ANTIFA： The Rise of the Violent Left ｜ Andy Ngo ｜ EP 239 (FE_UjbQSf2w)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=FE_UjbQSf2w

So what is it that they’re celebrating? as far as you can tell They think that a fascist or a racist got the violence against him that he deserved Yeah, but I don’t believe that you know, I don’t believe that’s what they’re celebrating Because I don’t think I don’t think they’re that good. I Think they’re celebrating watching some poor son of a bitch get hurt and that that satisfies something unbelievably dark in their souls Like the desire to burn the desire to burn down buildings the desire to melt cars the desire for the whole goddamn thing to go Up in flames because they’re resentful and bitter Because we can’t take these things at face value right it’s like no no you don’t understand you’re smiling and laughing Well, someone just got his teeth kicked in no trial. No jury. No defense. He’s on the ground He’s mobbed by by overwhelming force and you’re celebrating that and you’re telling me that’s because of your virtues It’s like I don’t think so Hello everyone, I’m pleased today to have with me someone I’ve wanted to talk to for a long time mr Andy no Andy is a journalist best known for reporting on American and Tifa He’s an editor at large at the post millennial which has recently been under attack by left-wing radicals I would say who have Sought to have the advertisers drop the post millennial as a and Deprive and depriving them of their source of revenue and consequence He’s written reports for the New York Post Newsweek and other media major media outlets He drew national attention when he was beaten and hurt very badly by Antifa thugs on the streets of Portland in the summer of 2019 his February 2021 book unmasked Inside and Tifa’s radical plan to destroy democracy was a New York Times bestseller and quite a gripping read I might add Andy had to leave the US because of concerns for his safety and is currently residing in the UK Hey Andy so nice to see you we haven’t met before I don’t think have we my memories a bit spotty and but I don’t Think we’ve ever met Is that correct? So we have when you were on your tour and you were in Portland, Portland, Oregon that was where there were some of the largest demonstrations against you and Backstage I interviewed you from my podcast very very briefly Sorry, I’m sorry. I’ve Hasn’t managed to lodge itself in my memory. Unfortunately, although I do remember that there were Protests in Portland that was pretty much yet for protests, you know on that whole tour so but of course, you know, they would be in Portland and They weren’t against me either. They were against who people wished I was so that they could protest me really So alright, so I’ve been going for your fiction Yes, it is an important distinction because you know a lot a lot of our ire is Reserved for our imaginary enemies and so that’s certainly something that we could delve into a little bit with regards to Antifa So let’s go there right away. So I was talking to a number of influential Democrats this week about Antifa and about January 6th Okay and so so imagine that an outside observer like a Canadian might look at the United States and think well, you know the radical left has Portland and Minneapolis and that’s pretty damn ugly and then the radical right has January 6th and that’s pretty ugly And you know, maybe you could draw some kind of equivalency between the two and maybe not But I think you could at least make a reasonable initial case for something like that January 6th had a lot of symbolic weight if nothing else and and certainly did frighten people very badly But when I was talking to these Democrats about Antifa and the riots, you know, their attitude is sort of well There’s there’s always been riots and race riots in the United States throughout its entire history so in some sense, it’s really nothing out of the ordinary and Besides and Tifa doesn’t really exist. And so I’d like you to address if you would both of those Points and began I should point out to these were reasonable people making these points. These aren’t radical leftists These are people who are trying hard to pull the Democratic Party Towards a moderate center and who are very suspicious of the radical leftists, especially the grip they have on the education system So they’re good faith players and still and oh the other thing they said to me was that they believed it was intellectually dishonest to draw a parallel between Portland and Minneapolis and January 6th Making the case that what happened on January 6 was much much worse like in a category of its own and they justified that by referring To the fact that it was direct assault on the Capitol building, you know and and and and that there was presidential ambivalence about bringing that to a halt So that’s a rat’s nest. So, you know you want to wade in? Yes, so I think Let’s say for good faith engagement from the left. I Completely understand why there would be this perception that Antifa is a myth or Doesn’t really exist because that’s the propaganda that the public is fed from The legacy media and broadcast and in print day in and day out certainly since Trump was elected it’s an entirely different story though when you are on the ground as I have been for years and you see that militancy face to face and when you see it the Organization aspect of it is undeniable. That’s what initially sparked my curiosity because important where I’m from when the election results in 2016 November were announced Tens of thousands of people took to the streets and within that there was a an organized element of people dressed in the same Uniforms at that time it was unusual to cover your face and they had weapons in a very strategic way Smash and move on smash and move on cause businesses Building star fires run So it was from there that sparked my interest in wanting one more about what looks like an organized militia or paramilitary So with that out of the way though, I think the press because of its Compromised nature and generally being biased the last they have turned to blind eye to the evidence that shows there’s in Depending on where you are. There’s an organ organizational structure to Antifa and The statement that by decide infamously at one of the debates last year antifa is an idea that statement in itself is true But it’s not the it’s not a complete statement you have I think One way to explain it that people can understand perhaps more easily is it’s analogous to the worldwide jihadist phenomenon in that you can have people who are actual members of organizations like Boko Haram or is or Al Qaeda or Any of these other jihadist groups, but you have people as well who are sympathetic to the ideology and act on it and in that regard I think you can think of the contemporary manifestations of antifa in in the United States Canada in in Western countries Along the same lines you can have people who had self identify in and simply all they do is go to these protests or riots based on flyers you see online Then you have actual cells that operate such as Roe City antifa, which is an organized group You can go on their website and look at the Q&A and they actually have one of the questions is how do I join? And they say that currently membership is closed So there’s that and in my book I published some of the primary documents of the curriculum from Rose City antifa Which is actually one of the cells that’s part of a network called The torch antifa network and they have cells in other cities So from you know, it’s kind of all of the above its ideology. It’s Horizontally organized it’s disorganized. It’s also highly organized in some cases. So it’s because of that Lack of centralized hierarchical authority that makes it easy for those who want to obfuscate and confuse the public about it Because they can point and say well, you know, there’s no single leader. Who’s the leadership? Show me the leadership because There is no single Person who’s heading everything then the responses well, that’s evidence that they don’t exist You know, yeah, okay. So this is this is a real problem conceptually, right? I mean and let’s think about it to begin with as a problem that we all face instead of a political problem emanating either from the left or the right Okay, because I think there’s a deeper problem here that isn’t exactly And we’ll get into the partisan element of it later So imagine first of all, okay So I assume that the description you gave would be the one that you gave is that okay? So what we have here is we have some actual organizations. Let’s focus on Rose City and Antifa and But but it’s a radically distributed Organization and we don’t even know how radically distributed and it’s almost impossible to identify Its core members or even to define what core membership might be now you you did point to Rose City and Tifa But if I said for example, how many other and Tifa groups are there that have an identifiable? Organizational strategy that’s akin to Rose City and Tifa. How many do you do? Do you have any sense of that? Just just a few dozen. There aren’t very many but the thing is many they they they close and then they spring up as New ad hoc groups on two different names, but it’s really the same so relatively same people involved Okay, a few dozen so that’s real interesting. So that’s like let’s say 24 Just let’s let’s make this concrete because I think it’ll be interesting to do so So in that 24, how many people do you think are? Core involved in each group. Do you think it’s like five? Is it three? Is it ten? Like real hardcore people are involved in each group Is it ten like real hardcore people who are devoting their time to this, you know, like like maybe they’re unemployed That would be a real shock and it’s their full-time job Something like that. How many people? across the entirety of the united states Based if most of them let’s say we’re averaging around the same size as the road city antifa Then I would say in total we’re looking at below a thousand people in In across entire united states. So hundreds Which is you know In the scheme of things and for the scale that’s a relative. That’s a very small number Yeah, well, it’s look it’s so small that you could say that it’s and i’m not saying this But it’s so small that you could say that it’s non-existent, right? Because it’s one in 300 000 if it’s the u.s It’s it’s such a tiny minority of people that they barely exist But what that points to is something actually that minimizing it in that manner actually points to something far more sinister Because what it means is that Under a thousand committed people can radically destabilize whole cities and pose