Thread by @RespectableLaw

THE ANDY NGO THREAD:
Your Comprehensive Guide to Andy’s Bad Faith Scams and the Intractable Problem They Present

A couple days ago, I posted a very popular discussion of Andy Ngo’s intentional misinformation regarding a hammer attack incident during the Portland fascist intimidation rally this weekend.

https://twitter.com/RespectableLaw/status/1162972206147743744

But there’s so much more to know about Andy Ngo, as some of his defenders proved.

A few people have been debunking Andy’s “reporting” on this Portland this weekend, but I’m going to dive deep and put it all in one place. And I’m going to cover Andy’s lengthy history of bad faith practices. So get comfortable.

Let’s start with Portland this weekend, and this viral tweet about a poor middle-aged man who was maced and beaten as a mob surrounded them. Andy’s video begins with the man already on the ground.

Here is what happened immediately before that:

And here's some more info on the guy in the vest from @DonovanFarley:

And then the guy jumped right back into the mosh pit:

Here’s some more misinformation spread by Andy – that antifa attacked a young girl.

But that’s not a young girl. That’s noted alt-right goon “Based Spartan” and his adult daughter. They didn’t get separated. They spent the whole day agitating people, spoiling for a fight:

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1162867061053411328

And sure, Andy corrected this one when he got called out, but there’s a small problem inherent to unreliable people like Andy:

https://twitter.com/Avi_Bueno/status/1163271705852338176

Andy next claimed an antifa mob attacked when police weren’t around.

But as reported by many people, this fight was caused when a Patriot Prayer weirdo rode his bike through protestors.

https://twitter.com/andrewkimmel/status/1162873757431500800

The guy on the bike, Greg Isaacson, is a well-known goon. He was arrested on June 3rd with some fellow Patriot Prayer goons during another violent intimidation rally (bottom right).

Andy’s claim about the police not being there to break up the fight is also wrong:

https://twitter.com/letsgomathias/status/1163511727968923648

And this next bit is thick with irony: Not only did Andy misrepresent the right-wing bike incident, but he later spread misinformation claiming a traffic accident near the protest was caused by antifa.

But a local TV reporter on the scene said:

Then the Portland Police -- who aren’t exactly antifa friendly -- said the incident wasn’t related to the demonstration.
portlandoregon.gov/police/news/re…

Hours later, Andy mentioned the Portland Police statement, but doesn’t mention the incident wasn’t related to the demonstration. In fact, Andy says “a source” (read: probably a fascist terrorist on meth) told him it was antifa:

It’s non-stop bullshit stories that keep changing in order to fit what the audience wants. First it’s antifa standing in the street. Then he misrepresents a police report and changes his story to an antifa woman driving the scooter. This is InfoWars-level garbage.

One of the things you’ll notice about Andy’s propaganda pieces is that they typically don’t include the beginning of whatever happened. They start in the middle, or more frequently, at the very end, where some fascist goon is looking pitiful.

A good example is the hammer attacker who Andy misrepresented in the bus incident.

Another example of this phenomenon in mainstream media is John Blum. There’s a good chance you saw this photo in national publications during the protest in which Ngo was punched and milkshaked.

It’s far less likely you saw any of the footage taken of Mr. Blum – a legit fascist militia goon and Three Percenter – attacking people with a police baton.

And of course none of us will ever forget “concrete milkshakes.” A moronic fantasy concocted by some Proud Boy meatheads and believed by some dumb Portland cop who had never seen a coconut-based non-dairy milkshake.

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1146235841922117632

Fewer people know about a shocking incident back in May, when Andy accompanied his fascist thug pals on a field trip to attack the Cider Riot pub, a local leftist hangout. The gang attacked patrons, spraying mace into the patio of the bar.

The owner of the bar has filed a lawsuit against Patriot Prayer members, noting that his patrons were struck with bricks being hurled into the patio.

The patrons poured outside the bar to confront the attackers, and Patriot Prayer weirdo Ian Kramer was arrested after he broke a woman’s neck with a baton. While she was in the hospital, Andy Ngo published her name.

There is also apparently video of Andy filming and pointing out this same woman prior to the attack. I haven’t seen the footage but multiple people have told me it was posted by this account, and there are other tweets discussing the video.

https://twitter.com/_WhyzGuy_/status/1147160451136069632

About a month later, when a couple of irate protestors punched Andy for his role in the Cider Riot incident and long history of antagonizing Portland leftists and assisting fascist thugs, Andy became a cause celebre, not just among the right, but among mainstream journalists.

