"Shaked" as in "milkshaked". Three masked cowards, uh heros, threw milkshakes at Ngo from behind as he walked away after another coward, uh hero, sucker punched him (who was such an upstanding citizen that he immediately ran away after landing the punch) , while being "protected" by your pals.

I think you are the only one who's "crazy" eyes "didn't" see this.

Or, more likely, you watch the video with tears of pride in your eyes. You know, masked cowards who are so certain they are on the right side of history that they are embarrassed to show their faces.

The love for masked violence shown in this forum is instructive.

I don't think you get what the word "specifically" means.

This is what you call gaslighting. There is no evidence Andy was chanting jews will not replace us.

You didn't really answer the question; half of it at best.

And the view from the inside is that I'm not sure I've ever seen a masked protester with a home made weapon. Maybe once. I think some 90lb girl/woman might have had a stick at one thing - not sure - but she never got close to the opposing group. So the optics from the "inside" (in quotes because I'm not "Antifa" (and that is in quotes because Antifa is not really a group)) is that your description is not generally accurate.

I'm obviously not talking about that incident.

Ah, from reading this thread, you would think that Andy was a really bad guy(potentially a nazi and or fascist), and was kind of asking for the beating he took.

I haven't really followed this and don't know much about him. I was talking about personal experience.

The last event I went to that had some people in masks was a pretty small demonstration outside the LA ICE detention facility. There were about 5 or 6 people who wore masks some of the time (yeah, they were in and out of costume). There was a guy there who pretty much filled the role Andy Ngo seems to fill. He was an African-American guy wearing a MAGA hat and according to some of the people there he goes to events and doxxes people. No one made any physical contact with him or threw anything.

No, this doesn't follow at all. Objecting to the unjustified use of violence regardless of who is carrying it out does not entail thinking that there is any general moral equivalence between instances of unjustified violence or individuals who engage in it. The moral distinctions are clearly important (whether between groups or between instances, i.e. misdemeanor assault is not murder...), as is the word unjustified as well.

To pivot off your post for a second (this isn't a response to you directly) it seems like one of the rebuttals in this thread to the objection to antifa violence is to claim that condemning violence is too idealistic, or ignores the "real world". But at least with regard to some of these rallies that seems exactly backwards to me. These rallies are almost entirely unimportant and the comparison to cosplay doesn't seem that exaggerated. There's no "real world" significance that would justify the use of violence in most of the incidents involving antifa, Charlottesville being an important exception.

At this particular moment in time, and just by example, I would feel much more conflicted about condemning the use of violence if antifa were trying to liberate refugees from camps in Texas. That would feel much more like a "real world" justified use of violent tactics. It's obviously a bad idea and I don't mean to suggest otherwise, but the moral argument would be a lot muddier than it is for roughing up right-wing journalists at rallies of no significance.

OK, but it’s abundantly clear that people here are definitely trying to make this kind of moral equivalence between Antifa and right-wing violent hate groups, cf any of Juan’s posts.

AFAICT this is just Juan, and his argument seems to be that the Proud Boys are not actually a violent hate group (or at least that they have been no more violent than antifa).

I would not equate the two groups in any general way but I don't really care enough about making some hierarchy of left and right wing groups to bother with it. I have no objections to people arguing against Juan, if they want, and I think that argument is easily separable from the general argument against the unjustified use of violence.

I'll speak for myself.

No violence is acceptable.

Bad people also have the right to free political speech. Recognizing that right does not (for sane people) equate agreement with the content of the speech.

The violent parts of Antifa and the violent parts of the du jour right-wing extremists are equivalent, except to point out that its currently fashionable to support Antifa including their violent members (as we have seen in this forum).

It’s contrary to fascism to maintain that violence is always questionable. It’s also contrary to fascism that people can choose to defend themselves.

Oppressors are only human, they want to oppress as easy and convenient as they can get away with.

Look how “hard” they have to work associating anti-fascism with violence. They really just have to copy paste the word antifa along with situational scenes of violence and then ask people why they aren’t sympathetic.

