The Michael Knowles Show - UNMASKING The True Threat of ANTIFA ｜ Andy Ngo

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Michael Knowles here. A couple of weeks ago, I sat down and chatted with my friend

00:00:04.680 Andy Ngo. Andy famously has been attacked physically, obviously as a matter of his

00:00:11.560 reputation, but also physically attacked by Antifa. He got a brain bleed because of it.

00:00:17.680 And this is because Andy is one of the few, maybe the only journalist in America who's actually

00:00:21.540 going out and covering Antifa. He's got a new book out chronicling all of what he's learned

00:00:28.080 about this militant leftist group, all the misconceptions people have about it. Turns

00:00:32.680 out it's definitely not just an idea as some Democrat politicians have told us. So take a

00:00:37.720 listen to my friend Andy Ngo. You know that the state of politics is tense and degraded when a

00:00:53.720 friend of mine has to flee the country for his life because of all the threats he's getting

00:00:58.240 from leftist militants. I can't, I actually can't believe no matter how crazy things have gotten

00:01:03.020 that I have to utter that statement in America in 2021. But I do. My friend Andy Ngo is currently

00:01:10.040 in the United Kingdom because he is target number one for some of the most prominent leftist

00:01:16.260 terrorists in the country. Um, most of whom work under the banner of Antifa. Andy has a new book out,

00:01:22.640 uh, which I think is sort of the, the book on the topic. The book is unmasked inside Antifa's radical

00:01:30.280 plan to destroy democracy. Uh, order the book now, get it while you still can. I'm sure it'll,

00:01:35.520 it'll be deplatformed or at least suppressed by, by big tech and by the liberal establishment. Andy,

00:01:41.860 I'm glad that, I'm sorry that you're out of the country right now, but I am glad that you're safe.

00:01:47.080 Thank you for having me on, Michael.

00:01:48.800 My pleasure. I, uh, I want to talk about some news that Antifa has broken. I mean,

00:01:55.540 they, they didn't report the news. They actually broke things and therefore that is the news.

00:01:59.500 Antifa took over this hotel in Olympia, Washington over the past week. Uh, they appear to have taken

00:02:05.240 hostages, some staff fled, some guests sheltered in place. Uh, this is not just, uh, you know,

00:02:12.880 running around making a nuisance in the streets. This is, this is the sort of thing you'd see in a

00:02:17.200 third world dictatorship. Yes, this is what happens in Somalia and Yemen, for example, 0.65

00:02:23.660 the terrorists will target hotels. So on Sunday, uh, a group of Antifa took over the red line in

00:02:31.400 downtown Olympia, Washington state. That's the state capital. And, uh, according to the statement

00:02:37.320 that was put out by the city, uh, staff were assaulted that they witnessed these militants

00:02:44.160 bringing in hatchets, knives and batons, um, within. So this was just, uh, over the weekend,

00:02:51.360 police did eventually respond in large numbers to get these militants out, but this really should

00:02:59.540 have been, uh, international news. Um, just how shocking that they, I mean, just what's re it's

00:03:07.560 becoming routine for them now to just take over territory or buildings and claim it as theirs.

00:03:13.340 And I believe this is the first time they've done it to a building where dozens of people were

00:03:19.520 victimized. You know, you're, you've become, I guess, one of the last journalists in America,

00:03:26.260 by that, I mean, you are going in covering stories that other people don't want to cover. As you say,

00:03:31.640 this should have been international news. It wasn't the liberal establishment is basically

00:03:36.480 covering for Antifa. Many people in the liberal establishment have said Antifa is just an idea.

00:03:43.420 Something tells me you're not fleeing the country because of the threats you've gotten from

00:03:48.400 just an idea. This is real people who are committing real violence.

00:03:52.400 Yeah, I think the, see, so that ideology statement that came from President Biden then during, uh, um,

00:04:02.000 presidential debate, it was first said by the head of the FBI, Christopher Wray. And that statement in

00:04:08.800 itself is not incorrect, but it, it needed to be followed up. So in addition to being an ideology,

00:04:15.780 it's also movement and networks of organizations. Now that third part is particularly important because

00:04:21.360 that's how they carry out acts of domestic terrorism. And, uh, it's not just theory, you know,

00:04:28.480 it's one thing if they were only distributing their extremist literature, but this literature then is also

00:04:33.840 coupled with pamphlets and booklets describing actually on how to claim and siege territory, how to make homemade

00:04:41.520 bombs, um, how to make, uh, Molotov cocktails. And I think because the Antifa have had,

00:04:50.080 uh, essentially covered by the mainstream and legacy press, people don't even realize

00:04:58.960 how extreme they are. I mean, think about it. So we just now had the weekend of them

00:05:05.040 see, uh, seizing a hotel where people were inside and bringing allegedly weapons, blunt force weapons

00:05:12.480 and knives and hatchets. But that was just one day we had throughout 2020 in my home city of Portland,

00:05:20.400 month after month, after month of nightly riot. So everything that happened on the 6th of January

00:05:26.000 at the Capitol Hill siege, all that and more happened day after day after day in my city.

