Former NFL punter Chris Kluwe was arrested in California on Tuesday after protesting against what he said was a tribute to the Maga movement.
Kluwe attended a city council meeting in Huntington Beach and spoke out against the decision to erect a plaque at a local library. The plaque features the words “Magical, Alluring, Galvanizing and Adventurous” and the city commission confirmed it was a reference to Maga.
“Maga is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy and most importantly, Maga is explicitly a Nazi movement,” Kluwe, who was part of the Minnesota Vikings for most of his career, said. “You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that’s what it is.”
He added that since Trump started his second term in power, the Maga movement had, among other things, sought to erase trans people, aimed to reintroduce segregation and fired military veterans and “the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal”. Kluwe then said he would “engage in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience” and walked on to the meeting’s stage.
There were cheers, laughter and applause for Kluwe’s words while one person told him to “get the heck out”. He was handcuffed by law enforcement officials and carried out of the chamber. The 43-year-old was charged with disrupting an assembly and was released after four hours in custody. He later said on social media that the police were “polite and professional.”
All seven members of the Huntington Beach city council are conservatives and one member, Gracey Van Der Mark, said there was “nothing peaceful” about Kluwe’s protest. She said he was guilty of “causing alarm among those in attendance, including two young students”.
Kluwe was outspoken on social issues during his NFL career, which lasted from 2005 to 2013, and he claimed he was eventually released by the Vikings because of his beliefs and his support for same-sex marriage.
“I felt that this was something important that needed to come out and if that’s the price I have to pay, then that’s the price I have to pay,” he said at the time about his beliefs.
