What people are seeing on social media
and even on mainstream cable news,
they are the most salacious clips
and oftentimes they are a very short period of time.
[ Bang ]
A lot of people think that we're, like,
burning our city down
and we're rioting and destroying everything.
I mean, I think there's some level of truth to that.
I asked him, "Do you plan on getting sprayed?"
We might be ready to protest right now,
but we don't need no helmets, we don't need no goggles.
[ Bang ]
That mayhem and that chaos is keeping people in fear.
That is terrorism in the city of Portland.
Um...
Vaping illness blamed for...
antifa is... "murder hornet" panic...
[ Overlapping voices ]
As clickbait headlines warp our view of the world,
we're going down the rabbit hole to ask,
how afraid should we really be?
On this episode, the media's favorite boogeyman -- antifa.
They've been terrorizing people,
and when they can get away with it,
violently attacking people.
They're essentially Bolsheviks.
Trump has vowed to label antifa a terrorist organization.
They are not misguided freedom fighters or teenagers.
They are actually organized.
I've been watching the coverage --
mobs of people in black burning down and terrorizing cities.
Right-wing media loves to call them thugs,
and the president tweeted he wanted
to designate them a terrorist organization.
But is this really a mass conspiracy
of organized crazy leftists?
Strapping in for our rabbit-hole plunge,
I first connected with a terrorist expert.
Would you consider a group like antifa a terrorist group?
Well, I mean, that's a loaded question,
because, first of all we're asking, is it a group?
It's a pretty amorphous kind of movement.
Generally speaking, people self-identify as being antifa.
There's no command and control structure.
You know, there's a difference between civil unrest
and terrorism, in that terrorism
is a premeditated and also systematic act.
So if we're talking about the crisis in the U.S. right now,
whether they're antifa or not, there's little evidence that
this is really being kind of a targeted, premeditated thing.
A lot of the time, it's been kind of demonstrations
that have deteriorated into unrest.
Still a bit confused, I started to search for antifa.
I touched down in the "anarchist jurisdiction"
of Portland, Oregon,
looking for alleged members of antifa
that had been rioting for three months straight.
We decided to scope out the scene our first night.
We walked with a group of what I thought might be antifa
to an ICE facility, where things quickly took a chaotic turn
as they started to vandalize the structure.
The shit is about to go down.
[ Thudding, glass breaking ]
We got another glass breaking.
They're coming, they're coming.
I don't know where these cops came from,
but they just pushed everybody back.
Right now is just kind of a standstill.
It's kind of like a face-off.
How often does this happen?
Every night?
Every night, all fucking night.
So this is happening every night.
[ Percussion music playing ]
Are you out here all the time?
Fucking -- It's like an adrenaline rush.
Our first night was quite the welcome party.
The next day I met up with Jamal Williams,
a local activist, to break this down for me.
First of all, let's just keep it plain, right?
You and I might be -- we might be ready to protest right now,
but we don't need no helmets, we don't need no goggles.
Right?
And that's a touchy thing, right?
Because I'm preaching nonviolence.
Let's go to the building, but don't nobody set any fires.
And I'm not the one to tell people how to protest.
I'm only one person.
The whole situation would have changed had the police chief
come downstairs the first night
and said, "You know what? We're with you."
Instead, they came out with the riot gear, like, "Shut up."
And then they shot those people who weren't doing anything.
Law enforcement and federal agents in the city
have come under fire for their aggressive tactics
used on protesters and mobs often labeled antifa.
These groups dressed in black come geared up,
prepared for direct confrontations with police.
But how many of these people are antifa?
Who is antifa?
I don't know if I've ever even really spoken to one
because nobody's just came up and identified themselves as,
"Hey, man, I'm from the antifa squad," or whatever.
So I don't know about all of that.
And I'm not speaking against antifa.
I'm speaking against fires
in the name of Black Lives Matter, though.
Hi there.
What?
-All right. -I think, yeah,
if you want to, it's your right.
-She just... -She probably
lives around here, and the protests,
-she probably doesn't like it. -Yeah.
And so she said, "Now I'm gonna go buy a gun."
Isn't that what she said?
She said, "I should go
-buy a gun." -Yeah.
And that's a real feeling. You can't discount that feeling.
You can't say her feelings don't matter.
-Yeah. -Right?
-Her life matters too. -Yeah.
Yeah, her life matters too,
so much so that she feels like she needs
to go buy a gun, right?
Now, I wonder how long
Black people have been feeling like that, like how she felt.
That was just one night.
After 80-plus days of constant protesting,
it's no surprise some folks here feel afraid.
Undeterred, I showed up at the protest that evening
hoping to finally meet someone from antifa.
As we caught up with them, however,
it looked like a totally different crowd.
Gone were the tactical shields,
and instead there were distinct leaders
moving the group through a neighborhood.
Vote! Yes, I know Joe Biden fucking sucks,
but for him, please.
Like, please!
