No Cameras Allowed: My Encounter with Antifa and a J6 Defendant in DC

I visited some of the Anti-Elon Musk protests in Washington, DC, earlier this month to document what all the rage is about and ended up meeting several interesting characters, including a January 6th defendant, a crude blue puppet, and Frank the Antifascist.

Conflict arose when I attempted to interview a man who happened to be the “January 6-er” and provocateur at large, Brandon Fellows, and an Antifa guy going by the name of Frank stepped in to block me and my camera from recording.

Antifa Frank’s odd mission is to block Trump supporters from speaking to cameras. Fellows is a cocky J6 defendant with Aspergers, whose mission that day, it seems, was to provoke activists wearing images of guillotines on their clothing, like Frank. Together, they formed a modern-day Odd Couple, like Zack Morris and Screech from Saved by the Bell, with Fellow playing the friendly bully (“We’re gonna find you a girl one of these days Frank!”) and Frank playing the goofy neurotic grump (“I'm not friends with the homophobic fascist!”)

More characters joined the show, including the Daily Caller’s blue puppet, Edgar (“Can I bite your crotch, Frank?”), and a masked cross-eyed Antifa who brought Frank a bigger sign to block my lens. Despite the frustration of being physically blocked from an interview, I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.

After being repeatedly denied the freedom to give an interview in public, Fellows activated his loudspeaker to provoke the rallygoers (as he had at the previous protest across the street), yelling, “Trump won! We won! Woohoo!”. The crowd booed and replied with “We Hate You!” cries and “Go Home, Weirdo!” chants.

The only threat of violence came from strong Democrat YouTuber Jesse Dollemore in a video recorded by X user michaelquotes1. After Fellows asked Dollemore not to step on his shoe, Dollemore told Fellows sternly, “I’ll step on your fucking neck.” (Dollemore edited that part out of his own YouTube videos). The hate was palpable, but Fellows, Dollemore, and the rest of the crowd continued to exchange taunts without any violence.

After being shooed away down the block, Fellows shared his story with a few listeners. Last year he was sentenced to 37 months in prison for trespassing misdemeanors and the felony obstruction of an official proceeding on January 6. A later Supreme Court ruling challenges the legality of the obstruction conviction, and Fellows is pursuing legal action.

Fellows and the other January 6 convicts were pardoned by the Trump administration but not before serving significant time. In prison, Fellows says he went ten months without being outside and feeling the Sun. He paused and then added, “Yeah, nobody, no matter whether you’re on the left or the right, nobody should be subjected to those conditions…I think a nice thing that we can all get behind, on the right and the left, is prison reform. Because a lot of us didn't have an understanding of what the heck was going on in there.”

That wasn’t the only issue the J6 defendent agreed with the crowd on. “Yeah, I'm a little, I'm a little worried, worrisome about this Gaza Strip news,” Fellows said of Trump’s annoucement that “The U.S. will takeover the Gaza Strip”.

“I don't think that was a great move. That's a tough area to control,” Fellows explained, before comparing Gaza to the U.S. previous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We've tried to control a Middle Eastern country…That didn't work out well for us. Spent 20 years there, and we're going to go do this again?”

The crowd would never learn their archenemy J6er was an ally on prison reform and ending U.S. support of the Gaza conflict. Instead, the Democrat-aligned protesters hatefully flicked him off and cussed him out as they walked by.

“Aww thank you,” Fellows replied with a huge smile before reflexivley berating them for wearing masks.