And, it’s not their own emotional response to their own narrative they are minding and asking about for sympathy. It goes from scenes of violence associated with the word antifa to questioning demands for our emotions about it.

Hey, some folks prefer empathy when sympathy doesn’t work for them. How can they squeeze sympathy from a stone that prefers to hold empathy?
And it’s really easy to fake sympathy. Any sock puppet can jump in and make some derision plus the word antifa in sympathetic support. I empathize with people who fall in with authoritarianism. That seems a hard road and the way out is a lonely valley.

Bottom line is they don’t act trauma informed, have very easy convenient narratives about violence, and argue to gain emotional appeal using conjecture based on very narrow situations.

Looks like your read was bad, judging from lap’s post.

Disagree. We can’t discuss whether it’s justifiable to punch fascists without some evaluation of whether fascists are bad.

What is the definition of a fascist though? To most of the left (ie denizens of this forum) and Antifa supporters fascist is anyone who isn't the extreme left.

That’s what the fascists say and how they say it. Some generalizations, the word “antifa” and a dubious suggestion.


Fascism, the word, is found in the encyclopedia, dictionary and thesaurus, and the further knowledge of people who observe authority.

You're not actually disagreeing with me. I said I wasn't personally interested in the discussion about whether antifa is equivalent to the proud boys (I think the answer is no). That's not the same question as "are antifa members justified in attacking Andy Ngo?"

The second question is relevant, hence the emphasis I put on the word "unjustified" in my post. My contention is that there is no possible justification for violence against Ngo in that particular venue on that particular day, and this is clear from the video.

I should probably also be clear, so as to avoid baiting anyone into expressing opinions I will feel obligated to moderate: as a general rule advocating for violence against specific persons is not acceptable in this forum. I've been sort of splitting hairs a bit on this (i.e. I didn't moderate Fly saying he "accepts" it, or people saying they don't think it's important, and so on) because I want to allow this conversation, but people should avoid being too enthusiastic about their support for violence. As rules go, I feel this one needs to be a pretty bright line.

I’ll do my best to temper my enthusiasm for punching Nazis.

You could work on the part where you establish that Ngo is a nazi, since that appears to be the substantive disagreement.

The thing is that the words nazi and fascist get thrown around so loosely that they lose all meaning. I think this is a point where Antifa and the left in general lose a lot of credibility. I'm all for fighting the good fight but I think this is getting to ridiculous extremes and those employing these tactics lose all credibility.

What? this thread started with me absolutely appalled at seeing a guy who shows up to protests/events as a photo journalist get attacked and hospitalized. That disgust wasn't just about Ngo, I posted video from the same event where people who were on their own were being group stomped. A senior citizen was mauled by multiple people with sticks and pipes. He ended up with his face completely full of blood. The guy coming to his defense had his skull smashed open by pipes in 3 different spots and was repeatedly maced. This is in addition to seemingly weekly to bi weekly occurrences of antifa showing up to public event dressed for violence and acting it out. There's also the issue of repeated property damage. The fact that they are politically radical/communists makes the situation being a real problem even more obvious

I was then mocked at my complete stupidity that i didn't know that this was a proud boy event. I mean how could i just see antifa and their history and not contextualize the fact they were fighting fascists in the form of proud boys? I mean how stupid could i be? I have heard of the proud boys and was familiar with gavin but wasn't up to speed that they were still alive and active, especially in portland since mcinnes is in NY.

