UNMASKING The True Threat of ANTIFA ｜ Andy Ngo
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Summary
In this episode, my friend Andy Ngo joins me to talk about his new book, Antifa: A Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, about the leftist militant leftist group known as Antifa. We talk about the group's tactics, their tactics, and how they plan to destroy democracy.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, Michael Knowles here. A couple of weeks ago, I sat down and chatted with my friend
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Andy Ngo. Andy famously has been attacked physically, obviously as a matter of his
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reputation, but also physically attacked by Antifa. He got a brain bleed because of it.
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And this is because Andy is one of the few, maybe the only journalist in America who's actually
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going out and covering Antifa. He's got a new book out chronicling all of what he's learned
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about this militant leftist group, all the misconceptions people have about it. Turns
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out it's definitely not just an idea as some Democrat politicians have told us. So take a
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listen to my friend Andy Ngo. You know that the state of politics is tense and degraded when a
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friend of mine has to flee the country for his life because of all the threats he's getting
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from leftist militants. I can't, I actually can't believe no matter how crazy things have gotten
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that I have to utter that statement in America in 2021. But I do. My friend Andy Ngo is currently
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in the United Kingdom because he is target number one for some of the most prominent leftist
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terrorists in the country. Um, most of whom work under the banner of Antifa. Andy has a new book out,
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uh, which I think is sort of the, the book on the topic. The book is unmasked inside Antifa's radical
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plan to destroy democracy. Uh, order the book now, get it while you still can. I'm sure it'll,
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it'll be deplatformed or at least suppressed by, by big tech and by the liberal establishment. Andy,
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I'm glad that, I'm sorry that you're out of the country right now, but I am glad that you're safe.
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My pleasure. I, uh, I want to talk about some news that Antifa has broken. I mean,
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they, they didn't report the news. They actually broke things and therefore that is the news.
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Antifa took over this hotel in Olympia, Washington over the past week. Uh, they appear to have taken
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hostages, some staff fled, some guests sheltered in place. Uh, this is not just, uh, you know,
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running around making a nuisance in the streets. This is, this is the sort of thing you'd see in a
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third world dictatorship. Yes, this is what happens in Somalia and Yemen, for example,
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the terrorists will target hotels. So on Sunday, uh, a group of Antifa took over the red line in
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downtown Olympia, Washington state. That's the state capital. And, uh, according to the statement
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that was put out by the city, uh, staff were assaulted that they witnessed these militants
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bringing in hatchets, knives and batons, um, within. So this was just, uh, over the weekend,
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police did eventually respond in large numbers to get these militants out, but this really should
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have been, uh, international news. Um, just how shocking that they, I mean, just what's re it's
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becoming routine for them now to just take over territory or buildings and claim it as theirs.
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And I believe this is the first time they've done it to a building where dozens of people were
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victimized. You know, you're, you've become, I guess, one of the last journalists in America,
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by that, I mean, you are going in covering stories that other people don't want to cover. As you say,
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this should have been international news. It wasn't the liberal establishment is basically
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covering for Antifa. Many people in the liberal establishment have said Antifa is just an idea.
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Something tells me you're not fleeing the country because of the threats you've gotten from
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just an idea. This is real people who are committing real violence.
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Yeah, I think the, see, so that ideology statement that came from President Biden then during, uh, um,
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presidential debate, it was first said by the head of the FBI, Christopher Wray. And that statement in
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itself is not incorrect, but it, it needed to be followed up. So in addition to being an ideology,
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it's also movement and networks of organizations. Now that third part is particularly important because
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that's how they carry out acts of domestic terrorism. And, uh, it's not just theory, you know,
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it's one thing if they were only distributing their extremist literature, but this literature then is also
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coupled with pamphlets and booklets describing actually on how to claim and siege territory, how to make homemade
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bombs, um, how to make, uh, Molotov cocktails. And I think because the Antifa have had,
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uh, essentially covered by the mainstream and legacy press, people don't even realize
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how extreme they are. I mean, think about it. So we just now had the weekend of them
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see, uh, seizing a hotel where people were inside and bringing allegedly weapons, blunt force weapons
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and knives and hatchets. But that was just one day we had throughout 2020 in my home city of Portland,
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month after month, after month of nightly riot. So everything that happened on the 6th of January
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at the Capitol Hill siege, all that and more happened day after day after day in my city.
