Andy Ngo: The Next Generation of News Grifter - podcast episode cover

Andy Ngo: The Next Generation of News Grifter

Sep 05, 201947 min
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Speaker 1

M what's part in my twos? I'm Robert Evans, host behind the Bastards. Uh, this is what what what? What is? What is what? What is what? The last ye, Sophie, let's part in my twos. That's a solid introduction. I think you nailed it, Thank you, Jack. Sophie is being mean to me because she's the bastard of this episode. Um well really how mean she is to me? Yeah?

You know, I'm still building to that one. Uh. This is the show about the worst people in all the history, obviously, And in last episode we talked about James O'Keefe, the patron saint of news grifters, and in this episode we're going to talk about I don't know, he hasn't worked with O'Keefe, but you might call him his spiritual disciple, a fella named Andy No. Uh. Now, James O'Keeffe is higher profile than have you heard a thing about Andy No? Jack?

A recent attest started seeing people tweet about him and yeah, I saw the hammer thing that happened. Yeah, that was him where he claimed the Antifa attacked somebody with a hammer and it was actually then being at that Yeah. Yeah, And Andy's a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson. He's very influential. He just hasn't been around as long as O'Keefe in the media sphere, so he's not quite as well known, although he's getting to be that way, so it's probably

good for us to talk about him today. Uh Andy Kuong No was born in Portland, Oregon, at some point in nineteen eighties six. I don't have an exact birth date for the guy. His parents had immigrated from Vietnam via boat slightly less than a decade before. They've been forced into re education camps by the country's government, which may explain some of the political attitudes that No inherited. As a young man, No intended U c l A and volunteered with AmeriCorps. He graduated in two thousand nine

with a graphic design degree. Like roughly forty scent of the people I went to college with, and like all of my friends, he was unable to find any work because graphic design degrees were essentially a scam played upon members of my generation. Uh He was forced to take work as a photographer for a used car lot, and he spent a lot of time unemployed. No would later tell BuzzFeed quote. My brain wasn't a stupor. I couldn't spend the rest of my life going from minimum wage

job to minimum wage job. It's pretty sympathetic so far. A lot of us have been there. Uh, like many millennials who realized they'd been grifted by the system into taking on buckets of student loan debt for a degree that wouldn't actually get them a job, and he turned back towards the only thing that made sense to him, more school and more student loan debt. In two thousand and fifteen, he enrolled in a master's program and political

science at Portland State University. So yeah, that's this guy's story so far. Now. No had been raised Buddhist and converted to Christianity in high school, but he became an atheist in the mid oughts. In two thousand twelve, he attended a Portland convention of the Freedom From Legion Foundation. As he got drawn into Internet atheist circles, he grew increasingly concerned about Islam. This was heightened in two thousand, fourteen and fifteen as the Islamic state rose to prominence.

No became fascinated with radicalism, and not just the Muslim kind. As social justice causes became more prominent across American campuses, Andy No grew concerned that a frenzy was overtaking American culture. According to a BuzzFeed profile quote, he attended an event at PSU where he said white students weren't allowed to speak, and another where he said a black student said she feared that she would be killed on campus by a

white supremacist. I'm from this city, No remembered thinking, and they believe Portland's state is a place where there are a white racist all over who can come out but at any time and kill you. It didn't seem to fit with reality. More than that, No thought he saw parallels with the Marxist Revolution his parents had lived through in Vietnam. I was deeply curious on how those beliefs

could take root in my family's adopted hometown. So a couple of things to note, one of which is that Oregon was literally founded as a white supremacist state, and there have been several very well documented murders of black people by white supremacists in Portland itself within the last couple of decades, so it's well it was attempted a guy named Jeremy Christian carried out an attack on a Portland Max train where he was threatening violence on two

young Muslim women, one of him was black, and two other passengers intervened and were stabbed to death protecting them. That was so. Yeah, there's a reason to be scared of white supremacists if you live in the city of Portland. Yeah. What a silly claim that woman was making. Yes, Yes, stupid of her to be worried, uh about white supremacists who have only killed a couple of people in Oregon recently, as opposed to worried about Muslims who have killed zero

oregon Ians. Uh. In by being attacked and thus drawing that person to uh defend her, wasn't that woman? Uh sort of responsible? She was? She was. If she had just not been on the bus, there would have been no attack. Yeah. I mean, there's two sides here. There's

two sides here, both sides of this one. Robert. Yeah, that does remind me of how it was explained to me traffic rules work for foreigners in Japan that if you're a foreigner and you're involved in a traffic altercation, it's generally viewed as your fault because if you hadn't moved to Japan, the crash wouldn't happen. Um, yeah, now, no claims. All of this stuff pushed him into becoming

