We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky,
culture editor here at The Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to the
premium version of our website as well. I'm coming to you today from sunny
springtime Charleston, South Carolina. We have a fascinating guest to get to Before
we do, though, I just want to say today's episode is sponsored by
our friends at the Center for Renewing America, and they're asking listeners of this
podcast to actually help them stand by their colleague, Jeffrey Clark. Actually,
you may have seen Jeff's name in the news. He's being persecuted for serving
former President Donald Trump honorably as an assistant an Attorney General and for fighting for
the integrity of our elections back in twenty twenty so last year, Jeff was
indicted alongside President Trump and some others in Fulton County, Georgia, and then
had his good name dragged through the mud. Now, though they're going one
step further. They're trying to take away his ability to practice law and to
feed his family. The DC Bar recently put Jeff through a sham trial and
issued their first disciplinary ruling against him for his legal work in the twenty twenty
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so please visit stand by Jeff dot Com. That's stand by Jeff dot
Com to help Jeff and the Center for Renewing America stand up to the woke
mob. So thank you, guys to the Center for Renewing America for their
sponsorship of today's episode. And now let's get on with the show. Today
we are joined by Gabriel Nadalas. He is the national director of Our America.
He's also the author of the book Behind the Black Mask, My Time
as an Antifa activist. So, as you can tell from just the title
of that book, we have a lot to talk about. But Gabriel,
thank you for joining us. No, thank you for having me, of
course, No you are I think I saw this on your Twitter. Since
January you are now officially a United States citizen, am I right? That
is correct? I was very exciting. You know, it takes a long
time. Immigration is really really difficult. Let's not talk about immigration. That's
a separate thing, but it's just it's an ridiculously difficult system to navigate.
But thankfully, after being in the country for some twenty years, like finally
a us S, I was just gonna say congratulations on that. It is
not an easy thing to do, so amazing, and that's a good place
to start. If you could just tell us, this is usually what we
do when it's someone's first time in the show, a little bit of background
about yourself and how you ended up where you are, Gabriel, that would
be fantastic. So thin. So I was born in Mexico, right,
that's on Mexico City, in a town called lash and you know it's it's
not the nicest place. I grew up in a town called Nasa, which
is it's now wild, which Aztec language oorld. That's Messa for short.
It's interesting if people have ever seen the movie Elysium, well, the remake
of Elysium, where it's a post apocalyptric Los Angeles and it's supposed to be
like one hundred years from now. It's horrible you know all these things.
It was still in Messa, so it gives you a little sense of like
how bad it is down there. Anyways, So I grew up there until
I was about eight. It was not a good thing. But we came
to America and I grew up in California. In California, I you know,
I was a kid. What can much can I say? I was
eight years old. I was very like I at first, I was a
little hesitant to be part of American culture. But I'll tell you this.
This is in two thousand and two, so I was it was post nine
to eleven, and I remember one of the first things that I did this
might be two thousand and three actually now or two thousand and four now,
I did a play in well, I was part of this play in what
do they call it, like a school play kind of thing, and my
job was to be a firefighter and I was supposed to hold the flag of
like for the the firefighters of New York firefighters for nine to eleven stuff.
You know. I thought it was like kind of like an interesting thing because
looking back, I was just you know, I was just doing it because
I was one of the kids that they picked to do hold the flag.
That's really what it was, but like it kind of felt like a little
bit different, a little bit interesting because I wasn't thinking out about it much.
I was just slowly kind of becoming like what it means to be an
American. I was called an American flag, I was an immigrant, all
these things. But I wasn't until like sixth grade that I actually started questioning
a lot of like politics. And one of the things that I remember was
there was an immigration law which is actually very similar to Texas immigration law today,
which is, you know, making it illegal to make it up a
throw people in jail for being here illegally as supposed to just deporting them.