00:05:32.160 And the establishment left and the media left gave them cover for that. At best, they were silent. At

00:05:37.600 worst, some of them actually even support, encourage people to donate to some of these crowd funds that

00:05:43.440 would, um, give supplies to these rioters or contribute to their bail funds so that those

00:05:50.160 who happen to get arrested are just back on the street ASAP. This is the, the aspect of it that,

00:05:56.000 that still confuses me a little bit though. I it's, I think it's becoming clearer and clearer

00:06:01.360 and your book is helping to explain why that is. Antifa is this kind of group of anarchists and

00:06:09.840 communists who want to tear down the system. They're burning down buildings. They've burned down

00:06:14.800 government buildings. They've taken over hotels as we've discussed. Why does the establishment left,

00:06:22.080 which owns many of these buildings and which, you know, operates within this formal system,

00:06:27.280 why are they covering for the people who seem to want to tear the system down?

00:06:32.320 You're right. They, we have the establishment establishment left giving coddling this beast

00:06:40.000 that I think is now too big to slay. So on inauguration day, for example, in Portland,

00:06:45.520 the Antifa destroyed the headquarters of the Democrat party office in Portland. Um, but I think the reason

00:06:52.640 why this allyship had developed was particularly, um, so in response to the surprise win of Trump in

00:07:00.800 2016, uh, those who are there out of ignorance or zealotry actually did believe that this was a sign of

00:07:08.880 ascendant fascism in the U.S. And so they excused, and in some cases even encouraged the most extreme

00:07:16.880 elements of the far left, like Antifa, to come right into the mainstream left. And that's exactly

00:07:23.280 what happened. The political violence in Antifa was accepted and tolerated in many urban centers to

00:07:30.640 the point of where, for example, in Portland and Seattle's political street violence is routine.

00:07:36.240 It's not, it doesn't even really make the news there when people are smashing up businesses or

00:07:41.200 striking fires. Um, people have gotten used to it over the years and this was allowed to happen

00:07:46.960 ostensibly under the banner of anti-fascism and anti-racism, but all it is is it's violent extremism

00:07:55.200 masked under social justice.

00:07:57.520 Well, this, this is a great point because very often the left projects and accuses its opponents

00:08:04.080 of doing what it itself is doing. And so what we saw with the rise of Trump during that time,

00:08:08.720 you had the left begin to elide, say mainstream conservatives and radical neo-Nazis, whatever.

00:08:17.840 And, you know, whenever the occasional skinhead crops up, mainstream conservatives say, oh yeah,

00:08:22.400 we're, we're, we're not that we don't agree with that. Uh, but the left no longer makes that

00:08:26.800 distinction. They don't even use the different words anymore. You'll notice they don't even use

00:08:30.240 this term alt-right or what, you know, whatever the term was that becomes completely, uh, drained of

00:08:36.480 meaning. Now, what the left is saying is that effectively 75 million Americans who some odd 75

00:08:42.880 million who voted for Trump are fascists. They're Nazis. They're no different than Hitler, right? So 0.99

00:08:48.160 they're erasing that distinction when in fact there are many distinctions on the right. But for the

00:08:53.040 left, the distinction between these radicals like Antifa who are going out and giving brain

00:08:58.400 hemorrhages to people such as yourself, there really is much less of a distinction between them

00:09:04.320 and the mainstream left who has been coddling them and encouraging them now for years.

