Republicans rolled out their narrative response to Democrats who were intent to see a law enforcement crackdown on the far-right extremist elements who assaulted the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 during Wednesday’s hearing of a House Judiciary subcommittee on “The Rise of Domestic Terrorism in America.” It resembled a team version of the “let’s throw shit at the wall and see what sticks” strategy, but beneath it all was a thread: Blame everything on Black Lives Matter and left-wing antifascists.
The presence of right-wing pseudo-journalist Andy Ngo—whose entire body of work has portrayed left-wing and anarchist political protests as terrorism—as the Republicans’ only witness was emblematic of the approach. Florida Congressman Greg Steube encapsulated the narrative by showing a video of anti-police brutality protests from the summer and then demanding that the Democratic witnesses label it terrorism.
Ngo’s testimony was indistinguishable from one of his talks promoting his “wildly dishonest” book, in which he depicts “antifa” as an existential threat to America. He repeatedly described last summer’s 120 day-long string of protests against police brutality in Portland—none of which he actually attended, but instead relied on others’ reports for his coverage—as “riots,” and insisted that this was terrorism and fundamentally no different than the Jan. 6 insurrection in nature: Continue reading.