SIO199: The Problem with #Antifa

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: What is that? Two episodes in one weekend, how could it possibly be? That's right, this is Serious Inquiries Only, episode 199, I'm your host Thomas Smith, and I am back for another edition of, another Phoebe Naptime edition of Serious Inquiries Only. Yeah, okay, wow, so, so much to tell you in the 24 hours since I last sat in the guest room during Phoebe's nap time. Uh, one, um, wow, thank you so much for your response to yesterday's episode, that was pretty overwhelming, I, you know, I wasn't really looking for that per se, I, I had a feeling a few people would comment in, but uh, I got just a lot, I got a lot of comments and emails and tweets and everything, um, about yesterday's episodes, specifically the, the later part there, and I just want to say, I I really appreciate it.

0:01:21 Thomas: And, you know, I said I wasn't, you know, looking for any, any sort of sympathy or anything. I just want to tell you guys what was up. But I'm actually, I don't know, I guess I'm surprised at how much it did really have a positive effect to see a bunch of people say that the show does something for them and they enjoy it in any way. It really does help because, you know, I guess if you just sit here and do a podcast, and sure, I can see that some people download it and stuff. But oftentimes you just see people who don't like it or disagree. And if people are enjoying it, they might just enjoy it quietly. And that's great, nothing wrong with that. But it can be, I guess it can be distorting. You know, I do think that the real culprit is what I talked about in yesterday's episode.

0:02:07 Thomas: However, it also could be that just the nature of this medium makes it tough sometimes. But all that aside, I don't want to go back into that. I just want to say thank you so much. I do want to say this is the episode not not yesterday's actually. This is the Episode that stalled me out. This is something that so, so rest assured this is not a spur-of-the-moment record another episode. I did tell you guys that I did want to try to do some catch-up just because I had done no episodes in July. So I kind of want to get some in before the end of the month here, but this is not a spur-of-the-moment thing. This was the episode that I was researching in depth back in late June. And I guess because it's a confluence of things, but it's such, it's one where there are a lot of episodes like this where I feel like I could never be done researching.

0:02:57 Thomas: Like, I could just go forever. There's no, somebody has to tell you, you know, like, okay, time, that's enough, you almost might be worthwhile to set like a time constraint, because then a lot times humans do better, with just psychologically, with some sort of constraint to tell them, okay, you're done after this point. Deadlines do help. But there's so much, I always could look at more stuff for this one. So I had an enormous amount of research done when I kind of stalled out. So, I picked it back up. I was worried that it would be off topic. However, it's not, because the occupant of the White House, Donald J. Trump, saw fit to tweet that we ought to label and designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.

0:03:47 Thomas: And that works for me to go back to this episode because this was going to be about the quote-unquote attack, or Antifa attack, quote-unquote. I mean, it wasn't an attack. You can't deny that it was an attack, but the quote-unquote Antifa attack on Andy Ngo back in June. And it's one that I posted this on Facebook and stuff. It's one I have something of a connection to because Andy Ngo was at the MythCon in Milwaukee, the infamous one with Sargon, Carl, and that debate.

And he actually went back and forth with me in the after-show gathering thingy, you know, and, and gave me some of the typical right-wing apologetics, uh, because he is an Asian American, a lot of those, uh, whenever you try to, uh, advocate for any sort of increase of diversity or any sort affirmative action or anything like that, uh, for people of color, it's a common right-wing talking point to point to Asian people and use them, and use the on average higher test scores, or whatever, on average, higher wealth, higher wages in the Asian community, and say, oh, look, it's not, well, if it's just white people being racist, how do you explain Asians? And that is a long separate conversation, which I sort of had with him a little bit, but I also would defer to other sources for that.

0:05:22 Thomas: It's something that I have looked into, I have thoughts on. I think there are probably other people who are more connected to it, have said it better. It could be a show for a later date, maybe with a guest, I don't know. But I'll put that aside. But rest assured, I do not see it as a valid argument. But anyway, that was my interaction with him. And then he also did a write up about the, the debate, and he interviewed me on Skype.

So I have like a little bit of knowledge about this guy. I've actually interacted with him a decent amount, Andy No. And it's because of that that I am even more weirded out by what's happened, because, and this is among the less important things about this, but he didn't used to have a weird faux British accent that he now seems to have. I mean, it's a minor thing, but it's also incredibly weird. Like, if somebody you knew just developed a fate, like kind of a sort of a Milo Yiannopoulos accent out of nowhere, like the guy is born and raised in Portland, Oregon, he's, he's lived in the United States his whole life. He's not, there's no explanation for that. It came out of nowhere. I know, again, this is, this has not, it's not important, but it is a weird thing.

Like, you couldn't, if all of a sudden somebody you knew showed up with an accent one day on cable news, you'd be like, what? Well, I mean, what is that? It's at least interesting. But that's the least of my worries. It's just something that I and some other people on Twitter found incredibly weird.

0:06:54 Thomas: And you can actually, you know, people have linked videos of what he used to sound like a couple years ago and to what he's sounding like now. It's really odd. Oh, before I go any further, I meant to say at the very beginning of the show, I also did something which I hope you will take advantage of. There used to be a patron-only, Serious Inquiries Only Facebook group, like a just for supporters. And it was good, but it also, I feel like it maybe didn't have as much activity as it could. So I talked to the folks over in that group and I had heard some suggestions before about maybe we should just open it up to everybody. It might just be better for getting the conversation going more, you know. And I asked the people there and they overwhelmingly approved of that.

