Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is up to his old tricks again. This time he crashed a gun rights event in Washington, where he posed as a racist country singer, getting some of the crowd to sing along before it reportedly “turned on him” and his security whisked him away.
According to Variety, Cohen infiltrated the event “March for Our Rights 3” headed by the organization Washington Three Percenters — a pro-gun rights group that has been widely described as an “anti-government right-wing militia,” a label the group rejects — where he sang a racist song before the crowd after posing as a country musician.
“According to social media posts from the event’s organizers, Baron Cohen disguised himself as the leader of a political action committee who wanted to sponsor the rally,” reported Variety. “He brought his own security team who prevented organizers from kicking him off stage once he began singing and turning off the power to his microphone.”
Once the actor took the stage, he performed a song while having members of the crowd repeat the overtly racist lyrics back to him. The song focused on “injecting Obama, Clinton and Fauci with the ‘Wuhan flu’ and chopping up members of the World Health Organization ‘like the Saudis do.'”
“Obama, what we gonna do? Inject him with the Wuhan flu. Hillary Clinton, what we gonna do? Lock her up like we used to do. Fauci don’t know his head from his a**. He must be smoking grass. I ain’t lying, it ain’t no jokes. Corona is a liberal hoax. Dr. Fauci, what we gonna do? Inject him with the Wuhan flu. WHO, what we gonna do? Chop ’em up like the Saudis do,” Baron Cohen sang.
Sacha Baron Cohen infiltrated the Washington militia event in Olympia today.
A last-minute big donor paid to sponsor the event, and hire security & then that security kept the organizers from getting on stage to stop Cohen
"Whatcha gonna do? Chop em up like the Saudis do".
— Justice for Floyd ➡️ I Can't Breathe (@InsideASCIF) June 28, 2020
Exactly what Baron Cohen was performing the prank for has not yet been confirmed. Speculation suggests it may have been for his Showtime program “Who Is America?” which has lampooned people to the right-of-center.
In a statement, James Connor Blair, a Councilman in Yelm, Washington, described how the stunt unfolded, ending with Baron Cohen escaping in a private ambulance.
“Sacha Baron Cohen pulled A bulls**t stunt at the ‘March for Our Rights 3’ event. Disguised as a PAC out of Southern California, paid for the stage set up and musical entertainment,” said Blair in the statement. “Came on stage disguised as the lead singer of the last band, singing much of racist, hateful, disgusting as s**t. His security blocked event organizers from getting him off the stage or pulling power from the generator. After the crowd realized what he was saying, and turned on him, his security then rushed the stage and evacuated them to a waiting private ambulance that was contracted to be their escape transport. It was a setup, and smack in the face of the great people who put on this event, including Allen Acosta, Tessa Ashley, and Matt Marshall disgusted with what Sacha did off of the bulls**t stunt.”
Holy shit 😂
Sacha Baron Cohen infiltrated the Washington 3% (local rightwing militia) event in Olympia a few minutes ago. A last-minute big donor paid to sponsor the event, and hire security… And then that security kept the organizers from getting on stage to stop Cohen. 😂 pic.twitter.com/mllLkKBcpZ
— Spek (@spekulation) June 27, 2020
In February, NPR produced a profile piece on the Washington Three Percenters’ “efforts to go mainstream.” The group, NPR reported, is “part of the broader ‘Patriot Movement,’ an assortment of militias, survivalists and self-described ‘constitutionalist conservatives‘ that question the legitimacy of the federal government and seek to limit its powers. Typically, these factions get lumped together under one catchall: anti-government extremists.”
“We’re absolutely not a paramilitary. We’re a nonprofit corporation,” the group’s leader, Matt Marshall, told NPR. “The narrative is, we’re an all-white man, Christian Dominion-type, crazy, out-there, far-right militia,” he said. Marshall has “set about changing that image,” NPR reported, including by breaking with the national Three Percent organization. “We’re stuck in the middle. The true neo-Nazis hate us, which they should because we hate them too,” Marshall said. “And the far left, who we don’t have any problems with, hate us because they believe that we’re neo-Nazis.” (Read the full NPR profile here.)
This article has been expanded to include excerpts from NPR’s profile on the group.
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