Journalist Andy Ngo discusses his book about Antifa, recounting his 2019 assault in Portland and death threats that forced him to the UK. He claims to have infiltrated Rose City Antifa and obtained documents showing formal vetting, radicalization, and weapons training. Ngo describes Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization aiming to abolish the United States.
How long have you been in Portland?
The last time that I relocated back there was in 2009, so I've been there throughout, from before, during, and I guess after the growth of this American phenomenon known as Antifa.
So Andy Ngo, as some of you may know, was beaten up by by Antifa thugs, and he has written now a book coming out tomorrow, Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. And I hope every one of you will buy it because it's important to read, and it is important to enable this man who had literally, literally had to flee the United States for his life He is now in Britain, and I'm speaking to him from there, or I should say he is speaking to me from there. Why did you flee the United States?
Ever since I was beaten on the streets of Portland by Antifa in the summer of 2019, my life has come under increasing threats. By these extremists who left me with a brain hemorrhage but did not succeed in killing me. All these death threats over the year and a half have been reported to police. They've showed up to my home before, and nothing happened. And I just think that— but the breakdown in the rule of law is just not— it's not just unique to Portland. I think we're seeing that in a lot of urban areas. And given the ratcheting up of what they've been doing in recent months, I've really been on borrowed time. So there was some other stuff that happened which I can't go into detail yet, but it's just, at least for now, temporarily, I've left the US.
Why didn't you just go to Boise, Idaho?
I could have, but I just, I felt like things were very unstable, um, and I didn't, you know, for me, I'm a city person and I didn't, and I could have gone to, I guess, a more rural state and stayed in the city there, but I think, um, I already had some connections to the UK. I go there pretty frequently and a support system that was already here. I think that the last thing that would be helpful for me would be to be isolated from people on top of the COVID stuff that all of us have been going through already.
Are you surprised that Amazon is still featuring your book?
A little bit. I think Amazon, you know, I guess out of all the, you know, from the different big techs, they're not the worst in that they don't cave right away, whereas Twitter I would say is probably the most egregious in that whenever there's an outrage mob in campaign, they immediately remove people. Facebook isn't far behind. I'm thankful the book is still available to order on Amazon and other sites. It was removed from physical sales in Portland's largest bookstore called Powell's, but that was because these extremists had showed up outside of the business for 6 days causing it to shut down out of safety reasons for 2 of them. You know, some businesses, even if they don't necessarily agree with Antifa's message, they kind of just have to go along. Right now because this is a movement, an organization that makes threats and too often makes good on those threats of violence and arson.
What is the name of that store again in Portland? Powell's.
Powell's, yeah.
So Powell's is under attack from the left for merely making your book available online.
Yes, sir.
Right, so you're from Portland, It is about an issue directly impacting Portland, and they won't sell it. They won't allow it in the store for fear of violence against their store from Antifa and other leftists. But at least they have it on their website, and that is not even acceptable to Antifa. Your book is about Antifa. How did you do research?
I did research by— well, so for the first time that's been published in this book, your readers will get a chance to look at some primary documents from somebody who actually went through the membership process for Rose City Antifa, which is the largest Antifa group in the US, and they're based in Portland. You'll see that this is not merely a grassroots-led spontaneous left-wing protest movement. The process of joining the organization has a vetting process in addition to a radicalization process, with extensive amounts of reading and literature and training, training how to fight, how to use firearms. So we are dealing with a homegrown domestic terrorist organization that is connected to many affinity groups. And together, they organize and carry out acts of violence against either private citizens or the state. And that's why throughout months of 2020, cities like Portland and Seattle and Minneapolis and many others were on fire and torched to the ground.
What is their end? Nobody is clear about that. Other than chaos, which is, I do believe, their ultimate end. What do you understand it as? Because they've even started violent protests with Joe Biden as president.
Correct. They've actually done a lot. So one misconception I try to clear up in the book is that even though Democrats have coddled them because of a shared mutual hatred in the previous administration and Trump, Antifa do not view the Democrat Party as allies. In fact, they view them as enemies, part of the same capitalist system that they are seeking to overthrow. And they use capitalism frequently synonymously with fascism, by the way. Their end goal is to abolish the United States, and not just the destruction of the literal nation-state, but also to completely delegitimize its founding ideals, ideals that also form the basis of many other liberal democratic societies. So I know a lot of the violence looks very nihilistic in that it's destruction for the purpose of destruction. But if you actually read their literature and you talk to the extremists, they believe they're working towards a certain goal. And to a degree they're having a lot of success. Dennis, you may remember that last year for more than 3 weeks they actually seized territory in a major American city, in Seattle, and created this CHAZ. And they created a hard border and declared it to be a sovereign area separate from the United States. And it was a literal no-go zone for police. Police, by a matter of unofficial policy, would not go inside there, even as people were calling for help every day in and day out, even though people were getting killed inside. The victims had to be carried outside the borders of this territory. And they also claimed territory in autonomous zone in Portland in December. Over the weekend on Sunday, this should be international news, by the way, Antifa in Olympia, Washington, in the capital of Washington State, actually sieged a hotel, a Red Lion, and there were occupants inside there who had to shelter in place in their room, in 40 rooms. So it became a hostage situation as well. And according to the statement by the city of Olympia, the staff who were assaulted at this Red Lion witnessed these extremists bringing in knives, hatchets, and batons.
Why did I not hear about this? Tell me when we come back. In the meantime, is it up at DennisPrager.com? His book coming out tomorrow about Antifa. I want you to read it, but even if you don't, please buy it.
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