Just days after his warning, Ngo sat a few feet away from me, cut up and dazed, after a beating at the hands of left-wing protesters.
I was in talks to shadow him at the upcoming demonstration, which I thought might be a good way to illustrate how Ngo constructs an incendiary political narrative out of a narrow selection of facts. But Ngo has also been a familiar, and reviled, presence at Portland’s left-wing protests, where he shoots alarming videos of anti-fascists that often end up on the likes of Fox News and Sky News. He made his name in part through his activism calling attention to a supposed epidemic of staged hate crimes, à la Jussie Smollett. Random bystanders can get hurt.Īndy Ngo was hardly a random bystander: The 33-year-old is suddenly one of the most prominent young figures in all of right-wing media. Under the evergreens, weekend gladiators in bike helmets and gas masks beat the sap out of each other, scoring pinfalls to document and then distribute to sympathetic online mobs. Over the past three years, the streets of downtown Portland have played host to a serialized civil war in miniature between armored combatants from the far right and far left. “Antifa promises violence,” Ngo wrote in a tweet about the video. Set to Kelis’s “Milkshake,” the video implored local leftists to turn out on June 29 to demonstrate against a march planned by the Proud Boys, the infamous right-wing fraternity. The demonstrations generated news coverage that arguably helped raise the book’s profile.Late last month, the conservative media personality Andy Ngo sent me a video made by Popular Mobilization, a group of anti-fascists who organize protests in response to right-wing rallies in Portland, Oregon. Local activists responded to the book with demonstrations in front of Powell’s Books-angry that the bookstore would carry it. In February, Hachette released a memoir, written by Ngo- Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. In his reporting-via Twitter, the conservative news site The Post Millennial, and guest appearances on Fox News-Ngo has been regularly accused of sensationalizing the danger presented by anti-fascists and other left-wing groups. Ngo’s willingness to post the mug shots and other personal information of arrested protesters has caused many of the people in Portland’s leftist movement to see him as something like an existential threat. Do not enter or damage The Nines hotel property.…Move away from The Nines hotel now.” Police withdrew from the scene, but used their sound truck to warn the crowd: “Anyone who is not a guest of The Nines may not enter the hotel. As of Saturday morning, police had not released any information on the incident. “They’re going to kill me,” he said.Īt midnight, Portland police arrived at The Nines on bicycles, along with a riot van, and made at least one arrest. When the fleeing man took shelter in The Nines, he appeared to be pleading with staff. He ran for blocks until someone in the pursuing group tackled him-at Southwest 4th Avenue and Morrison Street-and punched him several times after his head hit the brick sidewalk.Ī nearby man holding a skateboard admonished the group, saying that their quarry looked like he’d “had enough.” However, when someone nearby shouted that the person they were assaulting was Ngo, the skateboard-carrying man changed his attitude, swearing and joining the group. In front of the AC Marriott, the group tried to unmask the unknown man. At one point, the person they pursued said his name was Jake. Word began to spread that Ngo was in the crowd-disguised and wearing a Black Lives Matter flag around his shoulders.Ī group of five to 10 people in identity-obscuring clothing called “black bloc” followed the person they suspected of being Ngo for blocks, inquiring who he was. The small crowd gathered because May 28 was the one-year anniversary of Portland’s first night of protests of the murder of George Floyd.įriday’s march concluded around 11:30 pm without much fanfare.
0 kommentar(er)
