SPEAKER 1: OK, our next
speaker is Andy Ngo. He's a journalist, who
serves as editor-at-large. [APPLAUSE] You're supposed to let me
introduce him first, but-- [LAUGHTER] --he doesn't mind two
rounds of applause, or more. So to call him controversial
is maybe somewhat of an understatement. He's best known for reporting
on Antifa in America. He has written reports on
Antifa for the New York Post, Newsweek, and
many other publications. He came to the
attention of the nation when he was beaten
by members of Antifa on the streets of Portland,
in the summer of 2019. I'm happy to say
that incident only increased his determination
to report the truth. And we're grateful for that. He's the author of a recent
book titled Unmasked, Inside Antifa's Radical Plan
to Destroy Democracy, which is a New York Times bestseller. And some of you may
recall an incident from last month, when his
book made news headlines. Winston Marshall, a banjoist
for the band Mumford & Sons, first publicly
endorsed the book-- describing Ngo in a
since-deleted tweet as a "brave man,"
quote, unquote. And then, under pressure from
a left-wing cancel culture mob, later recanted his endorsement. As Marshall the banjoist
put in a tweet, quote, "For now, please
know that I realize how my endorsements
have the potential to be viewed as approvals of
hatred, of divisive behavior. [GROANING] I apologize, as this was
not at all my intention." So this is the upside down,
Bizarro World of cancel culture kind of on full display. The person who writes
about a group that, to use our speaker's words,
supports maiming, killing, and terrorism, is
himself accused of hatred and divisive behavior. Unfortunately, we've gotten
used to this kind of obsequious and groveling apology. But the more such
episodes occur, the more freedom of speech
is curtailed and suppressed. These episodes have the effect-- again, using our
speaker's words-- of quote, "closing curious
minds from independent thought." And that's a problem for
us, because free speech is essential to a free society. Well, as I said this
morning, at Hillsdale we're fans of free speech, and we're
delighted he could be with us. Please welcome Andy Ngo. [APPLAUSE] ANDY NGO: Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Oh, wow. [APPLAUSE] Thank you very much
for that warm welcome. And thank you to Hillsdale
College for the invitation to speak here. I've been looking
forward to this. Who here has heard
of trigger warnings? Yeah. So it's mocked a lot
by people on the right. Trigger warnings were
popularized in universities and other left-wing spaces. Basically, it's just
providing a warning, normally, for things that
may be triggering. So if it's like
reading a story that has triggering language
because of so-called homophobia or racism or anything,
it's given a warning. And oftentimes it's
misused, and it's to make students
quite snowflake-y. But there is a place
for it, actually. I'm going to give a trigger
warning for this, just because some of the
images and videos I'm going to show as part of my
presentation are graphic. And I don't do it to be
sensational or shocking. But there's no way to
report honestly about Antifa without showing what
they actually do, which does result in maimed
bodies and killed people. So many of you who heard of
me probably first heard of me in 2019, You probably saw this
photo or some variation of it in the mainstream
media headlines. This photograph was
taken on the 29th of June 2019 in downtown Portland. You probably heard the story. I was recording a
protester riot by Antifa, as I had been doing
for many years. And that day, in
organized fashion, Antifa beat me severely. So the photograph, you see
mostly all that liquid stuff on my face. But that wasn't really
what caused the injuries. The injuries were the repeated
punches to the face and head. I was in the hospital
and diagnosed with a subarachnoid hemorrhage. I don't know what that was. The doctor had to explain
it to me in layman's terms. And that's a brain bleed. And you can die from it. I survived. I had about a year of
various medical treatments to address the deficiencies
that resulted from that. So this story has been
on the record a lot. And I want to spend
a few moments just to focus on other people who
were injured on that same day. A lot of people don't know
that in the course of that riot there were eight people
who were injured. One other person is a man
by the name of John Blum. He was striked on the
head with a baton, by an Antifa militant
in downtown Portland. Now keep in mind
this is a riot that was pre-announced and
pre-advertised by Antifa. And the city could
not or would not respond to stop the violence. When I was beaten,
it was steps away from the Justice Center,
which is the building that houses the Sheriff's Office--
the central police precinct. So officers inside that
building could probably see me, but I had no help. In addition to John Blum,
there was Adam Kelly. He was hit on the head
with an overhead strike by Antifa member
Gage Halupowski, who was using a collapsible baton. Kelly needed 25 staples to
close the gashes on his head. And the beating was
caught on camera. You could actually
hear the sound of the baton hitting his skull. He was lucky to be alive. And here is the body of Aaron
Danielson in downtown Portland. Last year, after months of
