The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 239. ANTIFA： The Rise of the Violent Left

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

00:00:05.560 important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those

00:00:10.560 battling depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can

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00:00:48.080 the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Welcome to episode 239 of the JBP podcast.

00:00:58.740 I'm Michaela Peterson. In this episode, Dad spoke with Andy Ngo, an independent journalist and

00:01:04.760 photographer and lovely individual who lives under constant threat due to his reporting on Antifa.

00:01:11.900 Andy's a very controversial figure for really no reason. He's testified before the U.S. Congress,

00:01:17.100 appeared on countless TV shows and podcasts, and has been featured in publications like the Wall

00:01:22.680 Street Journal, New York Post, and National Review. He's also currently the editor-at-large at the

00:01:27.960 Post Millennial. Dad asked him about his experience with Antifa, race riots, autonomous zones, the summer of

00:01:35.300 love in Seattle, but they also had a really interesting discussion about psychology, like the psychology of

00:01:40.480 mob violence, journalistic integrity in high-stakes situations, using people for political ends,

00:01:47.220 and destabilizing the police. Dad also asked him about some of the criticism he's received as a

00:01:53.500 journalist. If you're interested in supporting this podcast and getting the ad-free version,

00:01:58.660 please visit jordanbpeterson.supercast.com. Signing up gets you premium show notes, access to pre-sale

00:02:05.500 events, and the ability to participate in exclusive monthly Q&As with Dad. I hope you enjoy this

00:02:12.120 conversation.

00:02:12.660 Hello, everyone. I'm pleased today to have with me someone I've wanted to talk to for a long time,

00:02:36.700 Mr. Andy Ngo. Andy is a journalist best known for reporting on American Antifa. He's an editor-at-large

00:02:44.260 at the Post Millennial, which has recently been under attack by left-wing radicals, I would say,

00:02:50.960 who have sought to have the advertisers drop the Post Millennial and depriving them of their

00:03:00.160 source of revenue. In consequence, he's written reports for the New York Post, Newsweek, and other

00:03:04.420 major media outlets. He drew national attention when he was beaten and hurt very badly by Antifa

00:03:12.360 thugs on the streets of Portland in the summer of 2019. His February 2021 book, Unmasked, Inside

00:03:20.500 Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, was a New York Times bestseller and quite a gripping read,

00:03:26.640 I might add. Andy had to leave the U.S. because of concerns for his safety and is currently residing

00:03:32.240 in the UK. Hey, Andy, so nice to see you. We haven't met before, I don't think, have we? My memory's a bit

00:03:39.160 spotty, but I don't think we've ever met. Is that true? That's correct. No, no, no, Professor, we have.

00:03:46.400 When you were on your tour and you were in Portland, Portland, Oregon, that was where there were some of the

00:03:52.460 largest demonstrations against you. And backstage, I interviewed you for my podcasts very, very briefly.

00:04:00.240 Ah, sorry, I'm sorry. That hasn't managed to lodge itself in my memory, unfortunately. Although I do

00:04:07.060 remember that there were protests in Portland. That was pretty much it for protests, you know, on that

00:04:12.080 whole tour. So, but of course, you know, they would be in Portland and they weren't against me either.

00:04:18.040 They were against who people wished I was so that they could protest me, really. So, all right, so

00:04:24.600 I've been going for you. Important distinction. Yes, it is an important distinction because,

00:04:29.280 you know, a lot of our ire is reserved for our imaginary enemies. And so that's certainly something

00:04:36.920 that we could delve into a little bit with regards to Antifa. So let's go there right away. So I was

00:04:41.740 talking to a number of influential Democrats this week about Antifa and about January 6th, okay? And

00:04:48.620 so imagine that an outside observer like a Canadian might look at the United States and think, well,

00:04:54.740 you know, the radical left has Portland and Minneapolis, and that's pretty damn ugly. And

00:04:59.900 then the radical right has January 6th, and that's pretty ugly. And, you know, maybe you could draw some

00:05:05.620 kind of equivalency between the two, and maybe not. But I think you could at least make a reasonable

00:05:10.400 initial case for something like that. January 6th had a lot of symbolic weight, if nothing else,

00:05:15.940 and certainly did frighten people very badly. But when I was talking to these Democrats about

00:05:21.980 Antifa and the riots, you know, their attitude is sort of, well, there's always been riots and race

00:05:28.920 riots in the United States throughout its entire history. So in some sense, it's really nothing out

00:05:33.640 of the ordinary. And besides, Antifa doesn't really exist. And so I'd like you to address,

00:05:40.380 if you would, both of those points. And I should point out, too, these were reasonable people making

00:05:46.700 these points. These aren't radical leftists. These are people who are trying hard to pull the

00:05:51.240 Democratic Party towards a moderate center, and who are very suspicious of the radical leftists,

00:05:57.820 especially the grip they have on the education system. So they're good faith players. And still,

00:06:03.340 and oh, the other thing they said to me was that they believed it was intellectually dishonest to

00:06:07.800 draw a parallel between Portland and Minneapolis and January 6th, making the case that what happened

00:06:14.040 on January 6th was much, much worse, like in a category of its own. And they justified that by

00:06:19.740 referring to the fact that it was direct assault on the Capitol building, you know, and that there was

00:06:25.640 presidential ambivalence about bringing that to a halt. So that's a rat's nest. So, you know,

00:06:31.860 you want to wade in? Yes, Professor. So I think, let's say for good faith engagement from the left,

00:06:40.600 I completely understand why there would be this perception that Antifa is a myth or doesn't really

00:06:48.580 exist. Because that's the propaganda that the public has said from the legacy media and broadcasts and

00:06:57.560 in print, day in and day out, certainly since Trump was elected. It's an entirely different story,

00:07:03.260 though, when you are on the ground, as I have been for years, and you see that militancy face to face.

00:07:09.820 And when you see it, the organizational aspect of it is undeniable. That's what initially sparked my

00:07:18.520 curiosity, because in Portland, where I'm from, when the election results in 2016, November, were

00:07:26.520 announced, tons of thousands of people took to the streets. And within that, there was an organized

00:07:33.040 element of people dressed in the same uniforms. At that time, it was unusual to cover your face,

00:07:38.100 and they had weapons in a very strategic way. Smash and move on, smash and move on, cause

00:07:45.160 businesses, buildings, start fires, run. So it was from there that sparked my interest in wanting to

00:07:54.780 learn more about what looks like an organized militia or paramilitary. So with that out of the way,

00:08:01.380 though, I think the press, because of its compromised nature and generally being biased to the left,

00:08:09.120 they have turned a blind eye to the evidence that shows that there's, depending on where you are,

00:08:18.140 there's an organizational structure to Antifa. And the statement that Biden said infamously at one of

00:08:25.480 the debates last year, Antifa is an idea. That statement in itself is true. But it's not the,

00:08:32.860 it's not the complete statement you have. I think, one way to explain it that people can understand

00:08:39.720 perhaps more easily is it's analogous to the worldwide jihadist phenomenon in that you can have

00:08:47.660 people who are actual members of organizations like Boko Haram or IS or Al-Qaeda or any of these

00:08:55.580 other jihadist groups. But you have people as well who are sympathetic to the ideology and act on it.

00:09:03.400 And in that regard, I think you can think of the contemporary manifestations of Antifa in the United

00:09:09.880 States, Canada and Western countries along the same lines. You can have people who self-identify in

00:09:17.200 and simply all they do is go to these protests or riots based on flyers you see online. Then you have

00:09:24.620 actual cells that operate such as Rose City Antifa, which is an organized group. You can go on their

00:09:29.920 website and look at the Q&A and they actually have one of the questions is, how do I join? And they said

00:09:35.720 that currently membership is closed. So there's that. And in my book, I publish some of the primary

00:09:41.480 documents of the curriculum from Rose City Antifa, which is actually one of the cells that's part of

00:09:46.620 a network called the Torch Antifa network, and they have cells in other cities. So from, you know,

00:09:53.880 it's kind of all of the above. It's ideology. It's horizontally organized. It's disorganized. It's

00:10:02.260 also highly organized in some cases. So it's because of that lack of centralized hierarchical

00:10:11.140 authority that makes it easy for those who want to obfuscate and confuse the public about it,

00:10:17.180 because they can point and say, well, you know, there's no single leader. Who's the leadership?

00:10:22.180 Show me the leadership. And because there is no single person who's heading everything,

00:10:28.160 then the response is, well, that's evidence that they don't exist. You know, yeah. Okay. So this

00:10:34.380 is this is a real problem conceptually, right? I mean, and let's think about it to begin with as a

00:10:39.680 problem that we all face instead of a political problem emanating either from the left or the right.

00:10:46.040 Okay, because I think there's a deeper problem here that isn't exactly partisan. And we'll get into

00:10:52.380 the partisan element of it later. So imagine, first of all, okay, so I assume that the description you

00:10:59.780 gave would be the one that you gave is that, okay, so what we have here is we have some actual

00:11:04.240 organizations, let's focus on Rose City and Antifa. And, but, but it's a radically distributed

00:11:10.860 organization. And we don't even know how radically distributed. And it's almost impossible to identify

00:11:17.080 its core members, or even to define what core membership might be. Now, you you did point to

00:11:22.840 Rose City and Antifa. But if I said, for example, how many other Antifa groups are there that have

00:11:28.560 an identifiable organizational strategy that's akin to Rose City and Antifa? How many do you do you have

00:11:35.380 any sense of that? Just, just a few dozen, there aren't very many. But the thing is, many they they,

00:11:40.740 they close and then they spring up as new ad hoc groups under different names. But it's really the

00:11:45.960 same. So relative to the same people involved. Okay, a few dozen. So that's real interesting. So

00:11:50.160 that's like, let's say 24. Just let's let's make this concrete, because I think it'll be interesting

00:11:55.540 to do so. So in that 24, how many people do you think are core involved in each group? Do you think

00:12:04.680 it's like five? Is it three? Is it 10? Like real hardcore people who are devoting their time to this,

00:12:10.960 you know, like, like, maybe they're unemployed, that would be a real shock. And it's their full

00:12:15.740 time job, something like that? How many people?

