July 10, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:19:26
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Okay. | ||
| Hello, Andy. | ||
| Hi, Mr. Rogan. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| How you doing, man? | ||
| You're all healed up? | ||
| The bruising and swelling has gone down, as you can see, but the more serious injury was to the brain. | ||
| You have a serious injury to your brain? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Brain hemorrhage. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| From what? | ||
| The mob beating. | ||
| From getting hit in the head? | ||
| You got a brain hemorrhage? | ||
| Multiple times. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Contusions, yes. | ||
| They were bashing me on the back of my head and to my eyes. | ||
| So how do you know you had brain hemorrhaging and how were you able to just walk around? | ||
| Well, I was taken to... | ||
| I started losing my balance after the beating. | ||
| There was no police. | ||
| I made it to the courthouse, sat down on the ground. | ||
| Ambulance was called. | ||
| I had to walk back to the ambulance because the streets were... | ||
| I walked back to the police precinct in the direction of the mob. | ||
| The medics that were associated with the Portland police let me know that I needed to walk in that direction. | ||
| It was quite shocking because it was... | ||
| I had just been a victim of this mob beating and then now they're telling me to walk back. | ||
| Did they not know that you had been beaten up? | ||
| Let's set this up for people who are new to this and don't understand what happened. | ||
| I've been aware of you because you had written for Quillette, right? | ||
| And you had become one of these, for whatever reason, controversial online journalists. | ||
| And you covered Antifa quite a bit. | ||
| And you covered a lot of the radical left. | ||
| You were in Portland. | ||
| And what was the exact rally that was going on? | ||
| What was it called? | ||
| Did it have a name? | ||
| It was something like Protect Portland. | ||
| So it was organized by Rose City Antifa and its allies. | ||
| And by its allies, I'm referring to the local chapter of the Democratic Socialist America that came out to support them in numbers. | ||
| And what are they protecting Portland from? | ||
| They allege fascists. | ||
| Fascists. | ||
| But just in general, I mean, is there a particular thing they're worried about? | ||
| There were two right-wing events happening that day that they were counter-demonstrating against. | ||
| On one part of downtown, the Proud Boys were holding a flag-waving event. | ||
| That was completely peaceful. | ||
| Flag-waving? | ||
| American flag-waving? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| A lot of Portlanders found that provocative and a manifestation of fascistic violence. | ||
| And in another part of downtown, there was a men's rights activist who was holding a rally. | ||
| It was titled for victims of domestic terrorism. | ||
| It was an anti-Antifa event. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| A men's rights activist? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That was doing an anti-fascist or anti-Antifa? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Boy. | ||
| Seems like a whole lot to do about nothing. | ||
| Flag-waving and anti-Antifa. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, can I set the context for the city of Portland? | ||
| It's a mess. | ||
| You have listeners and viewers all over the world. | ||
| So Portland, Oregon is an extremely progressive city in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. And I call it a political monoculture because really it's... | ||
| You're more likely to find open socialists there than you would find a regular Republican or conservative. | ||
| And within this sort of echo chamber of just leftist politics, it's become also a hotbed for far-left militancy. | ||
| So Rose City Antifa is, you could call it, the local chapter movement of Antifa. | ||
| It's one of the oldest in the country. | ||
| It's very large in Portland. | ||
| And they hold what you could call protests, but they're protests that always devolve into riots where they essentially take over parts of downtown and attack people, attack their ideological opponents, and do it frequently with impunity. | ||
| I mean, I wasn't the only one attack that day. | ||
| There were two other people who were bashed on the head and had very severe lacerations to the face and head. | ||
| from October of last year when there was an elderly driver who was attacked on the streets. | ||
| Yeah, they were directing traffic, right? | ||
| And somehow or another, the mayor thought it was a good idea to let this take place. | ||
| Is that the case? | ||
| And they told the police to stand down. | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| So, I mean, the next part of this journey for me will be the legal aspect of it. | ||
| And it seems like something stinks in Portland. | ||
| The issue is really not with the rank-and-file officers. | ||
| They're following orders to not intervene. | ||
| So I have been... | ||
| Assaulted and criminally harassed before the mob beating. | ||
| People were throwing milkshakes at my face and head within eyesight of police who were watching in downtown. | ||
| And both of these were reported. | ||
| And the answer that I heard that day, as I've heard many times before when I've been assaulted by Antifa, is that we will not question, approach, or detain the suspect because this could incite the crowd. | ||
| Okay, so this is why this has exacerbated, or this is why this has become such a big deal in Portland, because of this attitude? | ||
| Because Portland seems to be the hotbed right now for this kind of stuff. | ||
| Is that fair to say? | ||
| I think it is. | ||
| So, is this the mayor? | ||
| I mean, who's the one who's giving the orders to the police to tell them to allow this stuff to take place? | ||
| Well, I'm crowdfunding for the legal fund right now, and we are going to hold accountable whoever is responsible for dereliction of duty, where the evidence leads us. | ||
| So, Portland has an odd governance system in that the mayor, who is up for re-election, by the way, is also the police commissioner. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How does that work? | ||
| It was an old system that it inherited and it just never changed. | ||
| From the Wild West? | ||
| That sounds ridiculous. | ||
| Yeah, it is ridiculous. | ||
| You can see all the conflicts of interest that would arise, right? | ||
| Yeah, shitload. | ||
| How did you get involved in this? | ||
| First of all, why were they angry at you? | ||
| I work as a journalist. | ||
| I'll name places that I've been published before I write, and I do video and I do podcasts. | ||
| So my written work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, Spectator, New York Post. | ||
| I'm also on the editorial team of Quillette magazine. | ||
| And one of my beats among several is about far-left militancy, particularly in Portland. | ||
| To me, what I was noticing was that the national and local media coverage had a particular blind spot when it came to their coverage on Antifa. | ||
| There was all this sensitivity to the quote-unquote far-right and white nationalism or white identity extremism. | ||
| But they could not or would not recognize the militancy that was on the left. | ||
| And Portland seemed to be one of the places for ground zero, particularly after 2016. We had very violent rioting in downtown. | ||
| A segment of the population could not accept the election results in November. | ||
| And so they did a million dollars in damage, setting fires and And destroying properties and businesses. | ||
| And at that time, I was a graduate student working at the student paper, and I did a story on that. | ||
| And I came out to witness, and it, you know, this was a major American city, but it felt like I was in Afghanistan or Iraq, just with all these fires and explosions and people running around with bats while masked up. | ||
| And that was the first time I really became familiar with Antifa, and I took an interest in it. | ||
| And I saw over and over that the media coverage was basically really sort of whitewashing them, kind of like referring to them as anti-fascists, giving them that propaganda victory. | ||
| And Antifa as a movement, they're masters of doublespeak and disinformation. | ||
| So it starts with the name Antifa that is short for anti-fascists, but I never refer to them as that because that's... | ||
| Ceding the ground to them. | ||
| When they say that they are defending a community, self-defense, it actually is referring to premeditated violence and offensive violence. | ||
| I started covering this more and more. | ||
| After I left the student paper, I started writing for some national and international publications. | ||
| Internationally, there was a set of readers who were interested in what the hell is going on in Portland. | ||
| Why are there these continued scenes of street brawls and anarchy over and over? | ||
| What are the variables that are causing this? | ||
| And I thought that I could try to shine a light on it. | ||
| And by doing so, Antifa became enraged with my work. | ||
| Particularly things... | ||
| They've hated me since last year. | ||
| But they started really escalating on the 1st of May, May Day. | ||
| So this year was when I was physically assaulted by them for the first time. | ||
| They were very upset that I... I wrote a story from the New York Post where there was a series of, and this is one of the other beats that I work on, is hate crime hoaxes. | ||
| Portland earlier this year had this huge panic over serious allegations of LGBT people claiming that they were marauding right-wing gangs, driving around, trying to kill people with bats, with hammers, trying to kidnap them. | ||