rioting in downtown Portland, it escalated to murder. An Antifa member shot
dead a Trump supporter. And in this photograph,
you can see him. On his shorts, he's
actually wearing a patch of the Thin
Blue Line, which is showing support for police. Police were aware
of Antifa's plans for violence in
downtown that day, but they were
nowhere near to help the people who were
victimized-- and one person who was ultimately killed. So I show these images because
I want you and viewers out there to understand that Antifa is not
merely just an idea or purely theoretical. Their ideology and
militant tactics have real-life consequences. It's resulted in
destroyed livelihoods in terms of businesses that
have been continually vandalized and destroyed over and over. It's resulted in maimings,
and it's resulted in death. So who are the Antifa? What are they? There's a lot of
misinformation out there on both the left and the right. I'll start with misconceptions
on the right first. Sometimes you hear
them described as if they were a single
organization-- capital A, Antifa. And that perception,
I can understand why it exists, because of
how organized they are. And many of them travel to
different parts of the country to engage in
criminal activities. But there is no single Antifa. On the left, you
hear them described as noble antifascists who are
opposing racists and the far right and neo-Nazis. What you need to
know about Antifa is that they are a
transnational movement that espouses an extremist,
communist, anarchist ideology. They merge the worst aspects
of both communism and anarchy to form a worldview that
criminalizes property ownership, wrong think, and
produces endless disorder and crime. They organize themselves
via affinity groups connected through networks. Some of the Antifa groups
have Antifa in the name, like Rose City Antifa,
which I'm involved in a lawsuit with-- because
that militant group in Portland was the one who organized the
violence against me in 2019. But many Antifa
groups don't have the word Antifa in the name. This is the Youth
Liberation Front, which has cells or chapters
across the United States. And they were involved
in months of riot organizing on the West
Coast throughout 2020. They advocate for and carry
out acts of insurgency against the state. They hate America the most
in particular, because they see this country as, in
their words, imperialistic, and the head of a serpent
that spreads and upholds fascism around the world. They don't just hate symbols
of this country like flags and things that represent
the rule of law, like courthouses
or law enforcement. They really despise the
American philosophy-- i.e. individual rights, the rule of
law, and freedom of expression. An event like this
could not be held in an area where they have
significant control or sway, such as Portland. Antifa seek to make it
impossible, literally, for conservative or
right-wing people to participate in the public
square in urban areas. That's why they beat and
rob people for practicing their First Amendment rights. In left-wing urban centers under
the control of weak Democrats, they're able to do
it with impunity. And you don't have to have
a controversial opinion to be in their crosshairs. I've seen them beat
people for merely holding the American flag. And just over this past weekend,
a church in the Seattle area cancelled its event with
TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, after Antifa
threatened violence. You can think of Antifa
as somewhat analogous to worldwide jihadism, in
that extreme Islamic groups or individuals inspire
and incite violence against the infidel. Their followers may be formal
members of groups like Islamic State, but more
often, they're simply followers of the
ideology carrying out the call to violence. And like jihadists,
Antifa honor and celebrate their so-called martyrs. And despite the long
trail of evidence showing Antifa's involvement in
organized criminal activities, which even the FBI
Director Christopher Wray admits is real, this is
what you see when you read the legacy press headlines. Here's the Associated
Press last year, at the height of the riots-- "As Trump Blames Antifa, Protest
Records Shows Scant Evidence." New York Times-- "Despite claims by President
Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr,
there's scant evidence that loosely
organized antifascists are a significant
player in protests." So journalists who have the
benefit of a corporate media backing, with huge resources,
came to these conclusions. Myself, just as an
independent journalist, this is what I was able to find. So this is Amelia Shamrowicz. She, a male-to-female
transsexual, was arrested in May
2020 in Portland, as the George Floyd/BLM-inspired
riots broke out. She was charged with felony
arson, felony rioting, felony criminal mischief, and
two counts of conspiracy to commit a Class A felony. Now I didn't see this
reported in the press, but I actually looked
up her court records. And this is what the
criminal complaint says. Quote, "When her roommates
asked how Shamrowicz started the fires, Shamrowicz
responded by saying that it is not a conversation
for Facebook Messenger, and that she would be home soon. A subsequent in-person
conversation occurred, and the roommates
reported that Shamrowicz stated she started the fire