0:07:41 Thomas: So, I've made it public. I know there are a lot of great Facebook groups vying in that competition. Certainly, Philosophers in Space and Opening Arguments are two of my favorites. However, if you would like a group that is for SIO topics, that is for progressive politics, feminism, science, atheism, the old stuff, I certainly try to respond to everything that's posted there, and I think it'll only grow. I've let some more people in. It's now public. You just have to answer a couple of questions to make sure that I know you're not a bot. You know, I know it might seem like I'm it's not that I'm trying to find, you know, it's some show, very minor show trivia. And it's because it's the only thing I could think of that would separate actual listeners from other people.

0:08:28 Thomas: But that's at facebook.com/groups/SIO members slash group slash Sio members. So go join up. I'll try to remember to put a link in the show notes. It should be fun, and I think it'll be a good place to talk about future show stuff as well. Maybe get some comments, get some opinions, get some discussion going. It's going to be better opened up to everybody, even if you couldn't support the show financially, which is totally okay. So, Antifa. And I don't care about the pronunciation differences. Some people say it's Antifa, Antif... I don't care. I'm saying Antifa that's how I say it. I just really don't care. It's a, it's a compound word. There's not really, I guess if you were to use the other words, it would be anti-fa.

0:09:14 Thomas: Anti-fa would be how you do it. Otherwise, I don't know, I'm just, whatever, Antifa. So this is something, again, this is a topic, this is a show where I just don't even know how to get into, like, I have this whole, just, I've got copious notes, I have, have a million things I want to say, and I, it's so hard to like get a timeline, like a thought tree of where I want to start and where I want to end up, I'm going to do my best, I've tried, I will do my best, but I may, it may involve, as you know with me, it may involves some going back and forth, but if you haven't seen the video I will also try to link that, Andy Ngo was attacked, now this is what's, it's weird, it's already funny and it's already misleading because Andy Ngo was punched and kicked by one person and was also doused in some milkshake and some silly string.

0:10:06 Thomas: So that's, that is the bare bones of what happened. Now the headlines back in June would have you believe that this was like a roaming Antifa terrorist group that went around looking for innocent journalists to kill and to maim and beat up. That's really like honest to God how it was reported in some places. Antifa thugs, beat up, whatever. It's amazing that in all that coverage last month, and again, apologies that this is a month late, but it all, you know, the president just tweeted about Antifa today, I think it's a relevant conversation. It is amazing that in all of that coverage, oftentimes what was missed was this was a Proud Boys rally.

0:10:47 Thomas: This I'm sure there were plenty of Nazi sympathetic people there. This was an alt-right racist rally and Antifa was at it because that's part of what Antifa tends to do or people who call themselves Antifa, which is another big problem we need to get into. It's not a group with membership. It's also not nothing. That's the thing. I'm going to maybe be a little bit apart from some of the Antifa apologetics I'm seeing online, which mostly I agree with, by the way. Don't get me wrong. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, but it's not quite right to say that Antifa is nothing, and if you sitting here in your room right now oppose fascism, then you're also Antifa.

0:11:34 Thomas: That's a little misleading. Antifa has a little more than that. It takes a specific group of people. It takes a specific kind of person to don the black block gear, go out there, put your, oftentimes your body in harm's way for different causes. That's a, that's a that's more than just anybody who says they're against fascism. Look how easy it is to get off on a tangent. Okay, back to my notes here. So that's what happened, you know, and this was reported again. Again, and Andy, no, I think he, this is opinion, opinion, opinion, but it's based on observing this guy for a long time. Again, I've been aware of this guy for perhaps a lot longer than most people because of our interaction, whatever, two years ago.

0:12:22 Thomas: So I know the kind of guy he is. I think this is something he's been wanting to happen for quite some time. He's gone around and provoked Antifa type people for a while. He has doxxed them. He, he doxxed somebody who was attacked by Nazis and, and made it worse. Like it's, he's, he's not a great guy. And this is something I think he was counting on. And that's all the more reason by the way, that nobody should have given him this opportunity to cash in, because the minute he was roughed up a little bit by somebody wearing black block gear, it went into to full grift mode and he raised hundreds, hundreds of thousands of dollars. He's appeared on virtually every cable news, anything, of course, Fox News mainly, but also mainstream.

0:13:10 Thomas: He went mainstream with it because this is the kind of issue that this country loves to prioritize way ahead of anything else. And the problem is, and I'm jumping ahead, but one of the main reasons is because it can be cast in the lens of, oh, this press freedom journalist attacked. We need to, you know, this, this cannot stand. And so journalists and up to and including Jake Tapper even are going to sound off on something that they really shouldn't be. When you put it into the context that it requires, this is my main thesis. When you put this attack into proper context, it is nothing that any of us here or any journalist, any mainstream cable site, nothing that we should be remotely concerned with.

0:14:01 Thomas: I also want to say, for the record, I believe that the one person who physically attacked Andy Ngo, because it was one person, other people threw milkshakes and silly string, but if you look at the video, one person attacked Andy Ngo. One person physically attacked Andy Ngo. And in fact, several people tried to protect Andy Ngo. You could have written the headlines as Antifa protect Andy Ngo from assailant, from masked assailants. You honestly could have. All it would take is maybe like, it doesn't even take changing any of the facts. That is actually what happened. And that's what the problem with Antifa is. Everybody gets to be counted as Antifa if the right wing wants them to or if it's convenient.

0:14:46 Thomas: And there's no way to separate who might be good actors from who might be bad actors. There's absolutely no way. To an extent, that's worse than I think any other organization of any kind of religion or anything. If you're talking about Islam, if you're telling about Christianity, if you are talking about anything, you're at least able to say, okay, well, this person, this is what they believe, this, blah, blah, with Antifa, it's all anonymous and it's all just categorized as one thing.