| And these were all rumors that were reported on social media. | ||
| It caused a huge frenzy. | ||
| Even the mayor had to come out and issue a statement about how he was concerned. | ||
| There was an emergency town hall with the local queer center. | ||
| And so I started looking into all these allegations. | ||
| There were 15 of them. | ||
| And I found that of the 15, only one was reported to police. | ||
| And what was reported to police and documented in the report was entirely different from the GoFundMe, where over $10,000 was raised for this trans activist. | ||
| She had alleged that one night walking home transphobic people had beat her with the bat and knocked her unconscious. | ||
| Police reports said that she was extremely intoxicated and likely fell and there was no evidence that anybody had assaulted her. | ||
| So when this story came out, because Antifa and the Democratic Socialists of America in Portland were really involved in peddling this hate crime fear in Portland, and I just kind of threw water on this panic that they had been flaming. | ||
| And so on the 1st of May, there was a riot that I was covering and one of the masked people went up and sprayed me with, I think it was bear mace, some type of chemical that blinds you and burns you. | ||
| Yeah, I saw that video. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, there was no police that was there. | ||
| I mean, that Antifa event was publicly advertised on Facebook and all that. | ||
| So, over and over, Antifa is very transparent about their calls for people to come to their stuff and to engage in this physical confrontation that they call self-defense. | ||
| And the police either stay away on purpose or are told to stay away. | ||
| So... | ||
| It's very confusing. | ||
| Because when you watch the videos, they're just macing people. | ||
| They're macing people who disagree with them, like they're yelling at each other, and then someone will come along and mace people. | ||
| And for the police to not step in and do something, I don't think there's another city in the country that would allow something like that. | ||
| It just doesn't seem like it makes any sense at all because you're not talking about people that are being physically attacked and that are macing someone to protect themselves or even a threat of being physically attacked. | ||
| They're just disagreeing with each other and yelling at each other and then someone will come along and start macing people. | ||
| And I've seen it many times. | ||
| And I think there's also a real problem with people wearing masks. | ||
| You know, whether their ideology makes sense or not, when you put people in masks, and then you have a bunch of people yelling and escalating, and then there's teams, there's Team Antifa versus Team, you know, anybody opposing them, they feel is a white supremacist or a Nazi. | ||
| And this is just how they've chosen to frame it to dehumanize people. | ||
| And then you see them attack people. | ||
| I'm sure you're aware of the girl who got maced in the face because she had a hat on that said, But it was the same color hat as the Make America Great Again hat and she got maced in the face. | ||
| And she got hit with something too, right? | ||
| Didn't she get hit in the face with something? | ||
| Anyway, this kind of shit is really weird. | ||
| It's really weird and disturbing to see these young people with these idealistic versions of what they're doing. | ||
| I think a lot of the people that are involved in that really think they are fighting fascism. | ||
| They really do. | ||
| They really think that Donald Trump and the Proud Boys and white supremacists from Charlottesville carrying tiki torches that these people represent something horrible that's sweeping across the country and the young People today need to stand up and fight against this. | ||
| And they're putting on masks and they're carrying backpacks and whacking people in the head with crowbars. | ||
| It is really fucking weird to see. | ||
| And it's really weird that the city of Portland, or all cities in fact, haven't made some sort of a law where you can't walk around in public with a fucking mask on. | ||
| Because that is one of the things that helps these people. | ||
| It's the same thing that you see on social media when people are anonymous and they say the most horrible, hateful shit. | ||
| They're saying that because they're not in front of you. | ||
| You can't recognize them. | ||
| They don't have to take responsibility for what they're saying. | ||
| This is a lot of the same characteristics that a person has when they're wearing a costume. | ||
| You're dressed in all black with gloves on and a face mask, and you're hitting people with a bike lock. | ||
| Like, what is that about? | ||
| Well, what that's about is you're getting away with being anonymous and you're getting support from all these other people around you. | ||
| There's this mob mentality that takes place that's well documented with humans where when you get a group of people together and there's another group and it's like it's a tribal warfare type situation. | ||
| And that's what you're seeing with Antifa and the fact that The Portland police have, I don't know what's going on with them, whether they've been told to not handle that, but the fact they haven't done anything to mitigate this is fucking, it's embarrassing. | ||
| It's a shame. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| It's a travesty. | ||
| You asked about the mayor earlier and if he issued any stand-on orders. | ||
| There's a statement that was put out after I was attacked by Daryl Turner, who's the president of the police union, and he said very clearly he called for the mayor to remove the handcuffs of law enforcement so they can enforce the law. | ||
| And he accused the mayor of politicizing the police department. | ||
| Is this mayor popular? | ||
| No, he's not. | ||
| He's hated, well, by moderates because of the things that he allows to happen in the city, but the far left hate him as well. | ||
| They view him as not radical enough. | ||
| Why are they mad at you? | ||
| Is it just the articles that you've written? | ||
| Because somebody told me that you had been accused of doxing people. | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| Absolutely not true. | ||
| So this is such an outrageous defamatory claim. | ||
| So what happened was on May Day at that riot, there was one of the Antifa women... | ||
| in the fight during the brawl, and one of the right-wing person, he was wearing a mask, I don't know who he was, allegedly had hit her on her head, knee her head on her neck, somewhere like that. | ||
| She was knocked out. | ||
| I recognize this woman from her activism that day as the person who sabotaged the sound equipment when James Damore came to Portland State in February of last year. | ||
| That was an event that I was involved in organizing at Portland State University. | ||
| We should just explain to people James Damore is the author of the Google memo that was talking about women in tech. | ||
| That was... | ||
| Wildly misrepresented what he had said and people had claimed that he was this awful sexist. | ||
| Even the CEO of YouTube said that he enforced harmful gender stereotypes where while he was citing evolutionary psychology and the Citing all these different studies on why women gravitate towards particular fields and even a page and a half encouraging or strategies to encourage more women to get an attack. | ||
| But it was basically in response to things that Google had written. | ||
| About dealing with the lack of women in tech. | ||
| What is the problem here? | ||
| They were looking for a very particular answer, which was sexism. | ||
| And he was saying, well it actually has more to do with the choices that women sort of naturally tend to gravitate towards. | ||
| And he was saying that there was a way to possibly encourage women to get into technology, and he devised these strategies to do so, but was wildly misrepresented. | ||
| And if you meet the guy, and I've had him on the podcast, he is a soft-spoken Sweetheart of a guy. | ||
| He's not a misogynist, not a mean-spirited person. | ||
| He was merely looking at the results of studies. | ||
| And he was looking at real raw data and this real tendency that certain people have to gravitate towards certain positions in life. | ||
| Yeah, so there were so many misconceptions about James Moore, which is why the student group I was involved in invited him to come. | ||
| But Antifa and the Allies just could not take that. | ||
| They tried to shut down the event. | ||
| They tried to get it cancelled. | ||
| At that event, this one woman, she damaged the sound equipment as she was trying to shut it down. | ||
| She pulled all these cords out and pushed the soundboard on the ground. | ||
| It broke. | ||
| So I recognized her from that day. | ||
| She was named in the media. | ||
| And then, on May Day, I recognized her. | ||
| So I named her. | ||
| I said, this is the name of the woman who was knocked out. | ||
| I recognized her from the James Des Moines event protest, where she had damaged equipment. | ||
| And Antifa had spun that around as me doxing her. | ||
| That's not doxing. | ||
| Doxing is where you release people's personal details, such as where they work, where they live, their phone numbers, so that people... | ||
| You identified her? | ||
| I named her, yes. | ||
| But she had been identified in the media before. | ||
| She was a big local activist. | ||
| So that's basically it. | ||
| Other than you writing these stories, criticizing their behavior... | ||
| What's disturbing to me, beyond disturbing, was legitimate journalists that were making excuses for why you got beat up. | ||
| And people saying things like, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. | ||