00:12:19.760 Across the entirety of the United States, base, if most of them, let's say, were averaging around the

00:12:26.020 same size as Rose City, Antifa, then I would say in total, we're looking at below 1000 people in

00:12:32.000 across entire United States. So hundreds, which is, you know, in the scheme of things, and for the

00:12:39.940 scale, that's a relative, that's a very small number.

00:12:42.040 Yeah, well, it's look, it's so small that you could say that it's, and I'm not saying this,

00:12:48.340 but it's so small that you could say that it's non existent, right? Because it's one in 300,000,

00:12:53.340 if it's the US, it's it's such a tiny minority of people that they barely exist. But what that points

00:12:58.980 to is something actually that minimizing it in that manner actually points to something far more sinister,

00:13:04.540 because what it means is that under 1000 committed people can radically destabilize whole cities and

00:13:11.920 pose a threat to the integrity of entire culture, not not not least by fostering polarization and and

00:13:20.260 the degeneration of the political scheme that comes along with that. And so that's a real danger for all

00:13:26.840 of us, particularly if it's the case that groups like that can multiply their power by pulling other,

00:13:33.920 you know, semi attached, and maybe not so violent, or even extremist people in on the basis of their

00:13:40.460 empathy. Exactly. Concentric circles probably is a good way to explain it. What you asked me the concrete

00:13:50.600 number of how many people are actually core in terms of involved in the organizing the planning,

00:13:57.360 attending meetings and trainings, like, as you said, almost, almost non existent, given the population

00:14:05.100 size of the US. However, the larger concentric circles is of their sympathizers. And I think the role of the

00:14:14.360 press, since particularly, I would say, since the election of Trump, helps really to mainstream the

00:14:22.280 so called Antifa ideology, it put day in and day out for the entire world that this belief that America

00:14:31.640 had elected a fascist president under Trump, that we were experiencing a regime change, that there would be

00:14:39.080 people, there would be genocide. And on the face, I mean, these ideas, these accusations are so

00:14:47.960 outrageous, and I would say laughable. But people genuinely believed it, you know, go back five

00:14:55.160 years, remember, like this sense of fear, I know that was so palpable. Yeah, well, they're feeling the same

00:15:01.460 way about Trump running again, you know, that fear is definitely there. And I think it's probably even

00:15:06.120 higher than it was, at least, it's higher than it was, in some ways, among the same people.

00:15:11.320 And so because they think, well, he didn't manage to establish an authoritarian state this time, but,

00:15:17.400 you know, just wait, we'll see what happens if he gets power a second time, it might be the last

00:15:21.900 election the United States ever has. But think about what this means. So because I also I talk to people

00:15:26.680 on the left a lot. Most of them are moderate. You know, the extreme left types, they generally won't

00:15:33.420 talk to me. But although I would talk to them, if I have found someone who was credible and interesting

00:15:38.760 to talk to, and who is willing to. What that means is think about the conceptual problem that we're

00:15:44.440 faced with now. So the people on the left can point to the right and say, well, what about your

00:15:48.920 extremists? And the people on the right can say, well, there's hardly any of them, there's like,

00:15:54.480 they basically don't exist. And.

00:15:56.880 And in some sense, that's genuinely true. And on the left, it's the same thing. It's like it's

00:16:03.440 hardly anybody at all. It's under 1000 people committed to this, but they can cause a tremendous

00:16:09.340 amount of trouble. And so then the left can point to the people on the right who are extreme and say,

00:16:14.580 well, look at your extremists and what they do. And then the right can point to the people on the

00:16:17.860 left and say, look at your extremists and what they do. And we don't know how dangerous they are.

00:16:21.940 And what happens if they get out of control and get the upper hand and how much protection do we

00:16:27.100 have to, you know, wall ourselves in with in order to make sure that doesn't happen. And then

00:16:33.660 the fact of those extremists mean that each side can demonize the other by pointing to the worst,

00:16:38.840 and then everybody gets out of control. And so, and it's not obvious at all how to deal with that.

00:16:45.060 Lying, certainly lying about it certainly complicates the situation tremendously, right? If there's any

00:16:51.180 deceit in the press coverage and so forth. And so but okay, so so that's a problem, a conceptual

00:16:58.300 problem. And then why do you think that legacy media, so to speak, is so light handed in its

00:17:07.780 treatment of Antifa given the tremendous damage and and loss of life and violence for that matter,

00:17:15.480 that the riots that Antifa, in some sense are central to has caused, if you had to play devil's advocate,

00:17:22.920 what's motivating them to minimize this?

00:17:27.640 Um, establishment journalists were entirely uniform in and committed to the goal and opposing

00:17:35.960 Trump. And, uh, many of them felt that it was their duty and obligation to, um,

00:17:45.560 violate some ethical standards because we're, we were living in such unprecedented times with Trump,

00:17:51.720 uh, in the executive office that he needed to be resisted by any means necessary.

00:17:58.200 Isn't that always the justification for ethical violations? Isn't that always the rationalization?

00:18:04.280 It's like, well, this isn't, I wouldn't normally do this, but this is an exceptional case. And so

00:18:09.160 not only is it justified for me to violate my ethical standards, it's actually demanded of me.

00:18:14.920 And so that seems to me to be an argument. I can understand the argument, you know, because,

00:18:19.960 well, hey, maybe we're faced with an emergency. We're going to see a hell of a lot of that,

00:18:23.000 by the way, with climate change, like a lot. So it's coming in a big way. And so, well,

00:18:29.080 if the emergency is large enough, don't we get to violate our own principles? And well,

00:18:33.480 you're a journalist. Let me ask you a question. Do you, can you recall a time? And this is a real

00:18:39.320 serious question, man. Can you recall a time where you thought the stakes were high enough

00:18:44.120 so that you violated your journalistic integrity?

00:18:46.760 That's, I appreciate the question. So I've covered dozens of violent protests and riots where I

00:18:56.840 witnessed people being assaulted. I've always, I don't intervene in those instances.

00:19:07.320 I try to record a photograph. But when you see, for example, a mob of people beating somebody,

00:19:13.080 and it doesn't matter for me, the political affiliation of who that mob is.

00:19:18.680 I feel sort of as a human, as a citizen, I should at least just intervene in some way.

00:19:27.000 That's something that I've struggled with a lot.

00:19:30.760 Okay, so you, okay, so you said, you said that you don't intervene. Now in your book,

00:19:35.560 the account of your severe beating, I looked up some press coverage of that. And I believe this was

00:19:42.920 in your book as well, that while you were being assaulted so badly, there were press there,

00:19:48.360 and they did nothing to intervene. They were just recording and, and taking snapshots and video and

00:19:53.400 so forth. And, and, you know, in the book, that sounds like that they're derelict in their duties.

00:20:00.120 And maybe, in particular, because you were also a journalist, and maybe that, you know,

00:20:05.000 maybe there's a special category there. But, and then also, as a journalist, if you are recording,

00:20:11.000 it's like you're putting the whole above the part, in some sense, right? Because you think you're,

00:20:16.040 you're journalistic. It's demanded of you because of your journalistic integrity to record and not

00:20:21.400 to intervene. But, but you said you, you feel the pull on your conscience about that. So how do you,

00:20:27.640 how is it that you've learned to live with that? And what makes you think that you made the right

00:20:32.120 decision doing what you've done? And maybe you don't know, maybe, you know?

00:20:35.960 I'm not entirely sure if I made the right decision. Fortunately, I haven't been like

00:20:43.880 right next to somebody who was on the nearly getting killed. I think for that type of instance,

00:20:49.960 it's very clear that that that there's a demand for an obligation for an intervention,

00:20:55.160 intervention, so that somebody is not murdered. For me, I mean, you're also not a police officer,

00:21:01.800 and, and you're not armed. And I don't imagine you're trained in, in street fighting or that

00:21:07.000 sort of thing. So in some sense, you know, fools jump in where angels fear to tread and two people

00:21:13.400 beat to death isn't really an improvement over one. And so I'm not saying that like Leonard Cohen,

00:21:19.160 a Canadian songwriter said, there's no decent place to stand in a massacre. You know, sometimes

00:21:24.920 you're in a situation where anything you do is bad, because the situation is so terrible.

00:21:30.840 So okay, so you've had moral qualms about how, how apart from the action you should be under those

00:21:37.640 situations. What about, like, you're obviously not very happy with what's happening about Antifa,

00:21:42.760 and you're on the ground also, as opposed, I would say to these journalists who are minimizing what

00:21:47.880 Antifa is doing. They're much more up in the air in some sense, right? So you're down in the trenches

00:21:53.080 to the point where you're getting beat up for it. And then I would say, the people who aren't doing

00:21:57.480 that and reporting on it, they've got one form of blinders on because they're not seeing what's

00:22:02.280 actually happening. But in some sense, the risk for you and your integrity is that you, you have

00:22:08.280 the opposite problem. You're so damn involved, you're watching buildings burn, you're watching

00:22:12.920 cars melt, you're watching people be assaulted and being assaulted yourself, that how do you protect

00:22:18.680 yourself against the possibility that you're exaggerating the threat because you, you know,

00:22:24.200 your sample is up biased, you're in the middle of the damn riots all the time.