And anything ranging from "I'm gonna stand in a line and just protect somebody" to "I'm a douchebag who wants to put on black block and just destroy some stuff, just to take advantage of anonymity to create trouble and to to like break stuff," those people also get counted in, even though they might not even be really against against fascism, they might just be opportunistic troublemakers. And that's the problem, that's a major problem. So he was punched with a glancing blow, uh, and I think maybe hit twice, I've watched the video a thousand times, maybe hit, it's hard to tell but probably hit twice with fists and kicked a little bit. And then end of story, everything else was milkshake or silly string.

He had ever so slightly a black eye, which, you know, that's an attack. I would want the person who attacked, the one person. Oh, that is what I started saying and I lost track already because I have so much I want to say. I want the one person who attacked Andy Ngo brought to justice, which would probably be.

0:16:21 Thomas: What is the penalty for punching somebody, just like a bar fight or anything else? What is a penalty for that? Whatever that is, I want that to happen. That person should not have attacked Andy Ngo, it's as simple as that. Easy, easy question, easy answer, they shouldn't have done that. Mostly, by the way, not because Andy doesn't deserve it, he's a piece of crap in many ways, um, karmically I think he probably did deserve it karmically, in the same, but that is not the same as saying I want to hurt him or I want someone else to actually hurt him. That's just simply to say that I am not really sad about what happened to him. I don't, it's not a big deal. It's less than the beating I took in seventh grade at the hands of another seventh grader.

0:17:09 Thomas: I had an actual black eye after that. I mean, it really just wasn't that big of a deal. Now, it might be a little traumatizing, obviously, I'm not, I wouldn't wish it on anybody, buddy, but put into the context of what happens in America every day, I'm sorry, leaving out the expletive that I was about to say. Every day, worse things happen to better people, every single day, times a thousand at least. And we don't get up in arms about it. Jake Tapper doesn't tweet about it unless it just happens to be something he cares about. As a society, we prioritize certain things, we prioritize certain voices, we prioritize certain victims, and we don't care about others. That's just how it goes, part of what I'm going to say. But anyway, back to the story. So he did that, he filmed a video, he, you know, also stuff got stolen, which, yeah, that's wrong.

I also hope that whoever stole his stuff should receive whatever penalty for stolen stuff is, so that's return the stuff, pay a fine, I don't know, what is it, pay a fine, I don't know, what do you get if you just, someone catches you stealing someone's camera, what happens, do you get the electric chair, whatever, whatever it is, that person should also get that.

So that's, so there you have it, everybody who's pro Andy No or whatever, this is me saying I think the one to possibly two perpetrators of any sort of crimes on Andy Know should receive whatever justice is appropriate, whatever settlement, whatever, however that works, typically they should receive that.

0:18:49 Thomas: There you have it for everybody dying to hear the, the, those magic words. Yes, I do believe whoever was responsible for crimes against Andy Ngo should face the consequences of those crimes. I do believe that. And I mean it. I'm far more mad that they gave Andy Ngo exactly what he wanted. I'm much more mad for that, but that's unfortunately not against the law. It's not not against the law to give Andy Ngo exactly what he wants. Apparently it is against the law to punch somebody, uh, and, and uh, kick them a little bit. So that happened and Andy Ngo went on full capitalization mode. Uh, he just eventually decided this is, this is the most frustrating thing about it. And, uh I'm going to say this and uh I am just going to, I am going to just say it because it is true.

0:19:38 Thomas: He claimed to have suffered a brain hemorrhage, and that is almost certainly 99.8% not true. There is no way he suffered a brain hemorhage from that attack. His story was they were wearing super ultra nanotech evil Antifa gloves that have fiberglass in the knuckles or something, as though that would somehow hemorrhoge your brain but not actually give you a real black eye, apparently, as part of the nanotech, I guess. Um, but the reason I, that every medical professional that I asked on Facebook, and there were a lot, I'm friends with, coincidentally, a lot of medical professionals, and I did a status on this and they sounded off and they provided their evidence, and overwhelmingly everyone said, okay, technically it's possible.

0:20:28 Thomas: However, you wouldn't be, uh, you would be still in the hospital. You wouldn't have been discharged overnight. Like he stayed one night, discharged, discharged, uh, he wouldn't have been discharged immediately. He also was flying in airplanes within a week to go make his various media appearances saying how he's dying of a brain hemorrhage, his, he'll never be the same, he can't even speak, um, gosh, must be tough for any UFC fighter who gets hit a thousand times more than that every single night that there's a UFC. It's amazing that the tiny amount of punches that are in that video, which we can all watch, it's not not, there's no, there's no hidden part of it, that's a, that's, that is what it is. Um, but maybe he has, it's possible that he has a glass skull.

0:21:14 Thomas: Maybe it could, it's, that's what every medical professional said, essentially. It is possible that He, it was literally Mr. Glass from, uh, Unbreakable, and that's possible. And sometimes people have, uh... already have certain defects or something in their heads or their brains or whatever that could lead to worse injury than you're expecting. It's incredibly unlikely, and it's virtually impossible that he would have been allowed to fly within a week. It's pretty, that would be medical malpractice is what, uh, several medical professionals told me on my Facebook. And you can go, that's all public. You can go look, look it up if you want to. It would be medical malpractice if he had a real brain hemorrhage of any significance to the point where it's causing, apparently it's caused a British accent and a speech impediment.

0:22:03 Thomas: I, I, whatever. Okay, sure. So wall-to-wall Fox News coverage, and even some other mainstream media sources. But also another stupid thing happened, another really, really stupid thing, which was the Portland Police Department, by the way, who right-wing hacks like Peter Boghossian are saying is like purposefully allowing Antifa to roam the streets and beat up random journalists, which is not true, being accused, by the way, his police department, the mayor, all that, they're being accused of being too friendly to Antifa, keep that in mind as you hear the following, which is that they decided to just make up a rumor, or put it out based on terrible or non-existent information, that Antifa was planning on throwing milkshakes that had dry cement in them, which would act, some people, people interpreted that as like, oh, it would be a rock solid milkshake.