a free speech activist and a journalist. He joined the Portland State Vanguard, a school paper, as its multimedia editor. In two thousands seventeen, he showed up at an interfaith talk at the university called Unpacking Misconceptions. During the talk, a Muslim student was asked for their interpretation of chronic law and how it would apply to non Muslims living in an Islamic state if that country applied the strictest

interpretations of chronic law. The student responded that, based on her understanding, non Muslims would be asked to leave the country. The implication is that they would be killed if they did not. Another Muslim immediately argued against this interpretation of the law, which is, by the way, absolutely not what the Koran says. It's actually the opposite of a bunch

of ship. Mohammed said, Uh, if you're a Muslim and running a society according to like the rules Mohammed set out, you're actually required to treat people of the book in certain ways and protect them. Um, but no, ignored that other students response, and ignored the fact that the first response had been to a theoretical question, not the student

being asked what they wanted. He tweeted a video clip of just the response with the words at Portland State inter Faith panel today, the Muslim student speakers said that Apple States will be killed or banished in an Islamic state. Sounds great. Journalism would say it at an all faiths Uh yeah, college. Yeah, and we see kind of the same O'Keefe, tach dick where you you you pick out just the answer to a question that if you strip it up all context sounds bad. But if included with context,

is just people having a discussion. Um, but you don't include the discussion because the news story is just that clip. Um yeah. It was a moment perfectly crafted for the right wing rage machine. Bright Bart quickly farted out a news story titled Muslim student claims that nonbelievers will be killed in Islamic countries. So the fallout all this was significant. Andy was fired from the newspaper, which led to more rage from the right as they rallied around their victimized

truth teller. Andy was allowed to write an op ed for The National Review where he basically claimed that he had been let go for exposing the moral bankruptcy at the heart of multiculturalism. The Vanguard's editor said that Andy had been fired instead for oversimplifying the student's answered to

the point of rank and accuracy. The editor also noted that Andy seemed baffling le and dangerously focused on Islam, despite the fact that very few Muslim people live anywhere in Oregon and there have been no Islamic terrorist attacks in the state of note uh now that any hope of Yeah, so at this point, any hope of career, of Andy's career as a legitimate journalist had been shot, and Andy no moved on to the refuge of all shameless partisan hacks. Are they suggesting that nine eleven was

not an attack on all of America? Because that's bullshit. We were all attacked that day, all right, we were all attacked that day. I mean, I guess fair on your joke too. I'm sure in Oregon ian or two died in that attack, But yeah, I don't know. It's just it's telling that his focus is entirely on Islam, when if you look at the problem of political and religious violence in Oregon. Um, that's not really a big issue there. Um. Yeah. So and he moves on to

podcasting after he gets kicked out of the newspaper. Uh. And I hate to admit it, Jack, but he kind of picked a perfect title for his new show, You want to You want to guess what Andy No calls his podcast, uh something with his last name you. Yeah, it is something, It's Yeah. He called it Things you Should Know. Mm hmmmmm wow. I mean yes, And he already has a job, so I can't go out and

hire him on the spot. No, No, you can't. Um. I mean I was ripping him off when I pitched the title for this podcast initially as Things you should Robert Evans. Um. We we didn't go with that for some reason. But I mean, maybe we could sue him for copyright infringement for stuff you should Know? Yes, you should know? So. Uh. Andy's guests were men like Jordan Peterson, YouTuber Sargon of a Cod, Dave Ruben, and other alt

right in intellectual dark Web figures. But podcasting is hard and only super profitable if you have the voice of a Greek god like us, or you happen to be Joe Rogan. Like Joe Rogan, uh so, Andy No looked towards the and a highly lucrative example set by what I liked that Yeah, that part was fun to write. Um. Yeah, so Andy looked towards the highly lucrative example set by

James O'Keeffe. Uh Andy had already succeeded in making one story go viral on the right wing, and unfortunately he hadn't moved quick enough to properly capitalize on the opportunity. So he set to work crafting another viral piece of fake news and the hope that it, too would set the right wing rage machine a light and direct donations to his patreon. On August twenty nine, two eighteen, Andy No published an article titled a Visit to Islamic England

on the Wall Street Journal. I'm just gonna read how this article opened a visit to Islamic England. The subheading is Muslims headed to Friday prayer while non Muslims went the other way. No one made eye contact. Here's how it opens London. Other tourists may remember London for its spectacular sites in history, but I remember it for his um. When I was visiting the UK as a teenager in two thousand and six, I got lost in an East London market. There I saw a group of women wearing

head to toe black cloaks. I froze, confused and intimidated by the faceless figures. It was my first encounter within Ni Cobb, which covers everything but a woman's eyes. Yeah.