The next and logical step for anyone actually curious to what is happening in the real world doesn't just accept narratives, especially from people who demonstrate theyre delusional dolts at face value is to look for actual evidence. I mean people question if Ngo was a "real" journalist as he showed up on the ground to provide footage for everyone to judge themselves while MSM has ignored and downplayed a violent movement. Vox just provides SJW narrative candy. The whole thing is laughable. So in the search for a realistic impression of what is going on I asked the entire thread to provide actual evidence as to what the proud boys is. Being familiar with mcinnes i was surprised to see what it had become in the eyes of the SJW's but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility things graduated in to radical behavior. I asked for actual evidence of how bad they are and nobody has even attempted it. I have stated clearly i'm not the one trying to make any sort of equivalence, i'm responding to others doing that

so far we have some fake news from buzzfeed which was easily debunked because it was also a big story and the entire event was on video

This is the guy who ran a "cite or ban" mob claiming Ngo gives proud boys considerable amounts of good coverage. He also says Ngo is someone who promotes openly violent people. Where does Ngo do this? The comments have been challenged and he just slithers away. Where is the evidence? what a drastic change in attitude from "cite or ban". This is an absolute disgrace and the justification for unjustifiable behavior. On top of that, his buzzfeed story is just fake news. It's all on video and i covered that

So here i am asking the only people actually making equivalence arguments for actual evidence of what the proud boys are and what they do. Nothing. On top of that, now im just curious about what the truth is because its looking like more narrative bs being driven by biased rage-bait media feeding their audience a narrative. Speaking of narrative perhaps look at what i've written and the spin you're putting on my perspective.
No, I'm looking for and asking for actual evidence. My argument isn't "the proud boys are this or that". They were brought up and i asked for evidence. I didn't even know they were at the event or even had a presence in portland. In response to a complete failure i looked on my own. All i have found so far is them brawling with antifa and it being a social club of guys who want to live in the 70's or 80's with women at home with the kids mixed with some mainstream maga stuff

Here's another profile done on the proud boys


I'm looking and asking for actual evidence people. I can multi quote my openness to the fact that proud boys are doing awful things. I just want to see some evidence. so far i've seen a buzzfeed story that they rented a venue which was vandalized and threats were called in from antifa, then they showed up and screamed at attendees, then antifa charged them fully masked and brawled with them. It's one incident that the proud boys willingly participated in a brawl. I posted video of them engaging in another brawl. I'm looking for the part where they are some political nightmare or some violent group smashing seniors skulls open with pipes and stuff like that. Help me out. I'm trying to sort out what is real and what is just narrative and spin. This brings us full circle to Ngo being an "antagonist" as the MSM ignores antifa and downplays them. He films them and lets you decide, he doesn't tell you what to think. His "antagonism" is actually bringing people closer to what his happening in portland regularly

He’s spent his career demonizing religious minorities and working for Breitbart and Quillette. I don’t know, maybe Nazi-adjacent would be more palatable?

That’s what the fascists and nazis say. Look, it’s an easy narrative to toss around.

And, it’s really only your credibility on the line when you cast assertions about credibility with an unprovable opinion about words getting tossed around. Why aren’t you the one tossing those words around as we see you have done?

Hold on, are you endorsing this clown and their idiotic takes? The disdain she holds for Ngo is extremely off putting and unwarranted afaict

Clymer is so dumb she's complaining about equal pay in womens soccer when the revenue both men and women bring in is public information. On top of that, the womens team got trampled by a local team of 14 year old boys in texas. The reason womens soccer isn't as popular is because it's at the level of 14 year old boys. Imagine being dumb enough to pedal this stuff to your audience and imagine cultivating an audience that dumb. i guess being that dumb and building an audience is impressive

also Ngo will be doing a long form interview with rubin live this morning. he's already done a long form interview with bret weinstein (evergreen) who visited him in the hospital. both could be useful for the conspiracy theorists

The principle reason for calling so many people nazi and the rest of the dehumanising/etc is part of the process of justifying violence/etc. The nazi apologists (who aren't) and the quislings (who aren't) wont be far behind.

I appreciate you have to come down on those supporting violence but in some ways it's a pity as it so clearly brings into focus how fringe the forum and it's methods was (and among some still is). Not objecting to them being fringe at all but strongly objecting to the idea that their fringe was somehow 'the left'.

Strangely I totally agreed with the microbet's post for the same reason you disagreed with it. Objecting to the left wing violence in no way implies that the left wing violence is morally equivalent to the right wing violence.

I'm not sure I follow you. Your last sentence is what I said?