a threat to the integrity of entire culture not not not least by fostering polarization and and the degeneration of the political Scheme that comes along with that and so that’s a real danger for all of us Particularly if it’s the case that groups like that can multiply Their power by pulling other You know semi-attached and maybe not so violent or even extremist people in on the basis of their empathy exactly Consumtive circles probably is a good way to explain it What you asked me the concrete number of how many people actually core in terms of Involved in the organizing the planning attending meetings and trainings Like as you said almost almost non-existent given the the population size of the u.s. However The the larger concentric circle is is of their sympathizers and I think the role of the press since particularly I would say since the election of trump Helped really to mainstream the so-called antifa ideology it put Day in and day out for the entire world that Disbelief that america had elected a fascist president under trump that we were experiencing a regime change that there would be people there would be genocide and On the face, I mean these ideas are these Accusations are so outrageous and I would say laughable But people genuinely believed it, you know go back five years remember like this So I believe here. I know they believe it Yeah, well, they’re feeling the same way about trump running again, you know that fear is definitely there And I think it’s probably even higher than it was at least It’s higher than it was in some ways among the same people And so because they think well, he didn’t manage to establish an authoritarian state this time But you know just wait we’ll see what happens if he gets power a second time It might be the last election the united states ever has but think about what this means So because I also I talk to people on the left a lot Most of them are moderate um, the you know the extreme left types they generally won’t talk to me but Although I would talk to them if I have found someone who was credible and and interesting to talk to and who was willing to um What that means is think about the conceptual problem that we’re faced with now So the people on the left can point to the right and say well, what about your extremists? And the people on the right can say well, there’s hardly any of them. There’s like they basically don’t exist and And in some sense that’s genuinely true and on the left it’s the same thing it’s like it’s hardly anybody at all it’s Under a thousand people committed to this But they can cause a tremendous amount of trouble And so Then the left can point to the people on the right who are extreme and say well look at your extremists and what they do And then the right can point to the people on the left and say look at your extremists and what they do and We don’t know how dangerous they are and what happens if they get out of control and get the upper hand and how much protection do we have to you know, uh, wall ourselves in with in order to make sure that doesn’t happen and then the fact of those extremists mean that each side can demonize the other by pointing to the worst and then everybody gets out of Control and so and it’s not obvious at all how to deal with that lying certainly Lying about it certainly complicates the situation tremendously, right if there’s any deceit in the press coverage and so forth and so but Okay, so so that’s a problem a conceptual problem and then Why do you think that legacy media so to speak Is so light-handed in its treatment of antifa given the tremendous damage And and loss of life and violence for that matter that the riots that antifa in some sense are central to has caused If you had to play devil’s advocate What’s motivating them to minimize this? Uh Uh Establishment journalists were entirely uniform in and committed to the goal and opposing trump and Uh, many of them felt that it was their duty and obligation to um violate some ethical standards because We we were living in such unprecedented times with trump Uh in the executive office that he needed to be Resisted by any means necessary isn’t that always the justification for ethical violations? Isn’t that always the rationalization? It’s like well, this isn’t I wouldn’t normally do this But this is an exceptional case. And so not only is it justified for me to violate my ethical standards It’s actually demanded of me And so that seems to me to be an argument. I can understand the argument, you know, because well, hey Maybe we’re faced with an emergency. We’re going to see a hell of a lot of that by the way with climate change Like a lot so it’s coming in a big way And so well if the emergency is large enough, don’t we get to violate our own principles? And well, you’re a journalist. Let me ask you a question. Do you can you recall a time? And this is a real serious question, man Can you recall a time where you thought the stakes were high enough so that you violated your journalistic integrity? Hmm, that’s I appreciate the question So I’ve covered dozens of Violent protests and riots where I witnessed people being assaulted I’ve always I don’t intervene in those instances I try to record a photograph But when you see for example, a mob of people beating somebody I feel sort of as a human as a citizen, I should at least just intervene in some way That’s something that I’ve struggled with a lot Okay, so you okay so you said you said that you don’t intervene now in your book The account of your severe beating I looked up some press coverage of that and I was like, okay, so you said you don’t intervene Severe beating Um, I I looked up some press coverage of that and and I believe this was in your book as well that while you were Being assaulted so badly There were press there and they did nothing to intervene they were just recording and and taking snapshots and video and so forth and and you know in the book that sounds like that they’re derelict in their duties and maybe In particular because you were also a journalist and maybe that you know, maybe there’s a special category there but And then also as a journalist if you are recording It’s like you’re putting the hole above the part in some sense, right because you think you’re your journalistic It’s demanded of you because of your journalistic integrity to record and not to intervene But but you said you feel the pull on your conscience about that So how do you how is it that you’ve learned to live with that? And what makes you think that you made the right decision doing what you’ve done? And maybe you don’t know maybe you know I’m not entirely sure if I made the right decision. Fortunately, I haven’t been like right next to somebody who was on the Nearly getting killed. I think for that type of instance It’s very clear that that that there’s a demand for an obligation for an intervention So that somebody’s not murdered For me, well, you’re I mean you’re also not a police officer and and you’re not Armed and I don’t imagine you’re trained in in street fighting Or that sort of thing so in some sense You know fools jump in where angels fear to tread and two people beat to death isn’t really an improvement over one And so i’m not saying like lennard cone that canadian songwriter said there’s no decent place to stand in a massacre You know, sometimes you’re in a situation where anything you do is bad Because the situation is so terrible. So, okay, so you’ve had moral qualms about how Apart from the action you should be under those situations What about like you’re obviously not very happy with what’s happening about antifa and you’re on the ground Also as opposed I would say to these journalists who are minimizing what antifa is doing They’re much more up in the air in some sense, right? So you’re down in the trenches to the point where you’re getting beat up for it And then I would say the people who aren’t doing that and reporting on it They’ve got one form of blinders on because they’re not doing what they’re doing They’ve got one form of blinders on because they’re not seeing what’s actually happening But in some sense the risk for you and your integrity is that you you have the opposite problem You’re so damn involved. You’re watching buildings burn. You’re watching cars melt You’re watching people be assaulted and being assaulted yourself that how do you protect yourself against the possibility that you’re exaggerating the threat because You you know, your sample is up biased. You’re in the middle of the damn riots all the time So Yeah, I think that’s a fair question and a fair criticism I Though the instances of ultraviolence that I’ve seen in a written about and recorded video for Those are and it goes that important But they’re not the full story and in my the purpose of writing unmasked my book was The ideology that I think is is ultimately much much more dangerous than these instances of violence that lead to people getting seriously injured or killed in that I think it’s a it’s a theme and a subject that you’ve discussed before in your speeches and your writings professor. It’s about this belief that for Pursuing this justice racial justice anti-racism whatever name they want to give They believe that No, no act that they can make can never goes too far and that’s sort of the Yo, isn’t that a lovely thing? Wouldn’t that be a lovely thing to have on your side? So imagine that You’re so virtuous in your pursuits That you are now entitled to do absolutely anything to anyone whenever you want I Mean if you if you if you have that kind of cognitive structure, I mean first of all, you’re not very self-reflective It’s like do I really think that I’m so ethical that I can give myself a free hand to do anything? And so I’m increasingly skeptical about Large-scale ethical claims of that sort, you know, well, this is so important that Well that what exactly? Well, it depends on how important it is. And well we could climate change a good example of that well, if it’s the ultimate environmental catastrophe everywhere and it’s going to happen within 20 years then Well, we should do everything Well, okay, let’s get detailed about this. Does that mean we get to beat up andy? No, if he’s not that happy about climate change. Well, he’s just one guy You know and it’s a planet we’re talking about here, you know And that’s independent in some sense of whether there are warranted concerns on the environmental front I know there are like the oceans are over fished for example. That’s not a good thing. It’s stupid We should stop doing it But it’s this moral license that goes along with this claim to virtue that really scares the hell out of me and it’s also the fact that you can instantly demonize