I did actually include this in the script. But there's literally a quote from Adolph Hitler where he's talking about how he first realized the Jews were dangerous, where he talks about seeing a fundamentalist Jewish man wearing like the hair locks and the yamaka in public in Vienna, and like he said, I found myself asking first is this a Jew? And then is this a German? Like that? That's literally something Adolph Hitler wrote about, like his like

that's how Andy opens this fucking article. Um, this was published in what publications? The Wall Street motherfucking journal what, which you might remember, Google considers to be the most credible source. Yeah, I mean because they over both sides, the cified of people from other cultures and and the other side. Yeah, it's um, it's pretty wild. Now. The article was torn apart by people who actually live in England, which, in case you were not aware, Jack is not an

Islamic state. Muslims makeup roughly five percent of the English population. No, he just saw one one of them and it scared him. It scared him. People weren't making eye contact Jack. Yeah. And also this is a story of a time he got scared in two thousand six. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, Yeah, I think he went more recently for the article, like for the like he he opens it with a story of himself there in two thousand and six. He's a bit of an anglophile, but he he went back for

the article. Um, so you know that that. I should note that in fairness, In more fairness, I should note that exaggerations and outright bullshit were very common in the article. At one point, Andy No complained about seeing a sign that called a neighborhood and alcohol restricted zone. Without doing any further research, Like a journalist, Andy just assumed that since alcohol is haram from Muslims, they were behind this

nefarious sign. The reality is that this neighborhood was an alcohol free zone due to a public safety ordinance created to stem a massive public drunkenness problem. Alcohol itself was not banned, just street drinking. But of course Andy did no digging and blamed Muslims for banning alcohol in this neighborhood. Muslims for the fact that you're not allowed to drink on the street in America. Yeah, it's it's fucking wild man. Yeah, I I do shout that regularly at police when they

arrest me for public drunkenness. What is this isis? Yeah, I should note that I've spent time, like, obviously there are Muslim countries where alcohol is forbidden or very difficult to acquire. But I have gotten so drunk in so many Muslim majority nations and never had a problem with it, and met so many Muslims who were like, oh, yeah, we drink too, it's fine, Like it's it's like you meet a lot of Jewish people who eat shellfish, you know.

But for whatever reason, because conservatives are scared of Muslims, they assume that it's some like hardcore dictate that every one of them follows, which like if you've ever, I don't know, I've I've gotten drunk with a lot of young women in head scarfs, Like it's it's far from universally applied. I didn't make eye contact with you. How did you manage to unfreeze yourself while you were around those women? I mean, I will say they were not

wearing the cobs. Have never gotten drunk with somebody wearing the full na cob. Those people tend to be much more serious about the letter of of of Islamic Jewish prudence or whatever you call it. But um yeah uh now. In response to complaints about his shitty article, Andy wrote a follow up in The American Spectator, another right wing news site. Here's how he tried to defend him self. These vitriolic attacks all seized on my mistake over the

sign as evidence of my prejudice against Muslims. In fact, it was just trying and perhaps sometimes failing, to describe what I saw. I admit to having been surprised by quite how segregated some parts of Britain have become. I tried it to make judgments about that, But what I believe to be true is that Britain's multicultural policies had produced with Nobel Prize winning economist Martya Sin calls plural

monol culturism. That is, different communities or mono cultures existing side by side with literally to no interaction with one another, which I don't know if you've ever seen what drunken British people eat when they're out on the street, which tends to be donner Kebab's like like, there's there's plenty of interchange, and so he's saying that. He was actually talking about how the cultures don't interact enough. It was

his was his issue. But he's the one who in the story that opens the piece, freezes and terror when he sees a Muslim woman. Yeah, I think, as as is generally true with bigots, his writing reveals his own prejudices more than it does any actual problems at the core of British culture or multiculturalism as a whole. So uh. Sadly, this article did not succeed in making Annie Know a household name or hurning him a spot with an outfit

like Project Veritas, so he kept going. In the wake of the Jesse Smollett case, he started keeping a running tally of fake hate crimes, which he would collect and cover in articles with titles like Inventing Victimhood and hate Crime Hoaxes Reflect America's sickness, and he also took to the streets live streaming and writing about the escalating series of violent political rallies that have rocked Portland since the

two thousand sixteen election. In October of eighteen, he showed up at a peaceful rally by the activist group Don't Shoot Portlands, a march raising awareness for the police killing of Patrick Kimmins, a twenty seven year old black man. This was a fairly tame and orderly march. The only really negative moment came when a driver made an a legal right hand turn and hit some protesters who were legally crossing a crosswalk. This led several protests just to

hit the driver's vehicle. One protester shoved the driver. No one was seriously hurt, and the driver was allowed to pull away. A reasonable person might conclude that the protesters raged at the driver was understandable, given that he'd driven a car into them, and given the car based terrorist attack on protesters in Charlottesville a year before. But a right wing radio station w CBM retweeted footage of one angle of the altercation, edited to remove all context of

the event. They tweeted out with this, Antifa anarchists threatened elderly driver in Portland. The story spread across white right wing media. One of the people who helped to spread it was Andy no Uh nose tweets eventually reached Tucker Carlson, and Mr Carlson had Andy no on as a guest to discuss the attack. So that's what we're gonna listen to next. But first, Sophie is informing me via vociferously waved fingers that it is time for an ad break.

