “symbiotic”.

“There’s a symbiotic relationship between much more extreme figures who exist primarily online and more established figures who are elected from the Republican party.

He added, “It’s mutually beneficial in that the fringe are not directly affiliated so there’s a plausible deniability for the politicians, but it does help them to sort of move the Overton window”

Sortor’s rise from obscurity in Kentucky to the upper echelon of pro-Trump influencers coincides with Elon Musk’s ownership of X, which critics say tilted the algorithm in favor of rightwing accounts, and incentivized the production of low quality material.

Tischauser, the SPLC researcher, said: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Sortor becomes popular or decides to take this route in 2023 after musk purchases X and monetizes X and shifts the algorithm to favor voices like Sortor”.

His earliest successes in attracting widespread attention on X included his coverage of the East Palestine train derailment in February 2023, and traveling to Hawaii in August 2023 to report on the Maui wildfires, both of which he portrayed as a failure of the Biden administration. During his visit, during a live cross for Steve Bannon’s War Room, Sortor was confronted by residents over his coverage of the tragedy.

But his partisan coverage was appreciated by candidate Trump, and eventually by his new administration.

Just a month before the 2024 election, Sortor posted a picture of a personally addressed letter from Trump which began “Thank you for being a social media warrior in the fight to save our country from the Radical Left!” and added: “Comrade Kamala has the Fake News, Big Tech, the Deep State swamp creatures, but I have YOU!”

Since Trump was re-elected, Sortor has traveled to flashpoints elevated by rightwing discourse and administration policy, often appearing to escalate tensions on the scene.

This travel has included cities singled out by the Trump administration for increased immigration enforcement and National Guard occupation.

Last October, he spent several days in the Portland, Oregon, during which time, as The Guardian reported, he had “been involved in multiple physical altercations with protesters in Portland this month, some of which he clearly initiated”.

On 3 October, Sortor was briefly arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct on an evening in which he grabbed a burning American flag from an elderly protester he described as an “Antifa thug”, and later exchanged blows with other protesters.

Multnomah County prosecutors declined to press charges.

In the hours following his release on 3 October, Sortor reportedly received a message from Trump via a White House aide: “Great job. We’re behind you 100%. Let us know if there’s anything we can do. … President DJT.”

The same day, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, defended him from her podium, and criticized Portland police bureau, claiming: “Instead of arresting these violent mob members night after night … the police arrested a journalist who was there trying to document the chaos.”

Then, Trump’s Department of Justice issued threats to city authorities in support of Sortor.

Sortor posted on 3 December: “Attorney General Pam Bondi has ORDERED a full investigation, led by Asst. AG Harmeet Dhillon, of the Portland Police Bureau, following my wrongful arrest last night, Bondi confirmed to me.”

Harmeet Dhillon immediately confirmed this in a repost, writing: “Portland: it’s FO time. Buckle up.” The next day, Dhillon posted: “Portland police arresting journalists such Nick Sortor while giving Antifa goons a free pass is unjust, and will NOT stand in this @TheJusticeDept”.

Before her appointment to the Trump administration, Dhillon previously represented rightwing social media personality Andy Ngo in a largely unsuccessful lawsuit against people who were alleged to have been involved in various alleged attacks on Ngo.

Sortor subsequently filed a tort claim against the city of Portland in December, saying that he planned to sue the city for $10m.

Days after his arrest, Sortor flourished the flag he had obtained in Portland at a Trump-convened roundtable on Antifa at the White House.

Sortor’s Kentucky roots

Apparently the administration is unaware of, or unfazed by Sortor’s own criminal history.

According to November reporting in the Lexington News Observer, Sortor “has been charged twice and convicted once for driving under the influence in Kentucky, was arrested for menacing a police officer in downtown Lexington and was put on probation after pleading guilty to criminal mischief for an incident with a woman who accused him of being violent”.

Journalist Jacqueline Sweet reported on the details of the arrest and court records covering the 2020 incident that led to Sortor’s conviction and probation.