| I saw stuff like that. | ||
| Pick a better hobby. | ||
| I saw a guy write that. | ||
| You know, anti-fascists will rule, you know, Portland's not your place. | ||
| I saw all this crazy shit from people with blue checkmarks that were saying that this is what happens when you support fascism. | ||
| And I was so baffled by this. | ||
| Like, I read some of your stuff. | ||
| I haven't read all of it, admittedly. | ||
| But I've read some of your stuff. | ||
| None of it came off as you supporting fascism. | ||
| It came off as you, maybe at the worst case scenario, being a contrarian and not wanting to go with this sort of left-wing ideology that is so widespread throughout the Pacific Northwest. | ||
| But I didn't see any... | ||
| I mean, first of all, you're not a white guy, which should be explained to people. | ||
| You are Vietnamese, and you're what they would consider a member of a protected class. | ||
| You're not just a minority. | ||
| You're openly gay. | ||
| What do you consider yourself politically? | ||
| I've been avoiding labels for a while. | ||
| I think it's interesting that a lot of the coverage on what happened to me always qualified who I am as a conservative journalist. | ||
| Well, the worst thing is the way they're labeled Quillette. | ||
| They said you work for far-right newspaper or magazine, Quillette, which is not the case at all. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think the subtle... | ||
| I mean, the dog whistles that they're trying to say in there that this person deserved it. | ||
| And of course, these are the same people who always talk about, believe the victim. | ||
| They were the ones who jumped on to believe Jussie Smollett. | ||
| But I guess I was the wrong type of victim. | ||
| Well, exactly. | ||
| Because even though you seem like a very nice person, you weren't doing anything violent... | ||
| You're supporting the wrong thing or not supporting them. | ||
| Not just blindly supporting what Antifa is involved with, which is what – I mean, that is what fascism is. | ||
| I mean, you can't even question some of the more heinous things – I mean, clearly heinous things – they're doing just fucking macing people in the audience. | ||
| You may see people in the crowd just pointing it at people, yelling and screaming, hitting each other with things when you're wearing masks, getting involved in these brawls. | ||
| It's so fucking stupid. | ||
| It's so stupid to watch. | ||
| It's like this is base human behavior in its worst example. | ||
| And the fact that this dumbass fucking mayor thinks that this is a good idea to let this play itself out. | ||
| This is how people get shot. | ||
| This is how people die. | ||
| When you allow a certain amount of violence and when you condone or don't do anything with violence that you can't defend, like violence against a person like yourself. | ||
| I saw those guys hitting you in the back of the head, throwing milkshakes at you, just trying to walk away. | ||
| You weren't doing anything. | ||
| Yeah, you asked me at the beginning, how did I get the brain hemorrhage? | ||
| So, the video that's gone viral out there is actually the second half of the beating. | ||
| I don't know if there's video of the first half. | ||
| Hopefully, there is through CCTV or something. | ||
| But the first, there were more hits to my face and my head. | ||
| And so, when I went to the hospital, because of the nature of the contusions on my head, they did a CT scan in the ER, and that confirmed the subarachnoid hemorrhage. | ||
| So what started it? | ||
| Why did you get hit? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| 29th of June. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That would be 10, 11 days ago from now. | ||
| And so there was that demonstration happening. | ||
| Antifa was rallying to oppose the far right. | ||
| They claim opposed fascists. | ||
| I came, was excited to use my new GoPro. | ||
| I was a bit nervous, speaking, going to the event I was nervous because I'd been targeted just two months earlier, right? | ||
| I left my house with a helmet and got in my car, saw briefly my... | ||
| You wore a helmet? | ||
| I had a helmet. | ||
| I did have one. | ||
| Saw a reflection on myself. | ||
| Took it off. | ||
| Decided, I don't want anybody there to get the impression that I came. | ||
| Because they already accused me of being a Nazi and far-right and white supremacist. | ||
| I didn't want any of them to then perceive me by the fact that I came as a helmet as possibly a combatant. | ||
| So I left it at home. | ||
| Can you be a Vietnamese white supremacist? | ||
| Is that possible? | ||
| In their eyes, yes. | ||
| Hilarious. | ||
| I mean, this goes to the bigger issue that I've taken issue with how flippant people use these accusations of not just racist or being Nazi or far right, but it's like, part of what makes Antifa so dangerous is that they feel that they are morally justified in their brutality. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And they get, actually, a lot of morale from progressive and left-wing media. | ||
| So, after talking about what the attacker would like to talk about, how the actual militant antifa people is very small, those who are going out and doing the violence. | ||
| The larger group and those that I find more concerning, actually, are the nonviolent antifa. | ||
| You find those more concerning? | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because they work to mainstream Antifa's tactics and ideas. | ||
| Like now, doxing by Antifa is not even seen as, well, these people deserve it. | ||
| Do people not realize, when you're doxing, people releasing your address has happened to me, your family's address... | ||
| It puts this constant state of fear in you, even when you're in your own home. | ||
| I don't know if they realize that. | ||
| So there's the doxing, and then of course the punch the Nazi meme was meant to be cute and funny, but when they label such a large segment of the population as Nazis, it's... | ||
| It's going after a lot of people who are innocent and law-abiding, such as myself. | ||
| Well, they're also calling Jewish people Nazis, which is insane. | ||
| And then, now more recently, the milkshaking, we've seen as this cute, non-violent form of political dissent. | ||
| As you saw in the video, after I was getting beaten, I was trying to get away, and then they were pelting all these liquids at my head, and In my face, and that blinded me. | ||
| I couldn't even see really which way to leave. | ||
| So, to backtrack a little bit, sorry that I'm jumping all over. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| The march was right in the heart of downtown. | ||
| Just before I was attacked, they were chanting, no hate, no fear. | ||
| This is the irony of it. | ||
| I remember that very clearly. | ||
| The crowd was chanting that. | ||
| I was walking towards the front of the demonstration, thought I would get a wide-angle shot on my GoPro. | ||
| Before I could get there, somebody bashes me really hard in the back of the head. | ||
| And I've never been in a fight, Mr. Rogan, so I didn't even realize what had happened to me. | ||
| I was knocked forward. | ||
| As soon as I caught my footing, the punches kept coming from every direction, and all I could see was people dressed in black with masks, and most of them that were hitting me had on these gloves that have the hardened knuckles. | ||
| I think it's like... | ||
| Sap gloves. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Or tactical gloves. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was just endless. | ||
| And I could see in the background, like, this was in front of the Justice Center. | ||
| This is the other sad irony. | ||
| So, in broad daylight, in the heart of downtown, steps away from the central police precinct, from the sheriff's office, this beating happened. | ||
| No police intervened at any point. | ||
| Did police see it? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Nobody came to my aid at any point. | ||
| Before, during, or after. | ||
| So this happens out of nowhere. | ||
| You get blindsided to the back of the head. | ||
| A bunch of people punch you. | ||
| How many times do you think you got hit? | ||
| Maybe six or more. | ||
| The fact that people dismiss this as not being a big deal is really horrific to me. | ||
| The fact that the people that are in Antifa that are non-violent folks, which I think, I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to bring that up, that it's the extreme of the extremists, right? | ||
| It's the people that think that That there's a call for violence and that there's a reason to do it. | ||
| And even someone like yourself that is a nonviolent person is just there as a journalist. | ||
| That there is a justification for just, for whatever reason you want, just go up to that person and start hitting them. | ||
| Even though they're not a threat, even though they're not doing anything to harm anybody, even though they're not putting anybody in danger, they're just being a journalist and you feel like you could justify hitting them. | ||
| It's really disgusting. | ||
| I mean, there was this thing with Vox where Carlos Meza was Minimizing the impact of Antifa and kind of joking around about it and making it seem like it's just no big deal. | ||
| And he got really upset because Steven Crowder was making fun of the fact that he's gay. | ||
| And the fact that he talks with a lisp. | ||
| And that Crowder mentioned that along with mocking his stance on Antifa. | ||
| And then it became this gigantic thing that Steven Crowder is a gay basher. | ||
| What didn't become a big deal is that this guy is minimizing violent fascists. | ||
| And that's how I feel about this. | ||
| When you're trying to enforce your own ideology on other people, and you have no tolerance for anybody with a differing opinion, particularly journalists, that is fascism. | ||
