Joe Rogan | How Antifa Organizes w/Andy Ngo

Yeah, I want to state for the record though, the violence that happened after I was beat up was involving the men's rights activist group and Antifa. Proud Boys was holding, they held the separate event in a different part of the city. As far as I know, there was no conflict with them. In this particular right? Yeah, in this particular. So who was the men's rights guy? It was actually a woman. A woman who's a men's rights person? Yes. That's hilarious. She must love Dick, right? If you had a guess. No comment. Sorry, I'm a comedian. I couldn't help it. You don't even have to say her name. So she's, she, she organized this thing? Yeah, I would say, here's the other thing. You know, like I, my, what needs to be stated as well about, I guess, the right wing movements that are in Portland or come to Portland to do these events. There's an element of being provocateur as well. But that should never, ever justify the violence. Because I mean, what, what, explain what you mean by being a provocateur? Well, for example, holding an event in the middle of downtown, titling it, like any event justice for victims of domestic terrorism and then having a picture of Antifa, like that is, you know, it's an inflammatory. Yes. It's an infla-, you know, it causes a reaction. So there's a, you know, there's a, there's an element of coming in and seeing, let's enrage these lunatics on the far left or whatever. But at the same time, I want to make sure I state that just because somebody's a, quote unquote, provocateur to us or in the words of the writing, that it's unfortunate that people now find that that's justification for you to react violently. Well, I think again, it's a small percentage of people that find it this justification. And you look at the number of people that were there, what is it, thousands, thousands of people? How many people actually engaged in violence? Small number, but- Small number. That's the problem. It's important to note that they caught morale from the crowd who were cheering them on. Of course, the cowards, the cowards who don't disavow this horrific action. They cheered them on, laughed and clapped as I was getting beaten. And then the other thing about the people showing up in numbers who don't engage in the violence is they are like literal human shields. They dress the same, so they make it easy for the few violent militants to melt back into the crowd. Exactly. And these people also watch the cops and they keep an eye out on potential outsiders as well. Yeah, it's become a game. It's become a game. It's become a gigantic team war. There's our team versus their team. It's literally like playing a childhood game. It's really disturbing, man. And so since this, has anyone from Antifa apologized about what happened to you or disavowed the actions of these few extreme violent people? Of course not. Antifa has an iron fist on the people who support its movements. They don't allow any type of dissent. Actually, in their press releases, you can call them, they explicitly state that even if you disagree with that tactic, you will not publicly state it. It's to create, I guess, this image of unity, right? For a quote-unquote. Even if you disagree inside the organization. Yes. How organized are they? They are a leader. In terms of Antifa, as we understand it today, really crystallized only after 2016. There's been very little academic research into how they're actually organized. But basically, as a movement, they have essentially cells across the country that are semi-autonomous, united by an ideology of anarchy, anarcho-communism, and their support for violence. So it's not so much a group itself. It's the people who are part of that movement are drawn from other actual groups. They draw from the DSA. They draw from various workers unions, other anarchist groups. And like other terrorist entities, they have processes to radicalize sympathizers, essentially. They have their own literature as well. And so it's much more organized than people give them credit for. They think of them as just people showing up to fight on the street. There's meaning to that violence and there's literature to back it up. And they actively recruit people to join the movement. So I've been asked, do you think the federal authorities should step in? My response is, I think it's come to the point that they do, because with Antifa, it's beyond what local authorities can do, because a lot of these people, a lot of them are in Portland, from Portland. But a lot of them come from, for example, from Eugene, from Seattle, from neighboring areas that have other Antifa people come in to participate in the violence for that day or to help out. And then they go back to where they're from. So they're coming in and out of jurisdictions. It makes it hard for one local body of authorities to address it. I think the DOJ needs to step in. I think it's gotten to that point. And with 2020 coming up soon, there could be potential for a lot more political violence if the results don't, if the elections results don't go as they wish. Well, that's an obvious one, considering the fact that this all became a thing after Trump was elected. Yes. If the DOJ did step in, what do you think they could do? So that's... Well... I mean, do you believe in the ability to meet up and express yourself publicly and the ability to protest and the ability to just get together and have groups and express yourself? Yes. However, that's not just what Antifa does. Like I said, the violence is a feature of their movement. So what federal authorities can do... Can I stop you there? When you say the violence is a feature of their movement, is there... Do they have anything written, like the tenets of their movement, where they say that violence is acceptable? There's a book called the Antifa's Handbook. It's written by Mark Bray. He's