Andy Ngo and Shelby Talcott join host Meghan to discuss their new book, Unmasked: It s All About Antifa, a look inside the tactics and tactics of the far-left Antifa movement and the journalists who cover them.
00:14:05.280So you asked a moment ago, it seems like they've kind of just come out of nowhere.
00:14:09.980And I was saying that they've been around on the fringes of the far left in the United States since the 80s.
00:14:14.780But starting in 2016, they were really able to move into the mainstream left because they had the legitimacy that was given by the mainstream media,
00:14:27.140the legacy media and journalists and politicians who are now talking about the election of Trump signal that we were on the cusp of another Holocaust,
00:14:38.680that this is American fascism, that people needed to resist.
00:14:42.660They were using all these words of war.
00:14:44.900Well, like people like AOC who sound a lot like the her messages sometimes sound very similar to those we hear from Antifa.
00:14:54.960And I write about in the book how there are politicians in the Democrat Party,
00:14:59.320high level politicians who have at best been provided rhetoric that is encouraging to Antifa.
00:15:07.260Antifa has actually encouraged people to donate to some of these campaigns that provide legal aid to accuse rioters.
00:15:16.920And it's not just AOC who's done that for a riot that happened in Boston.
00:15:20.660But now BP Kamala Harris has infamously tweeted out support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bailed out every single person who wasn't just accused of rioting in Minnesota last year,
00:15:36.060but also accused of attempted rape, attempted murder and other really heinous crimes.
00:15:52.060You're supporting violence and the murder of black lives.
00:15:55.000Your book points out that most of those who were killed in this summer of violence we experienced were black.
00:16:01.820And no one seems to want to deal with that fact.
00:16:04.800But this is not about protecting black lives.
00:16:07.360This movement, they hurt people with impunity.
00:16:11.120Now, just to jump back to AOC for a second, because you you point this out in your book that she talks about how, you know, she wants to stop fascism.
00:16:39.640So the Antifa have some like longer term goals.
00:16:44.640Abolishing the U.S. is obviously quite a grand goal.
00:16:48.680But they they have certain things that they are doing in the meantime.
00:16:51.560And one of which is to completely delegitimize the rule of law, which is why they're attacking a lot of these institutions that represent like border enforcement, police, et cetera.
00:17:03.720And as for AOC, it's really been shocking to see how her really radical and extreme language, such as referring to border detention centers as concentration camps.
00:17:16.180Those same words were repeated by Willem van Sponsen, which is an Antifa extremist who launched a firebomb attack in Tacoma, Washington in 2019.
00:17:27.240He came down with a rifle and homemade and sundry devices and blew up a vehicle and tried to blow up, according to police, a 500 gallon propane tank that was attached to the building.
00:17:37.940And he was shot dead and he left behind a manifesto that in part quoted from AOC.
00:17:42.960So it's but again, these politicians who are now focusing on language and incitement around Trump, they're never held accountable for their incitement to violence.
00:17:58.640And so so you point out in the book that there's a relation, of course, because we saw Antifa coming out at the BLM protests over the summers, you know, that the riots were turned into riots.
00:18:09.720That's where Antifa gets involved. And there's a quote in the book from Patrice Cullors, one of the one of the founders of BLM, saying our task is not only to abolish prisons, policing and militarization.
00:18:24.680We must also demand reparations. She called the United States the most extensive purveyor of human rights atrocities at home and abroad and called for the dismantling of the United States.
00:18:34.620Basically, this is the quote of abolition means no borders. Abolition means no border patrol. Abolition means no immigration and customs enforcement.
00:18:44.460I mean, that sounds like AOC. AOC sounds like Antifa. And these sort of the BLM, the Antifa protesters, some of these far left Democrat politicians are it's no accident that they have the same messaging and that we're hearing more and more about these mantras.
00:19:03.920And sure enough. Like legitimate politicians push for the elimination of ICE. Right. And like Joe Biden completely changing our border policy now that he's taken over.
00:19:15.660And I just wonder whether you think they've made huge progress over the past six months.
00:19:20.200They have. I think people fail to recognize how wise some of the Antifa thinkers actually are in some of the strategies.
00:19:30.940Obviously, the media focuses a lot on the street violence because it's visceral and shocking when it's called a video.
00:19:38.440But the street violence is actually just one part of what they do.
00:19:41.920So the ideology also includes things about trying to attack from within using, in some cases, legal, democratic election process.
00:19:57.320So you have people elected to city councils in Portland, in Seattle, in Minneapolis and other cities who are echoing Antifa propaganda talking points about abolishing police.
00:20:10.520Essentially mainstreaming their ideology.