| It's so ironic to call yourself an anti-fascist when you're literally enforcing your own particular ideology to the point of violence, and you're wearing masks, and you're running around hitting people, and pretending that you're being inundated with Nazis and white supremacists and that this and pretending that you're being inundated with Nazis and white supremacists and that Like that old man that was just driving and they're directing traffic and forcing him to obey them. | ||
| And then when he doesn't want to, they chase after him and assault him. | ||
| It's fucking bananas. | ||
| And the fact that this city has not stepped in and recognized that they have a real problem because this has got momentum behind it. | ||
| And the people that are involved that are non-violent, you gotta speak up. | ||
| They've gotta speak up. | ||
| If you're a person that really believes that there shouldn't be homophobia and there shouldn't be violence and there shouldn't be white supremacy, good for you! | ||
| You probably got involved in this for all the right reasons. | ||
| But if you don't recognize that someone like you, yourself, who is A person of a different ethnicity. | ||
| You're not a white person. | ||
| You're a Vietnamese. | ||
| You're a gay man. | ||
| You got assaulted for no reason. | ||
| You didn't do anything. | ||
| I mean, it's almost like a test of where do your values truly lie. | ||
| And if you think it's okay for a person like you to just get assaulted for no reason, you are the problem. | ||
| You're the problem. | ||
| Your mindset is the problem. | ||
| It's not whether or not there should be white supremacy. | ||
| Of course there shouldn't be. | ||
| It's not whether or not there shouldn't be... | ||
| People be able to freely express themselves. | ||
| Of course there should be. | ||
| That is not what the issue is. | ||
| What the issue is, is group mob mentality. | ||
| When you get people together and you let them wear masks and you tell them that they're fighting against some evil, and then they feel justified in hitting a person like you. | ||
| It is really sickening. | ||
| And there's this diffusion of responsibility thing that happens when one person hits you and everybody feels like it's okay to hit you. | ||
| It's a mob mentality thing. | ||
| It is extremely common with human beings. | ||
| I've been in mob situations. | ||
| It's terrifying because you feel it in the air. | ||
| You feel the chaos in the air when you're in some sort of a large-scale brawl-type situation. | ||
| Anything can happen. | ||
| People just run up on people and start punching them. | ||
| It's not like two people alone in an open area where they can talk and work things out. | ||
| No, it's chaos. | ||
| And there's some weird animal activity. | ||
| There's some weird animal instinct aspect to it that is very unique to humans. | ||
| And when you see something like this and see a guy like you just getting peppered with milkshakes and punched in the head, it's fucking disturbing. | ||
| And for these people to dismiss that and not stand out, not stand up and say, hey, this is not what we're supposed to be about. | ||
| This is not what I signed up for. | ||
| They become a part of the problem. | ||
| I'm sure there's people listening to this that are upset at this. | ||
| Because maybe you support Antifa. | ||
| You support their ideology. | ||
| Think about what you actually support. | ||
| Think about what this is really all about. | ||
| What you shouldn't be supporting is people wearing masks, running around fucking hitting people. | ||
| You ain't changing shit with that. | ||
| All you're going to do is call for more people with masks from the other side. | ||
| If people feel like right-wing people are being attacked, and I don't think you're even right-wing, are you? | ||
| I mean, what are you? | ||
| If you had a gun to your head or a mace to your face, What would you – would you say you're a centrist? | ||
| What would you say? | ||
| I think it's fair to describe me as center-right. | ||
| Center-right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Which is fine. | ||
| It should be okay. | ||
| I mean, we should be allowed to have disagreements of ideologies and of political persuasions. | ||
| Political – But this is, it's twisted. | ||
| And it's twisted the way it's being depicted in the media. | ||
| It's very strange how it's being dismissed. | ||
| It's very strange in that there's really people in 2019 debating whether or not it's okay to assault journalists. | ||
| It's fucking madness. | ||
| Well, we've been seeing the build-up to this for years. | ||
| Political violence coming from the left is seen as moral. | ||
| And unfortunately, even those working in mainstream media have at times excused or found that type of violence good. | ||
| I'm thinking of Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon at CNN. And I wonder if that played a role in why they were the only center-left broadcast news network to invite me on to speak. | ||
| No other leftist center media has invited me on to any of those shows. | ||
| When they had you on to speak, what was their attitude about all this? | ||
| I think the host was very respectful and fair. | ||
| Who was it? | ||
| John Brennan, I think. | ||
| So you think they were respectful and fair. | ||
| Did it bother you that people like Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon had openly supported Antifa? | ||
| It did. | ||
| I mean, this kind of encouraged me to continue doing my work months ago, even last year when I was getting threatened, because it seemed like... | ||
| I don't think Chris or Don actually understand... | ||
| I think they're ignorant about Antifa. | ||
| I think you're right. | ||
| You know, they believe the propaganda about them that it's just an anti-fascist movement. | ||
| Well, the name by itself... | ||
| I'm hoping that, like, even with my injuries, and some you can see, some you can't, I'm continuing to force myself to do all these media engagements because I want the needle on the conversations about Antifa to move, to change. | ||
| Like, this is... | ||
| Not just a movement of people masking up and starting random violence on the streets. | ||
| The violence isn't just... | ||
| It is not arbitrary. | ||
| It's working towards their goal. | ||
| It's a movement of violent, radical anarchists and communists. | ||
| And they're agitating for political revolution. | ||
| And violence is part of their modus operandi. | ||
| It's not a bug. | ||
| It's the future of what they do. | ||
| So, I don't know if people recognize how dangerous this is, this movement. | ||
| And the DHS since 2016 has described some of Antifa's activities as domestic terrorist violence. | ||
| So, the fact that they're able to openly organize and recruit on social media is baffling to me. | ||
| I'm wondering, like... | ||
| There's such a huge blind spot for far-left militancy, not just in mainstream media, but also in big tech. | ||
| Do you think this is because Trump is president and because so many people oppose Trump as president, that the idea of far-left militancy is in opposition to what they oppose? | ||
| So they feel like the enemy of my enemy is my friend? | ||
| That's exactly what it is, I think. | ||
| Eric Weinstein had a great point about this, and he said one of the real issues is the cowards of the left and the cowards of the right that are allowing the extremists to do the work for them. | ||
| So when people see someone like the Proud Boys running around attacking people, even the Proud Boys, you have to realize that they started off as a joke. | ||
| Like when Gavin McGinnis first came up with the idea of the Proud Boys, it was literally a joke. | ||
| And it became an actual organization for fun. | ||
| And then people joined it that didn't think it was a joke. | ||
| And then people joined it and started taking it in a deeper and deeper direction. | ||
| And he eventually disavowed himself and abandoned the group. | ||
| I bet you see the same thing with Antifa. | ||
| I bet the idea initially was, hey, we see these tiki torch carrying assholes in Charlottesville. | ||
| We see that guy with the car ran over the girl who was a protester and killed her. | ||
| Like, this fucking shit has got to stop, so we have to organize. | ||
| We have to do something. | ||
| And then what happens? | ||
| You get people in masks, and you get people justified, and then you get people that support those people, and then you get the extremists. | ||
| And the extremists who are not disavowed, who are not... | ||
| There's no one speaking out against them from the left. | ||
| There's no one saying, hey, this shit has got to stop because they want them to do their dirty work for them. | ||
| They want them to push the envelope and push the agenda and get their ideology moving in the right direction, even if it's done through methods that they don't agree with. | ||
| And that's where it gets horrible. | ||
| I see these people that are involved in this, and I know for a fact just by watching them move and interact with each other, they don't understand violence. | ||
| They don't. | ||
| They're not good at it. | ||
| They don't understand it. | ||
| This is like role play. | ||
| It's like cosplay. | ||
| And you're gonna get real violence in return from people who actually know how to do it. | ||
| And if you look at violence from the left and violence from the right, violence from the right scares me a whole lot more. | ||
| They're a lot more armed. | ||
| They're more dangerous human beings in general. | ||
| And I think that if this keeps happening and people from the right feel threatened and their lifestyle feels threatened and their ideologies feel threatened, you're going to get people meeting at these things and it's going to be more than just people throwing mace and milkshakes at each other. | ||