0:23:00 Thomas: I don't think that's what it was meant to be. It's supposed to be like, that's like a caustic agent, you know, that'll like burn people's skin. And they decided to just tweet it out there.

The police department, real bang up job, good police work, tweets out, "Hey, we hear they're planning on using this dry cement in a milkshake, if you know anything about that, if have info, if suffer an attack, hack, let us know," and uh, to which journalists, several of them tried to follow up, "What, where did you hear this, what's the source of this, what is this, what are you talking about?"

And their response was to cite an anonymous email that just said they heard that, which was date and time stamped after they had made the announcement, so That's convincing, and this was seized upon by Fox News, right wing, you know, any anti-progressive, I, you know, I should just use the category of anti-progressive, as it's actually a better category than anything, because it encompasses Fox News, but it also gets people like James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, Michael Shermer, like all those people who say they're like classical liberals, and, and, you know, they probably agree with gay marriage, and they probably, they're probably pro-abortion, right? So, they have a few beliefs that would put them on the liberal end of the spectrum a little bit, but they also hate progressives and do anything they can to hinder the progressive agenda and to give aid and comfort to Nazis and fascists and Proud Boys and the alt-right and all that.

0:24:36 Thomas: They do everything they can to help those people, and they do everything THEY can to HINDER the progressive Agenda. So actually, I'm glad I just had this idea. It's going to be so much easier from now on. I will just say anti-progressives. And in the future, take that to mean everybody from Breitbart to, you know, James Lindsay, essentially the penis hoax guy. It's everybody. It really is an effective label, I think, because I think it's a more salient identity to those people than anything else.

That's why you see Sam Harris have Ben Shapiro on his show Sam Harris have Jordan Peterson on his shows and all these little things where they're able to like forget all their actual differences like Christians and atheists and anti-gay and whatever it is they're unable to leave all that aside as Long as you also hate progressives, that's how it goes. So anyway, the anti-progressives seized on this and said, look at these Antifa terrorists who are planning on burning people to death with these milkshakes. Never mind, there was not a, a single bit of evidence, not a single documented case of this actually happening. And this was a case of the police department creating fear, creating controversy where there was none. And if you're wondering, why would an Antifa-friendly organization possibly do that?

Well, did you happen to know that this is the very same police, what do you call it, squad? I don't know, department, whatever, I'm not big on police. The very same one that was recently busted for having cozy ties to the alt-right. Text messages were leaked in which they were working with and coordinating with these alt-right and these uh, Nazi-esque groups, these far-right groups.

0:26:22 Thomas: It's disturbing. They were, there, there was an inquiry opened up by the mayor or whatever because of it, um, and it was so bad. What they were doing was there was text messages between the police in the alt-right where they'd say, hey, if you guys are doing a protest, we know that some of you have outstanding warrants for your arrest. Tell you what, we won't act on those. We won't acts on those in your protest today. Those were a lot of the messages. Telling people, so yeah, this is the group that's allegedly too friendly to Antifa. They are telling neo-Nazi alt- right groups, hey, we know you should be arrested. There's a, a warrant out for arrest. We know who you are and we know where you're going to be because you are planning on various demonstrations and so forth.

0:27:09 Thomas: Go ahead, we won't arrest you. We'll go ahead and let you do that because, what, free speech or something? I don't know why police officers would do that, but they did. They did it. They also warned them and informed them about left-wing groups that were being formed. I will link this, of course, in the show notes. This is real. This really happened. This isn't an Antifa-friendly police department. So that's a lot of the fact.

Another thing is, there was a while where people were also sharing, um, photos of a older-looking man with a bloodied head, and that was another, oh, Antifa attacks again, these, they're going around beating innocent old men senseless, this Antifa roving terrorist group, uh, and then little snooping, little detective work by some people on Twitter found uh, numeric copious footage and photos and everything of that previously innocent-looking white old man, oh, that is out of all our sympathies, he's perfect for the American sympathy, an older white man who would be more sympathetic than that, turns out he is an absolute asshole who was waving around like a cattle prod weapon at people and sticking it in their faces and trying to get people, like, provoke people, and, uh, sure enough, enough, one person at least took that bait.

And quite frankly, if I were at an event, if I was at a counter-protest where I was counter-protesting neo-Nazis or Proud Boys or whoever, and who knows, maybe my wife would be there with me, and you were waving an active cattle prod, an electronic shocky thing in our faces, yeah, I might crack you in the head.

0:28:48 Thomas: And you tell, you what, you deserve it. That, I mean, again, then I should face consequences, maybe there will be some charges or something, or there will be a judge, will ask me why I did it, and I'll have to say, well, this asshole was waving a cattle prod in my wife's face, so I cracked him in the head, and he'll say, all right, well, you still shouldn't do that, do some community service, fine.

I'm not saying that anyone who ever attacks somebody should be above the system. I am saying that it, it is understandable in certain circumstances. It is understandable is what I'm saying. And if I were to put myself in someone else's shoes, I could see doing the same thing is what I'm saying. And if you think I'm full of crap, I would have, you know, wonder what you would do in that circumstance.

You know, what might happen if you were in that very heated circumstance when you, you know, by the way, another bit of background information, that every death, every activist, sorry, every extremist killing in 2018 was done by right-wing people. And you're sitting there with a bunch of other possibly Antifa members trying to make sure there's a peaceful protest or whatever of this Nazi group.

If you're trying, whatever you're doing, whatever they're doing, and some piece of crap is waving a weapon in your face, yeah, it's possible that sometimes someone will not react well to that, and it still should be illegal, not saying it shouldn't be illegal, not seeing there shouldn't some sort of consequences, it's understandable. All right, now that I think I've gotten all the fact pattern in, mostly now I want to do some contextualizing. And I want to say that even if you're not quite like I am, if you are more sympathetic to Andy Ngo, okay, okay.