00:09:10.080 Yeah. So what's allowed Antifa to become so empowered from a fringe movement to now a phenomenon that

00:09:16.160 it's actually destabilizing force in some cities is because of this, um, excuse that the left gives

00:09:26.080 in that the threat from the right, it's not even just threat from the far right. It's they're casting

00:09:33.680 this wide net of fascism and over Trump supporters, even people, for example, uh, who went to the Capitol

00:09:42.080 to listen to Trump speak or had nothing to do with riots. These people are now also being called

00:09:47.360 domestic terrorists. Um, they essentially they've mainstream tenants of Antifa's ideology. And it

00:09:55.520 comes down to, as you mentioned a moment ago, Antifa are anarchist communists. And from the original

00:10:03.680 Antifa to today, and by the original Antifa, I'm referring to the paramilitary Antifa of the

00:10:10.240 German communist party in the interwar years, that was the first one and the group that contemporary

00:10:16.160 Antifa take inspiration and direct lineage from, um, it's, uh, it's under that ideology that gives them,

00:10:26.160 um, in their minds, the justification for setting fires to buildings when people inside it bashing people

00:10:35.600 in the head with crowbars and bricks. Um, and in, in my case, in 2019, a person with the camera,

00:10:44.160 they actually punched me repeatedly in the head until I had a brain hemorrhage.

00:10:48.160 And they all actually think that they are doing something just and noble. And that's

00:10:52.320 really what makes them really dangerous because they see, I mean, they say it themselves that they

00:10:56.400 will do, do this all by any means necessary, opposing fascism. And, uh, that if, if necessary,

00:11:03.680 they will kill and they have killed and they've gotten themselves killed in the process of carrying 0.78

00:11:07.840 out attacks as well, which I document in the book. Right. You know, uh, it's, it's kind of

00:11:14.400 ironic, I guess, or it's just, it's an inversion of what we used to see, which is in the traditional

00:11:19.200 culture you had, uh, the West was a Christian culture, right? It was Christendom and Christianity

00:11:25.440 posits the incarnation of the perfect good in Christ. And we're all kind of evil, but you know,

00:11:30.480 you have this incarnation of the perfect good, which can lead us toward redemption.

00:11:33.680 And in leftism, which kind of flips that on its head, you, you don't really have any good and

00:11:39.040 you kind of get rid of all, all those, all those old notions, but you do have the incarnation of

00:11:44.560 pure, perfect evil. And that takes the form of fascism or Nazism or, or Hitlerism or whatever, 0.72

00:11:52.800 right? I mean, basically all the references come back to world war two and this incarnation of,

00:11:58.960 of, of perfect evil in the form of fascism. And so if you can, if you can tie your opponent to

00:12:05.760 fascism, if you know, you can make your opponent literally Hitler, then that justifies doing anything. 0.51

00:12:11.360 So you get a mild mannered journalist like you, one of the, you know, for people who don't know

00:12:15.840 you personally, one of the sort of most mild mannered, nice, polite people that I, I am friends

00:12:20.640 with goes out in Antifa and they say, you and, you know, are literally Hitler and we're going to bash 0.99

00:12:26.160 your head in. Luckily you escaped with your life, but, but all the while you have guys like 0.88

00:12:31.680 Jake Tapper, for instance, at CNN, who, when, when the, the white identitarian guy, Richard Spencer got

00:12:38.160 punched in the face, he was participating in these kinds of jokes saying, well, it's the American 0.95

00:12:43.600 tradition to punch Nazis. And now nobody's defending these guys like Richard Spencer, but surely I think 0.93

00:12:51.600 we can all acknowledge that we shouldn't have vigilantism in the streets, guys going around

00:12:55.680 sucker punching and, and committing political violence. Right. But now you have the mainstream

00:13:00.880 left defending that because of this kind of broad category of fascism. Yeah. That was my concern

00:13:08.400 several years ago when people on the mainstream left were celebrating these memes about Richard Spencer

00:13:13.840 being assaulted. Now I took issue with it, not because I like Richard Spencer or stand up for

00:13:21.440 what he believes in. It's nothing like that. It's about the principle or this norm that we do not

00:13:28.880 solve political disagreements through violence. I mean, that's sort of the base human instinct

00:13:34.240 and a lot of societies around the world still solve their issues that way. And the fact that nonviolence

00:13:40.240 between citizens is the norm in the U.S. is a huge accomplishment. And now we're undoing that,

00:13:46.560 that undoing was being celebrated because, you know, it's easy to dislike or hate somebody like

00:13:52.480 Richard Spencer. But then again, at that time, that label of who is the fascist is being applied so broadly

00:14:00.320 that it included just anybody who is critical of communism, it's critical of Antifa, it's critical of

00:14:07.760 social justice extremism. All of us are labeled fascist and therefore worthy of their acts of

00:14:16.400 violence and assaults and intimidation. I mean, I've had people show up to my home multiple times.

