Portland

'She emerged as an apparition from clouds of tear gas', writes Richard Read; '[a] woman wearing nothing but a black face mask and a stocking cap'. No, you are not reading cyberpunk erotica. You are reading the Los Angeles Times. Read's article is ostensibly about protests in Portland, and the Trump administration’s attempts to suppress them through the use of federal agents. As he writes about the naked activist who so entranced social media this weekend, though, things get a bit uncomfortable. 'The woman making her statement Saturday was altogether uninhibited,' Read declares, getting right to the meat of his story, 'at one point standing on one leg and raising her arms in an arc-type motion.' Richard. How closely were you watching her?

Ever since being beaten and robbed by Antifa in Portland in June, I have continued to receive threats of violence, which have prompted attention from police. But the scale of the abuse I received on Tuesday morning after waking up was unprecedented. The source of the rage? A Daily Beast hit piece headlined, 'Right-wing star Andy Ngo exits Quillette after damning video surfaces.' This was followed by another story in the Washington Examiner, shared in a tweet, which said I was out at Quillette 'after controversial video surfaces showing him doing nothing to stop or report violent attack.' This was followed by more hit pieces on VICE and Media Matters.

Andy Ngo has flown the Quillette nest. The Portland-based provocateur, famous for his hate crime-debunking Twitter threads, CCTV coverage of Antifa protests and narrative-driven writing on Islam, left his role as subeditor for the Australian Intellectual Dark Web magazine this week. The circumstances of his departure are unclear, but the timing is suspect: last Thursday a Portland Mercury reporter circulated a video that shows Ngo near to members of the far-right group Patriot Prayer immediately prior to a violent clash with Antifa. Ngo himself is yet to comment. https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1164406638519803905 Quillette editor Claire Lehmann said this was a coincidence.

‘Your parents would be embarrassed by you,’ a masked woman said as she blocked me from walking into a downtown Portland Plaza. An antifa counter-protest was taking place. Joined by others, a group of black-clad masked individuals surrounded me. ‘You’re an Asian giving into white supremacy, motherfucker,’ one shouted. Why did I, a Vietnamese-American gay journalist, receive this reaction from a self-described anti-racist social justice movement? Because I tried to report honestly on antifa – the far-left movement of communists, socialists, and anarchists who agitate for revolution. Their M.O. is direct confrontation against their opponents by any means necessary, including violence.