| It's going to be people showing up ready for actual combat. | ||
| That's fucking terrifying! | ||
| It's fucking terrifying. | ||
| And this idea that you could just run around hitting people and not have any consequences. | ||
| It's just like the way a child looks at violence. | ||
| This is what bothers me so much. | ||
| If you looked at their core tenets of what they want to do and if they wanted to accomplish that through political negotiation and through conversation and rallies and speeches, fine. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| But when you have people wearing masks hitting and macing people, You've crossed the line into the land of no return. | ||
| And you've called out to people who oppose you. | ||
| You've challenged them to come and do the same. | ||
| And this is how violence begets greater violence. | ||
| It's fucking dangerous. | ||
| It's really dangerous. | ||
| Violence does not exist in a vacuum. | ||
| You can't just have a little bit of violence and then there's no repercussions. | ||
| People react to that. | ||
| There's people that watch those videos, watch you get punched, and there is no justification for that. | ||
| When you see someone like yourself who's a small person, slight in stature, not violent in any way, and you're not even swinging back. | ||
| You're just taking it and trying to protect yourself. | ||
| People get infuriated by that and there's people right now I guarantee you who saw that video who are thinking what I would do if I was there I'd fucking shoot all of them or I'd beat them all to death with baseball bats or I'd run them over with my car or do things and the Unhinged amongst the right who feel like this is a in opposition of their ideology They're gonna show up someday and when that happens people are gonna die and This is fucking terrible. | ||
| And this is where the mayor and the police, they have not done their job. | ||
| I believe the police, when they say that they've been handcuffed, and maybe the mayor just didn't have an idea of where this would all go. | ||
| But now you do. | ||
| The mayor has been in office now for three years and he finally did a press conference two days ago, nine days after my attack, to address this controversy, right? | ||
| And what was so frustrating is that the police chief had publicly stated that she thinks the city or the state should adopt a law that... | ||
| Makes it illegal to wear a mask while committing a crime. | ||
| That should be a no-brainer. | ||
| It's shocking that in Portland... | ||
| I got a better idea. | ||
| How about you can't wear a mask in public at these events? | ||
| Because you can say you can't wear a mask while committing a crime. | ||
| You're wearing a mask. | ||
| Who the fuck do you know committed a crime? | ||
| Unless you take the mask off, then you can't even identify them. | ||
| It's stupid. | ||
| You can't wear a mask. | ||
| Yeah, so this sounds like a baseline policy that you should start advocating for, right? | ||
| Yeah, it's like, don't kick babies. | ||
| Yeah, well, the mayor said he hasn't decided if he supported it. | ||
| He hasn't decided if he supported whether or not it should be illegal to wear a mask while you're committing a crime? | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| And he had no policy proposals. | ||
| And he spoke as if it was his first day in office when this is becoming routine now. | ||
| It's almost banal in Portland. | ||
| And Portland is a harbinger and a warning. | ||
| To what can happen in other cities when you have those in the upper echelons of governance turning a blind eye to far-left militancy and just letting these thugs go on the street and beat people. | ||
| Just imagine if there was the case, if they were doing that about far-right militancy. | ||
| Imagine if there were far-right people. | ||
| Who are doing this and committing violence and the government was just like, well, you know, I'm not sure if they shouldn't be allowed to wear masks while they commit crimes. | ||
| People would be freaking the fuck out. | ||
| It's the weird justification of this stuff that's so disturbing. | ||
| And I fucking love Portland. | ||
| It's one of my favorite places. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| The city's great. | ||
| I mean, it's fucking cool people. | ||
| It's not all of them that are involved in this. | ||
| It's a very small number, and even amongst the small number, it's the very small number of them that are radical, that are violent. | ||
| When you look at the people that are attacking you, not to minimize it, but it's very few. | ||
| You look at that video, it's a couple people out of thousands of people that are in that group. | ||
| There's a few people that are attacking you. | ||
| There's about a dozen. | ||
| Was it really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay, if you count throwing milkshakes, but actually hitting you, how many people do you think hit you? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Three? | ||
| Four? | ||
| Maybe? | ||
| Something like that? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| The problem is these fucking assholes. | ||
| It's not the people that disagree with you. | ||
| It's the people that think you should be able to throw milkshakes at people. | ||
| And guys like Carlos Mesa who don't think it's a big deal to throw milkshakes at people. | ||
| It's a fucking big deal. | ||
| It's a big deal because it calls for a response. | ||
| This is why it's a big deal. | ||
| And people don't understand assault. | ||
| They don't understand violence. | ||
| You can't just do that. | ||
| You live in some comic book world or some fucking Disney show world where you can just throw a milkshake at someone and they don't do anything. | ||
| They're going to turn around and punch you in your fucking face. | ||
| And then what happens? | ||
| Well, you might fall and hit your head and die. | ||
| Because that's real. | ||
| That's the real world we live in. | ||
| Or you might cause a giant brawl because people don't want to be hit with milkshakes. | ||
| Or there's enough of you where you think you can get away with it. | ||
| So you're an awful bully, and you're throwing milkshakes at someone because you don't like what they stand for. | ||
| And you're meeting in a public place, and you're disagreeing about something. | ||
| So to right this disagreement, you're assaulting people. | ||
| Well, for that very reason, Antifa never engages in a quote-unquote fair fight one-on-one. | ||
| What they do usually, as a group while masked up, one or several of them will distract the person either by speaking to them perhaps or blinding them with the chemical spray, and then they take turns beating. | ||
| So there's even no opportunity to... | ||
| You know, you don't even know how many people are hitting you at that point. | ||
| So that's what they do. | ||
| Blind you, and then attack. | ||
| It's so scary. | ||
| Because it's so dumb. | ||
| It's not just scary because you watching what happened to you was scary. | ||
| And watching that old man who got hit in the head with a crowbar, it's fucking horrific. | ||
| All that stuff is horrific. | ||
| Apparently that guy had pulled out some sort of a rod and was swinging at people before he got hit with a crowbar. | ||
| I do not know. | ||
| But I do know when you start hitting people in the head with crowbars, that is the beginning of the end. | ||
| Horrible, horrible shit happens in response to that, and it hasn't yet, but this is 10 days ago. | ||
| Who knows what's going to happen if there's another one of these rallies, and you get people from the far right who organized. | ||
| This is when the Proud Boys really radicalized. | ||
| They radicalized to go against Antifa. | ||
| They were attacked, they attacked them, and then it became this fucking shit show that you're seeing right now. | ||
| Yeah, I want to state for the record, though, the violence that happened after I was beat up was involving the men's rights activist group at Antifa. | ||
| Proud Boys was holding, they held a separate event in a different part of the city. | ||
| As far as I know, they did not, there was no conflict with them. | ||
| In this particular event? | ||
| Yeah, in this particular event. | ||
| So, who was the men's rights guy? | ||
| It was actually a woman. | ||
| A woman who's a men's rights person? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| She must love dick. | ||
| Right? | ||
| If you had a guess. | ||
| No comments. | ||
| Sorry, I'm a comedian. | ||
| Couldn't help it. | ||
| You don't even have to say her name. | ||
| So she organized this thing? | ||
| Yeah, I would say... | ||
| Here's the other thing. | ||
| What needs to be stated as well about, I guess, the right-wing movements that are in Portland or come to Portland to do these events, there's an element of being provocative as well. | ||
| But that should never, ever justify the violence. | ||
| Explain what you mean by being a provocateur. | ||
| Well, for example, holding an event in the middle of downtown, titling it Justice for Victims of Domestic Terrorism, and then having a picture of Antifa. | ||
| They're inviting them. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It causes a reaction. | ||
| So there's an element of coming in and seeing, let's enrage these lunatics on the far left or whatever. | ||
| But at the same time, I want to make sure I state that just because somebody is... | ||
| Quote, unquote, provocateur in the words of the writing that it's unfortunate that people now find that that's justification for you to react violently. | ||
| Well, I think, again, it's a small percentage of people that find this justification. | ||
| When you look at the number of people that were there, what is it? | ||
| Thousands? | ||