So yep, yep, what what's what's an ad break? Well, act, I don't know if you realize this, but the money in podcasting comes from a collection of advertisers who who support our our content with their products and services and the advertising petro dollars that they generate. Um petro dollars. Yeah, I try to use that term once a day. Um. I usually just shouted at people on the street as I drive past. But today it's going to be in a podcast. Products we're back, so uh, we're talking about

you know, this car hits protesters. Some of them hit the car back because they're angry getting hit by a car, and uh. The story spreads and right wing media as anarchists threatening an elderly driver. UM. Dr Carlson has Andy No on to discuss the event the attack. Uh. The on screen shiron above their below the discussion is antipha violence out of control. So I'm gonna play a ship

from that. Here's Andy no talking to Tucker Carlson. Some of the footage you showed was recorded over the weekend on Saturday by Brandon Farley, and that was a protest organized by Don't Shoot Portland's, which is a Black Lives Matter type of group. They were protesting the police involved shooting of a man who is suspective of shooting two people. The police here, um take a pretty hands off approach

much of the time with protesters. And what you saw on Saturday in the video is that demonstrators were allowed to take over a street in downtown Portland and direct traffic and threatened drivers stop traffic while the police looked on from a block away because they were afraid of inflaming the situation. So, um, there's a couple of things you might have noticed from that video. One of them is and he's accent was as Yeah, that's his fake British accent um, which he has affected since he became

a media personality. I want to reiterate that he was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. I was so confused by that. Yeah, yeah, he he pretends to be British. Sounds like what's his name, Sebastian Gorka. Yeah, he's not good at having a fake British accent, but I think he's he's a real Anglo file. Um. Yeah, he's He sounds a little bit like Frasier Crane. Um. Yeah. Now the other thing you may have noticed is that in this interview he basically describes the police as ignoring anti fascists.

At one point, he says that the response to Antifa has been hands off in the city of Portland. I should note that he described this response as hands off five months after Portland police opened fire with grenades upon a crowd of anti fascist activists. One man was shot in the back of the head the less than lethal munition cractice skull and would have killed him had he not been wearing a helmet. Um. But that hands off them with their hands I mean with Truncheon's hands off technically.

Uh so. The faux outrage over this non incident helped inspire a patriot prayer rally organized by the group's leader, Joey Gibson, which he called Flash March for Law and Order in Portland. The march provided onlookers with a great example of what happens when these far right rallies are not met by an organized anti fascist presence. Right wing brawlers assaulted numerous people on the street as scattered anti

fascists struggled to respond. You can find video of right wing gang members stomping on people and punching them unprovoked. This happened a matter of days after a group of Proud Boys ran rough shot over a neighborhood in New

York City, assaulting outnumbered counter protesters. Now andy No hadn't filmed the video of the car assault that Tucker Carlson publicized, but he had helped spread it, and by showing up on Carlson's show pretending to be a non biased journalist in making anti fascists look dangerous, he'd found a lucrative niche for himself, the one that he had been looking

for all his career. So a little bit after that video went viral, another video went viral on Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller as a result of a tweet that Andy No had sent out on the surface. This video showed a left wing activist yelling at a woman who claimed to be a nine eleven widow. She was not actually a nine eleven widow. She was lying about that, but Tucker Carlson credited No with bringing the video to a site's attention, although No had not actually filmed it.

The video ignited the right wing rage machine and sent hundreds of extremely online conservatives into a doxing frenzy. Unfortunately, they were bad at it, and rather than doxing the actual activists, they docked a professional skateboarder that they misidentified as the culprit. When the actual dude was finally identified, he received mass death threats, as did the social service

agency who employed him. According to a round guptam who interviewed a source at the agency, it was quote flooded with hundreds of harassing calls and Facebook messages that were explicitly racist and threatening to harm and kill staff. So this has going on for months on end Andy No publicizing and often editing misleading videos to sick angry conservatives on coal Portland activists, many of them have received death threats as a result of this. In an article for

the left wing website Jacobin. Gupta notes quote Jacobin has talked to six people in Portland, including journalists, political officials, and activists, who described harassing messages and threats of violence resulting from nose work or political involvement in Portland. Friends of two other activists claim they went into hiding after No spread their names and they became targets of harassment. Some individuals who's tangled publicly with No are reluctant to

