00:00:31.160Listen, for anyone who doesn't know you, which is an increasingly small number of people these days,
00:00:35.060just tell us who are you, how are you, where you are, what's been your journey through life?
00:00:40.140Most recently I became infamous, or depending on the audience, famous for being the victim of an Antifa beating and robbery in Portland, Oregon.
00:00:50.520I cover demonstrations there quite frequently, and it was on the 29th of June that I was attacked, and part of that was caught on video, and I was left with a brain injury from that attack.
00:01:05.840And we're now, as of this recording, over two months since that incident, and there hasn't been a single arrest.
00:01:12.180and one of the the arguments that was that was used by some people inexplicably to me to to
00:01:20.040defend these people beating you up was that you are right wing and that somehow entitles people
00:01:25.460to beat you up as a journalist so and you have said that you are right of center so i i wanted
00:01:30.720just to explore what that means not that that would in any way justify anyone attacking you
00:01:35.320of course uh so where are you politically i'm just curious yeah it was joe rogan who who asked
00:01:40.580me if there was I think he asked if there was a gun put out your head and you had to answer it
00:01:45.140how would you that was the first time I said right to center I think I've avoided labels for a long
00:01:51.960time but I guess if I had to pick I picked what I said because the positions that I have that are
00:01:59.140important to me I think have been more so aligned with the right at least in the American context
00:02:04.840For example, I'm very patriotic. I'm very thankful that the United States provided refuge to my parents who are political refugees.
00:02:15.200And in the U.S., now that is seen as a conservative or right-wing position to have gratitude for citizenship and thanking America for what it is, for the freedoms that it protects, right?
00:02:34.840So there's that. There's also my parents' experience with escaping communism. It makes me not have the luxury of viewing Antifa and other revolutionary far-left movements with the same rose-colored glasses.
00:02:52.860So I am very critical of Antifa, as anybody who follows my work knows,
00:02:58.920and I've written critically about Marxism as well.
00:03:02.560So just because of, I would say it's those two main things,
00:03:06.400it's been easy for people to label me as a conservative writer,
00:03:10.740if they're being charitable, they're more trying to delegitize me or smear me,
00:03:19.320they'll say that I'm a far-right person.
00:03:20.900So you mentioned about Antifa. Now, Antifa is something that I've only recently become aware of. Who are Antifa and what do they want to achieve?
00:03:31.140It's a movement that began in Europe, particularly in Germany, in the years post-World War II.
00:03:39.740The subculture that it grows out of is anti-racist punk scene.
00:03:47.620And the American version of it is, as we know today, a very recent phenomenon.
00:03:55.480on. So I have much more knowledge on the U.S. version of it compared to the older German or
00:04:02.680Western European versions. In the U.S., it's had some type of presence in some progressive cities
00:04:10.200like Portland since the 2000s, but it became a much more mainstream thing from 2016 going forward.
00:04:19.240I mean, you know, just rewinding a few years, nobody expected Donald Trump to win, and Portland
00:04:24.220is a extremely progressive city. I explained to outsiders that it's basically what the SJW ethics
00:04:34.680and ethos of a university mainstreamed into entire city and through city government. So we had three
00:04:42.580days of protests that devolved into rioting in November 2016. And that was the first time that
00:04:47.380I saw black bloc Antifa, they were going around in their masks and black outfits and destroying
00:04:55.740property and starting fires in the street. And because Trump continues to be such a
00:05:02.460polarizing figure and a lightning rod for fear-mongering on the left, him and his administration
00:05:12.120has been a very powerful propaganda win for Antifa.
00:05:16.020So now they are able to point to him or various things in his policies
00:05:21.400or things that are done in his administration
00:05:23.320as evidence of ascendant and rising fascism.
00:05:26.960And it's pulled in a large number of people.
00:22:09.820Yes, so the demographics of Antifa, at least in Portland,
00:22:12.780Well, actually, in other cities like D.C. or Berkeley, whatever, predominantly white, they will try to elevate like the few individuals who they I think they use them as tokens.
00:22:24.340You know, they're trans person of color or they're disabled person to put them at the front of the line where black bloc will stand behind them.
00:22:59.900They call it direct action, physical confrontations with people.