Sortor was charged with 2nd degree burglary, per Sweet, which was reduced to criminal mischief on a plea deal. He was sentenced to two years probation in January 2022, and by June 2023 he had absconded. On 23 June 2023, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

Kentucky’s state department of corrections still lists Sortor as an absconded offender online. The Guardian contacted the department of corrections to confirm that the online notice was still current and did not get a response.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/nick-sortor-rightwing-influencer

maandag 19 januari 2026

After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization

Jan 13, 2026 Rami G. Khouri

The US-enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza has persisted for 27 months and sent shockwaves across the world. In its wake, two puzzles remain unsolved: Beyond the sheer shock of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, what motivates so much of the Israeli public to support their government’s genocidal annihilation of Palestinians and the destruction of Palestinian society? And why have the United States and key Western governments so enthusiastically supported Israel’s genocide and silenced public advocacy for Palestinian rights?

In this powerful book, Hamid Dabashi answers these questions by analyzing Gaza in the wider context of Western colonialism since the 16th century—or “Western” colonialism, as he would put it. The book’s central premise, captured in its subtitle, “Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization,” is that Israel’s militarism and the Palestinian genocide are not isolated dimensions of local tensions in the Levant but the apex of Western racism and colonial brutality. The concepts of “the West” and “Western civilization” as a civilizing force or source of moral authority are no longer tenable. “The Israeli savagery staged during the most recent war on Gaza, but always evident ever since its colonial invention, is not the cause but the symptom of the delusional malaise called ‘the West,’” Dabashi writes (p. 31).

Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, is a prolific scholar on Iranian culture and history, and on global political, economic, cultural, and military interactions more generally. In a way that few other authors can match, he here brings together his knowledge of both Western and non-Western traditions in philosophy, culture, the arts, identity, and state policies.

Dabashi makes four core points that are profound in their scope and moral depth. They are convincing, although in places more evidence would make them more fully compelling. He also leaves unanswered some important questions about the behavior of western citizens and governments during the genocide that deserve further attention.

His first theme is that Israel’s genocide—and that it only happened with the sustained support of most of the West—has exposed it as a classic settler-colonial garrison state that serves western globalized capitalism and plunder. “The link between garrison states, colonialism, and pure violence,” he notes, “is written into the very fabric of Israel, as first a European and now an American settler-colonial project” (p.114).

Dabashi’s second theme is that western settler-colonialism has always practiced racism against other ethnicities and religions, especially Judaism and Islam. He sees Israel’s Gaza genocide and the Nazi Holocaust as related brutalities in different parts of a Western civilization that looks more savage—and thus more fraudulent—every day.Dabashi extensively quotes leading European philosophers and authors to show how European racism explicitly saw Western societies as the center and drivers of world history, while viewing everyone else as inhabiting the realms of savagery. Among the dozens of notable authors whom he quotes are Joseph Conrad, Aime Cesaire, Immanuel Kant, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, Ilan Pappe, Patrick Wolfe, Theodor Adorno, Jurgen Habermas, Edward Said, and Georg Hegel. I especially appreciated his quote from the eminent French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas that “humanity consists of the Bible and the Greek. All the rest can be translated: all the rest – all the exotic – is dance” (p .97). Dabashi also quotes Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s “compelling proposition” that modern states are “rooted in the concentration camps they run and that their sovereignty is rooted in the systematic destruction of human life these camps best represent” (p. 116). Dabashi also cites Agamben’s statement that “Today it is not the city but rather the camp that is the fundamental biopolitical paradigm of the West” (p. 123).

The book’s third key idea is the centrality of Palestine to a “radically different liberation metaphysics, irreducible to any sectarian denomination” (p. 134) without racism, occupation, mass killings, exile, or cultural annihilation. As the United States and Israel move along their sustained course of colonialism, Dabashi argues that “Palestine today is the epicenter of a radically different conception of the world—a fragile and endangered world that has overcome all its fictional frontiers and mythologies of power and politics” (p. 135). Palestine has transcended local or Third World concerns, Dabashi says, and represents a global cry for freedom, a repository of all global anti-colonial struggles, and a center of resistance to Israeli-Western brutality.

