Calling Out Antifa
Kudos to Joe Biden for condemning the antifa assault on independent reporter Andy Ngo, as have two other Democratic presidential candidates, long shots Eric Swalwell and Andrew Yang. Too bad much of the left prefers to justify the violence.
It was the Saturday of Pride weekend that masked goons beat up the gay journalist — an attack they’d announced in advance — as he was covering clashing Portland demonstrations of the far left and right.
Local police just stood by during the assault: The fascists of antifa now regularly take over Portland’s streets, and cops are apparently under orders not to stop them — even when, as The Oregonian reported of that day’s events, the antifas vastly outnumber the righties they’re supposedly confronting.
Lefty apologists for antifa all but blame Ngo, as a long report by Vox’s Zack Beauchamp makes clear. A flack for the Human Rights Campaign even suggested that getting attacked was his goal all along, calling him a “sniveling weasel.”
Others complain that Ngo has “doxxed” at least one antifa member — although exposing the identity of someone who commits violent acts in public while wearing a mask seems more like good journalism. Then again, other lefties insist Ngo isn’t a journal
ist, apparently because he reports things they don’t think people should know about.
Although “antifa” is supposedly short for “anti-fascist,” the movement and the larger left are increasingly proud of their fundamentally fascist approach to public life. On top of beating Ngo badly enough to set his brain bleeding, his attackers “milkshaked” him, that UK-born humiliation being the hot new thing for radicals.
The comedian Ricky Gervais tweeted out the lunacy here: “The people who believe that throwing a milkshake in someone’s face shouldn’t be considered assault are often the same people who believe that ‘saying things’ should be.”
Which brings us back to Biden, or rather the statement his campaign provided to The Post. He “believes violence directed at anyone because of their political opinions is never acceptable, regardless of what those beliefs might be” and that “freedom of expression is fundamental to who we are as Americans, and that Andy Ngo’s attackers should be identified and investigated.”
Spot on. Will the rest of the 2020 pack chime in, or has the Democratic Party moved so far left that its would-be leaders don’t even dare condemn physical assaults on the press?