your enemies because if you’re so virtuous that Everything is justified than anyone who opposes you is virtually satan themselves Yes, i’ve seen this with my own eyes This is dehumanization dehumanization One of the really shocking things I witnessed last year at the beginning of the riot so I was under cover. So Again, I couldn’t I couldn’t intervene because if I did it would potentially blow my cover and I could get seriously injured or killed but This was an end of may days after george floyd had died and the rioting had not at that point spread outside of minneapolis There was a man that was targeted by the mob. He was accused of being Bright wing I whatever accusation is true or false. I don’t know but he was beaten up Uh, they got him on the ground and then one of them with glee uh rushed at his head and and kicked his teeth in and You could actually see the teeth on the ground And what do you mean with by with what do you mean by with glee? Why that phrase? The crowd around him celebrated that act was calling this person a fascist and was happy that he was He was crying and how and how could you tell they how could you tell they were happy? What exactly were they doing? They had smiles on the faces since they were looking at this bleeding person on the ground Yeah, well, it’s hard to see it’s hard to see exactly what would just it’s hard to see exactly what moral claim would justify that smile So what do you think’s really going on there just out of curiosity you watched it right up close So what are those people celebrating like what what is it in them? That’s responding to that? Well, you said with glee, you know that that that’s a very specific word So what is it that they’re celebrating? As far as you can tell They think that a fascist or a racist got the violence against him that he deserved Yeah, but I don’t believe that you know, I don’t believe that’s what they’re celebrating Because I don’t think I don’t think they’re that good I think they’re celebrating watching some poor son of a bitch get hurt And that that satisfies something unbelievably dark in their souls like the desire to burn the desire to burn down buildings The desire to melt cars the desire for the whole goddamn thing to go up in flames because they’re resentful and bitter Because we can’t take these things at face value right it’s like no no, you don’t understand You’re smiling and laughing while someone just got his teeth kicked in no trial no jury No defense. He’s on the ground. He’s mobbed by by overwhelming force And you’re celebrating that and you’re telling me that’s because of your virtues It’s like I don’t think so And this is the danger we’re facing right with with with this on the on in all these activist groups I’ve had people like that at my Come and protest against me. I can kind of spot them because I have some clinical training I can I can tell the guys it’s almost always men And they’re always almost always there to prey on unsuspecting women by being their ideological affiliates and those damn guys, man The worse it goes the happier they are I wanted to ask you about the based on your Your knowledge your background your clinical experience. What what is the psychology of this mob violence When I see it it it Like I I don’t even recognize some of these it’s seen they seem animalistic is what I mean Um in no, they’re worse than animals They’re worse than animals because animals they just kill to eat, you know Human beings they have a twist in them that makes them far worse than animals when they really get going Well, I think it’s I think you really want to know what I think. I think it’s revenge against god for the crime of being That’s really what I think It’s cain and cain and abel it’s like oh abel’s your abel’s your guy god How about if I take him out in the field and beat him to death? How do you feel about that? all my sacrifices went Unrewarded Yeah, it’s like Yeah, that’s what it is at the bottom of the hell of things And so, you know these people they can light the whole world on fire and and that’s partly what you’re so I I didn’t get your answer to one question. Sorry about the potential warping of your viewpoint because you’re so much in the action like how do you You know what? I mean if you’re in that all the time That becomes your world in some sense and how do you know that you’re not exaggerating the threat because you’re in in the Because I described Step by step What what what is happening and let’s say this particular anecdote of portland in the summer of 2020 But then I also follow that up with certain dabhas The consequences the political consequences say in portland last year The consequences of the political consequences of the political consequences of the political consequences of the political consequences of the political consequences The city council did vote to defund a law enforcement based on the Demands of the radical left activists those who carried out violence. They defunded police They also abolished the gun violence reduction team and a part of my reporting is the crime It’s a crime reporting particularly in the cities and areas. I know what best so north west of the united states And we’ve seen that we have the actual Data the number of violent crimes that has shot up ever since the death of george floyd last year in portland and other major american cities Portland this year 2021 has now surpassed its record all-time record for homicides and and this is a direct consequence of the political decisions that were made by local politicians in response to Their constituents as well as outsiders going in carrying out acts of political violence and carrying having certain demands over Okay, so that’s what you point to concretely So, okay. So let’s take that apart a little bit. So You have an ideology at the core of this. I want to go through this really programmatically one of the things that So i’m going to kind of mangle a bunch of questions here together. So These these core people It’s not so obvious to me that they’re simply left wing You know because well some of them are anarchists. Okay, like what the hell’s an anarchist exactly is he left wing or right wing? It’s like in some sense. It doesn’t matter. I know I know ideas matter. That isn’t what i’m saying but in some sense it doesn’t matter because That person who’s decided to be violent is is working to burn the whole damn thing down for whatever reason You know and and they also describe them as paramilitary and organized militia and there’s kind of a there’s a wrap There’s a right wing flavor to that right the uniforms because Uniform is more an element of the right than the left all things considered and I know that things get hard conceptually when the when the opposites touch Right and people debate about whether the national socialists were left wing or right wing and the answer was well They were a mixed complex mixture of both and the worst of both in some sense, although you know, maybe not worse than stalin or mao, but So and so that also means that people on the left can point to in tifa even the violent types and say well You know what makes you so sure they’re left wing and why should we bear the the mark of their disquiet? You know as a stain on our political beliefs So then okay now so there’s ambiguity about the real radicals and it’s certainly to the degree that they’re radical The degree to which they can sow confusion about their political ideologies all to their benefit Right. So if both the right wing moderates and the left wing moderates point to them and say well your left wing or your right wing Depending on what they’re trying to justify and that screws the system up if they’re hardcore anarchists great You know, that’s all the better. They just play into their hands Okay, and then you you pat you you laid out a pathway from that violent Interchange to Policy decisions like defund the police for example and the pulling back of law enforcement and then you said well, that’s destabilizing cities That’s actually what’s happening. That’s that’s data and so But it’s not that easy to trace It’s not so easy to trace that back to the radicals themselves Except in so far as they want to destabilize right the ideological trail isn’t isn’t so clear So now is there a question in there? Well, I guess the one of the questions is Is it reasonable to characterize the radical extremists as either left or right? Do you think that’s actually helpful? I Characterize them as far left and I can understand that there may be confusion about the ideology certainly I’ve Very frequently come across people on the right who would describe Antifa as radical democrats or radical liberals and that’s incorrect I think what makes me give give a partisan label to the antifa ideologies because by their own Admissions and their texts and the philosophers that they look to it’s this fusion of both anarchism as well as communism so they What makes them different from the traditional revolutionary communists of previous decades is that? They’re not looking for creating a tyrannical Top to bottom state communist regime in fact, they feel that communism failed in part because it was in implemented in that way and In china or the soviet union they believe in the abolishment the state and this is where the anarchist side of the ideology comes out So that society could be organized into communist communes And so they’ve tried some of these experiments at many times Um last year in in the middle of the height of The riots that happened In seattle there was the capitol hill autonomous zone otherwise known as chas and I went up there and that was this experiment that these anarchist communist antifa actually put into practice they were able to Force police to evacuate from a police department and then promptly took over six blocks of a neighborhood not that far from downtown and they established a hard border and in it they actually took attempts at state building in terms of Uh, this is where you go to get your food. This is where you go to get your water We don’t you don’t have to pay for it. This is mutual aid. We’re going to do our gardening in the park They actually try to grow fruits and vegetables. Um, the very that’s actually pretty funny That’s actually quite funny the garden in the park thing, you know, because really that’s that’s your solution You dimwits, that’s really what you’re doing now. Okay, so let me hammer you on that a bit So let’s say because when I was reading your book, I thought okay. Well one of the solutions is Arrest people who break windows enough of this like when they break the law arrest them It doesn’t matter what their political background is and then you think well, you know well, do you really