Veteran left-wing journalist Matt Taibbi is leading a charge against Portland’s notoriously violent Antifa chapter and their supporters in the mainstream media following the assault of Taibbi’s news correspondent Maranie Staab.
Last Sunday, Staab began filming Antifa rioters after they tried and failed to shut down a Proud Boys demonstration. The anarchists snatched her equipment, and when she went to ask for it back, she was sprayed in the face with bear mace and knocked her down. During the unprovoked assault, Antifa members called her a “slut” and a “dog.”
What is amazing about the incident is that Staab, like most people who work for the media, actively supports Antifa and has typically covered the group very favorably.
Today, Taibbi released an enraged editorial expressing dismay at the mainstream media’s refusal to condemn the attack.
In the post, he affirmed the right of journalists to document public protests over the consensus of most “progressive” liberal and left-wing media figures who feel it’s more important to cover for anarchists when they engage in criminal acts or provoke violence. The media by and large feels it is more important to portray the right-wing victims of Antifa negatively than accurately document political violence.
Leighton Woodhouse, another left-wing journalist who was attacked by Antifa in 2017, has joined Taibbi in demanding that the left-liberal paramilitary group apologize for their treatment of even highly sympathetic press.
Anarchists in the United States hold privileges similar to institutional activists in countries like Cuba or Turkey. When state actors and powerful interests in America perceive a rising political threat but do not want to get their hands dirty, they activate semi-autonomous Antifa and direct them to attack pro-white, populist or patriotic groups.
In Portland, District Attorney Mike Schmidt outright refuses to prosecute anarchists in most cases. The FBI and federal prosecutors also keep a general hands off approach with anarchists, even in the relatively rare cases where they charge them with crimes.
During the chaos on Sunday, a gunfight between an older man and an Antifa member erupted. It is not clear who started it, but the random citizen who pulled his pistol and crouched behind a garbage bin was arrested while the anarchist who shot many more rounds in his direction was allowed to get away.
Though most Antifa cells around the country have been largely deactivated since the inauguration of Joe Biiden, anarchists in the Pacific Northwest remain as violent and brazen as ever.
The attack on Maranie Staab, who unlike most victims of anarchist terror has connections to important people, may be a turning point in building political momentum to at least protect left-wing journalists from their violence. (Republished from National Justice by permission of author or representative)
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