using a Molotov cocktail, and she is part of Antifa. Shamrowicz was reported to be
extremely excited about being labeled a terrorist, and was
very animated about her hopes that police officers would
be killed and injured by the riots. She also stated that
she would be going out on another mission, and the goal
would be to set another fire," end quote. That wasn't reported in the
local or national press, and her charges were dropped
by the district attorney. Here's another one. Ryan Howe, another
male-to-female transsexual-- this person, she's from
Rochester, New York. She was federally
charged in September 2020 with inciting or
organizing a riot. Howe shared a
homemade IED recipe and posted about arson
attacks on her social media. I actually was able to
find her account, which is under a pseudonym. And this was her profile photo. You won't see this
in the headlines. Here's another one-- Britney Austin, another
male-to-female transsexual. She also goes by the
name Sumayyah Dawud. She's a convert to Islam. She was arrested at a violent
protest in Phoenix, Arizona last year. At the time of her arrest,
she was carrying a AR-15. She was charged with
felony first degree, hindering prosecution, felony
riot, unlawful assembly, assisting a criminal
street gang. Some of the local
reporting mentioned her as being part of a,
quote, "protest group"-- racial protest group. None of them
mentioned what you see on the photo on the right,
which is what I was able to find on her social media. Back to Portland. Jarrod DeFerrari, another
male-to-female transsexual-- this person came all the way to
Portland from Sunrise, Florida. They also go by the name Sophie. She was indicted on
one count of felony riot, three counts of felony
first-degree criminal mischief. According to court
documents, she destroyed property at St.
Andre Bessette Catholic Church, in downtown Portland. And there's video of it. And this is a Catholic church
that provides charity outreach to homeless people
in Portland, which is a very large and
vulnerable population. I'll show you the video,
which allegedly shows DeFerrari at that Antifa riot. You can see people who have
press markings walk right on by and don't photograph or record
this wanton act of violence. Again, it's a church
that provides services to the homeless. Antifa is a
contemporary phenomenon, but they do take the
name, mythos, and symbols from an older organization-- the Antifaschistische
Aktion, or AFA. As you can probably tell
from the name, it's German. The original AFA
was founded in 1932 as a violent paramilitary of
the German Communist Party. They were involved in extremely
violent political street brawls and systematically
worked to undermine the Social Democratic government
of the Weimar Republic. This was just shortly
before World War II. Antifa won't admit it today,
but their forebears actually paved the way for
the rise of Hitler, by creating a climate of
extreme political polarization and instability. After World War II, the quote
unquote, "Antifa ideology" of the communists was absorbed
into the official state ideology of East Germany. In the name of
so-called antifascism, the East German regime
built the Stasi, which was the Ministry
for State Security-- where citizens were
monitored and spied on through a vast
apparatus of informants who infiltrated all aspects
of life and civil society. The Berlin Wall built
to stop its own citizens from fleeing the
tyranny of the East was called the Antifascist
Defense Barrier, officially, by East Germany. A lot of people don't know that. Historically and
today quote unquote, "antifascism," or
Antifa, have nothing to do with actually
opposing fascism. It is a cover for an explicitly
far-left communist agenda. Most mainstream left-wing
people are ignorant of this. This is why you have fools
on CNN describing Antifa as comparable to
American soldiers liberating Europe of fascism. In the same fashion,
Black Lives Matter has nothing to do
with racial justice, and it's just a
rebranded version a Black Revolutionary Marxism
seen in America decades ago. Antifa's far-left
theories and ideology was able to slip in
America through academics. Herbert Marcuse and other
European Marxist intellectuals fled Europe in the last
century and found a home in America's academic
institutions. So things like critical theory,
and from that, critical race theory, trans ideology,
intersectionality-- all that was born in America's
academic institutions. And you can see
the effects of it today, in hollowing out
pretty much everything that it touches. Discussing Antifa's
origins and their ideology can be complicated
to the layman. There's a lot of history there. There's a lot of
terms and concepts. Antifa would rather we just
take them at their word, that they are
simply antifascist. But if listening to
what they say in writing is too complicated,
how about we just look at what they do when
they're given the opportunity? This close-up is one of
the barrier checkpoints in Seattle's Capitol Hill
Autonomous Zone last year. To recap, that was when for
three weeks during the summer, the city allowed groups of
armed left-wing militants to seize six blocks
of city property, in an area that is densely
populated near downtown. Now, Seattle is the biggest
city in the Pacific Northwest. In America. We're not talking about a failed