[ Speaking indistinctly ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
So we were at a protest yesterday,
and that ended in a riot.
This kind of shows a range
of the different protests here in Portland, right.
So what's this range look like?
There's no right way to protest.
Everyone has their way of protesting.
But for every protest you have,
it's about constant pressure.
Our way a lot of times is just causing a disturbance.
We like to be loud and fuck with people, like, I don't know,
like put some flashlights on their houses or something,
call out white people in the streets
who aren't protesting with us and tell people we're here
and we're not going anywhere.
Your job for the next week, when we announce our next march,
your job is to bring at least five new people
and you need to tell 20 people.
Keep doing the work. Keep coming out.
Media likes to look at things that gets people's attention
and the media likes to look at things that are eye-catching.
They're not focusing on these kinds of marches.
They only capture what they know people want to see.
And we aren't that eye-catching and entertaining.
Why? Because we tell the truth,
because we're smart, because we're not burning shit down.
so they're not going to watch us.
Kai and E. didn't strike me
as the antifa terrorists I'd read about.
How many groups are operating in Portland?
I linked up with Cory Elia, a community advocate journalist
who had been covering the nightly protests
since the beginning, to help me sort out who might be antifa.
There is a big gradient in terms of what the protests consist of.
How does this vary every night?
This crowd is not "antifa."
It's a crowd of about a half dozen
to maybe a dozen different organization groups.
-The reality in Portland is that there are many small groups
that organize across a decentralized network
of loose collectives.
Nobody is really in charge, but all the groups promote
and talk to each other.
And every single one of them
seems to have a slightly different message.
Some are about reform.
Some are about complete abolishment
of the current system.
Just people wanting to protest.
And yes, there are certain individuals usually coming out
and looking to just destroy stuff.
And then, like, there are direct-action nights
where you will see just people all in black
showing up to occupy public spaces,
be loud, throw, basically, what looks like a block party.
And on the edge of it, there's some vandalism going on
and stuff like that.
I mean, that's probably one thing you're going to see.
I don't know where Irving Park assembly tonight is going,
but if they end up going to one of the precincts,
you might see that,
[ Chanting ] Out of your home and into the streets!
As Cory predicted,
the assembly of protesters at Irving Park
made their way through the rain to the North Police Precinct.
If this group of protesters in tactical gear was antifa,
what I witnessed certainly wasn't scary terrorism.
What followed was a delicate balance of agitation,
high jinks, and some form of modern art.
The rain doesn't stop us, you fucking pigs!
[ Indistinct shouting ]
This is the Portland Police Bureau.
Do not enter or remain upon the North Precinct property.
Just got on the loudspeaker
and asked people to stop throwing projectiles
and shining lasers,
which it sounds like a parent
trying to get their kid to stop doing something.
Stop throwing objects and/or pointing lasers at officers.
It's just kind of ridiculous.
Oh, my God. [ Laughs ]
♪♪
All right, so we've been standing out here
for about two hours in a bit of a standoff,
and now we have a recycling bin on fire.
Everybody just kind of moved back a little bit.
♪♪
I'm sure you've watched the news.
If you run into somebody
who's only been observing that echo chamber,
what do you tell them about this situation going on here?
They're not centralized.
They're just a giant mess of people, in mass,
and it usually ends up being somewhat of a mess.
We got a we got one of those scooters for rent.
One of the more interesting things I see
from the alt-right conservative media is,
anybody at these protests that shows up,
if they're wearing mostly black or all black,
regardless if they're black bloc or participating in that way
or anything, they're instantly labeled as antifa.
This protest was declared a riot less than an hour later
between the few arrests we witnessed and the dumpster fire,
it's easy how someone might see just a handful of these images
and think that the city was in chaos,
when in reality this protest had mostly been contained
to a small area outside the precinct.
After three days of searching,
I realized the oldest active antifa group in the country,
Rose City Antifa, actually had an e-mail address --
very odd for a supposed terrorist group.
Luckily, they agreed to meet with me.
Our group is kind of one example of organizers
who are dedicating specifically our time and efforts
to learning about, spreading information about
and doing work to counter fascist organizing.
So, what is antifa?
Means being an anti-fascist.
Maybe they coordinate with other people or organize.
It could also just be part of
a person's broader political stances
but doesn't necessarily connote a organizational relationship.
Tell me a little bit about the work you do.
We collect information over long periods of time
to provide relevant information and useful information
to the community that's trying to keep themselves safe
from fascist organizing and fascist violence.
So that means doxxing people at times.
How active has Rose City Antifa been
in these recent protests here in Portland?
We don't feel, especially as, like,
a majority-white organization
that specifically focuses on anti-fascism
that it is our place to try and dictate the goals
or the direction of a movement that is led by Black women
and young Black people for the most part.
We're not organizing any protests
other than those that are specifically intended
to counter fascist organizing or fascist repression.
While we were in Portland, Rose City Antifa
published an article exposing
the extreme-right-wing connections to organizers
that were holding a rally our last day.