But this law was federal, well, the propos law was federal. I
remember that there was a lot of people saying that this was just anti immigrant,
a lot of the same rhetoric that you see in it today. There
was very anti immigrant. That it wasn't just about the League immigration, that
that was about all immigrants, you know. And then that's when I started
to kind of feel a little bit ostracized aspect the flight that despite the fact
that a couple of years before I was holding this American flag all of a
sudden, I started feeling a little bit like, oh, like maybe America
doesn't really care about me, and maybe it doesn't want me. And I
started getting involved through there. I remember my first protest, this is when
I was twelve years old, was in school. It was a middle school
protest. You know, we want walked around school yelling chance like cecip boy,
you know all these things. You know. I was really kind of
a follower at the time, but at the very least it kind of gave
me a sense of like getting involved in my community. That's the first thing
that I did. I started listening to a lot of my teachers. I
remember that in grade there was one of my biology teachers, who, ah,
gosh, he's he's bad because he would instead of teaching about biology,
he would just start yelling at the top of his lungs and just telling us
all how we were stupid if we believed in God, and you know,
the America sucks all these things. One time he said how his children weren't
stupid because he raised them to be atheists and you know, all of these
different things. So I was very much yeah, he seems very lovely,
right. I was actually very good friends with him because he transferred over to
the high school and then we were like best friends later on. But you
know, now thinking back, I'm like, probably shouldn't be yelling about kids
about like whether they're religious, especially at the public school. Nonetheless, these
are the types of teachers that I was encountering. The teachers that were pro
American, they didn't really speak about being pro American, which is a travesty,
like people shouldn't be able to speak in favor of America. There's a
lot of teachers out there, but they just don't speak out in favor of
America, which is another conversation, which is actually why I'm part of our
America. But we'll talk a little bit about what I'm doing a little bit
down the road. So I became very much involved in different movements in my
community, you know. I in in two thousand and nine, I marched
with the teachers union because Governor Schwaschenega was trying to cut the police but none
of the education budget, as well as immigrant rights groups, all of these
different things, anti war protests, anti war fliers, I'm passing them out,
all all of this, and I did this for several years. But
I started getting a little bit. You know, a teenager is like,
oh, nothing I'm doing is working. So I started to look for more
things for me to get involved. And that's when there was a neo Nazi
protest, and I mean actual Nazis. This is the NSM, the National
Socialist Movement. They showed up to claimont California in twenty eleven, and I
decided to at hand just because I freaking hated that. I'm like, how
the hell are they here? So I went in and I dressed in all
black, just like Antifa, does you know. And that's how I kind
of I got linked up with the local Antifa groups like in the area.
Now, I will be clear, the best way to understand Antifa is not
as an organization but as a movement. But within that movement you have several
different radical left wing groups and individuals. Some of them call themselves Antifa,
a lot of them don't. For example, the people who like I talked
to that and that spot it was STAK It's called the Direct Action Claremont.
Later up, I was linked up with people from the anarchist Black Cross in
Los Angeles, the Rost City Society. I mean, there's a lot of
different organizations that I that I talked to, and you know, they would
remind me to a lot of different things. I would go to Orange County
for animal rights protests, would I would go to the Occupy protests. You
know, A few of them weren't the black masks, the black block kind
of thing, but a lot of them weren't. A lot of them were
the traditional what you would consider activism per se, but there was a lot
of those the black block kind of things that I did. I also attended
a couple of different anarchist book fairs. One of them was in Los Angeles
and the other one was in Orange County. This is in twenty eleven.
In twenty twelve, I remember, and you know, I was. I
It's kind of weird looking back because when I think about it, when I
was doing at the time, I was just doing what I thought was right.