want to I remember in toronto when the uh, G7 came to downtown toronto. They basically turned the whole damn city into an armed camp And I walked down there by the barbed wire and the cement borders and I thought god damn it You’re turning this city into a prison And if you don’t think you’re going to have prison riots because you did that you’re a fool And so so like i’m not a big fan of authoritarian states And so then I might say well, is it okay in the u.s. If the state is loose enough in some sense to allow these Foolish experiments to take place because maybe by doing so by being that loose I mean, I know the you have the riots that’s not good but by being that loose it gives us a chance for these ideas to manifest themselves in a small scale prove their total lack of validity and their incoherence and then just sort of disappear Now the alternative would be to crack down in some sense more police to stop the violence in the riots And and to arrest people who are clearly breaking the law and we can talk about why that isn’t happening, too But so what do you think about that like is it it is it a sign of a functioning democracy that it’s loose enough To allow such things to happen Um, I think allowing this stuff to go on um under normal circumstances if if if the protesters or the people who were somehow discontent Had the self-awareness to recognize when to give it up. But the thing with the these extremists is that they They they never admit when they’re wrong They can only they always interpret history and contemporary actions as when it fails. It’s because we didn’t try hard enough So last year the the democrat mayor of seattle jenny durkin Um, she took a hands-off approach to the autonomous. So she thought okay It would look optically really bad to send in the national guard to get all the law enforcement across seattle Look bad Yeah, yeah, I know optics man to shut it down Let’s give them that space and she she went on cnn in this infamous clip and she was asked about it She said hey, it could be a summer of love and in some ways on the outside We know what happened. Hey, we know bloody well what happened after the summer of love That was the rolling stones concert and the hell’s angels and so forth It’s like the summer of love deteriorated into anarchy hell pretty much instantly So that’s a fairly foolish metaphor, let’s say Okay, so she let it go. Sorry to interrupt you It’s fine So during the day it did look like a street party and that was when the journalists were there That’s when you would see the videos in the photos giving out people giving out free food Um people supporting one another Providing everything that you would need with free of costs and families could go in and out freely But at night is where the true side of that autonomism came out, which is that when you have no rule of law true anarchy then How do you bring order to a place when there are people who are violent extreme and willing to kill or rape? and so the course of what happened over the three weeks is that In these tents where some of these women were one woman was nearly raped Uh, people started fires in the streets and this was a really densely this is a really densely packed neighborhood high high rise buildings So people live there the buildings were set on fire And shootings occurred almost every night and there were six shootings. So why do you think okay? That’s that’s really okay. So that’s real. Let’s let’s take that apart too. Okay, so Look, we understand pretty well as as actual social scientists What happens when it’s a summer of love Okay, so imagine you put a group together of people who are only agreeable. So they’re just compassionate And so and temperamentally so and maybe let’s say let’s make them like ethically so as well So not only are they compassionate? Temperamentally, but they’ve built an ethic around that so all they do is cooperate like mad Well, you let one psychopath in there and all hell breaks loose because there’s no defenses against the psychopaths and that’s the free rider problem now I talked to robert trivers who’s one of the world’s great evolutionary biologists about a week and a half ago about the Free rider problem the cheating detection problem. So and that’s the problem. I just outlined. It’s like if everyone’s cooperating And then there’s no enforcement The stage is set for the absolute Exploitation of that cooperating group by anyone who doesn’t share that ethic And so here’s imagine this so Women are more agreeable than men So more empathic And so that’s kind of rough on women because because the men are less empathic They’re they’re harsher and rougher and tougher and meaner and more blunt And so women put up with a lot because of that because a really different Man can be quite brutal now That can be hand-homed hemmed in by other traits like conscientiousness and etc But we’ll just keep it simple for now. So then why do women want less agreeable men? That’s beauty and the beast by the way, that’s the conundrum there, right? Well, because you need someone who’s not that agreeable to keep you safe from someone who’s really not that agreeable And so men exist and this is part of sexual selection men exist on this weird line Where they have to be disagreeable enough to keep the real criminal psychopaths at bay Those are the guys who come out at night, right? And then but they have to be agreeable enough to be empathic enough to be generous and share That’s a really tight line and it’s one that women are negotiating all the time and Trivers said that no it was I talked about this before And share that’s a really tight line and it’s one that women are negotiating all the time and Trivers said that no it was I talked to David buss, too buss said that Young women are really attracted to dark triad guys. They’re machiavellian and manipulative, but they’re confident and so they kind of look successful and they’re the risk takers they kind of have the The persona of daring success But they’re they’re they’re dark they’re they’re they they border on psychopathic But as the women get more mature, they’re less likely to be taken in by that So anyway, anyways, so this summer of love the summer of love problem is well what happens at night? Okay. So why do you think it happens at night and not during the day? Just out of curiosity. You’ve been there. Like what are you watching? Who’s who’s coming out at night exactly? Uh, there were gang members who were there and they’re they were armed I think they took advantage of the literal literal anarchy and that they could go to a place where there was no police because there was a hard There were hard borders that were surrounded this Zone so and law enforcement kept away and so that was just a perfect opportunity for Criminals to go in and what and what did they want to do? What what is it that it gave them free rein to do? Shootings Okay, so that’s what that’s kind of odd so Who are they shooting? I mean look if it’s gang warfare, you know why they’re shooting each other It’s usually guys who are looking for status who’ve been challenged in some way who are out to prove themselves Like there’s a good sociology of that kind of shooting. It’s like well, why are these guys going into this free zone? Summer love thing and shooting who are they shooting and why? I don’t know the name But they were untrained and they ended up murdering a 16 year old as far as I know nobody No suspect has ever been identified in that case And how how was that handled by the mainstream media that particular event because that’s quite the event Yeah, that was then the second murder that happened after tall of the stone The second murder that happened after tall of the stone so then by then the press started to be a bit more critical because that was Nearing three weeks at that point a lot of the residents were feeling a bit more emboldened to speak out anonymously To the not anonymously but unnamed to the press about what they’re witnessing what they’re hearing at night Um, I was there one of the nights that I was there um a burglar broke until a a car repair business And allegedly tried to start a fire inside but the the owner was there and he had security so he detained this individual the news went out and They had a speaker system set up in an autonomous zone with the microphone somebody went up to the stage And saw that a black person was being held by some racist whites an entire mob Sprinted to this business Broke down the barrier at the business got in and got their got their guy out um the business owner said He told press later on that he had called police about a dozen times and he just wouldn’t respond What’d they do with him? Uh the person that got away Oh, he got away. I see. I see. Yeah, it’s amazing. They didn’t lynch him Oh, so yeah You’re talking about the business owner. You’re right. Yeah. Yeah, sorry It could have been come deadly at that point. I again, this is one of those things like i’m watching and I you know, I feel so helpless in a way that i’m observing and I If they start to kill this business owner that there was nothing I could do. Uh police weren’t responding. They had already received Uh many many phone calls about that that incident and they didn’t respond um But I bring up the case of the chasels just sort of like just one example of what like a real life manifestation of this antifa ideology is there’s certain parts that are you could argue are nice like um this aspect of community building that I witnessed during the day was um Irrelevant it seemed like a like a religious community and that they recognize Okay, but let’s let’s let’s take that apart a bit here, too. Okay. So first of all, let’s not forget that this daytime utopia Existed in the middle of the richest country in the world’s ever produced it’s like so We’re giving things away for free. They have no cost. It’s like no. No someone else bore the cost that food Didn’t magically appear out of nowhere Nothing that satiates hunger Comes without a cost nothing that provides shelter comes without a cost and so this is an artificial utopia set up by Clueless juveniles who have no sense whatsoever of how privileged they are. They’re so privileged. They think food is free And you know, they’re the reason they’re that privileged is because food is damn near free And the reason for that is that we live in a miraculous society that’s made food free And it isn’t because it has no cost man You think of all the blood that’s been spilled over the centuries to pay for The terrible struggle that it took us all to figure out how to do that That’s not free You know, and it’s an appalling indictment of our education system that anybody can come out of it thinking that