0:30:35 Thomas: I tried to convince you. Maybe I couldn't convince you, fine. If you're like, no, that dude, I still feel really bad for the guy. He shouldn't have gotten attacked, da, da da da, okay I will even grant all that and still start from there, but I want put it in proper context. And at the end of putting it in the proper context, I will hope that you agree with me that we should not give the slightest crap about what happened. It should not be major news. It should be what it is, an isolated fight between two people who also, there's also some silly strings. That's nothing. It doesn't matter. But when you watch the video, as I have a million times, these people know who Andy Ngo is. I also want to mention a tweet, which I will link, by another journalist who was there who said, I and possibly a hundred other journalists were here are covering this Proud Boys, uh, Antifa clash.

0:31:30 Thomas: None of us were hurt. It's almost as though Antifa isn't going around attacking journalists, and someone from Antifa attacked Andy Ngo. That's what happened. A person who knew Andy Ngo and knew his history of doxing, his history of Islamophobia and lying about the state of like cities in the UK and how it's like, oh, there are no go zones. All this bullshit Andy has lied about, this despicable stuff, stuff he's done in his career, quote unquote, as a, you know, right-wing anti-progressive blogger, all that stuff. It's somebody who knew that, knew about the doxing situation that he was in, and attacked him because of it. It is someone who knows him personally. This is not Antifa going around attacking random journalists. So, it should be treated, I think, should be treated like if there's a bar fight and someone says, hey, you were the guy who looked at my, my wife funny the other day, and then there's a fight.

0:32:25 Thomas: Doesn't mean it's right, doesn't mean whoever punched someone was right, it does not mean that it was right. It does mean that it's not news. It's not news. And if somebody takes specifics about the circumstances and utilizes their situation and the political climate and all that stuff to then turn that into a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar grift, that's not right. Right. So that's what I care, that's what I think. But that's where I need to start talking about some concepts here. Conceptually, there's a problem we run into, and that is that the minute you try to put this in context, you get people saying, well, this is what a boundary. This is what a boundary you're avoiding. You're avoiding it.

0:33:10 Thomas: And I want to be as fair as I can to that argument, because this is something that we would talk about in 2016, and something I've talked about about on the show. Who knows if I've named an episode with whataboutery, I forget, or whataboutism or something like that. And it's caused me to have to think about what that concept is, when is an appropriate use of it, when isn't. And the truth is, it does depend a lot on what's happening.

It involves the proper weighting of moral problems, moral rights and wrongs, and also it just involves actual truth, the actual truth or falsehood of claims, um, because here's what happened, it was, it was, like, during the election a lot, I mean, we've seen this, this was the main tactic of Trump supporters, when you point out, hey, Trump is a, uh, sexual, uh, harasser and possibly assaulter of women, by his own admission, in every Likelihood he's unqualified, he has no skill, you'd go through the litany, you'd go through the the list of all the reasons why Trump is nowhere near, perhaps toward the bottom of people qualified to be president, how awful he is, all this stuff he said, all this stuff he's done, how terrible he is. And you would get in response, but what about Hillary Clinton's emails, or what about something, about, yeah but Hillary blah blah blah. And that, the the thing that makes that whataboutery, is improperly weighting those problems.

0:34:41 Thomas: Because if what we had was really two clones of Donald Trump, and just hypothetically, this is a Rick and Morty, like, you know, thought experiment. If we had two, a clone, Donald Trump versus his clone, and one side said, well, what about all the stuff Donald Trump was doing? And the other side said said, well, okay, but what about clone Donald Trump? He's done literally everything that Donald Trump has done. That wouldn't be an inappropriate use of whataboutery, really. To me, that would be because you have a choice between candidates. And if it were actually true that they were exactly as bad, then it's valid to point that out. It's actually valid to say, well, what about this person who is literally exactly as badass as the other person or worse?

0:35:28 Thomas: Then be like, all right, well you bring up a good point. Maybe I shouldn't vote for this person. It's not that there's no such thing as a proper use of saying what about it's about. It's about two things. I think it's the proper moral weighting of different things and truth, because what's more often the case is you get what about fake false thing that's not real is what you get. What about the Seth Rich who was murdered by the client? You know, like you get stuff like that. And it's like, well, that, I mean, perhaps there's a better term than what a battery to encompass all of this. I don't know. I'm not a term making guy, but, but that, that I will say this, this is at least caused me to go back and clarify in my own head what's happening here.

0:36:15 Thomas: And it's a little bit like an analogy. I mean, if you are the World Health Organization and someone is saying, hey, there's a problem here with, I don't know, tainted, uh, lipstick, I don't know, I'm just thinking random stuff, tainted products of some kind, and they're like, oh my gosh, what's, what's happened? Well, it, it killed one person. And And it made another person ill. And then the World Health Organization is like, well, that, I mean, honestly, we're dealing with like Ebola. And so, I means, there's thousands, thousands and thousands of people dying. We need to contain this. I'm like, we don't, sorry, but like, that's not really what we do. Like, it's not, it just doesn't matter that much, you know? That then they come back and say, well, are you saying you are okay with the fact that a person died of this tainted product? You're like, well, no, I'm not okay with it. It's just, it's not the priority. It's not, sorry, like it just isn't going to be what we focus on, you know?

0:37:18 Thomas: And what, this is the equivalent to me of what has happened. Well, are you saying this attack is okay? How dare you? How hard is it? Here's a tweet I saw. How hard it is to just condemn the attack, everybody? All you blue check journalists on Twitter can't even muster a word of defense for Andy Andy Ngo, or a word of condemnation for his attacker. And to that, I responded somewhat facetiously, but also with a point. I can't believe these blue checkmark journalists on Twitter haven't taken a single sentence to condemn my seventh grade bully who beat me up.