00:22:29.880 Yeah, I think that's a fair question and a fair criticism. I

00:22:37.640 though the instances of ultraviolence that I've seen and I've written about and recorded video for

00:22:42.680 um those are and it goes that important um but they're not the full story and in my the purpose

00:22:51.480 of writing unmasked my book was to shed light really on the ideology that I think is is ultimately

00:22:59.320 much much more dangerous than these instances of violence that um lead to um people getting seriously

00:23:06.520 injured or or killed in that um I think it's a it's a theme and a subject that you've discussed before

00:23:13.560 in your speeches and your writings professor it's about um this belief that for pursuing this justice

00:23:22.520 racial justice anti-racism whatever name they want to give they believe that no no act that they commit

00:23:31.240 can never goes too far and that's sort of the your isn't that a lovely thing wouldn't that be a lovely

00:23:37.480 thing to have on your side so imagine that you're so virtuous in your pursuits that you are now entitled

00:23:45.240 to do absolutely anything to anyone whenever you want I mean if you if you if you have that kind of

00:23:52.920 cognitive structure I mean first of all you're not very self-reflective it's like do I really think

00:23:57.480 that I'm so ethical that I can give myself a free hand to do anything and so I'm increasingly skeptical

00:24:04.440 about large-scale ethical claims of that sort you know well this is so important that well that what

00:24:12.440 exactly well it depends on how important it is and well we could climate change a good example of that

00:24:18.520 well if it's the ultimate environmental catastrophe everywhere and it's going to happen within 20 years

00:24:24.040 then well we should do everything well okay let's get detailed about this does that mean we get to

00:24:32.060 beat up Andy no if he's not that happy about climate change well he's just one guy you know and it's a

00:24:38.360 planet we're talking about here you know and that's independent in some sense of whether there are warranted

00:24:43.960 concerns on the environmental front I know there are like the oceans are overfished for example that's

00:24:49.000 not a good thing it's stupid we should stop doing it but it's this moral license that goes along with

00:24:55.380 this claim to virtue that really scares the hell out of me and it's also the fact that you can

00:24:59.620 instantly demonize your enemies because if you're so virtuous that everything is justified then anyone

00:25:05.100 who opposes you is virtually satan themselves yes I've seen this with my own eyes this demonization

00:25:13.460 dehumanization one of the really shocking things I witnessed last year at the beginning of the riots I

00:25:18.620 was undercover so again I couldn't I couldn't intervene because if I did it would potentially

00:25:24.140 blow my cover and I could get seriously injured or killed but this was in the end of May days after

00:25:30.400 George Floyd had died and the rioting had not at that point spread outside of Minneapolis there was a man

00:25:37.160 that was targeted by the mob he was accused of being right wing I whatever accusation is true or false I don't

00:25:44.100 know but he was beaten up uh they got him on the ground and then one of them with glee uh rushed at his head

00:25:52.880 and and kicked his teeth in and you you could actually see the teeth on the ground and and what do you mean

00:26:00.020 with by with what do you mean by with glee why that phrase the crowd around him celebrated that act

00:26:07.600 was calling this person a fascist and was happy that he was was he was crying and how and how could

00:26:16.780 you tell they how could you tell they were happy what exactly were they doing they had smiles on their

00:26:23.300 faces and so we're looking at this bleeding person on the ground

00:26:26.780 yeah well it's hard to see it's hard to see exactly what would you it's hard to see exactly

00:26:35.360 what moral claim would justify that smile so what do you think's really going on there just out of

00:26:42.400 curiosity you watched it right up close so what are those people celebrating like what what is it in

00:26:49.020 them that's responding to that well you said with glee you know that that that's a very specific word

00:26:54.600 so what is it that they're celebrating as far as you can tell they think that a fascist or a racist

00:27:02.880 got the violence against him that he deserved yeah but I don't believe that you know I don't believe

00:27:08.240 that's what they're celebrating because I don't think I don't think they're that good I think they're

00:27:14.280 celebrating watching some poor son of a bitch get hurt and that that satisfies something unbelievably

00:27:19.760 dark in their souls like the desire to burn the desire to burn down buildings the desire to melt

00:27:24.780 cars the desire for the whole goddamn thing to go up in flames because they're resentful and bitter

00:27:29.740 because we can't take these things at face value right it's like no no you don't understand you're

00:27:37.040 smiling and laughing while someone just got his teeth kicked in no trial no jury no defense he's on the

00:27:43.920 ground he's mobbed by by overwhelming force and you're celebrating that and you're telling me

00:27:49.400 that's because of your virtues it's like I don't think so and this is the danger we're facing right

00:27:56.620 with with with this on the on in all these activist groups I've had people like that at my come and

00:28:02.340 protest against me I can kind of spot them because I have some clinical training I can I can tell the

00:28:07.200 guys it's almost always men and they're always almost always there to prey on unsuspecting women by being

00:28:13.400 their ideological affiliates and those damn guys man the worse it goes the happier they are

00:28:18.520 I I wanted to ask you about the based on your your your knowledge your background your clinical

00:28:28.000 experience what what is the psychology of this mob violence when I see it it it it like I I don't even

00:28:39.100 recognize some of these it seemed they seem animalistic is what I mean um in no they're worse

00:28:45.300 than animals they're worse than animals because animals they just kill to eat you know human beings

00:28:51.580 they have a twist in them that makes them far worse than animals when they really get going

00:28:55.580 well I think it's I think you really want to know what I think I think it's revenge against God for

00:29:00.720 the crime of being that's really what I think it's Cain and Cain and Abel it's like oh Abel's your Abel's

00:29:11.320 your guy hey God how about if I take him out in the field and beat him to death how do you feel about

00:29:16.220 that all my sacrifices went unrewarded yeah it's like yeah that's what it is at the bottom of the hell of

00:29:27.840 things and so you know these people they can light the whole world on fire and and that's partly what

00:29:37.320 you're so I I didn't get your answer to one question sorry about the potential warping of

00:29:43.740 your viewpoint because you're so much in the action like how do you you know what I mean if you're in

00:29:48.920 that all the time that becomes your world in some sense and how do you know that you're not

00:29:55.280 exaggerating the threat because you're in in it all the time because I described

00:30:02.320 step by step what what what is happening and let's say this particular anecdote of Portland in

00:30:10.700 the summer of 2020 but then I also follow that up with certain data the consequences the political

00:30:19.900 consequences say in Portland last year the city council did vote to defund a law enforcement

00:30:27.120 based on the demands of the radical left activists those who carried out violence they defunded police

00:30:35.520 they also abolished the gun violence reduction team and a part of my reporting is a crime it's a crime

00:30:41.880 reporting particularly in the cities in areas I know best so northwest of the United States and we've

00:30:47.180 seen that we have the actual data the number of violent crimes that has shot up ever since the death

00:30:53.540 of George Floyd last year in Portland and other major American cities Portland this year 2021 has now

00:31:00.840 surpassed its record all-time record for homicides and this is a direct consequence of the political

00:31:08.660 decisions that were made by local politicians in response to their constituents as well as outsiders

00:31:17.860 going in carrying out acts of political violence and carrying having certain demands over it

00:31:23.860 okay so that's what you point to concretely so okay so let's take that apart a little bit so

00:31:30.560 you have an ideology at the core of this I want to go through this really programmatically

00:31:35.960 one of the things that so I'm going to kind of mangle a bunch of questions here together so

00:31:41.320 these these core people it's not so obvious to me that they're simply left wing

00:31:48.880 you know because well some of them are anarchists okay like what the hell is an anarchist exactly is

00:31:54.920 he left wing or right wing it's like in some sense it doesn't matter I know I know ideas matter that

00:31:59.920 isn't what I'm saying but in some sense it doesn't matter because that person who's decided to be

00:32:04.940 violent is is working to burn the whole damn thing down for whatever reason you know and and

00:32:11.600 they also describe them as paramilitary and organized militia and there's kind of a there's a

00:32:16.220 there's a right wing flavor to that right the uniforms because uniform is more an element of the right than

00:32:23.260 the left all things considered and I know that things get hard conceptually when the when the opposites

00:32:30.940 touch right and people debate about whether the national socialists were left wing or right wing

00:32:36.220 and the answer was well they were a mixed complex mixture of both and the worst of both in some sense

00:32:41.440 although you know maybe not worse than Stalin or Mao but so and so that also means that people on the

00:32:48.340 left can point to Antifa even the violent types and say well you know what makes you so sure they're

00:32:52.820 left wing and why should we bear the the mark of their disquiet you know as a stain on our political

00:32:59.080 beliefs so then okay now so there's ambiguity about the real radicals and it's certainly to the degree

00:33:05.900 that they're radical the degree to which they can sow confusion about their political ideologies all to

00:33:11.880 their benefit right so if both the right wing moderates and the left wing moderates point to them

00:33:18.000 and say well you're left wing or you're right wing depending on what they're trying to justify

00:33:21.600 and that screws the system up if they're hardcore anarchists great you know that's all the better

00:33:27.300 they just play into their hands okay and then you you pat you you laid out a pathway from that violent

00:33:34.600 interchange to policy decisions like defund the police for example and the pulling back of law

00:33:42.760 enforcement and then you said well that's destabilizing cities that's actually what's happening that's

00:33:47.700 that's data and so but it's not that easy to trace

00:33:52.760 it's not so easy to trace that back to the radicals themselves except insofar as they want to destabilize

00:34:03.160 right the ideological trail isn't isn't so clear so now is there a question in there

00:34:08.920 well i guess that one of the questions is is it reasonable to characterize the radical

00:34:17.180 extremists as either left or right do you think that's actually helpful

00:34:21.740 i characterize them as far left and i can understand that um there may be confusion about the ideology

00:34:30.720 certainly i've very frequently come across people on the right who would describe

00:34:35.920 antifa as uh radical democrats or radical liberals and that's incorrect um

00:34:42.720 i think what makes me give give a partisan label to the antifa ideologies because by their own

00:34:49.980 emissions and their texts and the philosophers that they look to it's this fusion of both anarchism

00:34:59.180 as well as communism so they what makes them different from the traditional revolutionary communists

00:35:05.080 of previous decades is that um they're not looking for creating a tyrannical um top to bottom state

00:35:14.820 communist regime in fact they feel that communism failed in part because it was in uh implemented in

00:35:21.280 that way in in china or the soviet union they believe in the abolishment of the state and this is where

00:35:27.700 the anarchist side of the ideology comes out um so that society could be organized into communist communes

00:35:36.260 and so they've tried some of these experiments at many times um last year in in the middle at the

00:35:43.880 height of the riots that happened in seattle there was the capitol hill autonomous zone otherwise known as

00:35:51.720 chas when i went up there and that was this experiment that these anarchist communists antifa