But it's only looking back then I realized, like, how many of
the mistakes that I was doing. It's like, it's not a good thing
that I was attending some of these events. Yeah, yeah, and what
can what was Antiva's perception of itself at the time, Because I'm really eager
to get into you know, you wrote a wonderful essay at the fair website
on substack. Well that I commend to everyone and I'm excited to talk about
that. Sorry, Gabriel interrupted, what were You're perfectly fine. I will
say that it's actually very interesting the way that antifas perceived today as it was
back then, because there's a much greater emphasis of what antifa is and it
is not back then because the vast majority of anti fascist activists, they didn't
necessarily think of themselves as like, I'm an ANTIFA activists. They right itself
as an anarchist and like, yeah, I'm really curious, can you tell
us more about that, like how antifa saw and as a part of this
movement, how did you see it? How did the people around you see
it at the time. So obviously we marched under the banner of ANTIFHIV worldwide
because like there was actual so sometimes people would bring antifa flags and you know
specifically that like the Klambom protests, somebody brought an anti flag, you know,
But more than anything, we saw ourselves as anarchists first. And this
is actually very key important to the discussion because when you super important, yeah,
super, it's only been, and I think it has to do a
lot with like the way that Antifa has perceived nowadays, because they see it
as like, oh, the Antifa group or the Antifa no no, no,
no, Like a lot of these people aren't really beholden to it.
Even if you're part of say the anarchist Black Cross, or you're part of
the Deck, or you're part of the whatever group, even there, you're
not necessarily a member of the group as opposed to. This is just the
people that you talk to and that you surround yourself around yourself, you know,
like they could be you could be in and out in a moment's instance,
like if I were to go to I don't know, some sort of
anarchist protest right now, we're in Black Black No one knows me. I
am now like a part of this group as opposed or like this movement.
So that's why I never call myself Antiva a member. There's articles out there
that say, like, oh, former ANTIFA member, I tried to correct
the one possible, But there's really no such thing as an Antifa member.
There's Antifa activists, there's anarchists, you know. That's that's how I always
saw myself I was an artist anyways, So the perception of I will say,
though it has changed even long before. If people want a quick history
about what antifa is, Antifa started sometime in the nineteen twenties, late nineteen
twenties, and that was like in pre Nazi Germany, actually in Nazi Germany,
and then they basically fizzled out from in post World War Two. There
was a lot of anarchist groups out there all throughout history, but the modern
antifa I really start sometime in the nineteen eighties, both in America and the
UK. So they used to America used to call themselves the Anti Racist Action,
and they typically were around touring with anarchist groups as well as with anarcho
punk movements. So this is a music movement, and they would go around
city to city and they would beat up neo Nazis or skinheads and stuff.
And that's the origins the origins of like the modern antifa movement. Sometime in
the nineteen I think as nineteen ninety nine, the WTO protests, that's when
that line was beginning to be blurred. It wasn't just like the Anti Racist
Action and like you know, and other anarchist groups everybody kind of started marching
within solarity. It didn't matter that you were an anarchist, a socialist,
a communist, an eco anarchists, and animal rights activist, whatever it might
be. Everybody kind of started falling under this banner of like radical left wing
activism. And it's something that we very much see today. In two thousand
and seven or is it six, because thousand and seven, it was actually
the first anti fuck collective in America, which is Real City Antifa. It's
portally Antifa. It's the oldest and the longest one that is actually active today.
Now this one, I know, I just said that the vast majority
of people see themselves as activist, individual activist and stuff, but this was
an actual worup. This one has memberships. They I'm sure they don't keep
anything written down, you know, membership list all that, but they have
official memberships. They don't have leaders, but they do have key people that
they like to kind of, you know, everybody has a role in this
organization. And that chapter though, used to call themselves Anti Racist Action,
and then in two thousand and seven they changed their name to Antifa to I
believe they made a Facebook post or a Twitter Post at some point a couple
of years ago, saying that the reason they changed their name to antifa is
to show that there was more things out there that they wanted to fight it
against than just racism, because racism pretty much silos you into this very specific
conversation. Meanwhile, fascism, well you can claim democracy's fascists, you can
claim by it and then trump that capitalism is fascist, all of these different
things, and that's kind of what they wanted to do. In twenty eleven,
when I was involved, it was very much still part of this anarchompunk
movement, because that's really where a lot of people were. But ever since
twenty eleven twenty fifteen, you actually saw a breakaway from that. Many of
the Antifa activists nowadays have no freaking clue that it was once connected to a
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podcasts. Okay, so again, yeah, it actually used to be so
much cooler. This is just so much more compelling way to be an anti
fascist. But that is all I think, so critical and such helpful information
because when I've covered Antifa, when I've covered riots, it's actually as exactly
as you said, been this mosaic of different local groups and a lot of
cases like local BLM chapters. Now I'm thinking back in twenty twenty what happened
and what was important to understanding it is that the banner of anti fascism wasn't
necessarily the ideological animation for everybody who was there. So when you're conservative and
reacting to these somewhat fascist techniques of protesting, like for example, journalists getting
their heads, you know, hit with bricks while they're trying to cover a
riot, that's somewhat of a fascist approach. There's this weird tension between what
they actually believe what they're doing, and maybe Gabriel you can talk us through
a little bit, how again you saw this, what was anti fascism to
you? What is it to people who are part of the movement now?