0:37:53 Thomas: It's the same. It's a same level of problem when put in the proper context. This is one person who attacked Andy Ngo. They knew Andy Ngo personally. You heard it in the video. They said, go home, Andy Ngo. These people knew this wasn't an anonymous random attack. This is one person who did, yes, broke the law. Yes. Attacked Andy Ngo and shouldn't have. And this is the age old thing with so much, I, you know, another reason I stalled out on this episode is I just can't think of, there's some sort of proper either analogy or historical example in my mind. And I cannot for the life of me, remember what it is, but I think it happened a lot in like the civil rights movement. You know, I've watched a lot of, obviously, a lot of documentaries and books and stuff on the civil rights movement.

0:38:39 Thomas: And it would happen. The tactic back then, too, was like, well, the protesters are violent, we can't, sorry, there's violence. Nixon ran on this, you know, on law and order, like, these protesters, they're in our streets, they're being violent. It's always been the way to maintain the status quo was to ignore, ignore the moral questions and focus in on individual bad behavior among the group of people trying to make change. That's, it's an age-old tactic. And usually, I think this goes hand in hand, the people who are trying to making change, or need, or rather maybe people are trying make change on their behalf, they look different than the people who are perhaps harmed by individual bad actors within the movement, a.k.a.

0:39:35 Thomas: One side is Black and one side as white, you know, in the civil rights movement. When perhaps a Black civil rights protester maybe fought back or defended themselves, or maybe even, because this is totally understandable in a country of millions of people, maybe maybe even they attack somebody because they're fed up, that would be blown up in images. And if there was a white victim, there's far more moral salience for the silent majority, in quotes, for that white victim than there ever would be for all the victims of racism and of all that stuff throughout history. That kind of goes in the background. And that's what I want to talk talk about too.

0:40:21 Thomas: I just looked up for fun, because, you know, it's always good fun, just how many unarmed men police have killed in this country so far this year. And I'm talking unarmed. They've killed a lot of people. They're killed, let's see, I've got the number. They killed 503 people so far in 2019. Oh, that's 503 more than Antifa have killed, by the way, just if we're counting. And specifically, of people who are not even armed, so I just want to look at those people, not even armed. That's 26 people who have been killed. Where are all the condemnations? I want, I want to go through every single person who's killed unjustly by a police officer. I want to get a condemnation from every single person on the right, on the anti-progressive side. You need to take the time and effort to use your energy to tweet out about them, otherwise you don't care, and you, you are, are saying that you want police to kill people.

0:41:17 Thomas: That's just not really how it works. And what's scarier, the idea that one masked attacker who knew Andy Ngo personally hit him a couple times, or that the people who are charged with maintaining law and order and are authorized, the only people who were officially authorized to use force, deadly force, on people in this country, don't seem to be able to do their job and seem to kill people all the time, which she thinks is a bigger problem, which should get more of our attention. That's but one of a million examples. Here's another one. Here's an other example. I was reading an Atlantic article today entitled An Epidemic of Disbelief, and I'll try to remember to link that, and it's about sexual assault and rape in our country, specifically the fact that there are thousands and thousands of untested rape kits. And it gets worse.

0:42:13 Thomas: This is a long article. There's a lot to it. I'll hit a couple highlights, by the way. Thousands of untested rape kits. It turns out, so there's been also been money that has been available for different cities and whatever locality, municipalities, to take advantage of to test those rape kits, there's money available. And so many cities have just not claimed it because this is such a low priority for them, because sexual assault of women is still not a high priority. And the article talks about why it's, it's there. It's not any good reason. It's not any reason that's that's like logical or makes sense. It's, it's reasons of convenience, not believing victims, not thinking you're going to get a conviction. And then that is also a self-fulfilling cycle, because if you don't pursue cases because you don't think you're going to get a conviction, then that means there's more historical evidence that you don't get convictions, which then leads you to pursue fewer cases, and so on.

0:43:11 Thomas: It's a feedback loop. So there's that. But they've been looking into it, and it turns out, as a result of never pursuing justice for rape victims, almost never, it's actually rape is the easiest violent crime to get away with in this country, sadly. Uh, it's, it's far and away easier than murder, than theft, than all that's, then Andy Knows attacker, you know, like, that it's the easy, because almost no rapists actually get punished, uh, and all that. And it turns out, they were talking about this, the article was saying that, um, rapists are actually way different than people thought, because there's been so little, little effort put into these cases. They started to, so in certain cities, they started to actually test these rape kits, you know, the cities where they actually took advantage of the funding to do it, which is available again to multiple cities that just aren't doing it.

0:44:06 Thomas: But they started taking advantage of that. They start testing them, which should take not very much time, not even very much money. And they started finding, like, oh, turns out there are way more serial rapists than people thought, than the quote-unquote experts thought. They used to think, you know, there wouldn't be that many, and they also used to think, oh, well, a serial rapist, they'll have like an MO, or it's always going to be a woman who has certain characteristics, or a certain situation.

And they start going through these, they start actually catching rapists, and, you know, pursuing it a little bit in certain cities, again, and only in certain cities, and they find that like, oh wait a minute, it turns out that like there's often not really a pattern to serial rapist behavior, it's often just opportunity. So obviously the pattern is they're a rapist, but like there's not an MO, you know, like if you see in serial killer movies or something, it's not really like that. And so that also changed how, you know, detectives should be looking for the perpetrators, because they might have, they said, like, what happens is, sure, a rapist might have in their mind an ideal of what their victim should be. They're going after a certain kind of person, but oftentimes they just can't find that person, and they're a rapist, so they rape somebody else. And that's how it goes. And this is also disturbing, apologies, but it's part of why I don't care about Andy Ngo. There's so much more disturbing stuff happening in our country.