00:35:57.980 actually put into practice they were able to uh force police to evacuate from a police department and then

00:36:06.320 promptly took over six blocks of uh a neighborhood not that far from downtown and they established a

00:36:12.800 hard border and in it they actually took attempts at state building in terms of uh this is where you go to

00:36:20.800 get your food this is where you go to get your water we don't you don't have to pay for it this is mutual aid

00:36:26.400 we're going to do our gardening in the park um they actually try to grow fruits and vegetables um

00:36:32.560 they're very that's actually pretty funny that's actually quite funny the garden in the park thing you

00:36:36.760 know because really that's that's your solution you dimwits that's really what you're doing now okay so let

00:36:42.680 me hammer you on that a bit so let's say because when i was reading your book i thought okay well one of the

00:36:47.340 solutions is arrest people who break windows enough of this like when they break the law arrest them it

00:36:53.620 doesn't matter what their political background is and then you think well you know well do you really

00:36:57.400 want to i remember in toronto when the uh the g7 came to downtown toronto they basically turned the

00:37:04.460 whole damn city into an armed camp and i walked down there by the barbed wire and the cement borders

00:37:10.300 and i thought god damn it you're turning this city into a prison and if you don't think you're going to

00:37:14.280 have prison riots because you did that you're a fool and so so like i'm not a big fan of authoritarian

00:37:20.080 states and so then i might say well is it okay in the u.s if the state is loose enough in some sense

00:37:27.380 to allow these foolish experiments to take place because maybe by doing so by being that loose i mean

00:37:35.040 i know the you have the riots that's not good but by being that loose it gives us a chance for these

00:37:40.540 ideas to manifest themselves in a small scale prove their total lack of validity and their

00:37:45.820 incoherence and then just sort of disappear now the alternative would be to crack down in some sense

00:37:51.960 more police to stop the violence and the riots and and to arrest people who are clearly breaking

00:37:57.940 the law and we can talk about why that isn't happening too but so what do you think about that

00:38:02.240 like is it it is is it a sign of a functioning democracy that it's loose enough to allow such things

00:38:07.240 to happen um i think allowing this stuff to go on um under normal circumstances if if if the

00:38:17.620 protesters or the people who were somehow discontent had the self-awareness to recognize when to give it

00:38:23.760 up but the thing with the these extremists is that they they never admit when they're wrong they can

00:38:30.480 only they always interpret history and contemporary actions as when it fails it's because we didn't try

00:38:36.820 hard enough so last year the the democrat mayor of seattle jenny durkin um she took a hands-off

00:38:44.260 approach to the autonomous and she thought okay it would look optically really bad to send in the

00:38:50.140 national guard to get all the law enforcement across seattle and king county bad yeah yeah i know

00:38:56.320 to shut it down let's give them that space and she she went on cnn in this infamous clip and she

00:39:02.500 was asked about it she said hey it could be a summer of love and in some ways on the outside

00:39:07.020 we know what happened hey we know bloody well what happened after the summer of love

00:39:11.660 that was the rolling stones concert and the hell's angels and so forth it's like the summer of love

00:39:17.400 deteriorated into anarchy hell pretty much instantly so that's a fairly foolish metaphor let's say

00:39:23.580 okay so she let it go sorry to interrupt you it's fine so during the day it did look like a street

00:39:31.940 party and that was when the journalists were there that's when you would see the videos and the photos

00:39:36.420 giving out people giving out free food um people supporting one another providing everything that you

00:39:43.940 would need with free of costs and families could go in and out freely but at night is where the true

00:39:50.260 side of that autonomism came out which is that when you have no rule of law true anarchy then

00:39:57.180 how do you bring order to a place when there are people who are violent extreme and willing to kill

00:40:03.880 or rape and so the course of what happened over three weeks is that in in these tents where some of

00:40:09.500 these women were one woman was uh nearly raped uh people started fires in the streets and this was a

00:40:15.780 really densely this is a really densely packed neighborhood high high rise buildings so people

00:40:21.300 live there the buildings were stuck on fire um and shootings occurred almost every night and there

00:40:27.420 were six shootings so why do you think okay that's that's really okay so that's real let's let's take

00:40:32.080 that apart too okay so look we understand pretty well as as actual social scientists

00:40:38.820 what happens when it's a summer of love okay so imagine you put a group together of people who are

00:40:47.740 only agreeable so they're just compassionate and so and temperamentally so and maybe let's say

00:40:54.220 let's make them like ethically so as well so not only are they compassionate temperamentally but

00:41:00.620 they've built an ethic around that so all they do is cooperate like mad well you let one psychopath

00:41:07.240 in there and all hell breaks loose because there's no defenses against the psychopaths and that's the

00:41:11.960 free rider problem now i talked to robert trivers who's one of the world's great evolutionary biologists

00:41:17.240 about a week and a half ago about the free rider problem the cheating detection problem so and that's

00:41:23.420 the problem i just outlined it's like if everyone's cooperating and then there's no enforcement

00:41:29.580 the stage is set for the absolute uh exploitation of that cooperating group by anyone who doesn't

00:41:38.660 share that ethic and so here's imagine this so women are more agreeable than men so more empathic

00:41:46.740 and so that's kind of rough on women because because the men are less empathic they're they're harsher

00:41:53.800 and rougher and tougher and meaner and more blunt and so women put up with a lot because of that because

00:42:00.120 a really disagreeable man can be quite brutal now that can be hemmed home hemmed in by other traits

00:42:07.940 like conscientiousness and etc but we'll just keep it simple for now so then why do women want less

00:42:13.860 agreeable men that's beauty in the beast by the way that's the conundrum there right well because you

00:42:20.400 need someone who's not that agreeable to keep you safe from someone who's really not that agreeable

00:42:25.840 and so men exist and this is part of sexual selection men exist on this weird line a where

00:42:33.220 they have to be disagreeable enough to keep the real criminal psychopaths at bay those are the guys

00:42:38.460 who come out at night right and then but they have to be agreeable enough to be empathic enough to be

00:42:43.620 generous and share and it's a really tight line and it's one that women are negotiating all the time

00:42:48.180 and trivers said that no it was i talked to david buss too buss said that young women are really

00:42:55.400 attracted to dark triad guys they're machiavellian and manipulative but they're confident and so they

00:43:02.340 kind of look successful and they're the risk takers they kind of have the uh the persona of daring

00:43:08.220 success but they're they're they're dark they're they they border on psychopathic but as the women get

00:43:15.580 more mature they're less likely to be taken in by that so anyway anyways so this summer of love the

00:43:22.020 summer of love problem is well what happens at night okay so why do you think it happens at night and not

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00:46:37.660 uh there were gang members who were there and there they were armed uh i think they took advantage

00:46:44.640 of the literal literal anarchy and that they could go to a place where there was no police because

00:46:49.620 there was a hard there were hard borders that were surrounded this um zone so and law enforcement

00:46:56.340 kept away and so that was just a perfect opportunity for criminals to go in to and what what and what did

00:47:05.940 they want to do what what is it that it gave them free reign to do shootings okay so that's that's

00:47:15.360 kind of odd so who are they shooting i mean look if it's gang warfare you know why they're shooting

00:47:21.280 each other it's usually guys who are looking for status who've been challenged in some way who are

00:47:26.200 out to prove themselves like there's a good sociology of of that kind of shooting it's like well why are

00:47:31.620 these guys going into this free zone summer love thing and shooting who are they shooting and why

00:47:37.000 i don't know the name uh but they were untrained and they ended up murdering a 16 year old uh as far

00:47:44.400 as i know nobody no suspect has ever been identified in that case and how how was that handled by the

00:47:50.080 mainstream media that particular event because that's quite the event yeah that was then uh the

00:47:56.740 second murder that happened up autonomous zone so then by then the press started to be a bit more

00:48:02.140 critical because that was uh nearing three weeks at that point a lot of the residents were feeling a

00:48:09.260 bit more emboldened to speak out anonymously uh to the not anonymously but unnamed to the press about

00:48:15.380 what they're witnessing what they're hearing at night um i was there one of the nights that i was there

00:48:21.180 um a burglar broke into a um a car repair business and allegedly tried to start a fire inside but the

00:48:32.120 the owner was there and he had security so he detained this individual the news went out and they had a

00:48:39.640 speaker system set up in the autonomous zone with the microphone somebody went up to the stage

00:48:43.520 and saw that a black person was being held by some racist whites and the entire mob sprinted

00:48:50.180 sprinted to this business broke down the uh barrier at the business got him and got their got their

00:48:57.820 guy out um the business owner said he told press later on that he had called police about a dozen times

00:49:06.020 and he just wouldn't respond and what'd they do with him uh the person that got away oh he got away

00:49:12.900 oh i see i see yeah it's amazing they didn't lynch him oh so yeah you're talking about the business

00:49:19.800 owner yeah yeah sorry it could have become deadly at that point i again this is one of those things

00:49:25.100 like i'm watching and i you know i feel so helpless in a way that i'm observing and i if they start to

00:49:33.160 kill this business owner that there was nothing i could do uh police weren't responding they had

00:49:38.500 already received uh many many phone calls about that that incident and they didn't respond um but i

00:49:46.500 bring up the case of the chas as just sort of like this one example of what like a real life

00:49:50.900 manifestation of this antifa ideology is there's certain parts that are you could argue are nice

00:49:57.600 like um this aspect of community building that i witnessed during the day was um it reminds it seemed

00:50:05.960 like a like a religious community and that they recognize okay but let's let's let's take that apart a bit

00:50:11.960 here too okay so first of all let's not forget that this daytime utopia existed in the middle of the

00:50:20.600 richest country and the world's ever produced it's like so we're giving things away for free they have

00:50:29.180 no cost it's like no no someone else bore the cost that food didn't magically appear out of nowhere

00:50:34.420 nothing that satiates hunger comes without a cost nothing that provides shelter comes without a cost

00:50:42.240 and so this is an artificial utopia set up by clueless juveniles who have no sense whatsoever of how