an academic at Dartmouth. He is, I would call him one of Antifa's chief ideologues. So not only does he explain what Antifa does, and in his writings he makes it very clear that the quote unquote self-defense is what justifies the offensive violence. He actually argues why that's ethical. So because he's an academic, well-spoken, he's invited on to mainstream media to explain, to basically, like I said, mainstream Antifa. Can you explain what he says? Yes. I highly recommend that people take a look at his book. The attorney general in Minnesota, Keith Ellison, was photographed a year ago holding up that book of the Antifa book. And that kind of went... He's been criticized a bit for that. He deleted that image after my beating. Was holding it up in support? Yeah. He said something about like this book or Antifa strikes fear into the heart of Donald Trump. So there's people in government who are sympathetic to Antifa. But this professor, can you explain what he says? He outlines and explains essentially why Antifa's violence is ethical. Because they're opposing fascism, and fascism is a violent movement, this is sort of a pre-Antiv move. That word fascism, it is a problem, right? Yes. Because it seems like that's definitely something you should oppose. But what's the actual definition of fascism? Fascism as a far-right political ideology, from what I understand is... Pull up the definition, Jamie, so we can just read what fascism, what the actual word fascism means. Here, a form of radical right-wing authoritarian, ultra-nationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society, and of the economy, which came to prominence in early 20th century Europe. Forcible suppression of opposition is what they're doing. Yes. Strong regimentation of society. I mean, they're literally telling people how to behave and what they will tolerate. I know it's not right-wing ideology, but it's almost like fascism. And I'm sure there's other definitions of fascism. The idea of supporting someone who opposes fascism sounds wonderful. Sounds great. Let's stop fascism. But are we really experiencing authoritarian, ultra-nationalism characterized by dictatorial power in this country? I mean, is that a fair thing to say? I know people don't like Donald Trump. I know people don't like right-wing ideologies running this country. I understand that. But this is not what's happening. Yeah, the issue like fascism, as defined by political theorists who have been researching this for decades, it has a particular definition in meaning, and I think that summarizes it pretty well. I'm very concerned that people use it so flippantly to just refer to the right or to even authoritarianism. Like, there's much more to it than just being authoritarian. There's all those other components. And it's important to state that Antifa is not just opposed to the far right or the right. They're also against liberal democracy. There's a reason why they hate the police so much, hate border enforcement, and hate the rule of law. It's against the concept of the nation-state as we understand it, and they're working to dismantle that, to delegitimize it. So this is what I mean when I say it's a dangerous ideology that for now, you know, enemy my enemy is your friend. But at some point, if this movement becomes bigger, more mainstream, and more people are sympathetic, at some point it's going to come back against the moderate left, because these people, they want to see the destruction of the nation. They want to see the destruction of the nation-state for what purpose? They want anarchy? Yes. So they're political anarchists, social anarchists. They don't want borders. They don't want nations. They don't want police. Correct. What do they want? I mean, what do they expect? What's the ultimate goal? They seem to believe in a utopian, utopian Marxist ideas, right, of this redistribution of wealth where we can only be truly equal and egalitarian when we dismantle everything about the country. So not just, you know, it's institutions, the rule of law, but the state itself. Like everything just has to be broken down and start over because it's irredeemable. I'm not quite sure if, I mean, they, you know, Antifa, I can't think of like where they have had, if there's any somewhat comparable examples around the world of what it looks like for them to do state building, right? So we don't know what it would actually look like, but I mean, the examples we see from these smaller anecdotes is chaos and anarchy, like absolute chaos and violent suppression of opposing views, indiscriminate violence at times. I wonder, and what I've been asking over and over is how many more people have to be drawn into, have to be victims of this violence before something changes? And in Portland now, we've had three years of this and literally no policy changes have happened. No, even proposals have even been accepted by the mayor. The previous mayor was, what was his political persuasion or her? I don't even know who it was. These are all, the people who become elected mayor in Portland are typically establishment Democrats, right? So they themselves are moderate, very much, you know, in the vein of a Hillary Clinton type of thing. But there's a constituency in Portland that they have to play to for votes, which is the radical people who are sympathetic to very, very progressive causes. And so there's a reason why to date the mayor has never named Antifor one time in any of his press conferences. He has no problem blaming Proud Boys or Patriot Prayer, the right for issues. Patriot Prayer. What's that? Another group? Patriot Prayer is one of the other right wing movements in and around Portland that have held pro-Trump events in town that Antifor comes to fight and oppose. And how do those turn out? They devolve into riots. And the police allow this? They allow it through their inaction. Wow.