state like Libya or Somalia or somewhere else. This is America. The militants
declared themselves sovereign from the US. And you can see one of their
signs here, on the right. It says, "You are
now leaving the USA." So I actually went
under cover there. I wanted to see
with my own eyes-- can this really be happening? Because from what I was
reading in the headlines, this was just a
wonderful street party. This was protest in the
street for racial justice. From what I saw there, they
had actual multiple checkpoints all around the six blocks. This was one of the checkpoints. And they were manned
by people who were armed with rifles and pistols. And police were chased out. CHAZ, as it was known-- the
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone-- was praised by the press. It was praised by
Seattle city council. And even the Seattle
mayor infamously went on CNN to say that this
could become a summer of love. [LAUGHTER] But what happened in there was
a zone of terror and death. In those three weeks, there were
six shootings, arson attempts, an attempted rape,
and two homicides. [INAUDIBLE] zone, established
to be a refuge for Black people, it had a 100% Black victim
shooting and homicide rate. One of the victims who was
killed was a 16-year-old teen. He was shot dead by
the CHAZ security. They mistook him for being
a white supremacist when he was in the car. They shot dozens of
rounds into the vehicle. And the one that likely
killed him was the one that went through the windshield. I looked at the photographs
and videos of the car. It was soaked with
blood on the inside. And the evidence was destroyed
by the occupants of CHAZ, such as to the
State Police still don't know who killed
that 16-year-old. It wasn't just CHAZ, of course. This is former statue in
downtown Portland-- this elk statue. It was quite beloved by
the city and its citizens. It was set on fire
and destroyed. It was one of eight statues
that were destroyed in Portland, along with the statues
of George Washington, Abraham, and Roosevelt. For more than 120 days,
night after night, Antifa rioted in Portland. Minneapolis is
probably what people think of when they
think of where the worst rioting happens, because actual
full neighborhoods were torched to the ground. In Portland, we had a
sustained violence for months on end, that lasts continuously
for more than 120 days-- to which now it's
still going on, but it's happening maybe
four-or-five times a week, instead of every night. That's the improvement
we have in the city. So Portland is my hometown, and
I was living and working there last year and seeing
with my own eyes what was happening to my city
in the course of writing my book, Unmasked. What I was seeing every
night was organized mobs of rioters setting
fires to buildings that were occupied by people. They came armed with weapons-- really brutal but
simple weapons, like knives taped to the ends
of umbrellas, Molotov cocktails, other homemade IEDs,
small knives, rocks, lasers used to damage the
eyes of their opponents in law enforcement. We hear a lot about what
happened on the 6th of January in DC. All the actions of
that day, and more, occurred for months
on end in Portland. Here's some undercover video
that I recorded last year. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] So a barrier was erected to
protect the federal courthouse, much like what we see in
front of the Capitol today. And there were
thousands of people who came night after night to
try to burn that building down. They came with power
tools, as you see here, to cut into the fence. And when that was
unsuccessful, they later attached ropes around
strategic parts of the fence and used hundreds of
people to break it apart-- which was successful. If you read the
headlines at that time, they were echoing what the
mayor, the governor, the two senators, and others
were saying in Oregon, which is that these were
protesters responding to Trump's Gestapo-- secret police that were
disappearing people. Those comments
incited more violence and allowed it to continue
night after night after night. Here's an attack where a
masked militant threw a Molotov cocktail at a group
of law enforcement. The individual here,
after more than six months of an investigation, has
been arrested and charged. He actually came to Portland
all the way from Minneapolis-- allegedly specifically for
the purpose of rioting. 96 people have been
federally charged. Around half have had
their cases dismissed. The remaining have mostly had
deferred resolution deals, which means that their cases
are dropped once they complete some brief volunteer work. At the local level, we had
more than 1,000 arrests related to the months and
months of rioting last year. With our progressive
district attorney, he dropped the cases of
more than 90% of them. This is justice in Portland. For reporting on Antifa's
violent extremism, I was beaten, as you know, and
have been continually subjected to death threats. Antifa have showed up to
my home to try to break in. They write things like
that around the city. They've written my address,
as well, in public. I have more than
two dozen reports with the Portland Police. No one's ever been arrested. This is Michael Reinoehl. He's the Portland
Antifa member who shot dead Aaron Danielson
in downtown last year. He had run-ins with law