00:50:50.480 privileged they are they're so privileged they think food is free and you know they're the reason

00:50:57.080 they're that privileged is because food is damn near free and the reason for that is that we live

00:51:04.020 in a miraculous society that's made food free and it isn't because it has no cost man you think of all

00:51:11.060 the blood that's been spilled over the centuries to pay for the terrible struggle that it took us all to

00:51:17.060 figure out how to do that that's not free you know and it's an appalling indictment of our education

00:51:23.940 system that anybody can come out of it thinking that way so even during the day so you have and

00:51:31.480 it's the same with the san francisco summer of love in some sense you know that could have never come

00:51:37.200 about at all even to the degree that it did without there being this unbelievable largesse and and

00:51:43.380 plenitude that characterizes modern western societies so i mean when we see people on the street even and

00:51:50.900 and i'm not saying that being on the street is not a terrible thing but it's a complicated thing

00:51:56.220 we don't see people who are skeletal

00:51:59.000 we see people who have enough to eat and so it's just rubbish right from top to bottom and and to

00:52:08.720 think of to have a politician say well you know maybe it could be a summer of love it's like what the

00:52:14.560 hell does that mean exactly our system is so broke that violent clueless radical juveniles can

00:52:22.720 arbitrarily occupy a part of a city and in two weeks make something better

00:52:30.320 really like what the hell i don't get it now you talked about optics so let's so i've been talking to

00:52:41.000 these democrats for example about how to conduct yourself ethically in the political domain and

00:52:47.580 i've been talking to republicans as well and one of the things we sort of zeroed in on is this idea

00:52:52.080 of instrumentality you know if you're doing something for a particular goal maybe almost

00:52:59.540 regardless of what that goal is then you tend to use people for your end and you might say well we

00:53:05.220 have to stop trump so it's okay to use this person for that end but i don't buy that at all i think

00:53:12.220 there's something deeply wrong about it you know and so when i do these podcasts for example i'm what

00:53:17.540 i'm really trying to do is just to find out some things i don't know i don't really have a plan like

00:53:22.620 my did i have a plan to talk to you i'll tell you what my plan was it was like well i'm going to read

00:53:27.320 as much of andy's book as i can manage in in the time i have to do it i'm going to do my background

00:53:33.080 research to the degree that i can then i'm going to ask him a bunch of questions about things i

00:53:37.080 don't understand that's the whole damn plan and this instrumentality we've got to get rid of this

00:53:43.760 idea that we can use people for an end i don't care what the damn end is and you know if you and

00:53:49.320 i are doing this right we're having an honest conversation that's all we're doing and that's a

00:53:53.720 hard thing to do so okay so back to okay your answer to whether or not you're exaggerating this

00:54:01.640 was to point to the consequences like the defund the police that sort of consequence and the

00:54:05.940 destabilization of cities like minneapolis and portland and how destabilized do you think they

00:54:11.880 have become because of this but they destabilize in the sense that the the people who are dying are

00:54:21.280 mostly black and brown people so the um elite liberal class of the cities don't really they don't

00:54:30.320 experience that loss of life if if you know what i mean um they may hear the gunshots more frequently

00:54:36.640 in the streets they may see businesses shuttered or damaged because of bullet wounds but it's not

00:54:42.860 it's not people in their families and their friends circles who are dying so in some in some ways

00:54:49.420 they're kind of always um protected from the consequences of their political decision making

00:54:58.320 more political demands um i think one other thing about yeah so if you look at hierarchies if you look

00:55:05.560 at the way hierarchies work in animal kingdom for example so even let's say birds that really don't live

00:55:13.500 in flocks they still have a hierarchy and the hierarchy is some birds have better nesting sites

00:55:19.280 and so they're closer to food they don't get exposed to wind and rain so much and they're birds that

00:55:26.340 are generally in better physical health they're like sort of

00:55:29.900 they're birds that are in better physical health let's let's leave it at that they sing louder songs

00:55:37.480 the males they attract higher quality healthier female mates they have the good nests okay now a flu

00:55:43.620 comes through that area an avian flu the birds die from the bottom of the hierarchy up

00:55:49.460 and so that's very much in keeping with what you're describing right is that as we move up our

00:55:55.640 hierarchies whether they're based on competence or power we shield ourselves from stress that's partly

00:56:02.660 why we actually want to move up the damn hierarchies and so then when things get destabilized people die

00:56:08.100 from the bottom up that's what's the old saying when the when the upper class catches a cold the lower

00:56:14.320 class dies of pneumonia and so that's the luxury belief problem too isn't it is we can have these

00:56:20.860 adulpated utopian schemes that we use to pat ourselves on the back for our ethical superiority

00:56:26.780 we can fund their implementation because you talk about that interestingly in your book right these

00:56:32.420 left-wing organizations funneling money into these more violent extremist groups we can pat ourselves on

00:56:38.360 the back for standing up for the oppressed and when things go sideways well it's just the oppressed

00:56:42.860 that die so i can't figure out why the left stands for this you know that's the thing i can't get is

00:56:51.720 that i thought you guys were for the working class

00:56:53.900 i think how this is demonstrated in one way it very clearly was last year uh in minneapolis when

00:57:03.520 some of the worst rioting broke out uh there was a the minnesota freedom fund which was set up

00:57:09.960 to provide jail support uh in legal support for those who were arrested and charges crimes related to

00:57:18.820 the riots um the public raised 35 million u.s dollars for that bail fund so everybody

00:57:26.220 was bailed out uh and there was millions more to spare um kamala harris you called them far left you

00:57:34.680 specifically called minnesota that minnesota freedom sorry it was mff minnesota freedom fund

00:57:41.200 fund you called the i went and looked up the board members there to see who they were and you know

00:57:46.560 they're professional types most of them community activists some of them lawyers etc i mean it looks

00:57:52.240 like a perfectly legitimate site so why did you call them far left and why do you think they're not

00:57:58.720 legitimate because that's a pretty that's a pretty deadly epithet coming from your tongue given what

00:58:04.000 you've seen and and heard so is that was that justifiable that epithet and if so why i think so

00:58:12.140 because the the the belief system that's undergirding that that whole project of the freedom fund

00:58:19.260 is that the criminal justice system should be abolished that is okay that's a strong claim you're you're

00:58:25.540 okay so so i want to push you on that because i like to talk about specifics and i noticed that

00:58:31.600 you called them far left and so now you just made a pretty radical claim so i'm going to read a

00:58:37.120 criticism about you that i found on wikipedia if you don't mind because this is a good time to introduce

00:58:41.460 it yes nose coverage of antifa and muslims has been controversial okay that's true and the accuracy

00:58:48.920 and credibility of his reporting have been disputed by other journalists yeah well so what right because

00:58:54.020 of course he has been frequently accused of sharing misleading or selective material that's a little

00:59:00.540 more pointed a criticism described as a provocateur and accused of having links with militant right

00:59:07.860 wing and far right groups in portland okay so now you talk about the minnesota freedom fund you say far

00:59:14.320 left and someone skeptical watching this is going to think yeah well of course that's what andy no thinks

00:59:19.400 because he's linked with militant right wing and far right groups in portland and is a provocateur and

00:59:25.480 then you're also a disciple of james o'keefe the founder of project veritas which is labeled in wikipedia

00:59:33.180 as a right-wing activist group okay so so given all that why should we believe your characterization of

00:59:40.860 the minnesota freedom fund and you know this isn't me attempting to hook you i but but i want to know

00:59:48.940 because this is the concentric circle problem right we identified the activists they just want everything

00:59:54.620 to burn and so they're nobody's friends if they're sense if they're sensible but now we're talking about

01:00:00.420 a circle outside that that's the minnesota freedom fund and from there you move into let's say the

01:00:05.380 democratic the left wing of the democratic party as a whole so this is a crucial issue so you said

01:00:12.380 they want to abolish the criminal justice system how do you know that why do you think that's a reasonable

01:00:18.440 claim well you can look at those who were involved in uh running uh that freedom that bail fund

01:00:26.880 is part of this what was a fringe belief on the left that america so from its founding to today so

01:00:36.580 racism is built into every single institution that it's not simply you cannot reform it that what

01:00:43.360 needs to be done is to uh they say burn it down uh abolish this abolish that completely um get rid of

01:00:51.480 at all because it's uh irredeemable and unfixable and i think that that radical type of belief that

01:01:01.240 drives bail funds like the minnesota freedom fund like the pdx how does that belief how does that

01:01:07.920 belief drive their bail fund and what are they doing wrong by bailing these people out and how do you

01:01:12.920 know that's linked to an ideology like the one you just described because they they believe that the

01:01:19.120 criminal justice system targets leftist black and brown people and so anybody who's charged the

01:01:26.840 crime uh that that's not a it's not legitimate within the system because the entire institution

01:01:32.080 policing the courts um judges all of that top to bottom is white supremacist and whether or not the

01:01:40.540 individuals involved in it actually are racist it doesn't matter to them they say the system

01:01:45.380 is racist and therefore needs to be abolished um yeah yeah you know so one of the markers for this

01:01:51.200 might be that real proclivity to use low resolution characterizations you know like i've been

01:01:58.180 watching the cop 26 debacle let's say and one of the things that really struck me was target zero

01:02:06.460 and i'm thinking target zero zero zero zero is an interesting number zero means none no pollution

01:02:17.760 well that means you don't get to go to the bathroom anymore zero you know like everything has a mess

01:02:26.940 and how about how about some how about some incremental improvement in a positive direction you know

01:02:33.840 you're it seems to me that thinking gets sloppy and self-congratulatory as we move towards

01:02:42.120 statements like the system is broken it's like well the system has a lot of parts a lot and they're not

01:02:51.100 all broken you can tell that because you can plug your toaster in in the morning and hey you put some

01:02:56.680 bread in which you can also get by the way and then you have toast that's that's not broken

01:03:02.060 and so it's this injudicious critique and that speaks of carelessness failure to be on the ground

01:03:11.240 and moral self-congratulation and it's extreme and then also interestingly enough it also speaks to