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And the establishment left and the media left gave them cover for that. At best, they were silent. At
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worst, some of them actually even support, encourage people to donate to some of these crowd funds that
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would, um, give supplies to these rioters or contribute to their bail funds so that those
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who happen to get arrested are just back on the street ASAP. This is the, the aspect of it that,
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that still confuses me a little bit though. I it's, I think it's becoming clearer and clearer
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and your book is helping to explain why that is. Antifa is this kind of group of anarchists and
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communists who want to tear down the system. They're burning down buildings. They've burned down
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government buildings. They've taken over hotels as we've discussed. Why does the establishment left,
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which owns many of these buildings and which, you know, operates within this formal system,
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why are they covering for the people who seem to want to tear the system down?
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You're right. They, we have the establishment establishment left giving coddling this beast
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that I think is now too big to slay. So on inauguration day, for example, in Portland,
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the Antifa destroyed the headquarters of the Democrat party office in Portland. Um, but I think the reason
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why this allyship had developed was particularly, um, so in response to the surprise win of Trump in
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2016, uh, those who are there out of ignorance or zealotry actually did believe that this was a sign of
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ascendant fascism in the U.S. And so they excused, and in some cases even encouraged the most extreme
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elements of the far left, like Antifa, to come right into the mainstream left. And that's exactly
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what happened. The political violence in Antifa was accepted and tolerated in many urban centers to
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the point of where, for example, in Portland and Seattle's political street violence is routine.
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It's not, it doesn't even really make the news there when people are smashing up businesses or
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striking fires. Um, people have gotten used to it over the years and this was allowed to happen
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ostensibly under the banner of anti-fascism and anti-racism, but all it is is it's violent extremism
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Well, this, this is a great point because very often the left projects and accuses its opponents
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of doing what it itself is doing. And so what we saw with the rise of Trump during that time,
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you had the left begin to elide, say mainstream conservatives and radical neo-Nazis, whatever.
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And, you know, whenever the occasional skinhead crops up, mainstream conservatives say, oh yeah,
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we're, we're, we're not that we don't agree with that. Uh, but the left no longer makes that
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distinction. They don't even use the different words anymore. You'll notice they don't even use
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this term alt-right or what, you know, whatever the term was that becomes completely, uh, drained of
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meaning. Now, what the left is saying is that effectively 75 million Americans who some odd 75
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million who voted for Trump are fascists. They're Nazis. They're no different than Hitler, right? So
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they're erasing that distinction when in fact there are many distinctions on the right. But for the
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left, the distinction between these radicals like Antifa who are going out and giving brain
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hemorrhages to people such as yourself, there really is much less of a distinction between them
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and the mainstream left who has been coddling them and encouraging them now for years.
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Yeah. So what's allowed Antifa to become so empowered from a fringe movement to now a phenomenon that
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it's actually destabilizing force in some cities is because of this, um, excuse that the left gives
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in that the threat from the right, it's not even just threat from the far right. It's they're casting
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this wide net of fascism and over Trump supporters, even people, for example, uh, who went to the Capitol
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to listen to Trump speak or had nothing to do with riots. These people are now also being called
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domestic terrorists. Um, they essentially they've mainstream tenants of Antifa's ideology. And it
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comes down to, as you mentioned a moment ago, Antifa are anarchist communists. And from the original
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Antifa to today, and by the original Antifa, I'm referring to the paramilitary Antifa of the
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German communist party in the interwar years, that was the first one and the group that contemporary
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Antifa take inspiration and direct lineage from, um, it's, uh, it's under that ideology that gives them,
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um, in their minds, the justification for setting fires to buildings when people inside it bashing people
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in the head with crowbars and bricks. Um, and in, in my case, in 2019, a person with the camera,
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they actually punched me repeatedly in the head until I had a brain hemorrhage.
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And they all actually think that they are doing something just and noble. And that's
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really what makes them really dangerous because they see, I mean, they say it themselves that they
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will do, do this all by any means necessary, opposing fascism. And, uh, that if, if necessary,
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they will kill and they have killed and they've gotten themselves killed in the process of carrying
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out attacks as well, which I document in the book. Right. You know, uh, it's, it's kind of
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ironic, I guess, or it's just, it's an inversion of what we used to see, which is in the traditional
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culture you had, uh, the West was a Christian culture, right? It was Christendom and Christianity
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posits the incarnation of the perfect good in Christ. And we're all kind of evil, but you know,
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you have this incarnation of the perfect good, which can lead us toward redemption.
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And in leftism, which kind of flips that on its head, you, you don't really have any good and
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you kind of get rid of all, all those, all those old notions, but you do have the incarnation of
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pure, perfect evil. And that takes the form of fascism or Nazism or, or Hitlerism or whatever,
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right? I mean, basically all the references come back to world war two and this incarnation of,
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of, of perfect evil in the form of fascism. And so if you can, if you can tie your opponent to
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fascism, if you know, you can make your opponent literally Hitler, then that justifies doing anything.