way So even during the day so you have and it’s the same with the san francisco summer of love in some sense, you know That could have never come about at all even to the degree that it did without there being this unbelievable Largesse and and plenitude that characterizes modern western societies So, I mean when we see people on the street even and and i’m not saying that being on the street is not a terrible thing But it’s a complicated thing We don’t see people who are skeletal We see people who have enough to eat And so it’s just rubbish right from top to bottom and and To think of to have a politician say well, you know, maybe it could be a summer of love It’s like what the hell does that mean exactly? Our system is so broke that violent clueless radical juveniles can arbitrarily Occupy a part of a city and in two weeks make something better Really Like what the hell I don’t get it now you talked about optics so let’s so I’ve been talking to these democrats for example about How to conduct yourself ethically in the political domain and i’ve been talking to republicans as well And one of the things we sort of zeroed in on is this idea of instrumentality You know if you’re doing something for a particular goal Maybe almost regardless of what that goal is Then you tend to use people for your end and you might say well we have to stop trump So it’s okay to use this person for that end But I don’t buy that At all. I think there’s something deeply wrong about it, you know, and so when I do these podcasts, for example I’m what i’m really trying to do is just to find out some things. I don’t know I don’t really have a plan to do that I’m what i’m really trying to do is just to find out some things. I don’t know I don’t really have a plan like my did I have a plan to talk to you? I’ll tell you what my plan was it was like well I’m going to read as much of andy’s book as I can manage in in the time I have to do it I’m going to do my background research To the degree that I can then i’m going to ask him a bunch of questions about things. I don’t understand That’s the whole damn plan and this instrumentality We’ve got to get rid of this idea that we can use people for an end I don’t care what the damn end is And you know if you and I are doing this right, we’re having an honest conversation. That’s all we’re doing And that’s a hard thing to do So, okay, so Back to okay your answer to whether or not you’re exaggerating this was to point to the consequences like the defund the police that sort of consequence and the destabilization of cities like minneapolis and portland And how destabilized do you think they have become because of this? but they destabilize in a sense that the The people who are dying are mostly black and brown people so the Elite liberal class of the cities Don’t really they don’t experience that loss of life if if you know what I mean They may hear the gunshots more frequently in the streets they may see Businesses shuttered or damaged because of bullet wounds, but it’s not It’s not people in their families and their friends circles who are dying so in some in some ways are kind of always protected from the consequences of their political decision-making or political demands I think one other thing about yeah, so if you look at hierarchies if you look at the way hierarchies work in animal kingdom for example, so even Let’s say birds that really don’t live in flocks They still have a hierarchy and the hierarchy is some birds have better nesting sites And so they’re closer to food. They don’t get Exposed to wind and rain so much and they’re birds that are generally in better physical health They’re like sort of They’re birds that are in better physical health, let’s let’s leave it at that they sing louder songs the males They attract higher quality healthier female mates. They have the good nests Okay Now a flu comes through that area an avian flu the birds die from the bottom of the hierarchy up And so that’s very much in keeping with what you’re describing right is that as we move up our hierarchies whether they’re based on competence or power We shield ourselves from stress That’s partly why we actually want to move up the damn hierarchies and so then when things get destabilized People die from the bottom up. That’s what’s the old saying when the when the upper class catches a cold the lower class dies of pneumonia And so that’s the luxury belief problem too, isn’t it is we can have these Adulpated utopian schemes that we use to pat ourselves on the back for our ethical superiority We can fund their implementation because you talk about that interestingly in your book, right these left-wing organizations Funneling money into these more violent extremist groups We can pat ourselves on the back for standing up for the oppressed and when things go sideways Well, it’s just the oppressed that die So I can’t figure out what left stands for this, you know, that’s the thing I can’t get is that I thought you guys were for the working class I think how this is demonstrated in one way it very clearly was last year In minneapolis when some of the worst rioting broke out there was the minnesota freedom fund which was set up to provide jail support in legal support for those who were Arrested and charged as crimes related to the riots The public raised 35 million u.s dollars for that bail fund. So everybody Was bailed out and there was millions more to spare Um kamala harris, you called them far left you specifically called minnesota the minnesota freedom. Sorry, it was mff minnesota freedom fund fund you called the I went looked up the board members there to see who they were and you know, they’re Professional types most of them community activists some of them lawyers, etc. I mean it looks like a perfectly legitimate Site so why did you call them far left? And why do you think they’re not legitimate because that’s a pretty that’s a pretty Deadly epithet coming from your tongue given what you’ve seen and and heard so Is that was that justifiable that epithet and if so, why? I think so because the the the belief system was Undergirding that that whole project of the freedom fund is that the criminal justice system should be abolished That is that’s a strong claim you’re you’re okay So so I want to push you on that because I like to talk about specifics and I noticed that you called them far left And so now you just made a pretty radical claim So i’m going to read a criticism about you that I found on wikipedia if you don’t mind because this is a good time To introduce it. Yes nose coverage of antifa and muslims has been controversial Okay, that’s true and the accuracy and credibility of his reporting have been disputed by other journalists Yeah, well, so what right because of course he has been frequently accused of sharing misleading or selective material That’s a little more pointed a criticism described as a provocateur And accused of having links with militant right wing and far right groups in portland Okay, so now you talk about the minnesota freedom fund you say far left and someone skeptical watching this is going to think yeah Well, of course, that’s what andy noh thinks because he’s linked with militant right wing and far right groups in portland and is a Provocateur and then you’re also a disciple of james o’keefe the founder of project veritas Which is labeled in wikipedia as a right wing activist group Okay, so so given all that why should we believe your characterization of the minnesota freedom fund? And you know, this isn’t at me attempting to hook you I But but I want to know because This is the concentric circle problem, right? We identified the activists. They just want everything to burn And so they’re nobody’s friends if they’re sense if they’re sensible, but now we’re talking about a circle outside that That’s the minnesota freedom fund and from there you move into let’s say the democratic the left wing of the Democratic Party as a whole So this is a crucial issue So you said they want to abolish the criminal justice system? How do you know that why do you think that’s a reasonable claim Well, you can look at those who were involved in running that freedom that bail fund It’s part of this what was a fringe belief on the left that America so from its founding to today. So Racism is built into every single institution that it’s not simply you cannot reform it that what needs to be done is to They say burn it down Abolish this abolish that completely Get rid of it all because it’s irredeemable and unfixable and I think that that radical type of belief that drives Bail funds like the minnesota freedom fund like the pdx How does that belief how does that belief drive their bail fund and what are they doing wrong by bailing these people out? Because they they believe that the criminal justice system targets leftist black and brown people And so anybody who’s charged with the crime? That that’s not a it’s not legitimate within the system because the entire institution policing the courts Judges all of that top to bottom Is white supremacists and whether or not the individual is guilty of a crime Is racist and therefore it needs to be abolished Yeah, yeah, you know so one of the markers for this might be that real proclivity to use low resolution characterizations You know like i’ve been watching the cop 26th debacle let’s say and one of the things that really struck me was Target zero and I think that’s a really good point And one of the things that really struck me was target zero And i’m thinking Target zero a zero Zero is an interesting number Zero means none No pollution Well, that means you don’t get to go to the bathroom anymore zero You know like everything has a mess and how about how about some? How about some incremental improvement in a positive direction, you know You’re it seems to me that thinking gets sloppy and self-congratulatory As we move towards statements like the system is broken It’s like well the system has a lot of parts a lot And they’re not all broken you can tell that because you can plug your toaster in in the morning and hey You put some bread in which you can also get by the way and then you have toast Now so that’s not broken And so it’s this in judicious critique And that speaks of carelessness Failure to be on the ground and moral self-congratulation And it’s extreme and then also interestingly enough it also speaks to that leftist preoccupation in some sense with unearned privilege, right? because the only time that you can Get away with thinking that sloppy is if you’re so protected from the consequences of your own failure to grasp the essentials of life that Having that mistake doesn’t actually cost you anything you know the people on cnn who