enforcement on three occasions, shortly before going
on his mission to kill. The photo on the right,
that was him getting arrested at a riot
the month prior. You see that gun on the ground? That was his. It was illegally possessed. He was charged, and all
those charges were dropped. And then he went on to kill. Portland's not really in the
headlines not much anymore, but the violence is continuing. Just two weeks ago, Antifa again
set the Portland Police Union Hall on fire. The photo on the left is some
of the damage you see from that. When Derek Chauvin was found to
be guilty on all the charges, Antifa in downtown Portland
set buildings on fire. I'll read you one of the tweets
from the official account of Portland Police, which
were giving live updates. "This fire is near an occupied
building and a propane tank." In another riot, they went on
to destroy a children's charity. And they also smashed
up another church. What can be done? Well, my role as a
journalist is more so to describe and inform
people what's happening, rather than to give solutions. So this part of the speech
was probably the most challenging for me to write-- and depressing, I think. I do think cities like Portland,
Seattle, and Minneapolis, and others are
possibly beyond saving. There's a critical
mass of support for violent extremism
masquerading as racial justice in those areas. Notice I said critical
mass, not a majority. You don't have to have a
majority of people supporting what's happening, you
just have to have enough. And there is enough of it there. And they vote for the
politicians that enable it. Through violence,
Antifa have driven out any meaningful opposition
in urban liberal areas. This is a fight that
liberals in the moderate left have to take on themselves. But if 2020 was any indication,
that's not something they're willing to do. In fact, they're probably
more likely to join in on the protests and volunteer
themselves to stand in between the rioters and police. I predict further civilizational
and cultural decline in the US, as the critical
theorists continue their successful
efforts at hollowing out every institution they touch-- academe, journalism,
entertainment, government, military. Through the years,
we've witnessed how far-left extremists like
Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Angela Davis, and Assata
Shakur have been successfully rebranded into racial justice
activists and academics, rather than communist terrorists
involved in bombings, shootings, and murders. Similarly, papers of
record and politicians would have you believe that
Antifa are just antifascists fighting neo-Nazis. I recently spoke on
record about my decision to flee the United States. This has pained me a lot,
because my family found asylum here as refugees fleeing
communist Vietnam. Both my parents were sent
to prison camp in the 1970s. I'm continuing my
reporting from abroad, resigned to believe that
my home city is dying and that the disease killing
it will continue to spread. I'm not sure what
the antidote is, but I hope conferences
like this will help inform the public about
what to look for before it's too late where you live. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you. [APPLAUSE] SPEAKER 2: Thank you, Mr. Ngo. We now have time for some
Q&A. If you have a question, please make your
way to a microphone. AUDIENCE: Hi, Mr. Ngo. Thank you for your comments. And you're a very brave man. My question has to do with-- we often hear, and
I was wondering if you could tell us the truth
of whether people with money-- a.k.a. George Soros and
things like that. I always hear that
they're involved and are financing behind the scenes. Do you know if that
is for sure true, or if they are just taking
advantage of circumstances? ANDY NGO: So that's the question
that when I was writing my book sought to answer. I wanted to find out where
the money is coming from. That's the question that I
had been asked most frequently over the past couple of
years, and it was something I was curious about myself. And the answer is,
I found no evidence that there are any big
shadowy billionaire figures funding the
actual militant Antifa violence on the streets. The money that they do
get, which is significant, actually is done pretty
much out in the open. They create
campaigns on GoFundMe to raise bail money
and legal funds. They establish ad hoc front
groups to gather those funds and to launder it
to their causes. They also create accounts on
CashApp, Venmo, or PayPal. These are some of
the apps and sites where you can donate money-- small amounts. And amounts add up to
hundreds of thousands. In the case of Portland,
the Portland Bail Fund, which was one of these
Antifa front groups raising money for all
the rioters arrested, raised more than $1.3 million. In Minneapolis, tens
of millions of dollars was raised, in part with
the help of our current vice president for accused
rioters in Minneapolis as well as those
accused of murder and other heinous crimes. So efforts to think that you
could topple the one funding source to cut them off,
it's not simple like that. Big tech has not been putting
much effort into shutting down these accounts and pages. Because it's masked
in a way, right? With a group name that sounds
as innocuous as the Portland Defense Fund, you wouldn't
think that these are far-left extremists who are raising money