0:45:37 Thomas: It also turns out that someone who sexually abuses family members is likely to sexually abuse others and vice versa. There's no, there's no like isolation. You know, they used to think like, oh, well, if they abuse family members, that's, that doesn't really mean they're a threat to abuse other people. No, actually there, there is evidence that people, rapists will, uh, abuse multiple people. Oftentimes that both, you know, people in the household and people, not strangers, you know? So it's, they're, they're learning a lot more because they had never pursued this seriously. And one thing the article talks about is how many more people have been raped or sexually assaulted because police and municipalities and all that, because they never put the effort into trying to catch these people or to testing these rape kits.

0:46:30 Thomas: So many more in people that should have been spared this horrible anguish because a serial rapist should have being caught way earlier had we been putting the resources, even just a moderate amount of effort into it. So many of these people should have been caught. So many people's trauma should have been saved. You know, so many victims should never have been victims because we didn't try. That's outrageous. Another recent headline, there's a judge, and again, I know this is disturbing stuff, but that's the point. The point is there is so much disturbing stuff happening every day. And it's systemic. Unlike this BS with Andy Ngo, which is not systemic. It is not endemic. It is something that's happening everywhere.

0:47:17 Thomas: Every city around the globe, Antifa terrorists are killing innocent journalists. No, that's not happening. That's not a thing. It's not. It's just not a thing. Whereas the disturbing stuff that I'm discussing today is a thing, it is systemic, it is people in positions of power, which Antifa is not, either abusing their power, not doing enough, not protecting people, uh, and and it's something that more far far far more people would have to worry about than if you are a an alt-right blogger who likes to dox, um, victims of attacks, and so somebody gets mad at you and punches you, that's somethingthat you just don't have to worry about, this is something you do have to worry about.

0:48:04 Thomas: Either you'll be a victim, either someone you know might be a victim or something like that, and these are major problems. So there was a judge, you might have seen this recently, there was an rape case in which a, I think it was a 15, 16 year old took video of himself raping a 15-16 year old girl at a party, visibly intoxicated 16 year old girl. Took video of it and shared the video with several friends with a text saying, quote, "when your first time having sex was rape," end quote. And a piece of crap 69-year-old judge, who was a man, is a man, decided despite that, despite the fact that it was self-admitted in a text that this is rape, the judge said, "Well, it's not really rape though, because, you know, rape is more like there's multiple men here." I'll do a quote, uh, from the CNN article, uh, Judge Troiano said that the teen's actions were not predatory and not necessarily rape because traditional rape cases involve two, two or more, generally males, either a gunpoint or a weapon, clearly manhandling a person.

0:49:30 Thomas: This is a judge. This is someone who's in charge of justice in our country. Now, and I can't imagine saying that something that the perpetrator himself shared saying was rape wasn't rape. Another really disturbing detail of this, actually, which I just, I can't even believe that I'm, what I'm reading, the girl, the 16 year old, literally wasn't even going to file charges for months, but for months this piece of shit kid kept sharing the video with friends, and she even said, "please stop sharing the vídeo and it's only after she asked him to not share the video of him raping her that she finally decided to file charges.

0:50:24 Thomas: It's only after all of that months later. I just can't, I can't even imagine how despicable that, that person is disgusting. And for a judge to say, well, that's not really rape. He's a good boy. Comes from a good family. Let's be lenient. That's a systemic issue. That is a person in power.

0:50:46 Thomas: That's injustice to someone who isn't in power, to someone who isn't enfranchised, and that's far more of a problem, that's far more disturbing than one person punching Andy Ngo. It just is.

Now, slight silver lining here, I am seeing that that judge was fired, so you might see a headline that says, "oh, that judge was fired." However, the only reason that judge could be fired was because they had already been retired and they were just brought back for this case to help handle, you know, caseload. So like typically you can't just fire judges. I mean, it far and away depends on, it very much depends on jurisdiction and all that.

They could be elected, they could be appointed, all these different things. Usually you can't get rid of them. Usually it's very hard to get rid of judges, and just think how many more there are with these horrible misogynistic, uh, rape culture attitudes every day that we don't hear about every day. That's a systemic issue. That's something that I care about. That's something that should get everybody's condemnation, and on and on, times a thousand, a thousand other issues that are more important than this one. But we see what resonates in the anti-progressive spheres, media spheres, what resonates is angry leftist mob attacks journal, poor journalist, all of a sudden. By the way, they also like to play identity politics, of course, when it's convenient to them. Uh, because now it's, uh, Andy Ngo is a gay Asian journalist, is now how he's been described because they, they like to play identity politics when it suits them.

0:52:23 Thomas: And then they like to say they never do and they condemn it otherwise. But that's what gets wall-to-wall coverage on Fox news, not police killing, innocent people, innocent black men, mostly not a rape culture, not any of these things that are actual problems. By the way, here's another fun one for you. We just had to make Emmett Till's memorial bulletproof.

0:52:48 Thomas: It's got to be replaced. Emmett Till, a child, a black child who was murdered and mutilated. His memorial had to be made bulletproof because of the country we live in. Quick check, every blue check mark journalist, make sure they condemn that. Lots of stuff in the backlog, lots of to condemn. I guess to try to put a bow on this whole thing, I want, I didn't spend a whole lot of time talking about Antifa. I actually thought I was going to, I had more research on that. I mean, there are times that, uh, people have said, I had an article talking about how Antifa, Antifa save people's lives. That is one of their functions, is protecting people from Nazis, alt-right people.