are viewing the the portland riots from afar they’re not Having their house burned down. They’re not getting beat up in the street So it doesn’t really matter that they have this low resolution view of it And so let okay, so let’s go into the criminal justice system for a minute Because the americans do lock up a lot of people Right for a western democracy. They’ve got quite the damn prison system going Now along with a rapid acceleration in that prison system There was a quite a rapid decline in violent crime from say Especially from the 80s till a couple of years ago And I don’t know what the causal links are there and i’m not I’m not making a case for a link between the prison system and the decline in criminality because it’s complicated But they do lock up a lot of people you guys lock up a lot of people you yankees And a disproportionate number of them are black And so that’s that’s a problem That’s a big problem It’s like the incarceration rate’s a big problem and the racial disparity is a big problem and it does beg the question Well to what degree is the system corrupt it begs the question of to what degree the corrupt system serves those the people in power Who are let’s say? disproportionately less likely to be black particularly and so And then you can see how that the guilt about that which is felt really broadly especially among empathic liberal types Increases the probability that they’re going to turn a blind eye to any manifestation of what seems to be associated And even a vague way against that And I don’t exactly know What? We should do about it You know, it’s really a cause so sorry i’d like to have your thoughts on those matters So I think the vagaries of things that they oppose such as using terms as like those systems Using terms as like the system burn it down abolish systemic racism these things are not defined really because I think by intention they never want their Goals to be reached they need they exist almost they being the radical fallout the revolutionary fallout, whatever as Um They need to exist in opposition to something so Over and over like let’s say last year all these mayors all these city councils We’re giving in to essentially all the demands you want to defund the police fine We’ll slash from the budget you want to abolish this gun violence reduction team fine. We’ll do that You want police to evacuate from this police department we’ll give you that and it was never never ever enough in fact In every time that these uh, let’s say in portland the portland mayor or the mayor in seattle every time that they capitulated What happened was demand for more extreme actions was stronger from these extremists and when they didn’t get that um Important for example the rioters went to the home of the portland mayor ted wheeler and actually set The building on fire and he ended up having to move out of his condo He apologized to his neighbors and he’s essentially in hiding in a way We don’t know where he lives now um in seattle they The radical did that not did that did that not change his viewpoint in some important manner or did he feel that the Protesters were so justified that it’s no bloody wonder they tried to burn down his house What’s the psychology there as far as you can tell? Um I think after that experience and after the the mayor of seattle experienced something similar in terms of people showing up at her at her door, um They They gave fewer concessions after that you know were In in the language moving forward that i’ve seen in some of the decision making pulled back on sort of the um The last the radicalism that they had embraced in the earlier months of the rioting They didn’t pull back completely but pull back enough that you know, there there were subtle things for example um like um the Uh the mayor much more being willing to speak critically Of violent riots that were happening in his city Whereas before it was okay, so it had some effect Yes, there was always there’s criticism before but then there was always You know, this is taking place in the context of historic racial justice protests and we can make something great out of it He went he didn’t He didn’t always qualify his statements moving forward, which I think were meaningful Uh important in that regard Before I forget I wanted to go back to one thing, you know, you wrote from the wikipedia articles Yes, yes, I want to and the and the freedom fund I know we were that’s still hanging because you called them far left and now I just called you far right So who the hell can trust you? So like how do we wade through this? Um, so the I’ve been one of the ways that um antifa and their sympathizers in some publications in the press have tried to Delegitimize my work and my voice is to To Posit or put out this idea that um, because I am against antifa Uh by default then that must mean that i’m pro-fascism So they’ve tried now for years to throw any type of accusation at me and hoping Knowing that it’s false but hoping That even if it doesn’t stick completely that i’m never left in the same state as before that it’s always that i’m always dirty In a way and even if that works, I mean I was nervous about talking to you It works man. It works and believe me i’ve experienced the same thing and it doesn’t take much to stain someone’s reputation, right, especially because Look, there’s seven billion people in the world. There’s no way i’m going to talk to all of them. And so You’ll kind of need hardly any excuse at all not to talk to someone So, you know a little stain will do the trick And so this this james o’keefe thing You’re described by your critics as a disciple of james o’keefe, okay The founder of project veritas a right-wing activist group So what’s the story with that exactly? Well a disciple would That was tend to imply that like i’ve been mentor or for a long time by project veritas or james o’keefe, which I haven’t Um, but for the record I I’m Very supportive of the work that they do I think they do Great invest they invest the resources money and time getting people to be undercover Journalists to record things like otherwise you would never Get on record Um, I understand there’s a lot of criticisms, uh against and are they Are they reasonably conceptualized as a right-wing activist group? What exactly does that phrase mean in this context do you think Uh, well that’s meant to be disparaging. I think me it’s probably fair to describe them as conservative um in the journalists, they’re Conservative but um The what they do is important for example they um, I thank them in my book because they provided to me some of the primary documents of when one of their Journalists went undercover into rose city antifa and that’s something that to date nobody else in anywhere in the united states has been able to do to actually Get somebody who is completely unknown Located to portland build a whole new identity and persona and get this person infiltrate the group in terms of the membership process As much as possible That type of work deserves Praise not condemnation Um, and Uh, I guess the fact that i’ve been um You know on record supportive of project veritas people are trying to use that just near me I think the more serious accusations i’ve been leveled against me spurious ones are accusing me of Being like in debt with violent extremists on the yeah Militant right wing and far-right groups in portland. Okay, so what what’s the story there? Why why and you know, because Young carl jung said every projection has to have a hook You know like there’s going to be ways you’re going to be smeared that will work and there are going to be ways that you’re Going to be smeared that won’t work and the ones that work. There’s a hook, right? There’s something about you that makes that stick a little better, right? And so we all have to examine our consciences when we get smeared because you think well You know Do I have a weak spot that i’m unaware of that makes me much more susceptible to that particular accusation? And so, you know you said well, you’re you’re a critic of antifa and that’s enough for you to be labeled as right wing and fair enough but like Anything else lurking around there that makes you an easy target of that sort of accusation I’m glad you asked so this really started. Um, so after I was beaten by antifa in the summer of 2019 That was when my profile rose a lot before that. I was just a regional small figures Occasionally interviewed on fox news, but otherwise really unknown I think what I noticed after that was So what happened was a few months after that a local left-wing alternative publication in portland called the portland mercury did what they said was it’s the closest story to Expose me they had to interview a person given this individual a pseudonym Uh today I still don’t know who this individual is like the real identity that they accused with and provided no evidence. They said that I was uh In the presence of when a right-wing riot was being planned against antifa and that I had an agreement Against the right-wing brawlers for mutual protection. That was the word this individual the pseudonym this person said I was never reached for comment for the story Um, and then it was printed on a local blog and then picked up by Journalists on the left who sought to discredit me such I think there was daily beasts Slay the same places that have gone after you’d a professor and so they repeated this claim and um, I had my legal, um council signed a cease and desist letter to the publication and then they they just ignored it and the thing in the u.s is You know to To actually win defamation when you’re a public figure particularly against the newspapers it’s so it’s near impossible so I felt really helpless and to this day i’m still really furious about it that this person Could just levied a serious accusation against me I have no idea who it is and I have no way to even counter like to confront my This way. Well, you do have one you do have one way The one way is to just tell the truth Yes, right. I mean, yeah that does counter your accuser and every time that something like that’s been happened happened to me at least so far Ultimately, it backfired Now, I mean i’m knocking on wood, you know, and I know that you know Maybe my days are numbered in all sorts of different ways, but so far it hasn’t worked Sometimes it’s taken a long time for the for the tide to turn For the tide to turn But it’s always turned and so I would say if you’re still feeling rage about that like one thing you can take solace in is that To the degree that you’re capable of representing the truth that is the best protection you have against anything And I don’t think there is any better protection against