| Thousands of people? | ||
| How many people actually engaged in violence? | ||
| Small number, but... | ||
| Small number. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| It's important to note that they got morale from the crowd who were cheering them on. | ||
| The cowards. | ||
| The cowards who don't disavow this horrific action. | ||
| They cheered them on, laughed and clapped as I was getting beaten. | ||
| And then the other thing about the people showing up in numbers who don't engage in the violence is they are like literal human shields. | ||
| They dress the same, so they make it easy for the few violent militants to melt back into the crowd. | ||
| And these people also watch the cops and they keep an eye out on potential outsiders as well. | ||
| Yeah, it's become a game. | ||
| It's become a game and it's become a gigantic team war. | ||
| There's our team versus their team. | ||
| It's literally like playing a childhood game. | ||
| It's really disturbing, man. | ||
| And so, since this, has anyone from Antifa apologized about what happened to you or disavowed the actions of these few extreme violent people? | ||
| Of course not. | ||
| Antifa has an iron fist on the people who support its movements. | ||
| They don't allow any type of dissent. | ||
| Actually, in their press releases, you can call them, they explicitly state that Even, basically, even if you disagree with our tactics, you will not publicly state it. | ||
| It's to create, I guess, this image of unity, right? | ||
| For a quote-unquote... | ||
| Even if you disagree inside the organization? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So how organized are they? | ||
| Do they have a leader? | ||
| In terms of Antifa, as we understand it today, really crystallized only after 2016. There's been very little academic research into how they actually organized. | ||
| But basically, as a movement, they have essentially cells across the country that are semi-autonomous, united by an ideology of anarcho-communism and their support for violence. | ||
| So... | ||
| It's not so much a group itself. | ||
| It's the people who are part of that movement are drawn from other actual groups. | ||
| They draw from the DSA. They draw from various workers unions, other anarchist groups. | ||
| And like other terrorist entities, they have processes to radicalize sympathizers, essentially. | ||
| They have their own literature as well. | ||
| And so it's much more organized than people give them credit for. | ||
| They think of them as just, you know, people showing up to fight on the street. | ||
| There's meaning to that violence and there's literature to back it up. | ||
| And they actively recruit people to join the movement. | ||
| So, I've been asked, do you think the federal authorities should step in? | ||
| And my response is, I think it's come to the point that they do. | ||
| Because with Antifa, it's beyond what local authorities can do. | ||
| Because a lot of these people, a lot of them are in Portland, from Portland. | ||
| But a lot of them come from, for example, from Eugene, from Seattle, from neighboring areas that have other Antifa people come in to participate in the violence for that day or to help out. | ||
| And then they go back to where they're from. | ||
| So they're coming in and out of jurisdictions. | ||
| It makes it hard for one local body of authorities to address it. | ||
| I think the DOJ needs to step in. | ||
| I think it's gotten to that point. | ||
| And with 2020 coming up soon, there could be potential for a lot more political violence if the election's results don't go as they wish. | ||
| Well, that's an obvious one, considering the fact that this all became a thing after Trump was elected. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| If the DOJ did step in, what do you think they could do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's, well... | |
| I mean, do you believe in the ability to meet up and express yourself publicly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| And the ability to protest and the ability to just get together and have groups and express yourself? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| However, that's not just what Antifa does. | ||
| Like I said, the violence is a feature of their movement. | ||
| So what federal authorities can do— Can I stop you there? | ||
| When you say the violence is a feature of their movement, do they have anything written, like the tenets of their movement, where they say that violence is acceptable? | ||
| There's a book called The Anti-Fascist Handbook. | ||
| It's written by Mark Bray. | ||
| He's an academic at Dartmouth. | ||
| He is, I would call him, one of Antifa's chief ideologues. | ||
| So, not only does he explain what Antifa does, and in his writings he makes it very clear that the quote-unquote self-defense is what justifies the offense of violence. | ||
| He actually argues why that's ethical. | ||
| So, because he's an academic, well-spoken, he's invited onto mainstream media to explain, to basically, like I said earlier, mainstream Antifa. | ||
| Can you explain what he says? | ||
| Yes, I highly recommend that people take a look at his book. | ||
| The Attorney General of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, was photographed a year ago holding up that book, the Antifa book, and he's been criticized a bit for that, and he deleted that image after my beating. | ||
| Was holding it up in support? | ||
| Yeah, he said something about this book or Antifa strikes fear into the heart of Donald Trump. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, there's people in government who are sympathetic to Antifa. | ||
| But this professor, can you explain what he says? | ||
| He outlines and explains, essentially, why Antifa's violence is ethical. | ||
| That it's... | ||
| Because they're opposing fascism, and fascism is a violent movement, this is sort of a preemptive move. | ||
| That word fascism, it is a problem, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because it seems like that's definitely something you should oppose. | ||
| But what's the actual definition of fascism? | ||
| Fascism as a far-right political ideology, from what I understand, is... | ||
| Pull up the definition, Jamie, so we can just read what fascism, what the actual word fascism means. | ||
| Here, form of radical right-wing authoritarian, authoritarian, ultra-nationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society, and of the economy, which came to prominence in early 20th century Europe. which came to prominence in early 20th century Europe. | ||
| But forcible suppression of... | ||
| Put that back up, please. | ||
| Forcible suppression of opposition is what they're doing. | ||
| Strong regimentation of society. | ||
| I mean, they're literally telling people how to behave and what they will tolerate. | ||
| I know it's not right-wing ideology, but it's almost like fascism. | ||
| And I'm sure there's other definitions of fascism. | ||
| The idea of supporting someone who opposes fascism sounds wonderful. | ||
| Sounds great. | ||
| Let's stop fascism. | ||
| But are we really experiencing authoritarian ultra-nationalism characterized by dictatorial power in this country? | ||
| I mean, is that a fair thing to say? | ||
| I know people don't like Donald Trump. | ||
| I know people don't like right-wing ideologies running this country. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| But this is not what's happening. | ||
| Yeah, the issue, like, fascism, as defined by political theorists who have been researching this for decades, it has a particular definition and meaning, and I think that summarizes it pretty well. | ||
| I'm very concerned that people use it so flippantly to just refer to the right or to even authoritarianism. | ||
| Like, there's much more to it than just being authoritarian. | ||
| There's all those other components. | ||
| And it's important to state that Antifa is not just opposed to the far right or the right. | ||
| They're also against liberal democracy. | ||
| There's a reason why they hate the police so much, hate border enforcement, and hate the rule of law. | ||
| They're against the concept of the nation state as we understand it. | ||
| And they're working to dismantle that, to delegitimize it. | ||
| So, this is what I mean when I say it's a dangerous ideology that for now, you know, enemy my enemy is your friend. | ||
| But at some point, if this movement becomes bigger, more mainstream, and more people are sympathetic, at some point it's going to come back against the moderate left. | ||
| Because these people, they want to see the destruction of the nation. | ||
| They want to see the destruction of the nation-state for what purpose? | ||
| They want anarchy? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So they're political anarchists, social anarchists. | ||
| They don't want borders. | ||
| They don't want nations. | ||
| They don't want police. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| What do they want? | ||
| I mean, what do they expect? | ||
| What's the ultimate goal? | ||
| They seem to believe in... | ||
| Utopian Marxist ideas, right? | ||
| Of this redistribution of wealth where we can only be truly equal and egalitarian when we dismantle wealth. | ||
| Everything about the country. | ||
| So not just, you know, its institutions, the rule of law, but the state itself. | ||
| Like everything just has to be broken down and start over because it's irredeemable. | ||
| I'm not quite sure if, I mean, they've, you know, Antifa... | ||
| I can't think of where they have had, if there's any somewhat comparable examples around the world of what it looks like for them to do state building, right? | ||
| So we don't know what it would actually look like, but the examples we see from these smaller anecdotes is chaos and anarchy, like absolute chaos, and violent suppression of opposing views. | ||
