Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy

Well, this was an interesting book.

I have a feeling that we are all living exactly 100 years ago - similarities between society in first quarter of 1900's and now are scary. From financial instability, to political instability and rise of the political violence..... Only one element is missing in the whole situation - maturity of the everyday citizen. Radicals on extreme right and extreme left always existed and will always exist, but majority of people used to be more clear headed and capable of independent thought. And most importantly they were not that easily swayed by populist talk (or they were, but to lesser extent than today because media had much shorter reach, and unfortunately media proved to be gigantic poison pill shoved show more into out throats).

And this is what scares me a lot. With armed paramilitary forces led by an empty-word ideologies that have devolved very meanings of terms and words they swear for (like communist, socialist, nazi, fascist - all of these words have absolutely no meaning any more because anyone who is against respective political beliefs is marked by these words) there is a great danger that people reading about events 100 years ago dismiss them because they see all this terminology to be empty and meaningless. Which is a very dangerous thing.

Antifa and in general political paramilitaries and political related violence in modern US (which is relatively new trend in US but present for long time in Europe due to historical context) are just the consequence - main cause are irresponsible politicians and media that actually think they are the Alpha and Omega of the events locally at home and in the world. They managed to kindle the fire in people who suffer the most and seek change. But as always they seek the change through easiest avenues and violence is one of these.

Again, these politicians and media I can understand - lack of common sense, inability to think in long term and in general need to be always in the media, with the most shocking news and views on the world. All understood, and to make things worse they are just toys and puppets for somebody in the background who reaps humongous benefits (unfortunately if we ever find about these people it will be years in the future). Even these hard core believers, paramilitaries "ready to die" for their cause are nothing but hired muscle on all sides, as they have shown after the elections in 2020 when they started riots against the new government (until they did not - interesting ain't it).

Politicians show such lack of common sense that they lock themselves out of any means of de-escalation. Everyone is so in love with more terse, more radical means of throwing more and more mud onto the perceived enemy with goal to bury the enemy down, destroy the enemy completely. This is ridiculous, because this is not politics but tantrum of children given control over violent means of state. It is like they are all Madam Pompadour's fans, constantly thinking "After me, the deluge".

And then we are surprised by common people showing level of zealotry not seen since inquisition when they come across their political opponents. Just look at the stand against Trump - for someone outside US this level of hatred makes absolutely no sense. Foreign policy (important item for people living outside US) did not change for iota whoever was the president from the 1990s, not for a iota. They were all marked by one-sided alliances and wars, and political pressure to follow US wherever it is going. So, this polarization from 2016 onward makes absolutely no sense (and believe me, I know when political candidates have, lets say, colorful history, war or no war) and it looks so artificial and Broadway-like it is incredible. But then again what to expect from 2-minute article, lets-learn-history-from-action-films culture? Right? God forbid any brain cell gets exerted by thinking or (oh, horror) reading.....

Author gives a portrayal of very violent paramilitary group, well organized and trained and used by political forces to be. They are believers led by and fed ideology by opportunists and sooner or later this Hydra will give birth to many dangerous entities. Any state that allows this level of paramilitarism to blossom is playing not with match fire but napalm. It is very worrying that underground group of this scope and capability is tolerated no matter the ideology (which again brings focus to whoever controls these events in the background).

Author is very anti-communist, which I understand since his family went through Hell until they emigrated (or better said escaped) from Vietnam after fall of South Vietnam. But even here historical context is forgotten when it comes to communism and socialism. Like every social revolution, communism started with great idea but failed in the implementation. Author mentions May Day (May 1st) but he forgets that May 1st - national holiday, Labor Day, for majority of countries in the world - is a day that marks - who would guess, right? - labor strikes in Chicago, US. While communist countries in majority of cases ended up as very closed societies it is not case for all of them, some where relatively stable and had relations with both East and West during the Cold War. Also were it not for the fear of the labor strikes and revolutions, worker conditions would not improve in the [truly exploitative] capitalism at the start of 1900's, including 5 day work week, 8 hour work day etc. giving birth to work conditions we today take for granted.

As they say nothing exists in the vacuum, nothing happens spontaneously, there is reason for everything. And nothing in politics is absolute, goal is to find the middle path, that will work for majority in the country. This is something that western politicians fail miserably at for a long time.

Also, author's constant talk of free speech etc - pandemic showed that all these western democracies have become something else (some people would even make parallels with - what? - authoritarian states), and are not that open nor freedom loving societies of days past, but societies ready to subdue, suppress, isolate and make life hard to anyone with different views, whoever that might be, professional or layman. And we must not forget that making difference about who can socialize or not (again that horror pandemic control) is just way of imposing control over the unclean ones.