00:23:03.560and the label and the type of people that they you know they sometimes do genuinely go against
00:23:11.700oppose true far-right figures but because those number of people are really small and they need
00:23:18.020a constant threat to not only give themselves meaning but to recruit other people they've
00:23:23.860expanded very very broadly who they consider a fascist or fascist supporting or nazi in that
00:23:32.600you know now encompasses people like me for example so it's like and the things
00:23:40.280that they do are criminal and so I there's a lot to there are many issues
00:23:52.460with Donald Trump I don't think that it that I'm not sure now at this point if
00:23:59.960If he was just taken out of the picture of Antifa, it would just go away.
00:24:02.860It would be definitely harder for them to recruit.
00:24:06.120But many aspects of their ideology basically have been mainstreamed by some of our politicians like AOC, for example,
00:24:15.260the demonization of law enforcement, even just delegitimizing the concept of sovereignty in the U.S.
00:24:23.560So there's been, in the past two months, four incidents of immigration customs enforcement facilities being targeted.
00:24:31.180And one of them was by an antifa militant in the state of Washington, close to Portland, where one of the firebombs of the facility tried to ignite a 500-gallon paint tank and came down with a rifle.
00:24:43.420He got killed before he killed anybody, but he left behind a manifesto.
00:24:47.200I'd actually crossed paths with him before.
00:24:49.880That was massively underreported, by the way.
00:24:52.660So like the street hooliganism on the street is one aspect of it, but it's the ideology itself is very extreme.
00:24:59.920I mean, it's it's like revolution by any means necessary and we will take up arms.
00:25:05.880And, you know, the the shooter, the mass shooter in Ohio recently, he didn't leave behind a manifesto as far as we know,
00:25:19.200But at least his social media footprint can give us a clue on his views.
00:25:23.160And he was extremely, he was a part of Antifa in that he attended the demonstrations in his state, expressed support for their views.
00:25:33.280And so I'm not sure if we can even really say that Antifa, that there's no body count on the Antifa side anymore.
00:25:42.340I mean, we'll see what the investigation finds.
00:25:44.540But, you know, we don't know anything about the Ohio shooter's ideology beyond his social media.
00:25:51.540And he did leave a very extensive history of support for violent far-left militancy.
00:25:57.800And why do you think, because when I was on holiday and I saw both the shootings, which happened in quick succession, and the first one, I think it was in, was it in Texas?
00:26:07.680So the first one was in Texas and obviously happened to a Latin American community.
00:26:11.320It was awful, awful, of course it was.
00:26:13.280and then there was another one that happened and that didn't seem to get as much press
00:26:18.560didn't or that might have been just what happened in europe and the way the bbc presented it because
00:26:23.860the bbc pushed forward the one that happened in texas and that one it seemed to be swept under
00:26:29.820the carpet is that fair to say or it for sure received less attention i mean there were fewer
00:26:36.620with fatalities in Ohio shooting, but still nine people were killed. That's a lot. And so I think,
00:26:43.460you know, it's about media narratives. It's the fact that the El Paso shooter in Texas was
00:26:49.080targeting Mexicans and he left behind a manifesto where his ideas created easy headlines, for
00:26:59.320example, because he had xenophobic views. It's much easier to sensationalize that type of story
00:27:07.220and make people go crazy on social media, whereas The Ohio Shooter was a bit more complicated in
00:27:14.960that he didn't leave behind a right-wing manifesto in his social media account,
00:27:21.420certainly didn't show him being sympathetic to white supremacy or anything like that,
00:27:25.660Quite the contrary. So I think ideology has a lot to do with that. I mean, you see it often when criminal or violent acts are committed by somebody who is part of a historically marginalized community.
00:27:40.580There's, I think with journalists, they don't want to focus too much on it because they're always afraid of how it could negatively impact the perception of the community, whereas if that suspect or criminal is a white man, particularly if he is seen as potentially conservative anyways, then it's a free-for-all.
00:28:03.460So that's just the nature of the media in the United States as well as this country.
00:28:09.080And how much do you think this is about language? Because we've had a number of people on this show talking about, you know, in Britain, Brexit voters being called Nazis, being milkshaked Brexit, pro-Brexit politicians being called Nazis, being milkshaked.