01:03:17.300 that leftist preoccupation in some sense with unearned privilege right because the only time that you can

01:03:23.300 get away with thinking that sloppy is if you're so protected from the consequences of your own failure

01:03:29.680 to grasp the essentials of life that having that mistake doesn't actually cost you anything

01:03:35.000 you know the people on cnn who are viewing the the portland riots from afar they're not having their

01:03:43.160 house burned down they're not getting beat up in the street so it doesn't really matter that they have

01:03:48.360 this low resolution view of it and so let okay so let's go into the criminal justice system for a minute

01:03:54.860 the americans do lock up a lot of people right for a western democracy they've got quite the damn

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01:05:41.420 in that prison system there was a quite a rapid decline in violent crime from say especially from

01:05:47.220 the 80s till a couple of years ago and i don't know what the causal links are there and i'm not

01:05:51.960 i'm not making a case for a link between the prison system and the decline in criminality because it's

01:05:56.700 complicated but they do lock up a lot of people you guys lock up a lot of people you yankees

01:06:02.080 and a disproportionate number of them are black and so that's that's a problem that's a big problem

01:06:10.660 it's like the incarceration rate's a big problem and the racial disparity is a big problem and it

01:06:14.940 does beg the question well to what degree is the system corrupt it begs the question of to what degree

01:06:21.160 the corrupt system serves those the people in power who are let's say disproportionately less likely to be

01:06:28.780 black particularly and so and then you can see how that the guilt about that which is felt really

01:06:37.340 broadly especially among empathic liberal types increases the probability that they're going to

01:06:44.620 turn a blind eye to any manifestation of what seems to be associated in even a vague way against that

01:06:50.760 and i don't exactly know what we should do about it you know it's really a so sorry i'd like to have

01:07:00.960 your thoughts on those matters so i think the vagaries of uh things that they oppose such as

01:07:08.040 using terms as like the system um burn it down abolish systemic racism uh these things are

01:07:16.100 not defined really because uh i think by intention they never want their goals to be reached they

01:07:26.960 need they exist almost um they being the radical fallout the revolutionary fallout whatever as um

01:07:35.120 they need to exist in opposition to something so over and over like let's say last year all these mayors

01:07:44.080 all these city councils were giving in to essentially all the demands you want to defund the police

01:07:49.740 fine we'll we'll slash in the budget you want to abolish this uh gun violence reduction team fine we'll do

01:07:55.720 that um you want police to evacuate from this police department we'll give you that and it was never

01:08:02.320 never ever enough in fact in every time that these uh let's say in portland the portland mayor or the

01:08:08.700 mayor in seattle every time that they capitulated what happened was demand for more

01:08:13.840 extreme actions were stronger than these extremists and when they didn't get that um

01:08:19.500 important and for example the rioters went to the home of the portland mayor ted wheeler and actually

01:08:25.900 set uh the building on fire and he ended up having to move out of his condo uh he apologized to his

01:08:32.640 neighbors and he's essentially in hiding in a way uh we don't know where he lives now um in seattle

01:08:39.440 the the radical did that not did that did that not change his viewpoint in some important manner or

01:08:46.000 did he feel that the protesters were so justified that it's no bloody wonder they tried to burn down

01:08:51.160 his house like what's the psychology there as far as you can tell um i think after that experience and

01:09:00.420 after the the mayor of seattle experienced something similar in terms of people showing up at her at her

01:09:05.440 door um uh they they gave fewer concessions after that and were in in that language moving forward

01:09:18.440 that i've seen in some of the decision making pulled back on sort of the um the left the radicalism that

01:09:27.880 they had embraced in the early months of the rioting they didn't pull back completely but pull back

01:09:32.640 enough that you know there were subtle things for example um like um the uh the mayor much more being

01:09:42.720 willing to speak critically uh violent riots that were happening in his city whereas before it was

01:09:49.560 okay so it had some effect yes there was always there was criticism before but then there was always

01:09:54.720 you know this is taking place in the context of historic racial justice protests and we can make

01:10:00.680 something great out of it he he went he didn't he didn't always qualify his statements moving

01:10:06.300 forward which i think were were meaningful uh important in that regard and before i forget i

01:10:12.380 wanted to go back on one thing you know you wrote from the wikipedia articles yes yes i want to and the

01:10:17.620 and the freedom fund i know we were that's still hanging because you called them far left and now i just

01:10:22.660 called you far right so who the hell can trust you so like how do we wade through this

01:10:27.260 um so the i've been one of the ways that um antifa and their sympathizers and some publications in the

01:10:42.460 press have tried to delegitimize my work and my voice is to posit or put out this idea that um

01:10:54.080 because i'm against antifa uh by default then that must mean that i'm pro-fascism

01:11:00.500 so they try now for years uh to throw any type of accusation at me and hoping

01:11:07.280 knowing that it's false but hoping that even if it doesn't stick completely that i'm never left

01:11:14.200 in the same state as before that it's always that i'm always dirtied in a way and they've been

01:11:20.900 yeah that works i mean i was nervous about talking to you it works man it works and believe me i've

01:11:26.040 experienced the same thing and it doesn't take much to stain someone's reputation right especially

01:11:31.440 because look there's seven billion people in the world there's no way i'm going to talk to all of

01:11:36.900 them and so you'll kind of need hardly any excuse at all not to talk to someone

01:11:41.820 so you know a little stain will do the trick and so this this james o'keefe thing

01:11:48.540 you're described by your critics as a disciple of james o'keefe okay the founder of project veritas

01:11:56.060 a right-wing activist group so what's the story with that exactly

01:12:00.380 well a disciple would that was tend to imply that like i've been mentored or for a long time by

01:12:09.240 project veritas or james o'keefe which i haven't um but for the record i i am very supportive of

01:12:15.660 the work that they do i think they do great investigate they invest the resources money and time

01:12:22.060 getting people to be undercover journalists to record things like otherwise you would never

01:12:27.380 um get on record um i understand there's a lot of criticisms uh against and are they

01:12:34.240 are they reasonably conceptualized as a right-wing activist group what exactly does that phrase mean

01:12:41.080 in this context do you think uh well that's meant to be disparaging i think it me it's probably fair

01:12:46.860 to describe them as conservative um in the journalists they're uh are conservative but um

01:12:55.380 the work they do is important for example they um i thank them in my book because they provided to me

01:13:04.220 some of the primary documents of when one of their journalists went undercover into rose city antifa

01:13:10.000 and that's something that today nobody else in anywhere in the united states has been able to do to

01:13:16.720 actually get somebody who is completely unknown located to portland build a whole new identity and persona

01:13:24.520 and get this person infiltrate the group in terms of the membership process as much as possible

01:13:29.660 that type of work deserves um praise not condemnation um and uh i guess the fact that i've been um

01:13:40.500 you know on record supportive of project veritas people are trying to use that just near me i think the

01:13:45.860 more serious accusations i've been leveled against me spurious ones are accusing me of um being

01:13:53.020 like in dead with violent extremists on the yeah yeah yeah militant right wing and far right groups

01:13:58.420 in portland okay so what what's the story there what why and you know because jung carl jung said

01:14:04.620 every projection has to have a hook you know like there's going to be ways you're going to be smeared

01:14:09.740 that will work and there are going to be ways that you're going to be smeared that won't work and the

01:14:13.740 ones that work there's a hook right there's something about you that makes that stick a little better

01:14:18.420 right and so we all have to examine our consciences when we get smeared because you think well

01:14:23.440 you know do i have a weak spot that i'm unaware of that makes me much more susceptible to that

01:14:29.440 particular accusation and so you know you said well you're you're a critic of antifa and that's enough

01:14:35.800 for you to be labeled as right wing and fair enough but like anything else lurking around there that

01:14:42.360 makes you an easy target of that sort of accusation i'm glad you asked so this really started um so

01:14:50.140 after i was beaten by antifa in the summer of 2019 that was when my profile rose a lot before that i was

01:14:57.000 just a regional small figures occasionally interviewed on fox news but otherwise really unknown i think what

01:15:03.760 i noticed after that was um so what happened was a few months after that a local um left-wing

01:15:11.300 alternative publication in portland called the portland mercury did what they said was this

01:15:16.180 explosive story to um expose me they had interviewed a person uh given this uh individual uh a pseudonym

01:15:24.900 uh today i still don't know who this individual is like the real identity but they accused with and

01:15:30.640 provided no evidence they said that i was uh in the presence of when a right-wing riot was being

01:15:38.780 planned against antifa and that i had an agreement against the right-wing brawlers for mutual protection

01:15:46.660 that was the word this individual the pseudonymist person said i was never reached for comment for the

01:15:52.560 story um and then it was printed uh on a local blog and then picked up by journalists

01:16:00.300 on the left who sought to discredit me such i think there was daily beast slate the same places

01:16:07.240 that have gone after you uh professor and so they repeated this claim and um i had my legal

01:16:14.080 um counsel send a cease and desist letter to the publication and then they they just ignored it and

01:16:20.840 the thing in the u.s is you know to to actually win defamation when you're a public figure particularly

01:16:27.020 against the newspapers it's so it's near impossible so i felt really helpless and to this day i'm still

01:16:36.020 really furious about it that this person who just levied a serious accusation against me i have no idea

01:16:43.100 who it is and i have no way to even counter like to confront my kids in this way well you do have one

01:16:49.080 you do have one way the one way is to just tell the truth yes right i mean yeah that does counter your

01:16:57.560 accuser and every time that something like that's been happened happened to me at least so far

01:17:02.480 ultimately it backfired now i mean i'm knocking on wood you know and i know that you know maybe my

01:17:09.340 days are numbered in all sorts of different ways but so far it hasn't worked sometimes it's taken a long

01:17:15.580 time for the for the tide to turn but it's always turned and so i would say if you're still feeling

01:17:21.660 rage about that like one thing you can take solace in is that to the degree that you're capable of

01:17:27.560 representing the truth that is the best protection you have against anything and i don't think there is

01:17:32.220 any better protection against anything than that they're like the courts anything like that's like

