How Portland’s Andy Ngo turned his war with ‘antifa’ into a dubious

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By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh | The Oregonian/OregonLive Portland has long stood in the popular imagination as a liberal utopia full of offbeat, laidback inhabitants. In recent years, however, its national and even international image has been recast in many minds as a lawless town run by marauding left-wing mobs. Arguably no one person has played a larger role in that reputational rewrite than Portland-raised Andy Ngo. A clenched-fist attack and milkshake-drenching of Ngo, 33, at a downtown demonstration in 2019 transformed the former graduate student with a side-hustle of documenting protesters behaving badly. He quickly became a high-profile figure sought after by national conservative media outlets and politicians as a foremost expert on — and victim of — left-wing extremism. Ngo now commands a Twitter following larger than any news publication in Oregon and is a Fox News regular. He has twice testified before Congress. His personal attorney served as a legal adviser to former President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. Along the way Ngo has faced repeated charges of peddling propaganda that foments far-right violence, inspiring a visceral loathing of him by the left. He’s said that hatred has led to continuous threats against him and his family. The star turn for the self-described independent journalist culminated this month with the publication of a best-selling book that claims to be a definitive inside look at the amorphous movement of anti-fascist activists, commonly known as antifa. More polemic than a work of reported revelations, “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy” was denounced in January by Portland leftists outside the flagship Powell’s Books. That only fueled its rise as one of the most popular political titles on Amazon before its release. Some of the biggest names in conservative circles, including Tucker Carlson and Dinesh D’Souza, have hyped Ngo’s book as a must-read. This week, it debuted as number three on the New York Times’ Best Seller list for nonfiction. But the work contains serious omissions, errors and false equivalencies that have alarmed an array of academics and intelligence officials who track extremist movements. Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino, delivered a blunt appraisal of Ngo’s book after reading it. “It’s full of claims that are patently false and rife with factual deceptions,” Levin said. Ngo declined to respond to specific criticisms of his work, telling The Oregonian/OregonLive to instead review Congressional testimony made by former Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli about Portland protester violence. In his book, Ngo seeks to shift the public focus from acts of horrific and even fatal right-wing violence that flourished during the Trump administration to warn of what he sees as an even greater menace: the ranks of far-left activists whose supposed subversive and effective savagery is facilitated by liberal politicians — including Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler — and a complicit press. Drawing on accounts from Portland and around the country, Ngo portrays antifa as a well-oiled machine of organized, diabolical danger. The group’s adherents and enablers, he writes, range from radical anarchists to the “Wall of Moms” who attended Black Lives Matter demonstrations downtown last year. His view: They orchestrate riots. They terrorize with impunity. They harm and maim. “No honest person denies there are indeed violent far-right militants in the United States, as documented by federal law enforcement, but their numbers and influence are grossly exaggerated by biased media,” Ngo writes in the opening pages. “Antifa receive a tiny fraction of the news coverage of the far right, and yet I would argue their increasingly violent tactics and ideology pose just as much, if not more, of a threat to the future of American liberal democracy.” Though the left’s acts of violence — including the fatal shooting of a pro-Trump protester in Portland by a self-professed antifa supporter — and widespread property damage are well-documented, national security officials believe there’s little evidence of a vast criminal conspiracy among its ideological backers. CONNECTIONS AND LIMELIGHT Since the attack, Ngo has appeared on Fox News at least two dozen times to detail the dangers the left poses, according to figures compiled by Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group. He’s been invited twice by Republican lawmakers, including once by Cruz, to testify before Congress. During this time, Ngo’s personal attorney has been Harmeet Dhillon, a national Republican operative based in California who served as a legal adviser to Trump’s re-election campaign. Joe Lowndes, a professor of political science at the University of Oregon, said Ngo’s emergence as an authority in the eyes of GOP officials, Fox News and outlets like it is no coincidence. “Andy is indicative of the increasingly blurry line between far-right media and the Republican Party, which have coalesced around demonizing the left,” Lowndes said. Though Ngo stopped attending protests almost entirely after the milkshake episode, he’s continued to post and comment on protest footage in Portland and around the country. He now boasts more than 750,000 followers on Twitter, more than any news organization in Oregon, including The Oregonian/OregonLive. His book, which shares the same publisher as titles by Donald Trump Jr. and Newt Gingrich, rarely strays from the territory Ngo’s staked on Twitter over the last couple of years. Nor does it provide much beyond interpretation and conjecture drawn from previously reported news events. Ngo conducts few original interviews and offers little in the way of documents or records that form the foundation for most mainstream investigative reporting. He steers clear of experts or sources who could complicate the narrative he puts forth. The book gives no indication he’s spoken with members of the political movement he purports to unmask. And while Ngo told The Oregonian/OregonLive he covertly attended several dozen protests in Portland over the summer, he provided neither proof nor dates when asked. His book is also riddled with misleading claims and factual inaccuracies. Ngo, for example, says that a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, carried out by 24-year-old Connor Betts in 2019 was inspired by antifa. His proof? Prior to the attack, which left nine people dead, Betts had occasionally voiced support for left-wing causes online. Meanwhile the FBI, whose investigation into the shooting has probed far beyond the killer’s social media posts, has yet to find a clear motive. The shooting remains under investigation, the bureau said. In another instance, Ngo cited figures alleging Portland protesters had cost downtown businesses more than $23 million during the first few weeks of the city’s nightly demonstrations. Those figures, the Oregonian/OregonLive revealed in a widely read article, were tied overwhelmingly to coronavirus closures, not the nightly unrest. TARGETED, HE’S LEFT THE U.S. Ngo said he has endured a great deal of harm while pursuing the subject of his book. In addition to being physically assaulted on a number of occasions, he said he’s received a deluge of death threats and had people in masks show up outside his parents’ home. Others have posted online photos that show them posing next to graffiti in Portland that reads “Kill Andy Ngo.” Because of increasing concerns about his personal safety, Ngo said he recently left his hometown for London. He filed at least 10 reports with Portland police about threats made toward him or his family since last June, said Sgt. Kevin Allen, a bureau spokesman. “His accounts of his own experience are very moving and powerful,” said Neumann, the former Homeland Security official. “That should not happen in America.” Still, some are disturbed by an apparent conflict of interest that Ngo chose not to disclose. In June, he filed a $900,000 lawsuit in Multnomah County against Rose City Antifa, a largely anonymous group of anti-fascists based in Portland. The suit alleges the group orchestrated a “campaign of intimidation and terror” against Ngo, including his June 2019 assault. His book never mentions the lawsuit nor the nearly $1 million Ngo stands to reap should he win. Ngo does, however, devote an entire chapter to Rose City Antifa and also discusses some of the people targeted in his civil case. Ngo defended that omission. “It is standard protocol to not discuss ongoing litigation other than through counsel,” he told The Oregonian/Oregonlive in an email. “The way publishing cycles and lawsuits work, any book about an ongoing lawsuit would become dated by the time of publication.” Levin, who runs the hate and extremism center in San Bernardino, said concerns with the far left in Portland and other parts of U.S. are not unfounded and that the movement poses a number of political threats. However, he believes Ngo has not provided a balanced or credible forum to explore them. “Unfortunately,” Levin said, “he’s doing a disservice to the American public.”