00:28:27.060How much of this do you think is about the fact that if you keep calling everyone Nazis, there will be some people who eventually actually believe it?
00:28:33.760And then, I mean, look, if I thought that there were genuine Nazis coming, right, well, I probably would use violence to try and defend myself.
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00:34:33.120without any of the drama let's let's talk about some of the stuff that's happened more recently
00:34:41.120because one of the things uh that we we know now is that um there was some criticism of you
00:34:50.180and an attempt to present you in a particular light and i wanted to speak to you about that
00:34:54.840and see what you had to say about it because there was this video release that's an 18 minute video
00:34:58.820So I find it quite boring and difficult to watch.
00:35:01.400But basically, if I can represent what is being said about it, and then you can say what you think about it.
00:35:07.640And correct me if any of my thing is not accurate to what people are saying, right?
00:35:11.680What I think people are saying is you were walking together with a right-wing group of, is it Patriot Prayer, right, who were planning to attack a bar in which these Antifa people hang out.
00:35:29.440And you were participating or at least observing a conversation in which they were planning this violent attack.
00:35:35.700And people have used that to essentially say Andy Ngo is not an objective journalist.
00:35:40.780what he is is someone who hates Antifa so he records all their violent crimes but when it
00:35:45.680comes to right-wing violence which also does exist he doesn't record that he doesn't present
00:35:50.120that and therefore he presents a skewed picture and they've then gone on to say that that's why
00:35:56.620you left Quillette. So tell us about that. Yes so I left Quillette a week before this latest
00:36:20.500I'm very thankful for the time that I've had there.
00:36:24.340Those who dislike me use that as we're trying to link it with the latest outrage.
00:36:33.860This video that's come out that some headlines describe as damning and has field very serious accusations against me.
00:36:43.560Actually, I think criminal accusations of criminality in that I was party to a violent criminal conspiracy or had knowledge of it that withheld it from the authorities.
00:36:56.440It's absolutely all and true. It's rubbish.
00:36:58.660This video, I actually encourage everybody to watch it.
00:37:02.060It's kind of like washing paint dry. It's 18 minutes.
00:37:04.520So that was recorded on the 1st of May, 2019, May Day.
00:37:09.620There were a series of demonstrations throughout the day.
00:41:10.380Because if he was really witnessing a violent criminal conspiracy, I wonder why he didn't call police.
00:41:18.500And this video footage, even at the very end of the interview, he said he didn't realize what he had caught until some time later before releasing it.
00:45:20.640And at one point, one of the men was talking about how Andy Ngo got beat up
00:45:25.460because he turned down the Proud Boys' offer of security.
00:45:30.540And then the commentary in a news story, not an opinion piece, by the way,
00:45:35.340news story was that this was evidence of me colluding with the proud boys and i don't know
00:45:41.800if i'm it's it's like i it's like we're reading and listening to different things because um you
00:45:49.180know there was an outpouring of support to me after the mayday attack where i was sprayed with
00:45:54.660bear mace in the face and was blinded and i had so i had a whole bunch of people that i didn't know
00:45:59.640offer to be volunteer security if i go out and cover more protests
00:46:04.540i turned down those offers because i wanted to maintain my independence and now that is used as
00:46:13.020evidence of coordination so i don't you know like this whole thing seems like uh what through the
00:46:18.300looking glass i you know i feel like i don't know if the world's going mad or if it's me but it's
00:46:24.500like it's amazing that like for me the victim on multiple multiple assaults in in in having my
00:46:34.140address stocks and part of the reason I'm in the UK is actually was because there continue violent
00:46:38.280threats to myself that have been reported to police and I just need to get away far away from
00:46:43.140the U.S. and like me being the victim of all that is now somehow spun around as I am like an extreme
00:46:51.680violent person who is the aggressor who deserves all this or was brought it on myself it's
00:46:59.780it's almost like a dream it just it doesn't seem like this is really reality to me it's scary to
00:47:06.840me how many people are delighted about what's happened I mean I before our interview I watched
00:47:12.560a clip of the young Turks and David Pakman both talking about this and particularly the young
00:47:20.180turks i mean the way that they try and present themselves as as objective journalists and then
00:47:25.320he goes yeah well conservatives don't feel any empathy that and and it's just like how can you
00:47:30.680even pretend to be in any way objective when you when you talk in that way and neither of us is
00:47:34.680conservative we just try and talk to people who who may we may disagree with or who might but you
00:47:40.060can't you can't talk about people in that way and then present yourselves as objective but they they
00:47:45.140they used exactly the phraseology that you talked about something along the lines of
00:47:48.920well of course violence shouldn't be used but and and that happened in that video a couple of times
00:47:54.900and i was like do you understand what you're saying anything you said before the word bud
00:47:58.040doesn't count you know um so obviously there is there is a large group of people who are very
00:48:04.140happy about you being treated in this way yes um why do you why do they see you as such a threat
00:48:11.140do you think? Because I'm a decent professional person who has quite reach
00:48:17.740in my writings. Like many people who have been very critical of Antifa have been
00:48:22.240confined to other blogs or YouTube videos, whereas my writings have been
00:48:28.420published in the Wall Street Journal and the National Review, the New York Post,
00:48:31.480and I was with Quillette. And so it's just like, and what, with what happened to
00:48:38.860To me, on the 29th of June, it kind of woke up some of the politicians to start speaking
00:48:44.440about anti-fast extremism, which hadn't been done before.