for people charged with felony assault, and arson
, and other crimes. SPEAKER 2: Question
to the speaker's left. AUDIENCE: Hi, I live in
the greater Seattle area, and we watched on TV all last-- the riots that happened. My question is, if you pull
off the masks of these people, who are they? ANDY NGO: Great question. So if people follow
me on my Twitter, one of the projects I've
been doing for almost a year now is in the Portland
area, because there's been so many
arrests in Portland, I will actually do the
public-records request to get the booking photos,
the names, and charges. And you'll see that there is
really no one type of Antifa. There are a couple of things
that generally you can say. They lean young. You have some people who are
young as 15 years old getting arrested, to those
in their early 30s. Slightly more men
than women involved. Disproportionately, people
who identify as transgender. And at some point I would
like to write on this more, but I believe it's
because the transgender ideology is a political
ideology that's very radical. So that's why you're seeing
an over-representation in those involved in
far-left activities. Some of them are people
in very white-collar jobs. There's been registered
nurses and attorneys who have been arrested. One of the staffers
for the speaker of the House for the state of
Oregon was arrested at a riot. There's many, many
students, of course, and even faculty
in academe who's been arrested at these riots. And another thing
is that many of them are homeless, or
otherwise very vulnerable populations of people. And I write about it in my
book, but there's a sympathy I feel for many of them. Because these are people who-- they want community. And this Antifa extremist
movement ideology gives them that community--
gives them meaning and purpose. It does a lot of things of like
what religion traditionally would do. But it also leads them down
a path towards violence. And some of them get
seriously injured in the process of
them trying to fight police, or assault people. And then they're just
kind of discarded. It's a very wicked and
destructive movement/ideology. [SIGHS] But I'm not
sure what it will take for the public to wake
up and realize this threat to America that comes
from this group. I think sometimes they're easily
dismissed as weak soy boys and soy girls on the street who
don't know what they're doing. That's partially true. But you don't have to be
strong to stab somebody. You don't have to be strong to
have a pistol in your pocket and shoot somebody dead. So the right does
underestimate Antifa. SPEAKER 2: Question to
the speaker's right. AUDIENCE: Yes. First, thank you for the
courage that you've shown. Secondly, I just read
that the mayor of Portland is asking people to
turn Antifa people in, and I wondered what your
response to that would be. And another quick
question-- what is the relationship between
Black Lives Matter and Antifa? ANDY NGO: Portland
Mayor Ted Wheeler is serving his second term. He came into office at
the beginning of 2017, and it was under his
watch the Antifa grew to become the existential threat
that it is today to Portland. For going back
several years now, he gave them the legitimacy
to do what they do. And he restricted and tied the
ability for police to respond, because he's also the
police commissioner. He serves a dual role. And he did all that because
of his blind hatred of Trump, which he made very, very clear-- which is not unique to him. Many Democrat elected
officials hate Trump more than they love
their own communities and their fellow citizens. With him doing the 180 now,
it's too little too late. I mean, he was
instrumental last year in pushing for the police
department to be defunded. It was under his leadership
that the Gun Violence Reduction Team in Portland
Police was abolished. And now we have
record-high numbers of shootings and homicides. And so he's pleading
with the public to essentially help police with
some of their investigations, yet the city will
offer you no help if, in the course of
you trying to photograph suspicious individuals
in your neighborhood, you get assaulted, or a rock
thrown through your window-- as happened a few days ago. Will anybody come
to protect you? The city certainly won't. So too little too late, I say. Regarding Black Lives
Matter, in my writings, I usually link BLM and Antifa. I describe them really
as a single entity. But what people
should know is they are different in their ultimate
goals, Antifa, as I said, is anarchist-communist, whereas
BLM is just straight communist. And so these differences
are meaningful. And ultimately,
if they were to be successful in the
destruction of America, it would lead to infighting,
and one group or the other will win. But for now they work
together, in the form of Antifa providing security at
these BLM demonstrations that also turn into riots. What I was seeing in
Portland and other cities last year with the
mass looting is that the Antifa would
be the first to break the windows to breach the doors
or windows of the building, and then sort of unleash
the opportunists to loot and destroy businesses. And then once
that's done, they'll just go in and start a fire
and destroy what's left. So the relationship
is mutually beneficial because of a shared hatred