| Indiscriminate violence at times. | ||
| I wonder, and what I've been asking over and over, is how many more people have to be drawn into, have to be victims of this violence before something changes. | ||
| In Portland now, we've had three years of this, and literally no policy changes have happened. | ||
| No even proposals have even been accepted by the mayor. | ||
| The previous mayor was... | ||
| What was his political persuasion? | ||
| Or her? | ||
| I don't even know who he was. | ||
| The people who become elected mayor in Portland are typically establishment Democrats, right? | ||
| So they themselves are moderate, very much in the vein of a Hillary Clinton type of thing. | ||
| But there's a constituency in Portland that they have to play to for votes, which is the radical people who are sympathetic to very, very progressive causes. | ||
| And so there's a reason why to date the mayor has never named Antifa one time in any of his press conferences. | ||
| He has no problem blaming Proud Boys or Patriot Prayer of the Right for issues. | ||
| Patriot Prayer? | ||
| What's that? | ||
| Another group? | ||
| Patriot Prayer is one of the other right-wing movements in and around Portland that have held pro-Trump events in town that Antifa comes to fight and oppose. | ||
| And how do those turn out? | ||
| They devolve into riots. | ||
| And the police allow this? | ||
| they allow it through their inaction. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| It's interesting to see a city that's gone so far off the rails, like Portland, in this regard, with this issue. | ||
| When you see this inaction, and what the consequences are, and how it happens, and particularly for a person like you, you physically see it, you personally see it. | ||
| Are you going to continue to do these things? | ||
| Because it seems like you're obviously a target now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When I was asked this in my interviews this week, last week, the response that comes to my mind right away is, of course I'm going to continue doing it. | ||
| These people have threatened me before. | ||
| I've been attacked before. | ||
| I'm not going to be cowed. | ||
| I'm going to continue. | ||
| I won't be intimidated. | ||
| But with the brain injury that they gave me, it's like, I can't continue doing it the same way as I did before and being naive to think that police would actually uphold the rule of law. | ||
| They gave me a brain injury and like I never had one before but I'm dealing with some cognitive and neurological issues. | ||
| Like what? | ||
| Memory issues, I have upcoming neurophysical therapy as well as speech therapy. | ||
| So as much as on the surface I have improved a lot since the beating, there are some long-term consequences that I'm going to have to work through. | ||
| You know, I have, to be honest, I have certain fears and anxieties of being in Portland. | ||
| I've continued to receive threats, violent threats, and they've been reported to police and just people promising to make sure next time that I won't even be able to walk away, that they will repeat what happened to me when they see me on the streets. | ||
| Have they caught the people that did this to you? | ||
| So it's been more than 10 days since my beating. | ||
| There have been no arrests. | ||
| I don't know where the police are in the investigation. | ||
| They haven't been keeping me informed. | ||
| There was a photograph of someone they released. | ||
| Yeah, so the Portland police released photos of potential suspects and asking for help in identifying. | ||
| One was unmasked, two of them were masked. | ||
| And I forgot to say earlier that in addition to the beating, they robbed me of my camera equipment. | ||
| So that was my evidence for that day. | ||
| And I tried so hard to hold on to it, but I couldn't. | ||
| What about you attending this with security? | ||
| Have you thought about doing that? | ||
| Yeah, so moving forward, once I feel well enough and once I'm cleared by the doctors, it may be worth it to cover these events but with professional security. | ||
| Gorillas. | ||
| Big giant dudes. | ||
| Would they wear armor? | ||
| What would you have? | ||
| How far would you take this? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| How far do you think I should take it? | ||
| I don't think you should go to those things anymore. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I mean, it seems like you've been... | ||
| I mean, it is part of your job. | ||
| You're a journalist. | ||
| But it seems like you've been singled out and targeted, and it seems like they don't have any problem justifying attacking you and assaulting you. | ||
| If I was going to go, I'd bring the biggest, baddest dudes that I could find. | ||
| And a bunch of them. | ||
| And have them surround you. | ||
| And have them protect you. | ||
| What's it tell you about America in 2019? | ||
| I don't think it's America. | ||
| I think it's this one particular area, and this one particular group, and not even the group. | ||
| I think it's the most ridiculous people in that group. | ||
| I think most of these people that probably are a part of this really don't want fascists. | ||
| And they really don't want some awful right-wing totalitarian regime running this country and marginalized people of color, gay people and immigrants and all those things that I support 100%. | ||
| I'm left-wing. | ||
| I mean, I would be on their side ideologically about a lot of things. | ||
| It's the implementation of it that I have the biggest problem with. | ||
| It's the group mentality. | ||
| It's the wearing the masks. | ||
| It's the assaults. | ||
| It's the not understanding the consequences of violence. | ||
| All these things. | ||
| This is what I have a problem with. | ||
| The way the mayor allows this to take place. | ||
| The way he handcuffs the police. | ||
| That is what I have a problem with. | ||
| It's not that they don't want horrible people running the government and running the world. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| But you're not for the dismantling of the nation state, right? | ||
| Nope. | ||
| No. | ||
| No, I'm not. | ||
| Or the breakdown of democracy? | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah, so these are the points that I'm trying to hit on. | ||
| Those are the points that are hidden, right? | ||
| These are important things that make up the ideology of ANTIFA. And the larger, those who are sympathetic because of the anti-fascist aspect or the anti-right wing, they are ignorant of it. | ||
| And I hope to become more aware of that. | ||
| I think that's what's important about your work. | ||
| That's what's important about these discussions. | ||
| That's what's important about people getting the word and understanding what this really means, not what it seems on paper. | ||
| It's like, we're the anti-Nazi movement. | ||
| Well, who the fuck could go against that? | ||
| Of course you're anti-Nazi. | ||
| Everybody should be. | ||
| That's what it seems like. | ||
| Well, we're anti-fascist. | ||
| Good. | ||
| We don't want fascists. | ||
| I think that's what Chris Cuomo was saying. | ||
| I think that's what Don Lemon was saying. | ||
| I think they're too busy. | ||
| I don't think they're really investigating this. | ||
| I don't think they're deep diving and understanding the ideology at its core, the way you're describing it. | ||
| And whoever that professor was that you were discussing that is somehow or another Condoning violence, that is ridiculous. | ||
| Anyone who considers themselves an intellectual who condones violence, all this punch-a-Nazi stuff, goddammit, you don't understand violence. | ||
| You don't know what you're talking about. | ||
| You don't understand the human condition, because if you understood violence, it's the last thing you would ever be calling for. | ||
| Can I talk about the next step of what's next for me? | ||
| So a lot of people listening and are frustrated and have expressed support are asking, well, what can I do? | ||
| I'm just one person. | ||
| And this is the power now. | ||
| We live in a time where there's crowdfunding. | ||
| And with all the points that we brought up earlier, it seems to show a lot of evidence to suggest that there's something seriously wrong in the upper echelons of policing and governing in Portland. | ||
| And that's what the legal fund is. | ||
| So I'm working with Hameet Dhillon. | ||
| She represented James Damore. | ||
| She's taken me on as the first client for the non-profit that she started. | ||
| If you go to PubliusLex.com, you'll see information for how you can donate. | ||
| And anything helps. | ||
| Lawsuits, if they happen against the city or mayor or police department, cost a lot of money and takes a lot of time. | ||
| There's a lot of overhead costs and the amount of people you have to take in to do your investigations. | ||
| So there's an opportunity for the public to get involved. | ||
| I don't want the story to pass just about Andy got beat up, so what? | ||
| Let's move on. | ||
| But rather... | ||
| There's systemic issues happening in Portland and there are implications for the rest of the country. | ||
| What do you think is going on with media that is supporting this attack on you? | ||
| Because I've seen so many journalists dismiss this as being not a big deal. | ||
| Why do you think that anybody would look at something like that where someone's being beaten publicly and not think it's a big deal? | ||
| What do you think is behind that? | ||
| Extremist ideologies are very good at dehumanizing their opposition. | ||
| And that's what Antifa does. | ||
| So there's been a lot of disinformation, misinformation put out about me. | ||
| They say, for example, I'm not really a journalist. | ||
| I'm just a far-right provocateur. | ||