The rally at the now-famed Justice Center
was attended by several right-wing groups,
including Patriot Prayer, the Proud Boys, Back the Blue,
anti-Marxists, and plain old Trump supporters.
Commies, go home! Commies, go home!
These right-wing groups were flanked
by an equally diverse coalition of left-wing groups --
democratic socialists, BLM, anarchists, anti-fascists,
and maybe some Joe Biden Democrats,
Stand on the side of justice, not on the side of nationalism.
Go home.
You go home! This is where I live!
What the fuck, man?!
♪♪
The direct-action part of your work,
if you hadn't shown up,
they would have been screaming into the air.
USA! USA! USA!
It's not about specifically just that
they're there to, like, say their thing
and then they won't, like, bother anybody.
The whole point is that if anybody express any dissent
with what they were saying, that person would,
in all likelihood, be subject to violence.
Proud Boys have a long and storied history of basically
just beating the shit out of
pretty much anybody they feel like,
especially anybody who has the gall to, for example,
shout "Fuck Trump" when they ride past them in their car
holding a Trump flag.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
♪♪
I do not want this to happen in Portland.
But I am not going to let them
get away with this kind of stuff.
Where am I going to go, where are you going to go,
where are your children going to go,
when that kind of stuff continues
and this system breaks down?
I don't support BLM. I do support Black lives.
Black Lives Matter? No.
They are a Marxist, communist organization.
Mark my words.
Do you think the news reports
that I receive across the country
are as bad as things are actually here?
Yes, they are that bad.
Now, is the entire city of Portland? No.
But that mayhem and that craziness
and that chaos is keeping people in fear.
So a lot of people who come to these nightly protests
and the ones that have turned violent,
doesn't it get complicated
when you're so anonymous that you can't say,
"Wait a minute. Not all these people are antifa.
They're not all with me,"
because they get grouped in with everybody
because they're wearing black, right?
The point of black is to protect your identity,
be able to blend in with the crowd, and be able to function
both autonomously and collectively with other folks
who are there trying to reach the same goals, right?
The overriding principle for how we decide
what we're going to do cannot be based on the needs
and priorities of media organizations.
Do you want to kill Trump supporters?
No, we don't want to kill Trump supporters.
We want to stop fascists from organizing,
using whatever tactics are most effective.
Is there a performative element to these recent protests?
When we started off doing this,
no one wore any goddamn helmets.
And then people started getting shot in the head.
So people were like, "Well, damn,
I should probably get a helmet," right?
The feds started tear-gassing everybody,
so people started wearing gas masks.
It's one of the main ways that you can be on the front lines,
exert that kind of consistent pressure
and be opposed, like, directly
and be able to have people there saying,
"That's fucked up, we don't agree,
and these folks should get the fuck out of here."
Alright so behind me is the remnants of what's left of this.
We're now across the street in this park.
The two groups, they essentially kind of battled it out
and then chased
the Blue Lives Matter, Patriot Prayer group
down the street and around the corner.
And now we're back here, and the Black Lives Matter
liberal coalition is taunting the police now,
and there's some elements
of the more conservative delegation over there.
It's very hard to talk about who these groups are
because they're so loose.
There are so many different groups here.
You got the anarchists, antifa, Black Lives Matter.
Joe Biden Democrats. Who the fuck knows?
Context is key to understanding the situation in Portland.
I began to think about how the news had informed my opinion.
I needed some help understanding this,
so I reached out to Dr. Rashawn Ray.
Certain people see certain clips
and they think the whole city of Portland is burning.
How do you think the way that we receive media
and information through social media or in the news,
how do you think that does a disservice
to what we actually know about these protests?
So social media is obviously a gift and a curse.
Everyone from a local protester
to the president of the United States
uses this medium to circumvent traditional media channels.
On the other hand, however, social media is set up where
these are oftentimes short clips taken out of context.
What people are seeing on social media
and even on mainstream cable news are buildings burning,
and it looks like massive destruction in a city.
And oftentimes news media will say "Portland"
rather than saying a specific neighborhood
because people won't resonate with that neighborhood
unless you're from there.
But people who live there,
you can see people in Portland
just going about their normal day completely unencumbered
by what's happening with the protest.
And a lot of people simply take a 45-second clip
on Instagram or Twitter, and what they think is,
"Wow, imagine if this was down the street from my house."
That's where people's minds go.
And in this era, Donald Trump is stoking fears in that way
that that response to that
is something that people are reacting to.
Ultimately, antifa is mostly a political stance,
like being feminist or pro-Second Amendment
rather than some galaxy-brain conspiracy network.
And yes, the decentralized nature of direct action
within a black bloc can be frightening.
There's no clear leadership, no singular vision.
It creates a space for extremists
to engage in violence.
But the heart of anti-fascist ideology
is to fight against white supremacist groups,
groups that the Department of Homeland Security
has called the most persistent
and lethal domestic terror threat to the country.
And that's something we should really be afraid of.