This programme, featuring Jack Posobiec, examines Antifa after the assault on journalist Andy Ngo at a protest in Portland, Oregon, in June 2019. Ngo, who had been reporting on far-left activism in the city, was beaten and pelted with milkshakes by masked protesters, suffering a brain haemorrhage and other injuries. The attack, filmed and widely shared, brought national attention to a movement that had long operated in the shadows of American street protests.
Posobiec traces Antifa’s origins and tactics: its roots in militant anti-fascist groups in Europe, its adoption in the United States as a loose network of activists, and its use of black bloc clothing, masks, and coordinated violence to shut down speakers, marches, and rallies it opposes. The programme looks at how Antifa organises online, how it identifies targets, and how its members justify confrontation as self-defence, even when the targets are journalists, bystanders, or people who simply disagree.
For viewers in America, this matters because Antifa is not a foreign movement; it operates in American cities, on American campuses, and at American protests. By examining its origins and its tactics after the assault on Andy Ngo, this programme helps explain what Antifa is, what it wants, and why its use of political violence poses a challenge to free speech, free assembly, and the rule of law in the United States.