00:14:23.600 All of this has been reported to police. They routinely write around the city of Portland,

00:14:27.760 where I lived, murder Andy Ngo, kill Andy Ngo. And so, and all this is being reported to police and

00:14:33.840 they don't do anything. So, you know, the conditions that gave rise to Antifa really

00:14:40.000 had very little to do with Trump. That was just pretext for them to mainstream the extremism.

00:14:45.680 And now with Trump out of the picture, you can really see that their actions are no different.

00:14:50.080 They're rioting the same. They're victimizing the public in the same way. They're attacking

00:14:54.880 Democrat institutions in the same way. I do want to touch on the Portland of it all.

00:15:01.120 As you mentioned, they seem to cluster around there. They go after you personally there in

00:15:06.000 your city. What is it about the Pacific Northwest? They, you know, they took over this hotel in

00:15:11.360 Washington state. Why? I mean, I know that Antifa is spread out throughout the country. We've seen

00:15:16.400 them in Washington DC and all over the place, but, but why, what is it about Portland that seems to

00:15:23.280 have attracted so many of these militants? So as I write in the book, um, the origin of

00:15:29.840 American Antifa and it's really organized form as we see today did start in Portland through one of the

00:15:36.160 cells called Rose City Antifa, which is the Antifa in Portland. I think the establishment of this cell is

00:15:43.360 significant because then once they already had a blueprint to, um, radicalize, recruit, and train

00:15:52.720 members and prospective members, that could really be easily applied to new auxiliary groups that

00:15:59.360 establish in neighboring cities. So what you happen is it just becomes sort of, um, once the apparatus is

00:16:08.560 built just to get stronger and stronger because then now riots that happened, for example, in

00:16:14.320 Portland, don't just involve the Antifa from Portland, the Antifa from Seattle, from Olympia,

00:16:19.840 from Eugene, from Corvallis will come up and vice versa as well. So you have what is in absolute

00:16:25.360 numbers of relatively small number of militants being much bigger, uh, than just a city problem.

00:16:32.800 I think all of this underscores the point that Antifa is not just an idea. It's an idea. Sure,

00:16:38.160 it's an idea, but it's not just an idea. If it were just an idea, you'd see it maybe evenly spread

00:16:43.280 out throughout the place, but no, it involves real people actually training, actually exercising

00:16:48.640 violence in real places and where they cluster, more people are going to come as well. It's,

00:16:53.200 it's not just philosophy. There's a history to this also. You know, one thing that's kind of

00:16:59.760 funny with the Antifa guys, if you want to use the word funny to describe these terrorists is the way

00:17:05.600 they talk and the way they write, they sound like the pink hat wearing campus radicals. You know,

00:17:12.240 they talk about intersectionality and gender theory, and you'd expect them to be kind of wimpy,

00:17:17.520 you know, in the, in the, the ideologies they're espousing, but they're not, they're not little

00:17:22.240 special snowflakes. They're armed with guns and machetes and bats. Uh, how do we reconcile this?

00:17:29.920 This idea that all the, you know, people spouting these silly ideas are so wimpy. Well, they, they 0.91

00:17:35.600 look pretty tough to me. Yes. I'm really glad you pointed that out because there is this

00:17:41.520 misconception on the right that Antifa are just soy boys who are weak and wimpy. I mean, it doesn't

00:17:49.440 really matter about their physical strength. These are people who bring guns, homemade explosives,

00:17:55.120 incendiary devices, uh, hatchets, hammers, two riots. And again, and they use these weapons against

00:18:02.960 people as well. And so, and they've killed, so it doesn't matter if they're weak and, you know,

00:18:07.760 it doesn't take much strength to fire a pistol or a rifle, for example, or to stab somebody with a

00:18:14.720 knife as they did in Portland this past summer. Um, so we're underestimating, even the right is

00:18:20.800 underestimating them. I think, um, in addition to the organized violence, the philosophy and theory

00:18:28.640 that, that is the basis for their movement and ideology is really crucial because it calls for

00:18:35.520 not just, um, destruction and violence. It actually, the main goal of it is to abolish the United States.

00:18:43.760 So like in their worldview, they cannot establish their communist anarchist utopia made up of communes

00:18:51.280 until the United States is destroyed. So you can see, um, what happens when their

00:18:57.600 political theory, if you will, is put into practice. Look at Chad's the Capitol Hill autonomous

00:19:03.200 zone. I write about my time undercover there in the book. It is an, an area once they claimed it and

00:19:09.440 claimed it as a sovereign territory separate from the U S immediately it devolves into murders,

00:19:17.680 homicides, attempted breaks, violent night after night, um, infighting, even, even though they claim

00:19:25.440 to be horizontally organized and not to have any leadership, there were figures immediately who

00:19:30.480 rose up and were vying to be the warlords of this territory. That's what their ideology leads to.