of the United States. You can tell the
difference between somebody who is a critic versus
somebody who's an enemy. If you listen to what BLM
activists and what Antifa say, obviously they
fall in the latter. SPEAKER 2: Question
to the speaker's left. AUDIENCE: Thank you, Andy,
for being here today. My question is, there are
also international groups that are similar. And what are the numbers
internationally and domestically that fall into
this type of organization? ANDY NGO: Yeah, so this is
a question that really is almost impossible to answer-- in that it's the same way to
ask how many Muslim extremists are there in the world? The delineations
is often not clear. You don't have to be a
card-carrying member. You don't have to have trained
in Syria or Iraq with IS to actually be a member. So who actually fits that? I think there's a
similar issue with Antifa when you're trying to find
out how many members they are. If you want to know numbers, you
have to look at it more, maybe, group by group-- like Rose
City Antifa, which has, from by estimates, less than
100 people who are actually involved. Relatively, their numbers
are actually small. But they're able to
do so much damage because they have a lot of wider
support in the mainstream left. I mean, you can look at papers
of record, the commentaries that they print-- and those
who go on broadcast television to excuse far-left
political violence, to argue that destruction
and looting and arson is not actually violence,
or that it's justified in the name of racial justice. So it's this tacit
support from the wide left that gives them the ability
to do what they do in. In conservative areas where
there are elected politicians who are responsible
and recognize the threat that Antifa
pose to the public, they don't allow them to build
the networks to destabilize the city. But when you're in an area
like Portland or Seattle or the Bay Area or Philadelphia,
there's wide support for it. SPEAKER 2: Question to
the speaker's right. AUDIENCE: The threat of
violence or death is real. And two things--
one, you mentioned about Seattle and Portland
being pretty much done. I was in Indianapolis
recently and I was having a talk with a police officer. And he said, we are
told to stand down. Arson is not a
crime, basically-- I mean, not to be prosecuted-- only if a human's
life is at stake. That's number one. And number two, your comment
about the stand-down orders from mayors and
chiefs of police. But also, you had
kind of brought it up, it's not just a
little bit of Antifa and a huge majority of
people against Antifa. There's a huge middle section-- a big middle section of
citizens that are going, it's just for racial justice,
and it's peaceful protest. You made some comments. I'd love to hear more comments
about this middle section of people. I think they need to get
active with their elected representatives--
like strongly-- and say, hey, no, this is
not going to be in our city. ANDY NGO: I said
earlier in the speech that, at least in
urban left-wing areas, this is really a fight for
liberals and the moderate left. But even in the rare instances
where they've tried to voice their opposition-- for example,
in Seattle, in the area-- the former so-called CHAZ-- there has continued to be
weekly violence there by Antifa. And a association of
business owners and residents in the area wrote a
letter to the mayor asking for a restoration
of law and order. And the response from
Antifa was to release the personal information
of every person who signed that letter. That has resulted in the
public being very, very afraid to speak out. So Antifa, they don't just
do the street hooliganism. It's threats and
intimidation and harassment. And for the average
working person, they can't deal with
that type of onslaught. And yeah, I wish
that politicians like Mayor Wheeler and others
had woken up to this threat, but they chose to empower it. And it's not really
them who will suffer. I mean, Wheeler's from a
very wealthy background. He will retire and
have a good life. It's the people in Portland who
don't have the money to leave. I'm very privileged that I got
my resources together to leave, as painful and difficult
as that's been. It's the people stuck
in the cities who have to deal with the
political consequences. SPEAKER 2: Question
to the speaker's left. AUDIENCE: I'd like
to say, first of all, thank you again for your
courage and boldness. I'd like to pray for God's
protection and healing for you, physically and emotionally. We can't imagine what
you've been through. But my question has
to do with the history of nonviolent resistance
to evil in our country-- going back to the '50s and '60s,
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and that whole tradition
of nonviolence. Are there no churches? Are there no Christians? Is there no one left
in this country who is inspired by Dr. King to stand
between this evil and those that it seeks to destroy? ANDY NGO: I think the
heroes of the past that are lauded now
by the current left-- the figures that they
pick tells us a lot. They don't uphold the memory and
legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. They celebrate people like
Assata Shakur, a wanted felon and an enemy of America
who fled to Cuba, after her involvement in killing
a state trooper in New Jersey. They uphold Malcolm X.