Finally, Dabashi asks “Where do we go from here?” (p. 155) after Gaza has exposed the West as “the code of a global criminality—not just because it has subjected the world to unspeakable savagery as Israel now does in Palestine, but because the West calls itself a ‘civilization.’ It is not a civilization. It is barbarism manifest” (pp.169-170). After the West, he sees a new moral intuition and underpinning emerging that must embrace us all. For all people in the Middle East and elsewhere to live together as equals requires deep structural and moral changes, including ridding the world of the rot at the core of notions such as “the West” and “Zionism.” This imperative requires recognizing the common elements of the Gaza genocide and the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and other victims.

“Witnessing this savagery in Gaza, we can clearly link the Jewish Holocaust to the Palestinian genocide and see genocidal Zionism as the logical colonial extension of European fascism,” Dabashi writes (p. xvii). A better world ahead will require the West and Israel to end their traditions of hating, mistreating, dehumanizing, demonizing, incarcerating, expelling, torturing, and killing Jews and Muslims. The author calls for nothing less that “rethinking the very metaphysical, the moral, and imaginative underpinning of the world after Gaza” (p. 157).

Dabashi acknowledges “We could not stop Israel’s mass murder of innocent people, but we are capable of exposing the savagery at the roots of that claim to ‘civilization’” (p. 157). Exposing the roots of the genocide’s savagery is what he does best in his recurring linkages between Israel as a settler-colonial representative of western imperial interests and its treatment of Palestinians in the same brutal manner in which western powers savaged their own colonial subjects in modern history.

Dabashi ends by noting that Gaza is a threshold for the world like the Holocaust was – it has “deuniversalized the West and exposed its tribal and ethnic roots” (p. 168), which could open a path to a better world for all. “Just as after the Jewish Holocaust, the entire project of European Enlightenment modernity was put under scrutiny and systematically dismantled; in the aftermath of the Palestinian genocide, the philosophical project of a post-Western world commences in earnest,” the author concludes (p. 168).

I fully agree with the author’s condemnation of the imperial crimes of Israel and the West in Palestine and elsewhere, but believe that in some places his arguments could be strengthened or expanded. The corporate dimension of imperial greed would benefit from examples that reveal the links between corporate and political power, a phenomenon evident in contexts such as Gaza and Venezuela, among others. Some of Dabashi’s e blanket condemnations of “the West” as fully evil and barbaric are justified in the colonial dimension, but further distinctions might be in order to differentiate between domestic and global behavior, and between Western government authorities and Western public opinion, which can diverge significantly.

Here is where Dabashi could draw upon his immense knowledge of political behavior across the world to assess historic developments that parallel the genocide. For example, recent public opinion polls have revealed changes in the domestic balance of forces for and against the Zionist-Israeli genocide in some western states. Trends that slowly balance pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, or pro-justice, forces in the West have been underway for years and have accelerated during the genocide. Some of these developments even affected national, state, and municipal electoral politics in the United States in 2025, usually partly as a reaction to US complicity in the genocide. A critical new element is the expanding world of Palestinian political resistance in the West through street rallies, advertising, legal cases, media activism, cultural and educational activity, coalition politics, solidarity across social movements, and other means that were virtually nonexistent in the 20th century when Zionism and Israel effectively monopolized the public narrative and perpetrated their ugly imperial deeds.

I strongly recommend this book to readers who want to understand why so many people and governments around the world vehemently and incessantly criticize Israel and the United States as the main Gaza genocide perpetrators. Israel’s crimes in Palestine and its longstanding links with Western colonial practices fundamentally explain the gruesome and ongoing attempt to annihilate the indigenous Arabs of Palestine.

Hamid Dabashi, After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization (Haymarket Books: Chicago, 2025, 218 pp.)

The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/after-savagery-gaza-genocide-and-the-illusion-of-western-civilization/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=today-on-the-jvl-blog-newsletter-total-articles-for-you_1

dinsdag 20 januari 2026