RIGHT SPEAK: If Antifa Isn’t Checked, Beware The Backlash Against Their Violence

Violence almost always begets violence, and if liberals and conservatives refuse, or fail, to establish order, someone else will.

One of my colleagues, Andy Ngo, is recuperating in a hospital with his skull bashed and earlobe torn by Portland Antifa. For those not aware, Andy is a sub-editor for Quillette, where I am a contributing writer, and he has been documenting the viral spread of the anarchist group Antifa in the city of Portland.

In his last such reporting, he was targeted, assaulted, and hospitalized with a brain bleed, with his camera and video instruments stolen. From the outside, Portland appears to tolerate this kind of anarchy, and Andy’s own work has highlighted that Portland is beset with a certain lawlessness. The city’s progressive mayor has time for LGBT pride parades, but orders his police forces to stand down when a gay Asian-American has his head caved in by a privileged bunch of ultra-violent cosplayers.

Antifa is short for “anti-fascist,” which is what these groups label themselves to excuse their crimes as a justified reaction to Donald Trump’s presidency. Antifa and other far-left personalities and groups openly organize every single day on Twitter and Facebook without any bans or fear of law enforcement. Andy has been targeted often by such people, not just Antifa but also by a section of liberal activists, lobbyists, policy people, and even liberal journalists who have tried to justify the assault on him.

In a blatant display of partisanship, the “fact-checker” website Snopes twisted itself like a pretzel trying to justify or at least minimize the gravity of the assault, which the editor of Quillette Claire Lehmann instantly called out. Quillette’s editorial also called this assault a wake-up call. CNN came up with a contorted tweet that almost made it sound like Ngo was simply caught in a cross-fire and is now blaming Antifa due to his personal biases.

Incidentally, Quillette has been on the forefront at unmasking journalists with overt sympathy for Antifa, and published a thorough paper to that effect.

“We were pilloried by left-leaning media last month for publishing a piece which scrutinised the relationship between a handful of journalists and Antifa,” Claire told me, “But considering how the violence at Portland has been downplayed or at times even justified by those same journalists, it is clear that more scrutiny is needed, not less.”

The assault finally caught the eyes of politicians as well, with the U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grennell being exceptionally vocal about it, as a prominent gay American leader: “Andy is a friend of mine and he is one brave reporter. What has happened to him should never happen to anyone,” Grennell told me.