00:19:37.360 Well, of course. And, and when the CHAZ zone and all these other pseudo states that they're 0.98

00:19:43.600 establishing when they fail, of course, we'll be told that true Antifa has never been

00:19:47.520 tried and they'll try it again and again. You know, there does seem to be an anti-establishment

00:19:54.800 movement on the left and the right. So on the left it's Antifa and BLM on the right. They generally

00:20:01.200 are more peaceful, much more peaceful. Uh, but there's still a real anti-establishment, uh,

00:20:07.280 idea cropping up that, that this establishment is corrupt. They're not particularly wise. They're

00:20:13.040 serving themselves. They're not serving the American people. This seems to be getting worse

00:20:17.680 and worse and worse. I was told if Joe Biden became president, it would be a return to normalcy.

00:20:23.680 Just the first week, all of the executive actions, radical new policy coming out of him,

00:20:28.560 even more social strife. That doesn't seem to be the case. Uh, you've, you've mentioned the end

00:20:34.320 game of Antifa here, which is the total upheaval of the system, the eradication of the United States.

00:20:40.320 What do the next few years look like? You're probably the nation's foremost leader on Antifa.

00:20:45.760 Do you, do you have a crystal ball? Do you have any prediction on where things go from here?

00:20:51.040 Uh, I think it goes where they've been in the past year, which is that because of weak leadership in

00:20:58.320 certain urban areas like Seattle and Portland and other cities, uh, because of demoralized police

00:21:04.080 departments and, uh, officers leaving in the droves and their budgets being slashed by the hundreds of

00:21:11.120 millions, you're going to continue to see an uptick in crime. And I think the, my fear is that this is

00:21:18.160 leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy where Antifa seek to

00:21:24.800 make the public not trust, um, in the ability of the state to provide like for the basic needs,

00:21:35.680 you know, just like peace, protection of property rights and all that, which is why these attacks

00:21:41.520 on, on capital property, uh, is, I mean, there's a lot of meaning behind it. It's not just want and

00:21:48.400 violence. They actually want business, uh, owners to leave. They want the areas to become

00:21:54.720 destitute so that they can go in and claim to be the replacement for the state. And, you know,

00:22:00.480 doing that at the federal level is, I don't think going to happen, but you can really see, uh, the

00:22:06.960 carnage that they can wreck in cities because of the leadership that turns a blind eye because they

00:22:12.160 actually think that these people are anti-fascist. That's what I'm afraid of. Well, you, you've seen the

00:22:17.120 rise of so-called no-go zones in areas in, in Europe where basically, uh, radical Islamists came

00:22:25.440 in and, and just sort of displaced the state there. And you, you see the rise of no-go zones in the

00:22:30.640 United States where like the Chaz or like many parts of Portland or parts of parts of Washington.

00:22:36.560 And, uh, yeah, the, the fear is that things don't seem to be getting better. If anything,

00:22:40.640 they seem to be trending in the wrong direction. One way to arm yourself, uh, with facts,

00:22:45.920 uh, with the knowledge of, of what this really is, and it's going to be very contrary to the

00:22:50.320 propaganda you're hearing in the mainstream press is to read Andy's book, Unmasked Inside

00:22:55.920 Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. A really, really important book. I'm glad that

00:23:02.400 you were able to put it out. I know Antifa's, uh, threatening you, even threatening bookstores

00:23:06.800 that are, that are going to carry your book. Uh, so make sure you, you order it now before it's taken

00:23:11.600 down. And, uh, Andy, when it's safe for you to, to return, I very much look forward to, uh, to

00:23:18.000 seeing you in person sometime. I know we, we haven't had a lot of travel now because of the

00:23:22.320 Wuhan flu. Everyone's very afraid of that. I'm much more afraid of the armed leftist terrorists

00:23:27.440 who are, who are threatening you. Uh, but I, I look forward to seeing you again in person. I'm

00:23:32.240 sure that this book is going to climb the bestseller charts in the meantime.

00:23:35.840 Thank you so much, Michael. Great to see you, Andy. We'll, we'll see you soon.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 13, 2021

UNMASKING The True Threat of ANTIFA ｜ Andy Ngo

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