The uphold Black Panthers. They reject the tradition of
nonviolent civil disobedience, because they see how effective
threats and violence actually are. I mean, in my view, they held
the entire country under threat of mass violence and
death and destruction if they didn't get the outcome
in the trial that they wanted, regarding Chauvin. Again, this
transformation in the left has been happening, slowly,
since the last century. It started in academe. If you go back to 2015,
I was kind of troubled that a lot of the
people on the right dismissed the campus rage
stuff as just kind of a joke-- that the screaming
and the crying and the extremism on campuses
is something to be mocked, and it's just going to go away. Well, those students
went on to graduate. They work in administration now. They go on to be
on city councils. They run for government. And you can see
the drastic effect this has had on culture and
politics in just five years. And that's going to continue. I don't think that the
issues we're facing now are going to go away with
a different administration. I mean, even with the
previous administration, there wasn't really
much that Trump could do to counter what
has happened in journalism, in local governments,
in academe. I just feel like with the
current administration that process of decline
is just sped up, but it is going to
happen regardless. SPEAKER 2: We have time
for one final question. AUDIENCE: Oh, great. Andy, big fan of yours. I've been following
you for several years. And God bless your heart
for doing such great work. So my question is
a little different. And I guess I'm looking
for some optimism here. I really need it. In your work all
over the country and talking to people all over
the place, I sort of personally get a sense that there are
all these little militias out there forming, to
take our country back. Do you ever hear
anything about that? Of course, I'm from
the South, so I might hear things differently
than other people do. We're not going to go down
softly, let me tell you that. [APPLAUSE] But seriously, do you ever hear
any undercurrent of discontent with the conservatives that
are ready to put up or shut up? ANDY NGO: I think we
saw an attempt at that, in some form at least. Possibly, you could argue
that on the 6th of January. And that's not something I think
that the right should embrace. I don't think the response to
left-wing political violence, left-wing extremism
is to take up arms and to fight them
on the streets. If you look at the history
of the Weimar Republic, part of the conditions that
led to the populist welcoming in Hitler was that
there was a lot of back-and-forth political
violence involving paramilitaries of-- not
just the communists, but the Nazis had
their own paramilitary. The Social Democrats had
their own paramilitaries. They were taking to the streets. They were fighting each other. They were disrupting
each other's events. There were assassinations and
then counter-assassinations. I'm not sure what
possible solutions can be. I think that's left
to other thinkers. I'm just here to tell
my reporting on Antifa. But my impulse,
though, is to say that I think you can work
through the system, at least locally, to save your
communities from this rot that is affecting primarily
liberal urban areas. But I would be very
concerned with anybody advocating for an escalation. We've had a lot of people die
in political violence in just the past year and a half. And certainly, I don't hope
for any more of that to happen. [APPLAUSE]
Summary: it’s violence and terrorism
This is not a “free speech” issue.
This is a “domestic terrorists LARP’ing as enlightened heroes not realizing how they look more like the Hitler-Jugend, Bund deutscher Arbeiterjugend than the normal citizens they terrorize” issue.
Antifa.... terrorist group if there ever was such a thing as terriost. Try telling those they terrorized, put in the hospital or even killed that antifa is not a terrorist group.
I'm currently reading Unmasked
Well, this has devolved into bouts of name-calling and ad hominem attacks having nothing to do with free speech issues. I assume at some finger-pointing will ensue.
What's his opinion on the terrorists who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, 2021? I remember when they tried to pin that on antifa too.
This is unrelated to free speech. The mods should delete this post.