01:17:37.140 no that's when you're playing a deep game the only real defense you have is truth and like truth is

01:17:43.840 reality itself man you have that on your side it's it's walking softly walking carefully speaking

01:17:50.500 softly sorry and carrying a big stick so you know and that that it's interesting too that you're still

01:17:57.680 angry about that because that's a hell of a thing to carry along and around with you you know it corrodes

01:18:03.460 you over time that that kind of anger and and so it you're doing pretty good given all things all the

01:18:11.940 things that have been stacked up against you so i feel angry because i've always i've gone through

01:18:17.940 my life like i have no i you know i don't have i don't have a criminal record and i've been arrested

01:18:23.120 i always i do things right you know i follow the rules um i don't support any political violence and

01:18:30.600 then this persona um identity that others have made this made-up person of who andy no is and has

01:18:38.740 gotten many to believe it you know they presented this person who's somebody who yeah it's a made-up

01:18:44.960 person too eh because they're pseudonymous you know that's so interesting they had to fabricate a

01:18:50.660 person to fabricate you yeah um so it just you know it feels i i've been wronged in that regard and

01:18:59.860 um the evidence i was put out to try to support it they said there was undercover video

01:19:06.060 the video they provided was me uh documenting the violent brawl uh that happened in everything

01:19:14.100 before and they said that because i was in presence in the presence and in proximity to people on the

01:19:19.340 right that i was with them or part of them which is completely untrue and that type of standard would

01:19:24.760 never be applied to other journalists um it's a backhanded compliment you know is it how so

01:19:31.840 well they obviously think you're a threat right well that's worth thinking about right i mean

01:19:39.360 that's worth thinking about because it means you're successful enough so that people are willing to

01:19:43.440 generate lies to take you out and so i know that's that's that's small solace yeah yeah we were talking

01:19:52.280 at the beginning of this how many times have you been beat up doing what you're doing and why the hell do

01:19:56.420 you keep doing it i've been assaulted uh or attacked um in total four times uh two of which were really

01:20:07.520 serious so the june 2019 most people i've seen those pictures where i'm covered in all the the milkshakes

01:20:16.060 um but i had a brain hemorrhage from that beating so um how that attack started is they um punched me

01:20:25.560 really hard uh in the back of the head from behind okay so that's worth that's worth thinking about okay

01:20:31.280 let's just think about that for a minute okay so now you also said these guys were wearing fiberglass

01:20:36.780 reinforced gloves okay so here's the kind of courageous person who went after you

01:20:41.740 is they wrapped their fists in a solid material and instead of confronting you face to face like

01:20:48.220 someone who's you know vaguely civilized might in in a in a brawl situation let's say they punched you

01:20:55.060 in the back of the head yeah well that's the kind of person we're talking about right now and then

01:21:01.760 we're talking about someone else that's even more than that is that they've managed to concoct for

01:21:06.020 themselves a story about their moral virtue that's so blinding that they think that doing that

01:21:13.960 was justified they've told them a story to justify that particular action it's like anybody who thinks

01:21:23.540 someone like that is their friend better start thinking about what they mean by friend so and so

01:21:30.400 what's the consequence for you like you're still doing this how come uh after that assault i was

01:21:38.740 rushed to the hospital by ambulance and um i had a well swelling immediately that happened on my face and

01:21:47.840 my eyes had was bleeding all over bleeding from the ear um a ct scan was uh done on me and the doctor

01:21:56.140 let me know hours later that i had a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage which is bleeding in the brain

01:22:01.460 very serious and uh i had about a year of um like cognitive speech therapy physical therapy

01:22:10.240 um to address some of the deficiencies i had immediately after the assault it's been two and a

01:22:16.820 half years now um and i'm still dealing with the cognitive issues and this is what makes me so

01:22:21.880 angry because nobody's ever been arrested for it and they these anonymous assailants some of them

01:22:29.100 uh took something away from me forever they you know i have i have memory issues and um my mind is not

01:22:36.780 the same as before that's what i deal with but i what was it like for you going back to your next

01:22:43.060 riot after you after you recovered from this or partially recovered from it i mean what was that day

01:22:50.000 like you decided you go cover something else violent tell me what that was like i wasn't able to do it

01:22:57.420 for many many months afterward and when i did it it was i had ptsd like this overwhelming fear which

01:23:08.260 wasn't irrational it made sense i was if these people knew who they were they would beat me again

01:23:13.860 and possibly kill me i mean they have been uh threatening to kill me uh dozens and dozens of

01:23:20.580 times on social media or through emails or phone calls or they would actually graffiti it across the

01:23:25.760 city kill andy no murder and yeah i've seen those pictures man so this incitement of violence was

01:23:31.100 was real uh and i went back out and you know i've gotten a lot of criticisms over it but um because i put

01:23:38.860 myself out at risk and earlier this year in may i was beaten again when i was exposed what sort of

01:23:45.020 criticisms that uh you're being too courageous is that the problem has andy no he's being too

01:23:52.980 courageous man no no it's the right way to interpret it you know and i'm asking about

01:23:57.620 foolhardiness right because like you got hurt bad and so i'm asking you know how do you know it's not

01:24:02.800 time to hang up the shingle and do something that won't get you killed i'm not saying you should i'm not

01:24:07.100 that is not what i'm saying but but it is worth asking yourself that question and so you did go

01:24:12.560 back into the fray so and you got criticized for it of course by people who wouldn't do that

01:24:18.420 that's for sure and they're sensible you know whatever that means but so why'd you do it and

01:24:24.420 how did you overcome that fear man because of course you had something approximating ptsd and this

01:24:29.720 isn't some abstract fear like you could be killed you were damn near killed

01:24:33.940 so there's a you can do a hell of a lot of journalism from the comfort of a computer anywhere

01:24:41.660 in the world however the further that you are physically removed from whatever subject you're

01:24:46.900 you're reporting on you introduce it's much much easier to introduce more errors so for example

01:24:53.940 the journalists who were at uh bureau desks and bureaus in dc or new york who were reporting

01:25:00.120 about antifa on the west coast from the comfort of their their desks in their offices introduced a lot

01:25:06.200 of error errors for example like describing it as simply a movement against uh fascism um

01:25:13.500 and i i needed to be on the ground yeah as if that's simple it's like oh they're fighting

01:25:20.920 fascism are they exactly how are they doing that and who are the fascists and how do you define

01:25:25.380 fascism and we tried to fight that before and it turned out to be pretty complicated and so how is

01:25:29.840 it that they're simply fighting fascism and who are these people that think that they're fighting

01:25:34.060 fascism and why do they think they're right etc etc etc etc so yeah simply that's that low resolution

01:25:42.660 thinking that that that that really is it's part of a it's part of a self-congratulatory privileged

01:25:50.980 blindness that's for sure okay so you need to be in the fray as far as you're concerned to get the facts

01:25:55.540 right and we already kind of walked through

01:25:57.220 why you think that you're not exaggerating the threat right you look at what's happened in these

01:26:04.060 cities in the broader political landscape let let if you don't mind let's go back to that

01:26:08.800 minnesota freedom fund again because that was really a crucial issue as far as i was concerned

01:26:13.300 because it has to do with these concentric circle this concentric circle issue okay so they're

01:26:18.540 they're they're helping people get out on bail as rapidly as possible who are the people that

01:26:24.520 they're getting out on bail and why do they think that's a good idea they were completely

01:26:30.120 indiscriminate so the bail bailed out people who were accused of things such as attempted murder and

01:26:37.840 rape uh one at least one individual um who was bailed out uh based on these funds

01:26:44.500 has was went on to allegedly murder another individual um okay so that that adds credence

01:26:52.000 to your claim that the ideology driving this is a low resolution critique of the entire justice system

01:26:58.780 right because you wouldn't be indiscriminate in your deliverance of bail if you didn't believe the

01:27:04.420 whole damn system was so corrupt that everyone arrested by it is best uh what would you call

01:27:09.620 it's it's just they were just addressed arrested for arbitrary and and unreasonable uh reasons so

01:27:20.220 exactly um in portland last year we have um sorry a person last year who's accused by uh the state as

01:27:32.860 well as the federal government of using firebombs uh to attack police during a riot in portland an

01:27:41.220 individual who uh referring to suspect muhammad malik he um went went from a different state to

01:27:48.760 portland allegedly had training in st louis uh was recorded allegedly on cctv uh various stores buying

01:27:57.880 things such as bats and components to make the firebombs he was held on a 2.2 million uh state

01:28:06.060 uh bail in the state of oregon when he was arrested after the investigation that involved the fbi and the

01:28:11.580 atf uh that that individual was that that's the highest bail set out of the thousand people who were

01:28:18.760 arrested in the riots in portland oregon last year the the bail fund in portland raised the money to cover

01:28:25.720 10 percent uh to pay his bail which is 220 000 dollars cash they put to get this individual out

01:28:33.020 and again it's it's from this belief that these i that there's no absolutely no legitimacy to the

01:28:43.240 american criminal justice system so any act of sabotage such as getting out violent allegedly violent

01:28:50.820 people people who accused of attempted murder people even accused of stabbing people and trying

01:28:57.100 to kill others all of that uh they support and helping because they just view it as one more way of

01:29:03.800 um disrupting the system in a way to cause it to break apart and okay and so that that's what

01:29:12.320 justifies your accusations let's say of far left sympathies on the part of this particular fund

01:29:17.560 and it's the indiscriminate use of the money okay so let's go into the bail issue a bit so we could

01:29:22.680 make a counter-argument we could say well look these people are innocent before they are tried

01:29:27.360 right we presume innocence and that's why bail exists at least to some degree because people can

01:29:34.200 get on with their lives when they're getting mangled up by a justice system that certainly can be

01:29:39.240 arbitrary and harsh and rather infrequently can deliver you know true justice because that's a

01:29:45.580 heavenly ideal isn't it and so so they could just say well look you know bail was set what the hell

01:29:51.700 is so wrong with us putting bail up and we're just helping people who don't have the means of fighting