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So you get a mild mannered journalist like you, one of the, you know, for people who don't know
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you personally, one of the sort of most mild mannered, nice, polite people that I, I am friends
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with goes out in Antifa and they say, you and, you know, are literally Hitler and we're going to bash
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your head in. Luckily you escaped with your life, but, but all the while you have guys like
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Jake Tapper, for instance, at CNN, who, when, when the, the white identitarian guy, Richard Spencer got
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punched in the face, he was participating in these kinds of jokes saying, well, it's the American
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tradition to punch Nazis. And now nobody's defending these guys like Richard Spencer, but surely I think
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we can all acknowledge that we shouldn't have vigilantism in the streets, guys going around
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sucker punching and, and committing political violence. Right. But now you have the mainstream
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left defending that because of this kind of broad category of fascism. Yeah. That was my concern
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several years ago when people on the mainstream left were celebrating these memes about Richard Spencer
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being assaulted. Now I took issue with it, not because I like Richard Spencer or stand up for
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what he believes in. It's nothing like that. It's about the principle or this norm that we do not
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solve political disagreements through violence. I mean, that's sort of the base human instinct
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and a lot of societies around the world still solve their issues that way. And the fact that nonviolence
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between citizens is the norm in the U.S. is a huge accomplishment. And now we're undoing that,
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that undoing was being celebrated because, you know, it's easy to dislike or hate somebody like
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Richard Spencer. But then again, at that time, that label of who is the fascist is being applied so broadly
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that it included just anybody who is critical of communism, it's critical of Antifa, it's critical of
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social justice extremism. All of us are labeled fascist and therefore worthy of their acts of
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violence and assaults and intimidation. I mean, I've had people show up to my home multiple times.
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All of this has been reported to police. They routinely write around the city of Portland,
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where I lived, murder Andy Ngo, kill Andy Ngo. And so, and all this is being reported to police and
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they don't do anything. So, you know, the conditions that gave rise to Antifa really
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had very little to do with Trump. That was just pretext for them to mainstream the extremism.
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And now with Trump out of the picture, you can really see that their actions are no different.
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They're rioting the same. They're victimizing the public in the same way. They're attacking
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Democrat institutions in the same way. I do want to touch on the Portland of it all.
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As you mentioned, they seem to cluster around there. They go after you personally there in
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your city. What is it about the Pacific Northwest? They, you know, they took over this hotel in
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Washington state. Why? I mean, I know that Antifa is spread out throughout the country. We've seen
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them in Washington DC and all over the place, but, but why, what is it about Portland that seems to
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have attracted so many of these militants? So as I write in the book, um, the origin of
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American Antifa and it's really organized form as we see today did start in Portland through one of the
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cells called Rose City Antifa, which is the Antifa in Portland. I think the establishment of this cell is
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significant because then once they already had a blueprint to, um, radicalize, recruit, and train
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members and prospective members, that could really be easily applied to new auxiliary groups that
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establish in neighboring cities. So what you happen is it just becomes sort of, um, once the apparatus is
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built just to get stronger and stronger because then now riots that happened, for example, in
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Portland, don't just involve the Antifa from Portland, the Antifa from Seattle, from Olympia,
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from Eugene, from Corvallis will come up and vice versa as well. So you have what is in absolute
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numbers of relatively small number of militants being much bigger, uh, than just a city problem.
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I think all of this underscores the point that Antifa is not just an idea. It's an idea. Sure,
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it's an idea, but it's not just an idea. If it were just an idea, you'd see it maybe evenly spread
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out throughout the place, but no, it involves real people actually training, actually exercising
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violence in real places and where they cluster, more people are going to come as well. It's,
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it's not just philosophy. There's a history to this also. You know, one thing that's kind of
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funny with the Antifa guys, if you want to use the word funny to describe these terrorists is the way
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they talk and the way they write, they sound like the pink hat wearing campus radicals. You know,
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they talk about intersectionality and gender theory, and you'd expect them to be kind of wimpy,
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you know, in the, in the, the ideologies they're espousing, but they're not, they're not little
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special snowflakes. They're armed with guns and machetes and bats. Uh, how do we reconcile this?