anything than that. They’re like the courts anything like that’s like No, that’s when you’re playing a deep game The only real defense you have is truth and like truth is reality itself man. You have that on your side It’s walking softly walking carefully Speaking softly, sorry and carrying a big stick so you know and that that it’s interesting too that you’re still angry about that because That’s a hell of a thing to carry along and around with you, you know it corrodes you over time that that kind of anger and and so it You’re doing pretty good given all things all the things that have been stacked up against you So I feel angry because i’ve always i’ve gone through my life like I have no I don’t have I don’t have a criminal record and i’ve been arrested. I always I do things right, you know, I follow the rules I don’t support any political violence and then this persona Identity that others have made this made-up person of who andy know is And has gotten many to believe it, you know, they Presented this person who’s somebody who yeah, it’s a made-up person too, eh because they’re pseudonymous You know, that’s so interesting. They had to fabricate a person to fabricate you Yeah um, so it just you know, it feels I i’ve been wronged in that regard and um The evidence I was put out to try to support it. They said there was undercover video the video they provided was me Uh documenting the violent brawl That happened in everything before and they said that because I was in presence In the presence and in proximity to people on the right that I was with them or part of them, which is completely Untrue and that type of standard would never be applied to other journalists. Um, it’s a backhanded compliment, you know Is it how so? Well, they obviously think you’re a threat Right Right. Well, that’s worth thinking about right? I mean that’s what we’re thinking about because it means you’re successful enough so that people are willing to generate lies to take you out and so I know that’s that’s that’s small solace. Yeah. Yeah, we were talking at the beginning There’s how many times have you been beat up doing what you’re doing and why the hell do you keep doing it? I’ve been assaulted or attacked. Um in total four times Two of which were really serious. So the june 2019 Most people i’ve seen those pictures where i’m covered in all the the milkshakes all But I had a brain hemorrhage from that beating so How that attack started is they punched me really hard In the back of the head from behind. Okay, so that’s worth that’s worth thinking about. Okay. Let’s just think about that for a minute Okay, so now you also said these guys were wearing fiberglass reinforced gloves Okay, so here’s the kind of courageous person who went after you Is they wrapped their fists in a solid material and instead of confronting you face to face like someone who’s you know, vaguely civilized might In a in a brawl situation, let’s say they punched you in the back of the head Yeah, well that’s the kind of person we’re talking about right now And then we’re talking about someone else there’s even more than that is that they’ve managed to concoct for themselves a story about their moral virtue That’s so blinding That they think that doing that Was justified they’ve told them a story to justify that particular action It’s like Anybody who thinks someone like that is their friend better start thinking about what they mean by friend So and so what’s the consequence for you like you’re still doing this how come After that assault I was rushed to the hospital by ambulance and I had a Well swelling immediately that happened there on my face and my eyes I was bleeding all over bleeding from the ear From the ear A CT scan was done on me and the doctor let me know hours later that I had a subarachnoid Brain hemorrhage, which is bleeding in the brain very serious and I had about a year of like cognitive speech therapy physical therapy To address some of the deficiencies I had immediately after the assault It’s been two and a half years now, and I’m still dealing with the cognitive issues and this is what makes me so Angry because nobody’s ever been arrested for it and they these Anonymous assailants some of them took something away from me forever. They you know, I have I have memory issues and My mind is not the same as before. That’s what I deal with But I what was it like for you going back to your next riot after you? After you recovered from this or partially recovered from it. I mean, what was that day? Like you decided you’d go cover Something else violent. Tell me what that was like I wasn’t able to do it for many many months afterward and when I did it It was I had PTSD like this Overwhelming fear which wasn’t irrational and made sense. I was if these people knew who they were they would beat me again and Possibly kill me. I mean they have been Threatening to kill me Dozens and dozens of times on social media or through emails or phone calls or they would actually graffiti it across the city kill Andy no murder. Yeah, I’ve seen those pictures man. So this incitement of violence was was real and I went back out and you know, i’ve gotten a lot of criticisms over it, but Because I put myself out at risk and earlier this year in may I was beaten again when I was exposed What sort of criticisms? That you’re being too courageous. Is that the problem? As Andy knows being too courageous man. No, no, it’s the right way to interpret it You know and i’m asking about foolhardiness, right? Because like you got hurt bad and so i’m asking, you know How do you know it’s not time to hang up the shingle and do something that won’t get you killed? I’m not saying you should i’m not that is not what i’m saying but But it is worth asking yourself that question and so you did go back into the fray So and you got criticized for it, of course by people who wouldn’t do that. That’s for sure And they’re sensible, you know, whatever that means But so why did you do it and how did you overcome that fear man? Because of course you had something approximating ptsd and this isn’t some abstract fear like you could be killed you were damn near killed So there’s a you can do a hell of a lot of journalism from the comfort of a computer anywhere in the world However, the further that you are physically removed from whatever subject you’re you’re reporting on You introduce it’s much much easier to introduce more errors. So for example The journalists who are at uh bureau desks and bureaus in dc or new york who are reporting On the west coast from the comfort of their desks in their offices introduce a lot of error errors For example like describing it as simply a movement against fascism And I I needed to be on the ground. Yeah, as if that’s simple It’s like they’re fighting fascism. Are they exactly? How are they doing that and who are the fascists and how do you define fascism? And we tried to fight that before and it turned out to be pretty clear And we tried to fight that before and it turned out to be pretty complicated And so how is it that they’re simply fighting fascism? And who are these people that think that they’re fighting fascism and why do they think they’re right? Etc, etc, etc, etc so Yeah, simply that’s that low resolution thinking that That that really is it’s part of a It’s part of a self-congratulatory privileged blindness. That’s for sure Okay, so you need to be in the fray as far as you’re concerned to get the facts right and we already kind of walked through Why you think that you’re not exaggerating the threat right you look at what’s happened in these cities and the broader political landscape If you don’t mind Let’s go back to that Minnesota freedom fund again because that was really a crucial issue as far as I was concerned because it has to do with these Concentric circle this concentric circle issue. Okay, so they’re they’re they’re Helping people get out on bail as rapidly as possible Who are the people that they’re getting out on bail and why do they think that’s a good idea? They were completely indiscriminate. So the bail bailed out people who were Accused of things such as attempted murder and rape Uh one at least one individual Um who was bailed out? Uh based on these funds Has was went on to allegedly murder another individual Okay, so that that adds credence to your claim that The ideology driving this is a low resolution critique of the entire justice system, right? Because you wouldn’t be indiscriminate in your deliverance of bail If you didn’t believe the whole damn system was so corrupt that everyone arrested by it is best Uh, what would you call? It’s it’s just they were just addressed arrested for arbitrary and unreasonable Uh Reasons so Exactly, um in portland last year we have um, sorry a person last year who’s accused by uh, the state as well as the federal government of using fire bombs, uh to attack police during a riot in portland an individual who uh Referring to suspect muhammad malik he um Went from a different state to portland allegedly had training in st. Louis Was recorded allegedly on cctv various stores buying things such as bats and components to make the fire bombs He was held on a 2.2 million state uh bail in the state of oregon when he was arrested after the investigation that involved the fbi and the atf uh that that individual was that that’s the highest bail set out of The thousand people who were arrested in the riots in portland oregon last year The the bail fund in portland raised the money to cover 10 percent of today’s bail, which is 220,000 dollars cash they put to get this individual out And again, it’s it’s from this belief that these But there’s no absolutely no legitimacy to the american criminal justice system So any acts of sabotage such as getting out violent Allegedly violent people people who accuse of attempted murder people even accused accused of stabbing people and trying to kill others all of that, uh, they support and helping because they just view it as one more way of um Disrupting the system in a way to cause it to break apart Okay, and so that that’s what justifies your accusations Let’s say of far-left sympathies on the part of this particular fund and it’s the indiscriminate use of the money Okay, so let’s go into the bail issue bit so we could make a counter argument. We could say well Look, these people are innocent before they’re tried right we presume innocence and that’s why bail exists at least to some degree because People can get on with their lives when they’re getting mangled up by us a justice system that certainly can be arbitrary and harsh and Rather infrequently can deliver, you know true justice because that’s a heavenly ideal, isn’t it? And so so they could