Sure? And I mean one of the things that they do is it's very
important is that many of them to this, they do not like to call
themselves antifa, like they really don't. You'll see the flag randomlyansuff but they'll
always have an individual or not always, but often have an individual life's name.
As I mentioned Deck Direct Action Planmont you have what are the one six
one, which is a FA the letters in the alphabet where they anti fascist
action, you'll have the s F one six one or Bay Area one six
one which is a Bay Area anti face fascist action. You know Las crucis
United Against Against Racism. All of these different names, and when you go
to some of these bigger protests, you'll have a lot of different factions within
there. And again you're kind of like this it's almost like a mob mentality,
not quite, but there is kind of a group think to the whole
thing. There is no really which actually it can be a lot more dangerous.
And one of the problems is that a lot of journalists, a lot
of like politicians, they try to put anti fid like the anti Antifa movement
into what they know, which is like an organization, you know, like
it's like, oh, it must be an organization. You know. They
try to think of like say the students or Democratic Society from the nineteen six
Is that what that said for that's correct name? Yeah. Yeah, they
started putting it and you know that that was an organization. It had Bill
Ayers was one of the leaders. You know that he was commanding, like
telling people what to do. They were bombing buildings. That's not really the
way antifa is. One of the better ways or the way to compare in
tifa is to tow in cells, not in cults what do they call it
to like the Taliban for example, if you go to the Taliban, sure
there is like a Taliban group, but you also have a lot of the
different like radical like Islamist groups that believe in the Jahad, but they don't
necessarily are part of the same organization. Instead, you have different movements all
pointing to the Jahad. And here you have all these Antifa groups all pointing
to like Antifa. But if you look within like like say anywhere in like
Afghanistan or some of the where these groups are, there's a lot of infighting.
Well, there's also a lot of infighting with Antifa groups. If you
look at the Portland anti fascists, for example, there are a bunch of
anarchists. If you look at the Austin anti fascists, there are a bunch
of communists. If you go on their websites, they're very critical of the
anarchists and they very much say like, no, like you know, the
anarchists had it wrong, like Mao is correct, this is how we should
be organizing. I mean, it's amazing, Yeah, it's amazing. It's
the Some of these splits are as old as communism itself. Here Trotsky ide,
you're a Marxist or your it's like its own little world, and you
got to be part of it. Gabriel, It's not something I'm necessarily proud
about. But you know, I was a kid. Well what did you
see? I mean, so from your perspective again, what was it that
you know? What was your motivating ideology? Why did you keep showing up?
Was it to oppose what I think people can make a reasonable argument is
you know, things like wto you can you know, I might disagree with
the argument, but you can sort of build an argument out that it's reflective,
especially in the days of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, that there is
something here that is fascistic, that there's something that to that. But you
know, opposing the sixteen nineteen project or tearing down abolition statues, things that
you know Antifa or at least Antifa adjacent groups did in twenty twenty, it
gets it gets more muddled. So for you, what was it? So
there was a couple of different things that really motivated me. I was vegan
for quite a while around this time. You know, animal rights were always
very important and to this day, like I think that it's really important to
take care of animals. I think that that's why I did some of my
animal rights activism through through some of these radical groups. I remember there was
one time that we went to the home of a CEO started harassing him just
because his company supposedly had a contract with some French company to to flying monkeys
into America to conduct baby sections. Now, baby sections are what's called when
you have it's basically like a dissection, but it's it's alive, you know,
and it's horrible, horrible, But nonetheless, the our response to that
was to harass the CEO of this company and his family. Now that's not
that's not free speech. That's not And this is in this private residence.