These oblivious journalists took a look at Andy’s weepy little eyes and never thought to question who he really was or whether he was representing himself in good faith.

It’s also important to note Andy’s unreliability extends beyond antifa. He’s just a terrible reporter in general, poisoned by his own biases.

For example, Andy often cites his byline at the Wall Street Journal. It was a piece about an East End neighborhood in London which he portrayed as utterly alien due to Muslim domination, mentioning signs reading “Alcohol Restricted Zone.”
businessinsider.com/wall-street-jo…

But the truth is that has nothing to do Muslims. In the UK, an “alcohol restricted zone” is a place in the UK where you can’t drink on the street, and it’s typically found where there are a lot of bars, strip clubs, etc.

https://twitter.com/seanjwheatley/status/1035172707921481728

So not only does the “alcohol zone” have nothing to do with Muslims, but the area Andy implies is a Sharia bubble is actually a popular nightlife district. In fact, there is a bar right where Andy was standing.

https://twitter.com/thezhanly/status/1035143611543941120

It’s also important to remember that Andy was terminated from the PSU Vanguard for a dangerous breach of journalistic ethics. He outrageously misquoted a Muslim student to make him appear to support jihadi violence. It was an ugly, shocking episode.
psuvanguard.com/in-response-to…

Some may also remember when Andy and his fellow Quillette editors published a ridiculously “study” by a self-professed extremism researcher named Eoin Lenihan, who claimed to use Twitter analysis to determine which journalists were secret Antifa collaborators.

But Lenihan had already been outed long before as a hardcore far-right troll and moderator of a racist “Groyper” group chat (google it) named ProgDad. And the “methodology” he used to connect journalists to antifa was ludicrously dumb.
cjr.org/analysis/quill…

But this troll “study” by Lenihan resulted in Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen publishing a “kill list” of those specific journalists.
newrepublic.com/article/154205…

Interesting side note, Lenihan once spent Christmas making a YouTube video standing under a bridge with a frog butt taped to the wall because he was mad that I made fun of Groypers.

Earlier this month, Andy’s dumb little rag proved again it has no fact-checking and welcomes anything that plays to its biases, when a Chapo fan got them to a publish a fake “Archie the Construction Worker” piece attacking the DSA with alleged inside info.
jacobinmag.com/2019/08/archie…

There’s so much more I could talk about, but it all becomes repetitive at some point. Remember the mass shooting in El Paso? Shortly before it happened, Ngo was publishing bullshit horror stories that Antifa would attempt a “10-day siege.” That’s what he does.

Anyone who is actually paying attention will see that Ngo has become disturbingly cozy with the most insane and hardcore fascist terrorists in America, and that he purposely engineers his work as deceptive PR for these groups.

Do I think Ngo is a hardcore fascist? No, not really. I think the reality is that he just really hates left-wing people. I think something happened in his life that made him bitter about left-wing people and it went from there.

Much like MAGA people yearn to own the libs, Andy yearns to own the leftists. And he’s more than happy to make strange bedfellows with meth-head terrorists to do it. Especially now that it’s become so lucrative.

No matter how many times he is debunked, he’ll continue to tell a made up story designed to hide something truly ugly. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Yet it is a tale that mainstream media swallows again and again and again.

So you end up hearing about a hardcore fascist militia committing a hammer attack from me instead of the nightly news.

https://twitter.com/randygdub/status/1163323659391422464

And I think the real question here isn’t about Andy Ngo or the meth-head terrorists or any of that. It’s how did we get to a place where busloads of legit hardcore fascist white supremacist militias could invade town after town holding violent intimidation rallies?

And why is the institutional legacy media getting behind a bullshit PR sideshow that attempts to portray them as victims?

Because we can – and should – collectively dismantle Andy Ngo’s illusion of credibility. But let’s be real. They’ll just find another huckster. They’re a dime a dozen.

The real problem is more sinister. I don’t have any answers yet. I’m working on it.

Shocking update to the Andy Ngo saga:

https://twitter.com/RespectableLaw/status/1164961745099788288

Andy Ngo Update:

@Quillette cut ties & scrubbed him from their website after Andy's embarrassing week came to a close with new video of him hanging out with fascist goons planning an attack. Lehmann says it's unrelated.

https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/1166169635957264384