0:53:33 Thomas: And that's something that unfortunately usually needs to be done. So conceptually, though, Antifa is a lot of things. One thing Antifa can be, and often is, by the way, is people who need to wear protective riot gear so they don't get injured or killed by both the police and by Nazis, who who also tend to try to stay anonymous. So they wear masks so that they, again, don't get harmed later by Nazis. So that's already part of it.

That's already, and they haven't even, I'm just building the concept here. They have not even done a thing other than tried to not be killed by Nazis and or police. So, so far, so like, I've just constructing the concept from the ground up and I want to see, you know, see where we go with it. And oftentimes what Antifa is doing is trying to prevent Nazi and alt-right violence. It's trying to protect minorities, trying to protect LGBT, trans people, whoever it is who are very often the target of violence by right-wing groups, trying to protect them and you even saw it again going back to Andy Ngo. You even saw with Andy Ngo. There were at least three or four Antifa people, looking people who protected Andy, who tried to stop the attacks. Again, headline could have been Antifa protects Andy from one assailant. And of course, some other people did Silly String and tried to, that's another part of the ideology or the strategy is to try to embarrass fascists with Silly Strings, which I 1000% support.

0:55:08 Thomas: I actually kind of wish, I don't even kind of wish this, I 100% wish that every Antifa member had had Silly String, and it just, you know, Ghostbusters, Andy Ngo with just massive amounts of Silly String, that is far more effective than punching, punching him makes him hundreds of thousands of dollars. So in the future, take note, everybody, um, but just building up, going back, building up that concept, if you are saying that Antifa needs to be designated as terrorists. A, the KKK is not even designated as domestic terrorists. And once again, in 2018, every extremist murder was right-wing. Zero were left-wing in 2018.

0:55:53 Thomas: So again, priorities. It's not whataboutery to actually clarify what real problems are. It's only whataboutery if it's, you know, if you're improperly weighing stuff or you're making up facts. But anyway, Anyway, building that concept back up, if you're saying they shouldn't exist or they should be terrorists or whatever, you are saying that you cannot have a group of people who wants to be anonymous, be protected from being injured by Nazis, but also protect LGBT, black, whoever it is, the target and the targets often of these fascists. And through nonviolent means, by the way, through nonviolent means, you were saying that one person, you are saying one person who can dress in a similar manner and do bad stuff Disqualifies the entire thing, the entire enterprise. That's what you're saying. You're saying just the fact that there have been a person who is dressed in black block who punched Andy Ngo, or maybe, you know, hit a window with a rock or whatever it is, you are saying that that means that you cannot have a group of non-violent protectors at all. I just don't think that's realistic. It's unrealistic to have those expectations.

That a group or people whose job it is to put their actual bodies on the line to protect people from fascism is never going to also have someone either, who, by the way, may not even be in it for the right reasons, may not even be anti-fascist, do something wrong, and then all of a sudden they're all terrorists despite having zero kills ever, pretty much. It's

0:57:46 Thomas: Absurd. And I guess to close, uh, I will say that for the free speech, freedom of association, uh, you know, First Amendment crowd, I can't think of anything that's perhaps a bigger threat to the First Amendment, to freedom of speech, and, uh, uh, protest and all that, then suggesting that we designate anyone who seems like they could be Antifa as a terrorist, because Antifa is not an organized group. There's no way to know, there's no Antifa membership. So it's, it's, you just would be, if, if Donald Trump had his way, if you just say, "I heard that guy, that guy looks like Antifa, I think he's Antifa, up terrorist," I suspect that that would have a chilling effect on free speech, to say the least.

0:58:34 Thomas: All right. That's my show. Uh, like I said, this one was, was not a spur of the moment. I had done a lot of research on this, a lot thinking about it. Uh. And I, I hope it, I, hope it helps clarify some things. I hope it's some good arguments for you. I imagine there will be a lot people who disagree with me. Um, um, sure, uh, have fun, give me your best shot, uh, but that's how I feel. I, I want to again say for the record loud and clear that the people who attack, the one person who attacked Andy Ngo and whoever stole his camera should face some sort of whatever the appropriate penalty is. I, I say it again, I've said it then, I'll say it now, that is how I feels. I also do not care, I do not care about this. Is one thing.

0:59:22 Thomas: I care as much about this as I do about a bar fight that happened in some town I don't know about. That's how much I care. That is how big of a systemic issue it is, i.e. not a systemic issues. Not anything we should care about. It's an individual act of violence. It's not a big deal. It doesn't deserve wall-to-wall news coverage. It is absurd. All right. Thank you so much for listening. I'm feeling better. I am glad to be back. I may even try to sneak another episode in before the end of July. Hey, keep the voicemail coming. I have a little backlog of those. Obviously, I'm not going to do all of them, but I think it will be worthwhile to go back and find some good comments to respond to. You guys are always the best with that.

1:00:07 Thomas: If you don't like recording voicemails, again, you can call the number. Remember you can also send me a voice audio clip. I don't mind if you do that. You know, if you email a clip, uh, you can also just, just email me with a comment. Um, I read email a little less than I, I like hearing you guys. It's more fun having that interactive, uh you know, recording, but if you have a really good email, I may read it. Uh, so get in touch with me. All the links are in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. And, uh most of all, thank you for supporting the show. patreon.com/seriouspod. That's how it goes on. And, uh, but I mean, at this time it will actually continue. I'm back at it. I feel a little better, especially after all the response from yesterday. That was, that did really help. It helped a lot more than I could have imagined it would.

1:00:52 Thomas: And, it's got me inspired to, to get back in the saddle here. Um, I'm, I am really excited going forward. So thank you so much. Please support the show. If not, please share it. If you find it valuable, that's another good way to get ear balls on it. Uh, and I will see you. I can't say when, hopefully very soon. Thank you for listening.