00:20:12.780That's the most important thing that they're doing in having allies who are elected officials is this mainstreaming because Antifa, they're so extreme that they have to be whitewashed and legitimized in the wider left to in order to be able to be palatable and to be able to introduce their ideology incrementally to people and to radicalize them.
00:20:37.280So it's been no surprise that they've been able to sort of just explode as an American phenomenon four years ago because we were being fed day in and day out that we were now living under American fascism and that people had to resist by any means necessary.
00:20:55.020And all the political violence that was being done on the left was being incrementally tolerated.
00:21:03.600I was really disturbed initially when people were celebrating the punch and Nazi memes.
00:21:11.360I mean, at that time, I recognized that it's, you know, can be easy to sort of just turn a blind eye when like an odious figure gets punched.
00:21:22.280Right. But the messaging behind that was I was OK to inflict violence against people who are quote unquote Nazis.
00:21:29.160And you saw this label who is a fascist or a Nazi being applied very, very broadly, which led to more violence throughout the next few years.
00:21:37.920And then through 2020, in my view, we had insurrections attempted in parts of American urban areas.
00:21:47.020And it was all excused and kind of now being I feel like we're being gaslit.
00:21:52.920It's like all the focus on the 6th of January has overlooked the violence that was magnitudes larger, not just in terms of deaths and injuries,
00:22:01.580but the destruction to livelihoods and billions of dollars to the American economy.
00:22:07.040That's no accident. That's that's no accident. That's what the Democrats wanted.
00:22:10.460And that's what the media wanted was to move on from the rioting and the death that we saw over the summer and move back to a place that they felt most comfortable,
00:22:18.920which is blaming Trump supporters for being racist, white supremacist, awful, terrible people.
00:22:24.700And and, you know, you point out correctly, I think, how these goals and TIFA's goals and some of the BLM goals have backfired.
00:22:35.660We've seen already. Right. You had Minneapolis and its attempt to defund its police fall apart entirely.
00:22:41.680Already they're reversing it. Portland, Oregon, you point out in the book, they someone thought it would be a good idea to dismantle the, quote, gun violence reduction team.
00:22:51.760Someone's like, let's get let's get. Yeah, those guys trying to reduce gun violence, get rid of them.
00:22:56.560And guess what happened when they did that? Why don't you tell the audience?
00:23:00.640Yes, we had skyrocketing shootings in Portland and unprecedented, unprecedented levels in recent decades for shooting homicides.
00:23:10.920And this is not a phenomenon that's unique just to Portland. It's across America.
00:23:16.060Like there are really severe consequences to this implementation of the BLM Antifa agenda.
00:23:23.940And what they're trying to do is really to destabilize local areas and to create power vacuums like this whole this wholesale demoralizing of police has had really profound effects.
00:23:36.460I think you can look in the Pacific Northwest, which is where I'm most familiar, you're having like low record levels of low number of officers, record high numbers of resignations and early retirements.
00:23:50.200And even when police want to respond to riots that are happening on the streets, which are still happening to this day in Seattle and Portland, there is just not the resources to respond.
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00:26:02.460I mean, there absolutely could be loss of life, and there has been.
00:26:06.180But I was shocked to see in the book some of the tactics that they use and the weapons that they work that you wouldn't know is a weapon, like the umbrellas, the water bottles.
00:26:22.500Can you just talk a little bit about the weapons that they bring with them?
00:26:26.600Yeah, so to put this into context, so people are very familiar with what happened on 6th of January in Capitol Hill.
00:26:34.640All that and worse happened night after night after night for more than 120 days in Portland.
00:26:41.780And Portland is a major American city.
00:26:43.860It's one of the largest ones in the Pacific Northwest.
00:26:46.640And night after night, what I was seeing is that people dressed in the same black uniforms were bringing knives, homemade explosives, guns to their riots.
00:27:01.600And they were setting fires to buildings for people inside.
00:27:05.220In July, when a lot of the parachute journalists from D.C. New York came to Portland to cover some of the rioting, the Antifa night after night were trying to burn down a federal courthouse.
00:27:20.260And they were throwing these modified firework explosives to injure the federal officers.
00:27:28.480And Ken Cuccinelli last year had gave testimony to the Senate where he was talking about the really severe injuries that the officers had to deal with, including PTSD, by the way.
00:27:41.000And the response in the press, the headlines, and the response from even the governor and the senators in Oregon and other places were that they were describing the officers as Trump's secret police and occupying force, Gestapo.
00:27:56.240And the pictures that they had, like, this was such a fascinating window into, like, how propaganda is made in real time.