go on their record. They say they want to avoid the trauma of being subjected to a new round of death threats. In fact, and you know, seems to rely on people not speaking of about his effect on them. He often writes of how activists won't talk to him or how they take down social media profiles after he

focuses on them, seeming to imply they have something to hide. Madison, a Portland activists who tracks No, says No signals that this is a person that should be targeted, should be harassed, and should be threatened, and he puts a target on them, and that results in the person being doxed, and he is giving people explicit permission to unleash hatred and violence on people. He absolutely knows what he's doing, knows what he's doing. Uh, you did it. Yeah, I can do

the thing that he does. Yep, yep, it is okay for us to do because he did it. Um. Now we're actually gonna run into another case like that a little later. Uh nos role in stoking harassment against against individuals he disagrees with goes even deeper than that. See. Andy is now an editor at the far right website Quilette, which, among other things, runs articles that advocate for a cleaned up, modern version of phrenology. Earlier this year, Quilette ran an

article by a researcher named Yoin uh Lenihan. On its surface, the article purported to be a groundbreaking study laying out a network of journalists who were secretly connected to Antifa. Now, the reality is that Yoin is no more a researcher than I am a tennis pro. His idea of being connected to Antifa was no deeper than tracking journalists who followed at least sixteen verified Antifa accounts and wrote articles he considered sympathetic to anti fascists. There are a number

of reasons this is absurd. For example, I follow at least sixteen anti fascist accounts. I also follow Augustus and Victus, a literal neo Nazi running for president. I followed members of numerous right wing, extremist and terrorist groups on Twitter, because as a journalist, that's kind of what you do now. The Independent, in coverage of this even noted that Quilett's founding editor, Claire Lehman, follows more than sixteen white nationalist

accounts on Twitter. But the fact that Lenihan was a complete fraud with no academic credentials, and the fact that his study was nonsense had no impact on Quilette. The study spread like wildfire through the fever swamps of the right and eventually made its way into the phones and computers of actual Nazi terrorists. One white nationalists tied to the Adam Waffen Division, posted a YouTube video that showed pictures of several of the journalists named in the Quilette article.

The video was titled Sunset the Media, and it not so subtly suggested that these people should be murdered. The video ended with a quote from James Mason, a neo Nazi terrorist and author of the book Siege, which is a guide for how to commit terrorism. The quote was about so called lone wolf attacks. Mason said quote, I do not urge anyone to do anything like that, but

when it gets done, I won't disown them. Jesus. Now, this all kind of pisces me off because a lot of the people named in the article and in that video, our colleagues and friends of mine. The Quilette article made it onto Stormfront and neo Nazi message board, the FBI has tied to more than a hundred murders, and it's led to a lot of death threats from different groups towards journalists who are really good reporters. By publishing the shot a piece of crap journalism, the editors at Quilette

endangered the lives of innocent people. One of those people was reporter Shane Burley, he noted in an article for The Independent. Quote in a tweet, Quilette contributor Andy No attempted to identify us and others as covert Antifa ideologues posing as experts for willing journalists, all of whom apparently have joined together in a plot to create some kind of media Antifa industrial complex. So you can see why a lot of people in Portland are not exactly big

fans of Mr Andy No. Their distaste for him would intensify after May one, two thousand nineteen. Now Portland is obviously a very left wing city, and made a marches are common there due to the sheer number of leftist activists in the streets. Right wing protesters like Joey Gibson, Patriot Prayer, and Century Proud Boys avoided hosting a single event where they would be swamped and swarmed, and instead traveled around in a small group, demasking people and generally trolling.

At the end of the day, they headed to a popular anti fascist hang out in the city named Cider Riot. Now cider Riot is a bar, although they get angry if you call them a bar and prefer the term CIDERI I'm going to be referring to them as a bar because they're a bar. Uh. Sorry, cider right. Uh. Joey Gibson and a group of his goons showed up there with Andy No in tow and assaulted several people there.

Ian Kramer, a member of Patriot Prayer, whipped out a telescoping baton and shattered a young woman's vertebrae with it. The attack is on video and it is entirely unprovoked. There was no fight, just a violent assault that you could very fairly call attempted murder. Hey, everybody, one quick

bit of clarification. When I say there was no fight, like there was a big brawl going on at cider Riot that was started initially when some guys from Patriot Prayer began macing the people at Cider Riot and they sprayed mace back, and it eventually evolved into throwing stuff and then a fist fight. Um. When I say there was no fight, I mean that the young woman whose vertebrate was broken was not fighting. She in fact had her back turn to Ian Cramer at the time when