01:29:57.040 for themselves and yeah maybe they got carried away at a at a demonstration but people get to

01:30:02.240 demonstrate and that doesn't mean they shouldn't well that we shouldn't help them out with bail and now

01:30:07.320 you made a specific point about this particular guy 2.2 million bail right so if there is any legitimacy in

01:30:13.960 the justice system that would be an indication that maybe he went beyond the pale by any reasonable

01:30:18.840 standards and so so how would you respond to because i can imagine someone from that fund sitting here

01:30:24.520 listening to you thinking no we're doing this for good reasons and so what do you think about that

01:30:29.500 kind of argument i would be willing to concede that to them if they weren't willing to bail out people

01:30:36.940 who've been arrested let's say two three four five six seven eight times over the course of two weeks

01:30:42.380 when you see that it's used essentially to get people out and then they're allegedly go on to

01:30:48.600 riot within the same 24-hour period is arrested again they have them out again then that looks more

01:30:55.420 like it's the indiscriminate aspect there yeah okay okay okay fine that's good i want to read something

01:31:01.820 from your book okay i'd like to talk to you for about like a day but we're not going to be able to do it

01:31:06.520 okay okay so uh let me make sure i've got the whole story here

01:31:12.020 yeah this is from a section in your book where you're talking about uh

01:31:25.080 but really about what led to the ideas of defunding the police and so forth and

01:31:29.720 and about the fact that if there's any interference in in a criminal matter between

01:31:38.100 the police and someone who's black in this particular case that the police are likely to

01:31:43.500 be in terrible trouble for it and you talk a little bit about the difficulties that

01:31:47.700 presents for law enforcement officers who are at least sometimes trying to protect black people

01:31:54.460 as well from violent subgroups so here's some you're talking about this guy he was arrested and

01:32:01.460 shot by police after fighting with cops in a residential area he had shrugged off being hit

01:32:05.340 with a taser round and reached inside his vehicle where there was a knife this was all caught on camera

01:32:09.460 blake who is black had a warrant issued for his arrest by the wisconsin circuit court for a felony sex

01:32:14.560 crime and other charges related to domestic abuse the criminal complaint for that may 2020 incident

01:32:21.060 accuses blake of raping a woman with his hand in front of her child according to a police scanner

01:32:26.240 audio on august 23rd officers responded to the same woman's residence after she called 911

01:32:31.760 and said blake was at her home again his criminal history included assaulting police resisting arrest

01:32:39.760 carrying a firearm while intoxicated and use of a dangerous weapon even though he survived the shooting

01:32:45.340 the response was again mass carnage and looting in the streets of kenosha now this is the

01:32:50.980 interesting part not that all that wasn't interesting democratic vice presidential candidate

01:32:57.520 kamala harris later visited blake and said she was proud of him okay so i'm going to hammer you about

01:33:03.540 that first because i i want to get to the bottom of this did you take her words out of context proud

01:33:09.500 of him do you think like are you because this is a pretty serious accusation right this guy does not

01:33:15.940 sound good in fact he sounds pretty much like the antithesis of good and if a vice presidential

01:33:21.700 candidate then visited him and said she was proud of him and that's a contextually accurate quote then

01:33:29.500 well then what the hell which is really the point you're making there so did are you being fair to

01:33:36.160 kamala harris i think so so i think at that time um she and much of the public just weren't aware that

01:33:45.440 this was was the crimes that he's been accused of or was convicted of that's his history but it's

01:33:52.060 that what we see over and over is um the context of who these individuals are who are involved with

01:33:59.700 um sometimes deadly encounters with police uh it's almost like their whole their whole history is

01:34:07.720 irrelevant and the only thing that matters is that they're black and essentially i think that kamala

01:34:13.100 and other democrat politicians um viewed him as a george floyd 2.0 type of figure and saw only what

01:34:21.120 was on the outside which is the black man who had been shot by police district either discarded

01:34:27.240 evidence early evidence that was known about some of this criminal history some of it emerged more of

01:34:33.140 it emerged later that type of stuff uh was irrelevant to the narrative at hand because

01:34:38.720 um the kenosha riots were a part of riots that occurred in many other cities within this whole

01:34:46.280 movement for racial justice and police reform which the democrats in my view very cynically use

01:34:52.700 uh as a campaigning point and as um as a way to uh batter uh the the trump pence campaign

01:35:01.300 why cynically you say because you know part of what i've kind of come to understand is that

01:35:07.700 some of the stuff is worse because it's not cynical you know what i mean is there's a cynical element and

01:35:14.180 because people act instrumentally they want to win an election for example and they think that

01:35:18.340 they need to win at all costs because you know look what we're preventing and i get the malevolence and

01:35:23.540 the cynicism but it's more scary when you see that it's actually good people or people as good as you

01:35:29.720 are as good as i am that are caught up in this sort of mess you know because it points to how complex

01:35:34.600 and sticky and horrible it really is so i mean you know we talked about the incarceration rates and

01:35:42.920 the disproportionality of incarcerated people in the black community and that really is a problem you

01:35:49.120 know and it might be a severe enough problem to bring the whole mess down right we don't know

01:35:53.500 it's a real problem and it isn't going away easily and we can't even talk about it not not not deeply

01:36:01.380 and so then we we fall into these low resolution categories the kind that you just said it's like

01:36:06.840 well the justice system is biased against black people and so whenever a black person is treated

01:36:12.660 badly by law enforcement there's this reflexive move just to note the systemic inequality and to be on

01:36:17.740 the side of the person who is a member of a group that is incarcerated at a much higher rate than

01:36:22.900 other groups and so it points to some to a real problem now god only knows what the problem is

01:36:29.420 it it isn't a problem right first of all it's like 10 000 problems and each of those problems is really

01:36:36.720 hard and you have to get a high resolution map of them but and you know we it's i know why you went

01:36:44.380 after kamala harris it's because well this isn't a guy to be proud of

01:36:49.060 could have she known or did she just not know and and then you know that's an important it's a

01:36:58.180 crucial question because lots of times you could know something if you want to but you decide not to

01:37:02.820 i don't think she cared to know because uh i mean she's a she's a former um prosecutor herself

01:37:13.880 she has the resources to be able to pull up some of these criminal records like i'm not just talking

01:37:18.800 about things that okay so that's a good point so you don't think she did her homework and she could

01:37:23.380 have done it because i would say okay look she's busy like such people are busy right they're scheduled

01:37:30.100 they are scheduled to the second like 20 like 18 hours a day so they're busy and things can get by

01:37:37.560 them so you say well yeah but she was a prosecutor and so she knows this sort of thing she could have

01:37:43.800 done her homework right then and and to go into that situation and say specifically that she was

01:37:48.840 proud of this guy it was like no that's not excusable because you had the expertise to know

01:37:53.580 and you could have taken the time to investigate who you were going to congratulate and did you you

01:37:59.260 know did you let the camera opportunity get in the way so to speak that's the question you're raising

01:38:05.860 okay okay okay okay well this is i'm going to talk about that particular story with these democrats

01:38:12.540 that i'm talking to because you know one of the things i like about your book i'm afraid we're

01:38:17.260 going to have to close on this there's a whole bunch of other things we should talk again i guess

01:38:21.080 that's really the issue um you know the devil's in the details and your idea that you have to be

01:38:28.060 there to to know what's going on well there's real truth in that and you know there is the danger

01:38:33.400 that because you're there you're going to exaggerate the threat that's the danger of being on the ground

01:38:37.180 and you know hopefully you can protect yourself against that but uh i i liked your book a lot and i

01:38:43.040 and it made me think a lot about how these groups are structured and about how this goes out of control

01:38:51.960 sideways and so you're doing real journalism as far as i can tell and that's not that common anymore

01:38:57.700 it's no wonder you're getting beat up you know because real journalism puts you in a war zone and

01:39:04.620 people get killed in wars so uh i'm glad you're okay

01:39:10.300 thank you professor yeah i'm glad that um i'm glad you're back you know the i i've been a fan of yours

01:39:20.700 for years now and uh the world missed you a lot you're we're gone i'm glad you're well enough that

01:39:27.360 um you you blessed the public with your your intellect i appreciate that and i i i'm thankful

01:39:34.680 that you took time to read my book and to give me an opportunity to speak with you you know i haven't

01:39:38.800 read it all yet but i'm going to and i'm going to try to get some of these democrats that i'm talking

01:39:42.720 to to read the damn thing too because at very least you know what you did that i think was so useful

01:39:47.400 is so imagine that they're pretty concerned about far right radicals it's like okay fair enough and

01:39:53.280 it's not easy to tell the far right radicals from the far left radicals anyways so but you know by

01:39:59.180 unpacking how these groups work you you perform a real service in aid of stopping the well the

01:40:07.780 psychopathic radical types who really are always a threat to everything that everyone sensible holds

01:40:14.020 dear you know you shed some light on the complexity of it the detailed complexity of it

01:40:19.400 and that's extremely useful it's extremely useful to people who want to know what's going on and so

01:40:26.340 that is what journalists should do it's the purpose of a free press and you know what would you say

01:40:32.780 i wouldn't say what would i say because i can't say congratulations it's like

01:40:39.180 it's quite something that you put yourself in the line of fire for that it's not just words you know

01:40:46.340 it's not just words

01:40:49.060 and and to have and to be brain damaged from it that's

01:40:54.240 you know there are things worse than death and you got away intact more or less but

01:41:02.320 you could have been consigned to something that would be a living hell

01:41:06.320 and then to walk back into the fray despite that it's like

01:41:09.800 you put your money where your mouth is man

01:41:12.240 good to talk to you thank you professor hope to see you in the uk

01:41:21.760 have you heard of anything more chilling than frozen beef until november 3rd get an always fresh

01:41:48.680 never frozen dave single from wendy's for only four dollars nothing scary about that

01:41:53.380 taxes extra at participating wendy's until november 3rd terms and conditions apply

01:41:57.120 you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - March 28, 2022

239. ANTIFA： The Rise of the Violent Left ｜ Andy Ngo

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