Unmasking Antifa: Inside America's Anarchy - Andy Ngo - #275

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends, welcome back. My guest today is Andy Ngo, journalist and an author. Andy has been on the front row for some of the most radical, intense rioting in America, including the barricading of cities downtown, shootings, calls to defund the police, and attacks on federal buildings. So today, expect to learn what it was like going undercover with Antifa in Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, how it feels to live in Portland where Antifa are most prevalent, whether Andy thinks the Capitol Hill riots would have happened if Trump had won, and much more. You will be familiar with Andy from the internet. He is the number one guy who understands what is happening with Antifa and this anarcho-communist movement that's sweeping America. Some pretty scary takeaways, but I think it's really important for everybody to be informed. And being frank, I'm just glad that I live in the UK where we seem to not be swayed as much by this sort of crazy mentality. No matter where you are from, though, I would like you to press that subscribe button on whatever podcast app you are listening on. It only takes two seconds to do and it would make me very happy indeed. We charted in the top 30 last week on Apple Podcasts Chart, and your boy wants to hit the top 10 So just navigate to the little podcast app and press subscribe for me. I thank you. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Andy Ngo.
Was getting people to scream, stop selling Andy Ngo's book in your hometown a part of your marketing strategy? This pretty good free advertising.

**Andy Ngo** (1:49)
I was not part of the strategy, but a lot of people did end up hearing about the book because of the six day efforts by Antifa to get it banned, which unfortunately was partially successful in that Portland's largest bookstore immediately came out and said they would not stock it on its shelves. And this is a bookstore, by the way, a very popular Portland institution that every year dedicates a week to books that are censored and banned. So there's sad irony there.

**Chris Williamson** (2:22)
Too banned to be part of the unbanned book week?

**Andy Ngo** (2:27)
Correct.

**Chris Williamson** (2:28)
That's serious. But obviously, the elephant in the room is that almost everyone's gonna buy your book from Amazon or Barnes and Nobles or whatever.

**Andy Ngo** (2:37)
Yeah, I hope so. And I mean, I'm just, you know, the goal is to get people informed about what's happening. And I think there's a lot of misconceptions about Antifa out there from both the left and the right. And this book tries to explain in one place where people can understand the ideology, the history and how they organize and what all that comes together actually looks like in practice. So I go into detail, particularly of what happened in the Pacific Northwest of the United States throughout 2020, my home city of Portland, which I've had to flee because of death threats against me. We had more than 120 nightly days of violence. So in your country, Britain, you had sporadic violence that happened last year. Imagine if that was reoccurring day after day after day for months on end. And that's what happened in my city. And it's still ongoing.

**Chris Williamson** (3:36)
It's terrifying, man. So let's start. Who are Antifa?

**Andy Ngo** (3:42)
The Antifa claim to be anti-fascist. They're actually anarchist communists who are really working to destabilize governments, particularly the jurisdictions in the United States because they want to ultimately overthrow the US. So they take inspiration from historical anarchist communist communes, and they try to carry out these experiments wherever they can. And to do so in America was always a pipe dream for them, given how strong law enforcement institutions are and the military, etc. But in 2020, things just completely was flipped upside down when after George Floyd died, then the every excuse on the fringe extreme far left to carry out violence was excused in the mainstream left. And it was in that context that Antifa, BLM, for example, in Seattle, the largest city in the Pacific Northwest, they actually claimed sovereign territory or territory that they said was sovereign from the United States for more than three weeks. And they actually have the blessing of the city council as well as the mayor. And immediately despite what the media was saying, describing it as a block party, some of love, I spent time there a week undercover, I write about that in the book. It devolved within days into an area where there were shootings and people ended up getting killed and murdered there.