he swung at her. So I just wanted to clarify on that point. Now. In recent days, there have been a number of arrests I think six so far due to the May Day attack, but we're gonna get to that later. In the immediate wake of the attack, is Portland Local shared video of the brutal assault, Andy publicly doubted on Twitter whether the woman had suffered any kind of serious injury. He also docked her in a tweet in which he claimed, without proof that she had committed

crimes at a previous event. His tweet read the anti full woman who got knocked out cold at may Day is and he gave her name. She is the person who tried to shut down the James to More Portland State panel last year by sabotaging and damaging sound equipment. Now, as you might imagine, this piste off more people. Several folks who were at cider Riot claimed No had basically lured them out of the bar and was thus a

willing participant in the attack. I haven't seen any event that this is true, but I say this in order to give you an idea of the sort of attitude that developed around No in the wake of that attack. People were pissed at him. This all came to a head in July, during yet another set of dueling anti fascist rallies in Portland. Andy No showed up live streaming to the anti fascist side of things, where he was promptly doubted with multiple milkshakes. I was actually there for

that part. Not long after that, he wound up surrounded by a group of masked anti fascists. Several of these people assaulted him, punching him a number of times. The video of the assault is very clear and quite ugly. No immediately filmed himself bruised and bloodied in the wake of the attack. Now, the assault went very viral and prompted calls from the President and Republican lawmakers to de

claar Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. Even centrist journalists like Jake Tapper picked up on the story, reporting it as another case of antipha violence against journalists. Real story, I hate Jake Tapper. Yeah, he's he's he's he's a garbage reporter. Now, the real story is a lot more complicated than that. UM And you know is not a journalist. He has a right wing activist that does not justify as assault, which was absolutely not okay. But he was not a

bystander just recording the event. And you know was a participant in a running series of street battles which have torn Portland's apart for the last three years. He got assaulted during one of these street battles, and again that's not okay. But his assault is no different from any of the hundreds of other assaults, most of which were against left wing demonstrators, that have taken place during the

last three years. UM. And this fact is made very clear in a video that was released just a couple of weeks ago, or just actually less than a week ago when we record this, which we'll talk about once we come back from an ad break. We're back, so as things currently stand, and he know has been assaulted uh in lie during a protest. The video goes viral, he shows up all over the media and within a matter of literally like hours, raises close to a quarter

of a million dollars for his medical bills. UM. So that's what people knew. In July, now, roughly a month later, a full video from the May Day attack was released. UH. And this video showed was had been filmed by someone who had been walking and marching with Joey Gibson, Andy No and other right wing activists on their way to cider riot that May Day. Uh. The full video paints a very different picture of what happened than one I

think No would have liked to have been known. I'm gonna quote the Portland's Mercury's coverage of the video quote. The most incendiary of the clips show a small group of Patriot Prayer members milling about a few blocks from the cider bar, waiting for instructions from Gibson, who's texting Joey? Someone asks, While the group seems to be without a game plan, another man says, tell Joey about and them to hurry the funk up. I hope they got like ten big dudes with them. As the group waits, they

discussed their weaponry. A few men consider which way the winds blowing to avoid getting spray in their eyes. Another man holds a thick wooden dowel and practices swinging it like a baseball bat. Somewhere goggles helmets and tactical gloves. One woman is holding a brick. Who's the guy with the weapons? Here? A man holding a police baton says, appearing to become agitated, that the group has to wait

for Gibson me. A little while later, someone in the group tells a person on speaker phone there's going to be a huge fight and gives them directions to cider riot. Now that all is pretty damning evidence of conspiracy to riot, which is what six of the people present there have been arrested for. And Andy no was present and filming for all of this, but not once in the wake of the attacks did he share any of his videos,

any of his audio or report. This clear evidence of people planning planning to commit mass assault to the police or to the media. You can even in the video see him smile at one point as his comrades discussed their plans to attack the cider bar. This video makes it very clear that and you Know is not a journalist. He is a participant in this attack. Of course, none of this evidence was out in July when no was assaulted and he was able to is a huge amount

of money. He claimed in the immediate wake of the attack that he had suffered a brain bleed. He has presented zero evidence of this. He flew across the across the country less than a week later and was checked out of the hospital the next day. I feel it's fair to question Knows honestly about the extent of his injuries, since that's exactly what he did to the young woman

who had her spine broken outside of cider riot. Now, the good news seems to be that many journalists on the center have at least finally started waking up to Andy knows grift. During the August seventeen protests, which I also attended, No retweeted several edited chunks of other people's videos to try and push claims that Antifa has committed

numerous assaults on decent, harmless right wing activists. To give you a brief summary of his lies, he claimed that a bicyclist swerved to avoid an Antifa person on a scooter, causing a serious accident. Uh. There was in fact a scooter bicycle accident during the time of the rally, but it had nothing to do with the protest or Antifa and Portland Police repeatedly pointed this out when challenged on

this fact any know posted. Portland Police Bureau have released a press statement saying that too had actually collided when the woman on the scooter was going in the wrong direction. A source tells me she was part of the Antifa group. She and friends had been passing around the scooter and taking turns trying it out. Yeah. At another yeah, yeah,

damning Andy. Uh. At another point in the day, an armored school bus filled with members of American Guard, a fascist extremist group linked to nine murders and mosque burnings, attempted to cross into down town Portland to do god knows what. They were caught by anti fascists while stopped in traffic the anti fascists chucked water bottles and what appears to be sheet rock at the bus, which again was armored and had screens on most of the windows. Several of them kicked at the door of the bus.

