To the Sound of Star Wars - Charlie Kirk Supporter Led Away in Portland

There are images one would take for satire if they were not real. In Portland, the city once known for protest culture, creativity, and progressive values, police officers led a man away in handcuffs on Friday night - to the sound of the Star Wars theme. The man wore a T-shirt reading “Freedom,” had shouted through a megaphone that he stood behind ICE and “America,” and was arrested while right-wing and left-wing groups around him screamed, filmed, and accused each other of embodying the downfall of the country.

What at first glance looks like grotesque street theater has long become a symptom of a deep political sickness. The demonstrations in front of the ICE building in the south of the city have turned into a kind of open-air laboratory for America’s self-destruction - a stage where the myths and slogans of the Trump era mingle with the everyday reality of urban police work. Between tear gas, cell phones, and Bible verses, there is no longer a clear boundary between order, faith, and delusion.

The arrested man is named Thomas Wayne Allen, a young follower of the movement that calls itself “MAGA Patriots of Oregon.” Images show him hours earlier standing with other young men at the ICE compound - some in “Charlie Kirk Freedom” shirts, others with Bible verses on their arms. They chanted slogans against “Antifa,” swore “Jesus is Lord,” and saw themselves as heirs to a generation that, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, turned into a kind of sacred cult of martyrdom. In the movement’s online forums, Allen is already being called a “patriot” who was “taken by police in the name of evil.”

Reality, as so often, is more complicated. The police cite “disorderly conduct” - public disturbance - yet the context makes the scene look like a parable of the American condition. While officers confront counterprotesters with signs and bottles, they simultaneously protect the entrances of the ICE complex where children in handcuffs and adults in chains are delivered. In this atmosphere of brutalization, every gesture, every arrest becomes political - and that is precisely what makes the situation so volatile.

That police officers led the young MAGA man away to the triumphant sounds of John Williams’ Star Wars fanfare seems like an unintentional caricature. It is a moment when reality slips into absurdity, when American pop culture mirrors itself in its darkest form: heroes and villains, good and evil, lightsabers and batons, freedom and coercion - everything blurs into a grotesque ritual of identity.

But the decisive thing is not the music, it is the audience. Thousands watched the moment live on X (formerly Twitter), shared by the account “MAGA Voice.” In the comments, users celebrated the arrested man as a “soldier of God,” cursed the police as “agents of the Antichrist,” and called for the “National Guard to be sent.” Thus, every local police scene is inflated into a national narrative, every operation into proof that the United States is at war with itself.

Portland is no longer an isolated case but a mirror image. A city where every street corner has become an ideological battlefield - ICE against Portland Police and Sanctuary, Patriot against Antifa, Christian against “Woke.” Whoever is arrested here is not simply led away but woven into a myth. A myth that generates millions of clicks, monetizes rage, and feeds a movement that draws its strength from a sense of victimhood.

That the police that night led away the man with the megaphone while others shouted “Death to ICE” unimpeded fits the confusing pattern of a country that no longer knows where order ends and political theater begins. Everything is filmed, everything commented on, everything distorted. Between “Freedom” shirts and Bible verses, a bizarre tableau emerges of patriotism, self-victimization, and religious exaltation - and above it all blares the music from a film that once told of hope for a better galaxy.

What remains is the image of a country parodying itself. A police force that, in trying to remain neutral, becomes the projection surface of both extremes. And a generation that no longer seeks its hero stories in books but in viral clips oscillating between pathos, violence, and pop music. To the sound of Star Wars, no hero was born in Portland, but rather another shadow image of the American present. A symbol of how deeply the country is trapped in the conflict between myth and reality - and how loud the soundtrack can be when democracy begins to stagger.