Rise of political militarism in US is truly worrying phenomena, especially in country that gets paralyzed whenever important things are to be discussed (that weird political correctness instead calling things what they are). Internally, while opportunists are in power and they use political violence to make themselves look good, this will create great tension that can cause [which is the worst part] international-level of disruptions.

If we look at analogies from the past we are in the turmoil phase of the 1920's, some events accelerated due to changed technological environments and spread of everyone's opinions that are the used for various political and violent actions. Considering the speed up and the way things are going we are entering truly dangerous waters.

Excellent book, hopefully some will listen to the warnings given by the author. show less

Still Mostly Masked
Review of the Center Street Kindle eBook edition (Feb. 2021)

Unmasked came along with a polarized rollout campaign that saw Antifa activists harassing Powell's Bookstore in Portland, Oregon in order to attempt to stop sales of the book. A block of early 1 star reviews on Goodreads was part of the online effort to dissuade interest. A random quick scan of those reviews reveals that many of those "reviewers" exist only for that single review and show no other evidence of Goodreads activity. To offset those efforts, many supporters of the book give automatic 5-star reviews in an attempt to balance the scales.

My own 3-star rating is a compromise in that, although the history and documentation that Andy Ngô provides is show more important, it doesn't reveal very much beyond the nightly incident reports that one would gleam from reading Ngô's twitter feed. The "trove of documents obtained by the author that he will publish for the first time in this book" are selected excerpts from an Antifa training manual and are not any great reveal of grand conspiracy and cover-up which one might expect.

Ngô is excellent on providing the historical background to Antifa's rise. He traces it from the founding of Antifaschistische Aktion (Antifascist Action) in 1932 by the German Communist Party (where they bizarrely united with the Nazis to harass liberal politicians and citizens) on through various terrorist gangs such as Italy's Red Faction and Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang on to England's leftist skinheads and finally to the United States.

Aside from the above, there is no great "unmasking" of the greater machinations of the movement. Its funding and greater strategic planning remain a mystery. Somehow members are funded in order to travel between cities in order to incite violence when ignition incidents such as police shootings present themselves. Suspiciously, various GoFundMe's for bail funds and such are begun and then disappear without accountability. These are likely a major source of the funding activity. No evident masterminds of all of this are revealed though. This is especially the key missing element, a reveal of undermining foreign influences (ie. Russia, China, etc) and/or undercover/false flag activity would be the true "Unmasking." That would require a greater investigation which apparently main stream media in the current climate are not willing to undertake.

I read Unmasked as part of my reading survey of various books in relation to the 2020 American Election and the post-Election situation. As a Canadian I’ve generally ignored American politics and elections in past years, but the drama of the situation in 2020/21 has heightened my interest. As an outside observer it does seem extraordinary that the mainstream media appears to cover up the occurence of leftist/anarchist violence while constantly drawing attention to any instances of rightist/populist violence. show less

Continuing with my reads to try and understand the culture wars and the state our countries are in right now.
This is a very good title for this book. It looks at the history of the Antifa group, what they hope to accomplish, their training and philosophy and it is frightening. Ngo is a photo journalist from Portland observing Antifa who has been beaten with resulting head trauma and has been much reviled by the group. HIs parents are new Americans who fled the communists of Vietnam and had horrible experiences in reeducation camps and were "boat people" to flee the country. He has grave concerns about the direction that Antifa wants to take the country. This book should be read with an open mind. For me any group that does and tries to show more justify violence is reprehensible. Antifa has been protected by the left leaning press. show less

A gripping work of fantasy. However, since it's presented as reporting it has to be considered a total failure, as anyone taking the trouble to cross-check Ngo's accounts with those of reliable media sources will be able to confirm.

I thought this was a well-written, and seems to be well-researched book. It's not tedious to read [I just read Cynical Theories and that was tedious for me, though informative]. I enjoyed the historical perspective too on the rise of antifascism.

Several of the negative comments talked about how it's lacking grammar and editing. I found 4 instances of a word being dropped. Three of those instances I recall the word being "of" or "and". One was identifying a professor of something. The something was the word missing. Not really a reason to lambaste the whole book in that regard.

Well written narrative that takes the individual videos and stories over the last three years and layers in terrifying historical context of Antifa and presents evidence that, in addition to Antifa being more than an "Idea" [sic], they are an organized, real, violent threat to the American way of life.

I often joke how the US is screwed. It's not a joke any more. This is pretty scary.

Unfortunately the book doesn't deliver much beyond reporting on a few incidents and a sneak peak behind the curtain of the organisation(s). There's no high level view or analysis. You can feel the story is personal and the reportage is very much from the ground level.