00:28:05.320So all these people with cameras and photos, they were photographing people holding things that looked relatively innocuous as projectiles, such as water bottles or them holding umbrellas.
00:28:16.240But as police noted, in Portland, some of the umbrellas were affixed with small knives at the end of the sticks, at the end of their umbrellas.
00:28:24.820The water bottles were frozen solid, and they were using that to throw, hurl it at police officers' faces and heads.
00:28:32.980They were buying these lasers through online websites, lasers that are capable of causing permanent eye vision damage.
00:28:42.180And they had a whole brigade set up that would target on a single topic, a single victim.
00:28:48.360So eye injuries are one of the things that Ken Cuccinelli had reported.
00:28:53.120And this was being done day in and day out.
00:28:56.860And in July, when the federal officers finally withdrew some of their numbers at the courthouse,
00:29:05.700I remember the media headlines were saying that with the police gone, that the problems are going to go away.
00:29:55.640So they made all these homemade projectiles in addition to the things I mentioned.
00:30:01.260But in some of the police reports that were put out locally, water balloons were being filled with a slush mixture of feces and water.
00:30:14.260And that was being hurled at officers.
00:30:17.680They were also filling water balloons with paint.
00:30:20.480And that was used to obscure the visions of police.
00:30:25.020And they were also creating sort of like mini explosive devices by using light bulbs and throwing them filled with paint at the faces of police.
00:30:37.560So, like, the type of violence that they were doing didn't require a high level of sophistication, but they were able to do severe damage.
00:30:51.160And on top of that, they came armed with guns.
00:30:54.720And at the end of August, in Portland, one of the so-called self-styled Antifa security people ended up stalking out a Trump supporter in downtown Portland and shooting him point-blank dead.
00:31:09.380And then he fled to another state before later getting killed by federal authorities.
00:31:15.060So this ideology, extremism, has produced death.
00:31:19.800And I get so frustrated whenever I keep seeing this lie repeated by politicians and in various biased publications that say Antifa has killed nobody.
00:31:33.600Like, you can, that's empirically false.
00:31:38.680And then you can also look at the trail of misery that they've caused.
00:31:44.240And it's just, it's, it makes me so sick that this violence, extremism, essentially terroristic acts are being excused because of people doing it or saying they're doing it in the name of anti-racism and anti-fascism.
00:32:01.500So what's incredible is they're using all these tactics.
00:32:05.140I can't imagine what it's like to be a police officer in Portland.
00:32:08.300Oh, good gracious, those poor men and women having to deal with all of this.
00:32:12.700And then you point out that they, they, they're very clever.
00:32:16.140They, they use protesters who are there as human shields.
00:32:20.080They know when the cameras are running, so they know how to make themselves look like they're not the aggressors.
00:32:28.040But in the meantime, what you refer to as the parachute journalists who just parachute in and try to, you know, I covered the riot.
00:32:35.460Come back and issue reports like we saw in the Washington Post, which is, I think it was mostly unremarkable.
00:32:41.260And then you've got places like the Oregonian, which you point out in the book, won't even print the mugshots of the Antifa folks who, who have been arrested or the BLM folks.
00:33:06.820So you have a media that's really not interested in the violence that they're perpetuating or the truth about this group.
00:33:14.300Yeah, I think people don't appreciate how serious things got just months ago.
00:33:21.800I mean, BLM and Antifa extremists in Seattle, which is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest, they actually took over six blocks of city property and created a hard border with checkpoints that were manned by their security, who were brandishing semi-auto rifles and pistols and other things.
00:33:42.860And they created essentially a hostage situation for the thousands of people who lived in that area.
00:33:49.300And that was allowed to go on for three weeks by the mayor of Seattle and the governor of Washington state.
00:33:56.580And that devolved very quickly into nightly violence, shootings, attempted rape, mass vandalism and murders.
00:34:04.660And, like, people just seem to, I mean, the reporting at the time, I remember, was, it was being described as a block party atmosphere.
00:34:14.520Like, these were journalists who were from corporate media who came in with their security and then at night they would leave and they didn't see all these other things that were happening.
00:34:24.740And one thing that I didn't see reported anywhere, but I write about in the book was in CHAZ, this so-called autonomous zone that existed in Seattle last summer.
00:34:38.200They have these literature booths set up where they were distributing booklets that they printed out.
00:34:45.540And the ideas contained within those pages are so extreme.
00:34:52.060It's like what you would find, I think, for, like, a jihadist group.
00:34:56.460Like, things that were providing sort of the ideological and theoretical justification for political violence against other people.
00:35:03.980Why you should use human body shields.
00:35:07.080How to barricade yourself within a building, prevent police from getting inside.
