By now, you may have seen -- or heard about, if you heeded the warnings of how brutal the footage is -- Antifa's attack on Andy Ngo in Portland, Oregon. The video-journalist for the website Quillette has extensively covered the anarchist group's actions, has been targeted and doxxed by Antifa in the past, and was covering them last weekend when he was outnumbered and assaulted by the group's masked members, being punched, kicked, and (evidently) struck with cupfuls of quick-dry cement. In the hospital, he was diagnosed as having a brain bleed among his injuries. This happened at an event in which awareness was being raised for male victims of sexual abuse. Antifa was there to protest against that. Figure that one out.)
No, unless they're acting out first, it isn't okay to "punch Nazis." I'm not sure what happened. Just a few years ago, we were all quoting Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it." This may be getting replaced by "I disapprove of what you say, so I'm going to crack you across the skull with a bike lock."
A hateful ideology, in and of itself, is just hateful. A person has the right to hold views that I may personally find objectionable, or even horrid, without my being able to attack that person physically. If (s)he acts upon that hateful ideology by attacking someone else, or clearly planning to do so, then I may intercede. But if that doesn't happen, then I may not. A proper response to ten marching, Klan jerk-asses is to shun them, or to ignore them, or to ridicule them. But if all they're doing is marching, and you begin throwing rocks, then you're the aggressor, no matter how loathsome they may be. It's the only way. If we begin allowing violence based on what a person thinks, the result will be very bad.
Having said that, let's get to the obvious. Antifa is an organization that believes 1.) it does have the right to punch Nazis and white supremacists, and that, 2.) equally importantly, everyone who disagrees with it as a group is a Nazi and/or a white supremacist. It's a pretty good gig, actually: shouting "Take that, fascist!" while you hit the school crossing guard with a brick because you don't like the colors of his uniform, and it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. Or, at least it has been at least a few times, because people like Portland mayor Ted Wheeler have, in the past, given his police forces (he is also the Police Bureau's commissioner) orders to "stand down" when Antifa is embroiled in a conflict. CNN's Chris Cuomo has defended Antifa's tactics in the past, saying last year that "all punches are not equal morally," again suggesting that (non-self-defense) violence is justified depending on who the target is, and, again, intimating that all of the people Antifa attacks really are the fascist bigots Antifa claims they are. Cuomo's crossover buddy, Don Lemon, expand condescendingly, "It says it right in the name: Antifa. Anti-fascism...". Presumably, if a band of thugs called themselves the Angels of Nice and then put on masks and hoods and beat up random people in the streets, Lemon would be chiding those of us who opposed them, arguing that we must be against nice people. (Twitter is loaded up with such arguments in defense of Antifa.)
Hopefully, this incident will be a turning point in how Antifa is covered by the national media, and how it is dealt with by law-enforcement authorities, but we've had similar hopes fall through before. As for Ngo, you are invited to his gofundme page, the the Protect Andy Ngo Fund, initiated by Michelle Malkin for his medical expenses and future protection while he bravely does his job.