The fascists then opened the door of the bus and one of them began swinging a hammer at people's faces. One anti fascist managed to take the hammer from him and swing it back. Andy No tweeted edited video that just showed the anti fascist with the hammer and claimed that this had been an unprovoked attack by Antifa, something actual video evidence clearly contradicts. Again, this is the guy's

fucking strategy. At several points he posted video or pictures of injured older men claiming they had been assaulted by Antifa. In every case, full video show that these men were taking place in street brawls and in some cases instigating them. One video is a picture of a clearly inebriated man who taped his fists up specifically to punch people, and repeatedly shouted the passer by where faggots. He was eventually

succeeded in starting a fight. When he was beat up, Anti fascist street medics provided first aid care to him. This is all documented, But here's how Andy no characterized things, posting just a picture of the man on the ground. Middle aged man was maased and beaten by an Antifa mob. He was knocked unconscious to the ground. His partner or spouse was trying to protect him as the mob still

surrounded them no police. When the man regained consciousness, he began like instigating fights immediately again like he was with the Yeah, yeah, cool, it's it's it's all pretty yeah. So, in the wake of the footage of the media attack and the sheer shocking number of lies Noah was caught telling about the August seventeenth rally, many Low Glen National reporters have begun to dissociate themselves from him. So it is possible that his grift has peaked and we're all

about to watch him take a downhill slide. But if the lesson of James O'Keefe teaches us anything, it's that repeated and flagrant lies are no barrier to a lucrative career in right wing journalism. And based on that, I suspect that and you know is going to have a long and very profitable career. Has he been on Tucker Carlson's show recently. I don't think he's been since August seventeen, actually, but I'm not a certain about that. Tucker Carlson also

took a planned vacation recently, so maybe. Yeah, Well, after claiming that white supremacy was not a problem in the US after a white supremacist terror attack. He always seems to have these vacations planned for right after he says some just blatantly racist ship. It's weird. I mean, you know, that's how I plan all of my vacations too, So I'm not going to hit him too much on that. You know. Uh, I don't know, and you know, it makes me very angry. I think he's a dangerous person, um,

and I don't like him. That's the That's that's what I got. Yeah, that seems to be Um. You know, the actual Nazis during you know, the early twentieth century didn't make a bunch of very uh convincing documentaries, but they made a bunch of you know, famous works of propaganda. And because you have to uh edit the truth out of movies to get for the reality or presenting to

cohere to your version of things. And it seems like that Yeah, these people are just propagandists who managed to hijack a very willing right wing media and a bad centrist media. You know, Andy know was responsible, like during them the rally in July for sharing this picture of what what If you look at the picture, it's an older man in his sixties um with white hair and just blood pouring down his face and the top of

his shirt. UM, which you know, obviously was claimed to have been an old man assaulted by Antifa for no good reason, and it made it into like local reporting like cinterest and sort of mainstream local news organizations. Like one of the titles right above this picture was two more Oregon men or left bloody after violent Antifa attack

at Portland's protest. There's other pictures of the same guy before he's bloody, with a telescoping baton and a fedora, smiling and rushing towards the crowd, and there's video of him sparking attacks and swinging a stick at people. The guy got hit in the head after swinging a baton

at people and instigating attacks. Like, yeah, the violence definitely occurred on both sides, but this guy was an instigator and not an innocent old man, he was a dude swinging a fucking baton at people like That's part of the problem is that, like what's been happening in Portland is a complicated and conflicting series of street attles, and

there's absolutely been bad actors on both sides. But the right wing media is trying to portray Antifa is this like violent organization, whereas the reality is most of them are more apt to do things like show up in banana costumes as a marching band or like like help hold prayer vigils and stuff, and there are a smaller number of guys who are there because they want to have a fight, whereas on the right you have also a shipload of people who show up because they want

to have a fight, and sometimes members of both groups get their wish. But like the idea that this is terrorism or anything but two groups who hate each other fighting in the street um is pretty ridiculous. And the number of assaults that occur when the right wing demonstrators aren't uh checked by large scale groups of anti fascists like those are the least violent rallies when a shipload of anti fascists show up uh and just sort of drown them out, Like that's why on auguste there was