00:35:19.900And the response from the mayor, at least well until this occupation, was to go and see an end and to say to Chris Cuomo that this could be a summer of love.
00:35:53.380So one misconception that exists on the right is that people think that Antifa are Democrat voters, that they support Democrat parties.
00:36:04.060Now, they tolerate some Democrat politicians, particularly AOC.
00:36:10.160But by and large, they don't recognize any American government.
00:36:15.140They view the entire United States as, in all its institutions, as irredeemably wicked and fascistic.
00:36:21.800So this coddling that Ted Wheeler did for them for years, ever since he came into office in 2017, allowed, under his watch, allowed Antifa to better organize in his city and to grow and to establish a sort of apparatus in a blueprint that was replicated in other nearby cities.
00:36:43.500And he really seemed to kind of want to appease them.
00:36:51.580They set the condo where he was at on fire, which, by the way, is occupied by dozens of other families.
00:36:58.200And in response, Wheeler, who's also the police commissioner, by the way, just simply announced that he was moving.
00:37:06.580And I think what this is emblematic of is all these politicians like Wheeler, Jenny Durkan's not running for re-election, Antifa showed outside of her house.
00:37:17.040They have the resources to go on and have a nice life, but the wake of the consequences of their political decisions and their poor leadership are really long-lasting for the people who remain in the cities where they were elected to power.
00:37:58.960You, I won't say infiltrated the thing, but you went where they went and covered the thing.
00:38:04.880This, this moving sort of blob that we now know as Antifa, which is growing and getting more organized and very savvy and working the media and so on.
00:38:15.180And as a result of all this, you became, as you described yourself, their public enemy number one.
00:38:22.340And this is a dangerous group to have as one's enemy, as you've outlined.
00:39:32.140Um, and I think probably they do things that are provocative in terms of, like, holding pro-Trump rallies in cities that are, um, predominantly blue.
00:39:42.460Like Portland and Seattle and other urban areas.
00:39:45.900And through the years, uh, some of their members have been involved in, um, these brawls that would frequently happen.
00:39:52.720RTFE would come out to fight them and they'd fight back.
00:39:56.480Um, some of their members have been convicted or are facing current charges for, uh, alleged involvement.
00:40:03.260Uh, I know they're accused of having a role in the Capitol Hill riot.
00:40:15.460Um, but spreading lies about the organization, such as describing them as a, uh, neo-Nazi terrorist organization is not only, uh, unhelpful.
00:40:26.620It actually motivates people on the left to come out and to respond in kind.
00:40:33.420So if anything, I think the, uh, the poor reporting on Proud Boys has caused, um, counter reactions that have led to growing street brawls over the past few years.
00:41:03.620In 2018, I started becoming a target for Antifa after I wrote a piece that was published in the Wall Street Journal about the, their occupation during the summer of the local ice facility in Portland.
00:41:16.380And they had, um, took over the exterior of the building, uh, in the early days and actually had created another hostage situation where staff inside could not actually leave because the exits were blocked.
00:41:29.800Um, they ended up establishing this area that was an encampment, um, that became a life safety issue.
00:41:36.580And after several weeks, the city was forced to dismantle it.
00:41:40.160And so I wrote about everything that was happening, how the residents of that, that community were terrorized by these people who, uh, the Antifa were doing patrols on the streets and they would openly brandish batons and other weapons to intimidate the public.
00:41:55.080And so that put me on their list of unfriendly media.
00:41:59.620Uh, it continued to, uh, they're targeting of me, continue to escalate.
00:42:04.800And then in the summer of 2019 was when that attack happened.
00:42:09.020And it was, uh, a very large Antifa and democratic socialists of America gathering to pose what they said was a proud boy event.
00:42:19.340There were about maybe 10, between 10 and 20 proud boys who were waving flags in another part of downtown.
00:42:27.120And I came there as I had done many times to document a newsworthy event that was happening, uh, in public with my cameras.
00:42:36.040And, uh, halfway through the day, um, I just, I was punched repeatedly in the head suddenly and kicked.
00:42:44.860Um, and then when I thought that was done, I was just trying to get away.
00:42:50.940Uh, it happened right in front of this, in the central police station.
00:42:54.400Uh, but there were no police, uh, which, um, by that point was pretty normal for Portland.
00:43:00.300The Antifa can just shut down traffic, uh, assault drivers and do it with impunity.
00:43:06.100Uh, but as I was trying to walk away, that's when they threw all these liquids on me to blind me, uh, and to humiliate me.
00:43:14.940And that's the photos and videos you see of me covered and all that stuff.
