There is plenty of ruin in a city. But if you want to see just how much ruin, look no further than Portland, Oregon.
A once-proud city, in recent years it has become internationally notorious. In the summer of 2020, there were riots in the city for over 100 consecutive nights.
Every federal and state building in the city was attacked. Businesses were attacked and forced to either close or board up. The Downtown area became a wasteland with homeless people wandering the graffiti-covered city.
I went to see this for myself. This was when Joe Biden was dismissing the group as “an idea” rather than a reality. Well for two nights I went undercover with the radical group and saw that they were very real indeed.
I saw them intimidate local residents and watched as they attacked the city’s only ICE facility and attacked the remaining forces of law and order.
One reason why Portland came to such attention was because of a young and brave local journalist named Andy Ngo. This son of Vietnamese immigrants had watched what had happened to the city he had lived and studied in. And he began to document it.
Specifically he videoed Antifa’s violent activities and posted them online. He would also systematically gather the mug-shots of Antifa rioters who were actually arrested. Most looked like the Addams family on meth.
Naturally this made Ngo a target of Antifa. I saw this for myself. Apart from the usual radical-left slogans, the most common piece of graffiti in Portland — often in huge red letters — was “Kill Andy Ngo.”
At least twice, Antifa tried to act on their threat. In 2019, Ngo was violently assaulted by Antifa while he was covering one of their protests. Left-wing media organs tried to play down the attack, but Ngo was taken to hospital with a brain hemorrhage and suffered serious cognitive impairment afterwards.
Antifa activists staked out Ngo’s mother’s home and on one occasion were caught on camera approaching the front door all wearing masks of Ngo’s face.
You’d have thought that at such a time the media would have protected one of their own. You’d have perhaps expected PEN, the ADL and all those other fat, over-funded, pompous organizations to condemn the violent assault of a journalist.
But they didn’t.
In part because they´re all cowards who only ever defend journalists and writers if they happen to be left-wing. And second because they seem to have fallen for Antifa’s view of things.
This smear was that Ngo was not in fact the quiet, studious, son of immigrants, but a “far-right” maniac who provided “kill lists” to “actual Nazis.” It’s one way to smear your opponents. And Antifa certainly realized they had an opponent in Ngo. Because he reported on them accurately they did everything they could to take him out.
In 2021, they almost managed a second time, finding him as he worked undercover, assaulting him and chasing him into the lobby of a local hotel. If Antifa had got to him there is little doubt they would have killed him.
So far, so disgraceful. But consider this.
Despite the fact that Ngo was assaulted on camera not once but twice, the authorities did nothing to prosecute the people who could be identified on camera assaulting and social media assaulting him.
The law didn’t bother to prosecute people trying to kill an American journalist in an American city.
So Ngo decided to try to take a civil case, with crowd-funding support. Applications to bring the Rose City Antifa itself to trial were denied by the judge, who only allowed Ngo to bring two of his attackers to trial. It was left to Ngo and a crowdfunding campaign to do what the authorities failed to do.
But the trial was a disgrace. The two activists, Elizabeth Renee Richter and John Hacker, were recognizable from evidence including their own social media boasts. Hacker even admitted part of one attack on Ngo.
But Antifa had a 10-person legal team to Ngo’s two. And thanks to the actions of the judge there was a near media blackout.
In court Antifa had the run of the place. They brought up an “expert witness” in the form of Portland State University Geography Alexander Reid Ross who claimed that Ngo was responsible for a “neo-Nazi kill list.”
On cross-examination it turned out that this “expert witness” had absolutely no evidence for this claim. Another attempt to smear Ngo in court included the shocking claim that Ngo had appeared on — wait for it — Fox News. Gosh.
By contrast, the evidence Ngo’s team were allowed to present was damning. But here’s a thing. The judge and jury were local. And you’d have to be a fairly brave local in Portland to sit on a jury that convicted two Antifa thugs. Antifa were roaming the halls of the courthouse, hoping to intimidate the claimant and others throughout.
In her closing statement, the attorney for the Antifa activists actually told the jury that she would now be wearing an “I am Antifa” shirt. And she told the jurors that she would remember all of their faces.
The jury returned a “no fault” verdict, letting the Antifa activists off completely. Hacker didn’t even have to pay damages for a phone he had admitted damaging.
The only journalist covering the whole trial — a colleague of Ngo’s — had her car broken into and robbed. Meanwhile “journalists” at sites like the Daily Beast celebrated with headlines including “Activists cleared after right-wing troll Andy Ngo accuses them of assault.”
Note once again the defaming of Ngo and the turning of violent thugs into mere “activists.”
The whole thing is rotten. Portland is now a city that is not just lawless but one in which justice can’t take place. Even when private citizens do the job of the authorities and try to make it happen. I hope Ngo appeals. And I hope a massive crowdfunding appeal can help him. He hasn’t given up so far, and I hope he doesn’t now.
Meantime I hope that someday all the people who allowed this situation to arise in an American city hang their heads in shame.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