| I'm somebody who's sympathetic to Nazis. | ||
| And so when you put these ideas out that not only are lies, but are meant to Remove one's humanity. | ||
| They just become, you know, like Andy is no longer Andy. | ||
| Andy is the face of far-right ideology. | ||
| And it makes people feel comfortable with violence against that. | ||
| And it was so disheartening to see so many writers come out and say things like... | ||
| I don't really support what happened to Andy, but he's done far worse. | ||
| He was a provocateur, his writings. | ||
| He came and he got exactly what he was looking for. | ||
| What happened to me should happen to nobody, much less a journalist, right? | ||
| This is in a major American city. | ||
| This is not in Afghanistan or Iraq where the state is weak. | ||
| We have a strong state. | ||
| We have police force. | ||
| Why are the laws not being enforced? | ||
| Why are citizens having to suffer? | ||
| Why are there no arrests? | ||
| Why are there no arrests? | ||
| It's really absurd. | ||
| And it's obscene. | ||
| When is the next one of these things supposed to take place? | ||
| On the 17th of August is supposedly the next event. | ||
| I think the Proud Boys have announced that they're encouraging all of their members across the country to fly into Portland. | ||
| It's always fucking Portland. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're kind of reacting, I think, to the 29th of June. | ||
| So we'll see what happens. | ||
| I'm concerned. | ||
| Are you going to go? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You should go and get a Popemobile. | ||
| Let him throw milkshakes at the Popemobile. | ||
| Get a big old fish tank. | ||
| Put some wheels on it. | ||
| Have some giant dudes push you around. | ||
| I'm joking around about it, obviously, to try to make light, but do you really think you're going to go? | ||
| I don't know if I feel safe. | ||
| And I hate using... | ||
| Well, you shouldn't feel safe. | ||
| Well, I hate using the language of the identitarian left. | ||
| You know, like, I feel unsafe and all that. | ||
| I'm trying to remain rational. | ||
| Okay, but you were assaulted twice. | ||
| And I continue to receive threats. | ||
| You were assaulted, what, in May? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And then you were assaulted again in June. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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So... | |
| And you continue to receive threats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Is this necessary to go to these things to cover them? | ||
| Do you think maybe that's part of the problem with people like Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo who are talking about this who haven't actually been there? | ||
| They really don't understand it and maybe you do because you're covering it with boots on the ground? | ||
| You got it. | ||
| When you're all the way in New York City and you work for elite media and you always even when you travel to protests you have a very large crew of security around you It removes you a bit from the reality of the situation. | ||
| And I don't think any of these people who are opining on these mainstream media television shows have actually embedded themselves to covering these violent riots that are happening in Portland or in Berkeley. | ||
| How many of the people that are involved in Antifa do you think really understand... | ||
| That they're trying to dismantle the government. | ||
| Really understand that they want the state to dissolve. | ||
| I don't have a number for that. | ||
| It's definitely small. | ||
| It's the same people who engage. | ||
| It would probably be around those who are engaging in violence and those who are aiding in that violence. | ||
| For example, creating shields or whatever, allowing them to hide among them. | ||
| Those people, I think, understand very much what the ideology is. | ||
| Those people who come unmasked, you know, and just read the Facebook event page. | ||
| Opposed fascists, come protect Portland. | ||
| Those people, I think, are ignorant of the ideology behind the movement and groups that are organizing these events. | ||
| I can't put a number on that. | ||
| And this is where there needs to be research by academics and think tanks to look into. | ||
| And this is where federal authorities need to be looking into as well. | ||
| How are they organized? | ||
| Where are the businesses that are helping them fund some of their causes? | ||
| Because when some of their members get arrested, they have money for bail. | ||
| Who's involved in funneling that money? | ||
| Who's helping to disperse their literature that they use to radicalize people? | ||
| This requires research and intelligence gathering, and as far as I know, it's not being done. | ||
| There's a real concern among some people that we're entering a phase of this country where there's a real possibility Of having some sort of a civil unrest, civil war. | ||
| When you see something like these Portland events, when you see this kind of chaos, do you think that's a valid concern? | ||
| Not for something that is across the country but perhaps very regional or to the city itself. | ||
| And not so much like civil war but the violence that is done and planned by Antifa is meant to make the wider public not just polarize and hate each other but also begin to distrust the institutions that are in place that are meant to uphold democracy. | ||
| So, the police in Portland have come under fire, for example, not just from the radical left, but a lot of people who are normally very pro-police are finding like, what is wrong with the Portland police? | ||
| Like, we can't even trust them. | ||
| So there's... | ||
| If things just continue, I think the violence will continue to escalate, leading to a death or death. | ||
| That's my real concern. | ||
| It's my real concern as well. | ||
| And you think this is particularly unique to Portland in the way they're treating and addressing it? | ||
| I'm trying to think of comparable other cities that have had some of these issues. | ||
| So, for example, in San Jose in 2016, Trump supporters, when they were leaving a Trump rally, were brutally assaulted by mobs of people. | ||
| And then there was a lawsuit that was launched against the city for basically putting citizens in the way of danger. | ||
| The way they were funneled outside of this event led them directly in front of these violent protesters who attacked them. | ||
| and those footage that went viral that year. | ||
| Since then, policing tactics have changed in San Jose, as far as I know, and, you know, involved the lawsuit. | ||
| So, like, sometimes it takes lawsuits for... | ||
| The local government to start protecting people's civil rights. | ||
| So right now, as bad as it is, it does seem confined to Portland. | ||
| We haven't seen, for example, in Berkeley, the type of violence in 2017 when Milo came. | ||
| That hasn't been repeated for a year and a half now. | ||
|
unidentified
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So... | |
| But it takes the political will of those in power to enforce the law, right? | ||
| So you mentioned lawsuits. | ||
| What lawsuits are you pursuing? | ||
| Well, immediately right now, what I would like to see is the city of Portland carry out a full investigation and hold accountable all those who were involved in attacking me or aided in that as well. | ||
| And then, where the evidence leaves, if this shows that there was dereliction of duty from those in power, then... | ||
| I reserve my judgment. | ||
| My lawyer reserves judgment for who, if anyone, gets sued at that point. | ||
| But right now, I'm very focused on seeing that and putting pressure on the city to arrest people who are responsible and charge them and get convictions as well. | ||
| Alright, in closing, because I know you've got to get out of here, is there a silver lining to any of this? | ||
| I mean, do you think that perhaps your assault and the fact that the police didn't intervene is actually allowing people to understand the real significance of this, the real problem of this, that this is a real issue, a gigantic one, in fact, that goes against the core tenets, the value of free expression and the ability to gather and communicate safely in public? | ||
| As hard as it was for me to see a silver lining when I was laying in hospital with so much pain, there is one. | ||
| And that is that everybody paid attention to what happened to me. | ||
| It was a big story. | ||
| Even the mainstream liberal press could not ignore it. | ||
| And I'm hoping that from that, it goes beyond just being a headline, but forcing the national discourse to change on how it views and talks about Antifa. | ||
| We'll see if that happens. | ||
| I feel encouraged that we're beginning to see some cracks in the way that Antifa has been protected by sympathetic writers and journalists and those in mainstream media. | ||
| I mean, the fact that Keith Ellison deleted that photo that he showed a year ago, right after it was attacked, I think indicates that even he faces a certain pressure that it may not be good for a mainstream politician to so actively promote this movement. | ||
| And I hope it continues to move in that direction. | ||
| If you had a crystal ball and you were looking at the future, what do you think you would see? | ||
| Well, based on the press conference that the mayor did two days ago, him not having any proposals, it seems like more violence has to happen. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Andy, I hope you're wrong. | ||
| Me too. | ||
| But thank you for being here. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| Take it easy. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Stay safe out there, will you? | ||
| Thank you. |
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