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This idea that all the, you know, people spouting these silly ideas are so wimpy. Well, they, they
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look pretty tough to me. Yes. I'm really glad you pointed that out because there is this
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misconception on the right that Antifa are just soy boys who are weak and wimpy. I mean, it doesn't
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really matter about their physical strength. These are people who bring guns, homemade explosives,
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incendiary devices, uh, hatchets, hammers, two riots. And again, and they use these weapons against
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people as well. And so, and they've killed, so it doesn't matter if they're weak and, you know,
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it doesn't take much strength to fire a pistol or a rifle, for example, or to stab somebody with a
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knife as they did in Portland this past summer. Um, so we're underestimating, even the right is
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underestimating them. I think, um, in addition to the organized violence, the philosophy and theory
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that, that is the basis for their movement and ideology is really crucial because it calls for
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not just, um, destruction and violence. It actually, the main goal of it is to abolish the United States.
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So like in their worldview, they cannot establish their communist anarchist utopia made up of communes
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until the United States is destroyed. So you can see, um, what happens when their
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political theory, if you will, is put into practice. Look at Chad's the Capitol Hill autonomous
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zone. I write about my time undercover there in the book. It is an, an area once they claimed it and
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claimed it as a sovereign territory separate from the U S immediately it devolves into murders,
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homicides, attempted breaks, violent night after night, um, infighting, even, even though they claim
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to be horizontally organized and not to have any leadership, there were figures immediately who
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rose up and were vying to be the warlords of this territory. That's what their ideology leads to.
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Well, of course. And, and when the CHAZ zone and all these other pseudo states that they're
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establishing when they fail, of course, we'll be told that true Antifa has never been
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tried and they'll try it again and again. You know, there does seem to be an anti-establishment
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movement on the left and the right. So on the left it's Antifa and BLM on the right. They generally
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are more peaceful, much more peaceful. Uh, but there's still a real anti-establishment, uh,
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idea cropping up that, that this establishment is corrupt. They're not particularly wise. They're
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serving themselves. They're not serving the American people. This seems to be getting worse
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and worse and worse. I was told if Joe Biden became president, it would be a return to normalcy.
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Just the first week, all of the executive actions, radical new policy coming out of him,
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even more social strife. That doesn't seem to be the case. Uh, you've, you've mentioned the end
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game of Antifa here, which is the total upheaval of the system, the eradication of the United States.
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What do the next few years look like? You're probably the nation's foremost leader on Antifa.
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Do you, do you have a crystal ball? Do you have any prediction on where things go from here?
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Uh, I think it goes where they've been in the past year, which is that because of weak leadership in
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certain urban areas like Seattle and Portland and other cities, uh, because of demoralized police
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departments and, uh, officers leaving in the droves and their budgets being slashed by the hundreds of
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millions, you're going to continue to see an uptick in crime. And I think the, my fear is that this is
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leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy where Antifa seek to
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make the public not trust, um, in the ability of the state to provide like for the basic needs,
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you know, just like peace, protection of property rights and all that, which is why these attacks
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on, on capital property, uh, is, I mean, there's a lot of meaning behind it. It's not just want and
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violence. They actually want business, uh, owners to leave. They want the areas to become
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destitute so that they can go in and claim to be the replacement for the state. And, you know,
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doing that at the federal level is, I don't think going to happen, but you can really see, uh, the
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carnage that they can wreck in cities because of the leadership that turns a blind eye because they
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actually think that these people are anti-fascist. That's what I'm afraid of. Well, you, you've seen the
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rise of so-called no-go zones in areas in, in Europe where basically, uh, radical Islamists came
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in and, and just sort of displaced the state there. And you, you see the rise of no-go zones in the
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United States where like the Chaz or like many parts of Portland or parts of parts of Washington.
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And, uh, yeah, the, the fear is that things don't seem to be getting better. If anything,
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they seem to be trending in the wrong direction. One way to arm yourself, uh, with facts,
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uh, with the knowledge of, of what this really is, and it's going to be very contrary to the
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propaganda you're hearing in the mainstream press is to read Andy's book, Unmasked Inside
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Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. A really, really important book. I'm glad that
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you were able to put it out. I know Antifa's, uh, threatening you, even threatening bookstores
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that are, that are going to carry your book. Uh, so make sure you, you order it now before it's taken
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down. And, uh, Andy, when it's safe for you to, to return, I very much look forward to, uh, to
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seeing you in person sometime. I know we, we haven't had a lot of travel now because of the
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Wuhan flu. Everyone's very afraid of that. I'm much more afraid of the armed leftist terrorists
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who are, who are threatening you. Uh, but I, I look forward to seeing you again in person. I'm
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sure that this book is going to climb the bestseller charts in the meantime.
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Thank you so much, Michael. Great to see you, Andy. We'll, we'll see you soon.