Beating the Enemy

Just as I was lowering the blast doors on the input phase of my (now long-overdue) roundtable contribution, I ran into this BuzzFeed News article by Joseph Bernstein about Andy Ngo. Ngo is a quasi-independent reporter infamous for identifying, investigating, and publicizing what he sees as the excesses of the progressive left, especially antifa. In doing so, he became beloved by various right-wing and alt-right media outlets even as he earned considerable acrimony from antifa and other progressive activists.

On June 29, he was in Portland, Oregon, to document (as he put it) altercations between some right-wing groups (the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer) and progressive protesters, including antifa. He carried a GoPro camera, streaming the event and tweeting constantly, as is his usual style. He was "milkshaked" twice--antifa protesters threw vegan-soy milkshakes (coconut flavor, apparently) on him. And then several black-clad, masked people (antifa, presumably) began beating him. At the hospital, he was treated for a brain bleed (a subarachnoid hemorrhage) and released.

Video of his beating (along with video of some other violent altercations) went viral, especially on right-leaning sites. To them, this confirmed the longstanding conviction (one Ngo has based much of his career on fomenting) that antifa are violent hooligans functionally the same as neo-nazis. In this narrative framing, antifa smashes anyone it perceives as nazi, which in practice means anyone unwilling to kowtow to "political correctness." Ngo of course endorses this reading, gaining a lot more support, online following, and general fame on the right.

On the left, several responses played out at once. Most mainstream voices condemned violence against a journalist, even as they noted with distaste Ngo's preferred tactics and narratives. Commenters circulated multiple defenses of antifa, noting its heterogeneous, loose structure (you can't generalize from a few bad apples) and rejecting as false the suggestion of equivalence with neo-nazis and white supremacists. (No one thus far has died at antifa's hands, which can't be said about rightwing agents.)

A significant portion of left-wing responses, however, celebrated the beating, putting it in roughly the same category as previous sucker-punches of white supremacists like Richard Spencer. Fascists and their enablers should be a little afraid, went this rationale. Denigration of Ngo's status as a journalist abounded. In many people's view, he is little more than an attention-seeking vlog star grifter with a knack for inciting the worst in people and filming it. Some suggested he had invited the attack and/or that he had faked or exaggerated his injuries. People familiar with Ngo's previous work pointed to instances where he had exposed identities, effectively doxxing some progressives and making them vulnerable to attack. In this view, Ngo got what he deserved

It was this event and the fallout from it that planted the seed of the paper I'm writing now, which focuses mainly on shady internet tactics by progressives in the Alabama special election of 2017. I wasn't actually going to reference the attack, however, because in part I didn't feel like I knew the whole story and in part--if I'm honest--because I was a little afraid of being seen as defending a fascist sympathizer. The situation and the debate surrounding it seemed so murky, yucky, and vexed. I'm against violence toward people just because you disagree with their politics. But, having soaked in a lot of stories about the malleability of internet news, I wondered if the situation were as simple as it seemed. In any case, Bernstein had written a story on a different subject that I was using in my paper. Just as I was about to close down the research and start outlining, I did a quick, last-minute check to see what else he had written.

I read the story hot off the presses, as it were, a scant fifteen minutes after it went live on BuzzFeed. I took it as a sign that this seed needed to be part of my research.

It's a fascinating long read. I recommend it.

Bernstein had been researching Ngo for a while. I get the impression he planned to profile Ngo as an example of a particular kind of do-it-yourself, attention economy gig journalism. The piece works on that level. But Bernstein also happened to be there in Portland with Ngo as the attack happened. Bernstein called 911, accompanied Ngo to the hospital, and followed up with him afterward. No fan of the Proud Boys and highly critical of Ngo's politics and journalism, Bernstein nevertheless puts to rest several left-leaning myths about Ngo and the event.

Ngo did nothing overt at the event to invite his beating. He was attacked out of nowhere (though, it seems, in clear retaliation for his prior hit-pieces about antifa in Portland and Seattle). In Bernstein's view, nothing indicated that Ngo had planned or desired such an attack. Moreover, Bernstein confirmed that Ngo's injuries were real and serious.

Lemme say it here, then: Ngo's attackers were wrong, and their actions make me angry and sad. That the Proud Boys and groups like them threaten (and occasionally enact) worse is both true and a shoddy moral dodge. Tu quoque arguments sicken me as defenses for violent action. And I am weary of hearing canned criticisms of nonviolent activist tactics. The progressive internet (at least) bristles with armchair warriors just itching, so it seems, to show those nazis who's boss. Question their tactics and you get haughty lectures about how no social change comes without bloodshed and how Power never relinquishes its hold willingly. "You'd have us stuff flowers into the gun barrels bigots aim at us!"

Yet rarely if ever do these warriors actually bother to deal with their burden of proof: how exactly does violence work? Self-defense in an immediate situation is one thing; if a Proud Boy comes at you with a bat, then of course use force to defend yourself. But paint for me the connection between "we start beating them!" and "justice results!" Show me instances where that tactic has worked to produce a stable situation better than the status quo ante. Perhaps some examples exist. But in the main, violence tends to spiral out of control. Humans are terrible at discriminating between those who deserve to get punched and those who deserve merely to be criticized (and those who just happen to be in the area). Start hitting (or stabbing or shooting or blowing up) enemies, and suddenly you find enemies everywhere.

I don't deny it feels good to watch baddies get their comeuppance. Our pop culture narratives are awash with superheroes smashing villains--or better yet snapping evil armies into dust. But life isn't a comic book movie. We don't have an Infinity Gauntlet.* And our enemies aren't faceless monsters but human beings capable of suffering. That doesn't mean we bow to their whim or tolerate their bigotries. But neither does it mean that we resort immediately to fighting fire with fire.

So, just as general principle: Don't hit people who aren't immediately about to do violence to you.

More tomorrow,

JF

*And if we did, would it be right to use it? There's a reason Gandalf warns the Fellowship against any attempt to use the Ring of Power for good. I wonder if Avengers missed that...)