no serious violence. Um, but so I mean in comparison, how do the number of people murdered by right wing extremists compared to the number of people murdered by Antifa. Well, so far there's been zero people murdered by Antifa. The closest thing you come to an attack carried out by someone who marched with any of those groups was, um, Willem Sprocken, the guy who attacked those ICE buses. Hey, everybody, I screwed up again. His name was William van Spronson,

not Sprocken. Sorry, I'm dumb and a hack and a fraud. And he didn't kill anybody. He attempted to destroy busses that were empty to stop ICE from being able to deport people. He was a guy who would yeah they

they shot. He did have a gun with him, you know. Uh, yeah, that's the closest you get to an Antifa attack with a body count of zero, whereas you know, uh, we're up to well over a hundred right wing deaths in the last year and change like death as there was ault of right wing terrorists in the last year in Change and The police have arrested twenty seven people since El Paso for planning terrorist attacks, the vast majority of whom had clear right wing and white supremacist ties. Um. Yeah, yeah,

it's weird. Yeah. I wonder how the right would react if and if killed a single person. Well, and this is what's really worrying to me, is that I suspect there absolutely will be probably inspired by like environmental activism, um, a deadly terrorist attack in the near future. Um, you know,

maybe on oil and gas employees or something like that. Um. And when that happens, it's going to be used as the justification for a vast uh crackdown on left wing activists, Whereas you know, there's been essentially was nothing done up until El Paso, you know, after it took It took dozens of right wing attacks for any kind of crackdown to occur, and even then it's been fairly mild. Um

it's frustrating, it is, I would agree with that. Yeah. Hm. So everybody look forward to the eco terrorist attacks in our future. Um, and uh, keep an eye out for people like Andy No because they're full of ship. Yeah. All the pictures you when you just do a Google image search of him. It's all him with like a black guy appearing on various news things and just looking very uh, you know, beat down and yeah victimy. It's

just yeah, he's uh. He talks about the victim culture, the people claiming to be victims, and that seems to be his whole m Oh yeah, that's he He really like getting assaulted. Um worked out very well for his career. I can say that. Uh, you know, he made a quarter of a million dollars in a matter of hours. Uh, and you know, he's he's, he's I don't know. I'd

be interested to see his medical reports. Um. Yeah. I also suspect i'd be interested to see if he gets charged as a result of any of the videos that came out on cider Riot or about sider Right. He doesn't doesn't say really anything during those videos, but he's present the entire time, and UM, I don't know. It's it's very like. I can say this as a guy who frequently is on in filming on the anti fascist

side of things. If I was embedded with a group of these people and I heard them planning to attack a bunch of people sitting and chilling at a bar, and then one of the anti fascists I was with, unprovoked, broke a woman's spine. I would report that ship because that would be a serious crime and not Okay, Uh, that's what you do as a journalist, regardless of where your sympathies lie. And I think Andy's performance during the May Day attack is all the evidence you need that

he's not a journalist. Yeah. I think that's pretty fair. Yeah, hey, everybody, just one quick update. Uh, Andy no no longer works at uh Quilette. Um. Some people say he's been fired. His name has certainly been removed from the masthead. I think some of his articles have been purged. Um. You know, his editor at his former editor at Quilette says that he wasn't laid off, that this was a plan departure. The timing certainly seems a little bit suspicious for that

to have been the case. But either way, he seems to be currently unemployed, so we will see, um whether or not his career recovers from all this. Anyway, Jack, you want to plug your plug holes. I do. I desperately want to plug my plug doubles excellent. I can I host a week daily podcast called The Daily Zeitgeist. It is a comedic look at the events of the day, the zeitgeist, the news, ghost of the day, what what is happening in the world of popcorn ulture, just the

America's national shared consciousness. I do that with Myles Gray. You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien and you can find Daily's I Guys on Twitter at Daily's I guess. So check out the ghost of all of that news um uh, and check out us on Behind the Bastards dot com where you can find all the sources for this episode. Check us out on Twitter and Instagram at Bastards pod uh, and you can buy T shirts from the public Behind the Bastards and you

found out about those I did? I did. Sophie tried to keep it a secret from me for some reason, but I I got to the bottom of it. With your hands tied behind your back, tied to a chair, and Sophie like throwing water in your face to wake you up. I'm telling you about the telling you that is T shirt store. That is how we start every episode of Behind the Bastards are Our recording studio looks exactly like the safe House from reservoir dogs. Just one

swing to light bulb and yeah, that's all we'll do it. Okay, guys, that's the fucking episode. Go uh fucking I don't know, Yeah, do do something useful or uh something useless but relaxing. One of the two sounds like a plan, all right by Game

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