00:43:53.500So the Portland police at that time have put out, uh, a tweet based on intel they received that some of the, uh, milkshakes may have been tainted with quick drying cement.
00:44:05.880Uh, but they never collected a sample, so it was never definitively confirmed.
00:44:11.080And so, um, I had abrasions all over my face and the liquids were seeping in and it really, it felt like a burning sensation.
00:44:20.080And I know that quick drying cement can be caustic.
00:44:23.640Um, but I also had cuts all over, so I don't know which was which.
00:45:36.900And let me just read you part of what he writes.
00:45:39.000Noh's fame, such as it is, stems from a June, 2019 Donnybrook in Portland, in the course of which Antifa activists assailed him with a thrown milkshake.
00:45:51.580Noh claimed the milkshake contained concrete.
00:45:54.940Far more likely it was a vegan blend, heavy on cashew butter.
00:46:02.500I guarantee you weren't there, had nothing thrown on you, and had no injuries.
00:46:08.080Instead, you sat in some wingback chair made out of leather, trying to find fault with somebody else's on-the-scene reporting who got attacked and was hospitalized.
00:46:27.380What goes unmentioned is that Noh had a history of embedding with right-wing groups, including, according to persuasive allegations he has denied,
00:46:37.240the white supremacist outfit Patriot Prayer that provoke Antifa into the very fights Noh then films.
00:46:47.700So you're not the victim, even when you are the victim.
00:46:51.800This must somehow be something you asked for, Andy, because you've embedded with a group that, according to Alexander, has white supremacist ties,
00:47:04.020and there are persuasive allegations that you're part of this group that provokes Antifa.
00:47:10.620So to you and your book, there's no evidence to support anything he says.
00:47:15.700There's no evidence to support his vegan butter accusation trying to diminish you, right?
00:47:23.180And by the way, not for nothing, but you're an openly gay man.
00:47:26.060So in any other circumstance, you know, trying to, like, make light of your injuries and you're taking this seriously would be seen as an anti-gay attack, right?
00:47:37.400They're trying to make you seem, oh, too weak to withstand the milkshake.
00:47:41.620All the rules are different, though, because you're writing about a group he wants to protect.
00:47:45.360So can I just ask you what your reaction is to Alexander Nazarian?
00:47:51.440So Alexander is the White House correspondent for Yahoo News, and I was surprised that for somebody who works as a White House reporter,
00:48:01.080that he used such inflammatory language in his writings.
00:48:07.240In addition to what you read, there's another point in the review where he says that my book would make Herr Goebbels proud.
00:48:19.040That type of, I mean, I just, I don't think it's appropriate to make that type of flippant remark just, like, so casually.
00:48:29.400I mean, soon after he wrote that review, he had a piece come out in The Atlantic where he was describing himself,
00:48:37.920comparing himself as a White House correspondent under the Trump administration as somebody who was, like, a World War II soldier in Europe.
00:48:46.860So, you know, these are people who think so highly of themselves and think they're so brave
00:48:54.720and diminish the works of other people that they look down on.
00:48:59.400And this accusation that he said that is credible about me embedding with the far right, you know,
00:49:07.840that came from an interview that was published in a left-wing Portland paper on a blog site
00:49:14.800where the author gave anonymity to a person who made that completely baseless claim.
00:49:20.940And I have absolutely no way of confronting my accuser.
00:49:25.160And so it's made me, to see me, last year these things were then repeated and, like, the Rolling Stone and Salon
00:49:36.260and all these other bigger publications and then they become what people see when they Google my name.
00:49:42.020These accusations are then kind of at the forefront of my Wikipedia entry.
00:49:46.160And it's just, like, it made me really, like, I never liked it when Trump described, like, the press as the enemy of the people.
00:49:56.740But then when you're seeing what some of these people who work as professional journalists,
00:50:01.800what they do to really try to, like, destroy somebody they don't even know,
00:50:07.380and they do it in such a dishonest way, like, it makes me understand what Trump's sentiment was when he made that statement.
00:50:15.520I don't know anything about patriot prayer or what they stand for.
00:50:20.520I know there are some right-wing group and that they've been involved in some attacks.
00:50:24.760But what I'm objecting to is the attempt to tie you to them when, as far as I can see,
00:50:31.020the evidence is simply that you covered them.
00:50:33.700And I read Reason Magazine all the time.
00:50:36.640Roby Soev over there is really great in his reporting.
00:50:40.140And he said he watched the video repeatedly of you, like, with this group.
00:50:47.220This is the evidence of your, you know, support for this group.
00:50:51.500And he says, this is quoting from him,
00:50:54.780The message coming from left of center media was clear.
00:50:58.040Patriot prayer planned this cider riot attack.