just say well look, you know Bail was set what the hell’s so wrong with us putting bail up And we’re just helping people who don’t have the means of fighting for themselves. And yeah, maybe they got carried away at a at a Demonstration but people get to demonstrate and that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t well that we shouldn’t help them out with bail And now you made a specific point about this particular guy 2.2 million bail, right? So If there is any legitimacy in the justice system, that would be an indication that maybe he went beyond the pale by any reasonable standards And so so how would you respond to because I can imagine someone from that fund sitting here listening to you thinking no We’re doing this for good reasons. And so what do you think about that kind of argument? I Would be willing to concede that to them if they weren’t willing to bail out people who’ve been arrested Let’s say two three four five six seven eight times within the course of two weeks when you see that it’s used essentially to get people out and then they’re Allegedly go on to riot within the same 24-hour period is arrested again. They have them out again then That looks more like It’s the indiscriminate aspect there, yeah, okay, okay. Okay fine. That’s good. I want to read something from your book Okay, i’d like to talk to you for about like a day, but we’re not going to be able to do it Okay, so Uh, let me make sure i’ve got the whole story here Yeah, this is from a section in your book where you’re talking about uh, but really about what led to the ideas of defunding the police and so forth and and about the fact that If there’s any interference In in a criminal matter between the police and someone who’s black in this particular case that the police are likely to be in terrible trouble for it and you talk a little bit about the difficulties that That presents for law enforcement officers who are at least sometimes trying to protect black people as well from Violent subgroups. So here’s some you’re talking about this guy He was arrested and shot by police after fighting with cops in a residential area He had shrugged off being hit with a taser round and reached inside his vehicle where there was a knife This was all caught on camera Blake who is black had a warrant issued for his arrest by the wisconsin circuit court for a felony sex crime And other charges related to domestic abuse the criminal complaint for that may 2020 incident accuses blake of raping a woman with his hand in front of her child According to a police scanner audio on august 23rd officers responded to the same woman’s residence after she called 911 And said blake was at her home again his criminal history Included assaulting police resisting arrest carrying a firearm while intoxicated and use of a dangerous weapon Even though he survived the shooting the response was again mass carnage and looting in the streets of kenosha Now this is the interesting part Not that all that wasn’t interesting Democratic vice presidential candidate camila harris later visited blake and said she was proud of him Okay, so i’m going to hammer you about that first because I I want to get to the bottom of this Did you take her words out of context proud of him? Do you think like are you because this is a pretty serious accusation Right. This guy does not sound good. In fact, he sounds pretty much like the antithesis of good And if a vice presidential candidate then visited him and said she was proud of him and that’s a contextually accurate quote then well then what the hell which is really the point you’re making there so Did are you being fair to camila harris? I think so. So I think at that time, um she and much of the public just weren’t aware that this was was The crimes that he’s been accused of or is convicted of that’s his history, but it’s that What we see over and over is Um the context of who these individuals are who are involved with Sometimes deadly encounters with police It’s almost like their whole Their whole history is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is that they’re black and essentially I think that camila and other democrat politicians Deed him as a george floyd 2.0 type of figure and saw only what was on the outside, which is a black man who had been shot by police This just Either discarded evidence early evidence. I was known about some of this criminal history. Some of it emerged more of it emerged later That type of stuff was irrelevant the narrative at hand because The kenosha riots were a part of riots that occurred in many other cities within this whole Movement for racial justice and police reform which the democrats in my view very cynically use as a campaigning point and as a as a way to batter The the trump pence campaign Why cynically You say because you know part of what i’ve kind of come to understand is that some of the stuff is worse because it’s not cynical You know what? I mean is there’s a cynical element and because people act instrumentally They want to win an election for example, and they think that they need to win at all costs because you know Look what we’re preventing and I get the malevolence and the cynicism But it’s more scary when you see that it’s actually good people Or people as good as you are as good as I am that are caught up in this sort of mess, you know Because it points to how complex and sticky and horrible it really is so I mean, you know We talked about the incarceration rates and the disproportionality of incarcerated people in the black community And that really is a problem, you know, and it might be a severe enough problem to bring the whole mess down Right. We don’t know It’s a real problem and it isn’t going away easily And we can’t even talk about it. Not not not deeply And so then we we fall into these low resolution categories the kind that you just said It’s like well justice system is biased against black people And so whenever a black person is treated badly by law enforcement There’s this reflexive move just to note the systemic inequality and to be on the side of the person who is a member of a group of people That is incarcerated at a much higher rate than other groups And so it points to some to a real problem. Now. God only knows what the problem is It isn’t a problem, right? First of all, it’s like 10 000 problems and each of those problems is really hard and you have to get a high resolution map of them but And you know we it I know why you went after camilla harris. It’s because well Could have she known Or did she just not know And then you know, that’s an important it’s a crucial question because lots of times you could know something if you want to but you decide not to I don’t think she cared to know because uh, I mean she’s a she’s a former She’s a former black woman. She’s a former black woman. She’s a former black woman Because uh I mean she’s a she’s a former Prosecutor herself She has the resources to be able to pull up some of these criminal records like i’m not just talking about things that okay So that’s a good point So she don’t think she did her homework and she could have done it because I would say okay. Look she’s busy Like such people are busy, right? They’re scheduled. They are scheduled to the second like 20 like 18 hours a day So they’re busy and things can get by them so you say well, yeah, but she was a prosecutor and so She knows this sort of thing She could have done her homework right then and and to go into that situation and say Specifically that she was proud of this guy It was like no that’s not excusable because you had the expertise to know and you could have taken the time to investigate who you were going to congratulate And did you you know, did you let the camera opportunity? Get in the way So to speak that’s the question you’re raising Okay, okay. Okay. Well, this is i’m going to talk about that particular story with these democrats that i’m talking to because You know one of the things I like about your book I’m afraid we’re gonna have to close on this. There’s a whole bunch of other things we should talk again I guess that’s really the issue You know the devil’s in the details And your idea that you have to be there to To know what’s going on well, there’s real truth in that and you know, there is the danger that because you’re there You’re going to exaggerate the threat. That’s the danger of being on the ground and you know hopefully you can protect yourself against that, but I liked your book a lot and I and It made me think a lot about how these groups are structured and About how this goes out of control sideways and so you’re doing real journalism as far as I can tell and That’s not that common anymore It’s no wonder you’re getting beat up You know because real journalism puts you in a war zone and people get killed in wars so I’m glad you’re okay Thank you professor, you know, i’m glad that um, i’m glad you’re back, you know the I have been a fan of yours for years now and The world missed you a lot when you were gone. I’m glad you’re well enough that um You you blast the public with your your intellect. I appreciate that and I I’m thankful that you took time to read my book and to give me an opportunity to speak with you You know, I haven’t read it all yet But i’m going to and i’m going to try to get some of these democrats that i’m talking to to read the damn thing Too because at very least you know what you did that I think was so useful is So imagine that they’re pretty concerned about far-right radicals. It’s like okay fair enough And it’s not easy to tell the far-right radicals from the far-left radicals anyways, so But you know by unpacking how these groups work you you perform a real service in aid of stopping the well the psychopathic radical types who really are always a threat to Everything that everyone sensible holds dear You know, you shed some light on the complexity of it the detailed complexity of it And that’s extremely useful It’s extremely useful to people who want to know What’s going on and so that is what journalists should do it’s the purpose of a free press and you know What would you say I wouldn’t say What would I say because I can’t say congratulations. It’s like It’s quite something that you put yourself in the line of fire for that It’s not just words, you know It’s not just words And and to have and to be brain damaged from it that’s you know There are things worse than death and you got away intact more or less, but You could have been consigned to something that would be a living hell And then to walk back into the fray despite that it’s like You put your money where your mouth is, man Good to talk to you. Thank you professor. Hope to see you in the uk So You