00:48:47.820So I am perceived as a threat, understandably, to them because for so long they've just been
00:48:55.160receiving pretty much only favorable coverage.
00:49:00.300And the fact that now there's somebody who can't be relied on to provide favorable coverage
00:49:07.580consistently, who calls them out in their actions, and who has a reach that, you
00:49:12.700know, I have quite a large reach on Twitter, and the places that publish me
00:49:16.400have large amounts of people reading it. They see that their
00:49:21.620control over the narrative is slipping a bit, and actually they really depend on
00:49:26.120that control over how they are perceived, because their actions and
00:49:32.540An ideology is so extreme that they really do have to rely on those who are willing to whitewash and rationalize the things they do.
00:49:43.260And once that gets challenged, whoever's doing the challenging needs to be taken out by any means necessary.
00:49:50.560Andy, you strike me as being a very brave person in the truest sense of the word.
00:49:56.160Your life could be a hell of a lot easier if you didn't do this.
00:50:00.000why do you feel the need as a journalist to put yourself in the firing line and to put your body
00:50:05.640on the line as well i have a lot of journalist friends who told me and you just move on to write
00:50:11.240other things like the pile on that happens every time you do one of these things the
00:50:17.060uh the scrutiny on every single detail every single word you say um like it's just not worth
00:50:25.000it that living that type under that type of pressure and on top of you know the threats of
00:50:29.120violence and I think I've refused to be cowed because the things that Antifa has been doing
00:50:37.100to me for months is to terrorize me into silence and I think with the the crowd beating on the
00:50:44.62029th of June that was meant to like attempt to permanently silence me and they failed
00:50:52.480and I just I refuse to give them that type of victory you know of course moving forward
00:50:57.320But I'm much more wise about how I cover events in that I no longer, unfortunately, no longer believe that the Portman police are willing to uphold the law, for example.
00:51:08.820So even if I'm covering anti-FUD right in front of the police, I was naive to think that the police would actually protect a citizen just in a public space.
00:51:21.360So there's things that have changed, but I'm sticking on this.
00:51:24.820There's other things I write about that makes people on the far left and the left hate me.
00:51:30.420You know, I write about hate crime hoaxes quite a bit.
00:51:32.460That was originally how I kind of started receiving some notoriety earlier this year.
00:51:38.400And that challenges and weakens the Antifa narrative,
00:51:42.500which is that we are living in such an oppressive, dangerous time that violence is justified against the oppressors.
00:51:52.700And the pressers can be anything from regular Trump supporters to those truly on the far right.
00:51:58.280But that's, I mean, that's a huge spectrum of people that they all oppose with the same hatred and violence.
00:52:04.680So I'm going to continue to speak out.
00:52:07.840I recognize, and, you know, I want to be a better journalist too.
00:52:11.100The mistakes that I've made that I've had to correct, I mean, it's embarrassing every time that happens.
00:52:15.020But, you know, any journalist with integrity recognizes that and works to improve on it.
00:52:20.140And so, you know, I have goals that I have to work on for myself moving forward.
00:52:26.120At the same time, you know, when something's an outright lie against me, as some of these headlines are right now, they're outright lies.
00:52:33.360And, you know, I'd just like to say my legal team is aware of it because I think some of the claims against me rises to the level of libel and defamation.
00:52:43.920Well, I was going to ask you, you're here in London, in England.
00:52:46.820We had something not similar, but we had some protests recently.
00:52:51.820Do you think we're going to see more of this across the world?
00:52:54.820These running battles between people on the two extremes?
00:52:59.820The issues that we're seeing with Antifa more recently is really kind of confined to the Anglosphere.
00:53:07.820I mean, Antifa activism in Germany is a kind of entirely different thing
00:53:11.820because they actually do have a history that goes back decades of this group.
00:53:15.820And some of the ideas that are from America, I noticed, are bouncing off to far less militants in Britain.
00:53:26.680What I was encouraged to see was that the London Metropolitan Police,
00:53:33.840even without having any of the heavily militarized gear that you see American police have,
00:53:39.260they were able to contain law and order.
00:53:42.220For example, last weekend when there was an Antifa demonstration against Tommy Robinson's supporters, they were marching on the street so they had disrupted traffic.
00:53:53.900And before they could really do that for much longer, the police just surrounded them in such large numbers that they couldn't do anything and the police pushed them to the pavement.
00:54:04.980So, one, they could no longer disrupt traffic.
00:54:08.020Some of them were carrying some small sticks that had sharpened ends that was taken.
00:54:14.720And it seemed like because the police are quick to act, they're not emboldened to see how much they can push.
00:54:23.520Because in Portland, it wasn't like right away that, you know, they were attacking people in the street.
00:54:27.560It was like, OK, first, we're going to take over the streets and we can do it.
00:54:32.420Secondly, some of us are going to bring in bats or brass knuckles or small knives and bear mace,
00:54:40.400And the next thing is we're going to start using it.
00:54:43.200So, you know, like the incidents of political violence in Britain that I've seen
00:54:47.000have been much more isolated and small.
00:54:48.980I mean, I know that some of the controversial political people who ran as MEPs not too long ago were targeted,
00:54:57.700But the violence that I saw there wasn't anything like what we continue to see in Portland.
00:55:04.980So I think that as more attention is brought to the dangers of normalizing political violence in liberal democracies,
00:55:18.120I think police will naturally face more pressure to do more.
00:55:22.760Unfortunately, in Portland, our police commissioner is also our mayor, so that may be the one exception.
00:55:27.700But what I'm really concerned about is just that the wider public will accept and encourage those types of violent actions because they believe that it's for a better cause or a good cause.
00:55:42.460I think that's extremely damaging to how citizens relate to one another.
00:55:48.620It's like if you erase the line between thoughts, ideas, and actions, like that, I mean, there are many parts of the world, actually, where depending on just the idea that you hold, you can be put to death for it, either by the state or through a mob lynching.
00:56:12.480And so it worries me that many influential people here who have benefited from the rights that come in, the civil rights that come in liberal democracy, that they are in a way working to weaken those sort of like those rules that are codified into law, but as well as expected between one another.
00:56:42.480And do you think we're going to be able to, because at the moment, I mean, maybe it's just, you know, the effect of the internet, you look at the internet, everybody seems to be more polarised than ever, you know, we seem to be bracketing ourselves into certain camps. Do you think that we're going to be able to heal this division? Or do you see it just becoming worse and worse?
00:57:02.840Well, in your country, you're dealing with Brexit now. And it does seem like it's getting worse and worse.
00:57:07.680Thanks for that, Andy, mate. Nice one.
00:57:12.480But you have, I mean, your prime minister, as hated as he is by some people,
00:57:18.800I also see him doing good effort to be a unifier.
00:57:23.900In America, it's a bit harder in that the president, you know, that's Trump is Trump,
00:57:30.060that he hasn't changed a bit from the campaign days in 2015.
00:57:33.760And so there are going to be people who will try everything they can
00:57:43.460to exploit this polarization because it benefits them politically.
00:57:47.880And so I'm a bit more hopeful about Britain than I am about America in this regard.
00:57:53.380Well, I don't normally do this before we ask our last question.
00:57:55.560Do you think Trump is getting re-elected?