It's not even like a pubk square or like you know, on like the
unlike the street, like by the corporate offices or anything that this this guy's
this guy was just like we actually went through three of his homes. One
of them was like near the pier, one of them was in sam Pedro,
I believe, and the other one was like an Orange County you know.
That's kind of the type of activism been in. So emmal rights were
a big thing for me, and the continued to be with me important to
me. Another thing that I used to really care about and I still do,
is the idea of like banks. And that's why I was part of
the Occupy protests. You know, I think that banks, I believe.
Sometimes I have to separate myself from it, like from the way I speak,
because I still don't like banks. I still don't like but the reasons
for why I don't like the centralized bank are now different. Back then,
the reason I didn't like banks was because I thought that it was the capitalists
who were controlling like the economy, and that they they they were they were
trying to you know, it was corporate greed. They wanted more for themselves.
They didn't care about who they heard. But now what I believe the
reason I don't like banks, well, I don't like central planning. I
don't like giving the government, like the Federal Reserve, any money, and
like you know, they control the money supply and all these different things.
It's a completely different like way of looking at it. But still I don't
like banks. It's fair, I'd argue with that. Now for you and
you write about this again in the Fair essay it's called from Antifa to free
speech Advocate. That's at Fair for All dot org. You talk about what
started to draw you away from the movement. And you know, one kind
of phrase that stuck out to me when I was reading your story is bleeding
heart. You know that describes you know, you talk about your dad,
you talk about animal rights. You are somebody who you know, you your
life's purpose. You want it to be kind of centered around as you write,
helping others, and it's easy to see how people get caught up in,
you know, radical movements in such a complicated and like tragic world,
especially now that it's all on display for us with social media every hour of
every day. But what for you was it that started to draw you back
and actually towards free speech, which you might think the anti fascists are interested
in free speech, but smart I mean, as you mentioned, I've always
wanted to help people I don't like. It's only looking back now that I
can say that it's one of the reasons why I care so much is as
people will read in that essay they have the opportunity, is the fact that
likes my you know, like he's always like. It's one of those things
that you don't realize how easy it is to become your parents, you know.
And I think my dad's great, and I want to be more like
him, especially although I do have to temper myself because like to be more
like him, I also need to be more like my mom. Which people
will read a little bit of that article, they'll understand what I'm trying to
say. But what started to change, You know, a lot of people
think that it was like a one night overthink like, you know, I
just like I got red piled or something. I've always hated that term because
I don't think that people. I don't think it's a productive term, because
it's everything is more complex than just like opening your eyes. That being said,
sometimes very often there is a catalyst for you wanting to be open minded
about about these things. So there's always two things that I point to.
One of them I wrote in that article, and I'll tell you the other
one that's a little bit more grotesque, and I got it, Okay,
I'll tell you about it, but I have to pay a warning for people.
It's what I mean, grotesque really is grotesque. So I was talking.
I started learning about some really interesting figures like Milton Friedman and Thomas Soul
and you know, I really like I didn't like their ideas at the time,
but I found them interesting enough that I wanted to talk with my friends
about these ideas. And one of my friends call me a capitalist pig for
bringing them up, and that made me take pause because I literally was just
asking, like, what do you guys think, Like, you know,
what are some of these things? How do we really respond to this and
the fact that they called me a or he called me a capitalist pig made
me want to learn more. And one of the things that I've actually found,
and I found a psychological term for it not long ago, it's called
the backfire effect. When you try to force people into not looking at something
you are going to for, you are going to make them want to look
for it even harder. So that's what happened. And in college I started
at this point, I was starting college, and I started learning more about
the free market, just because I'm like, Okay, why don't they want
me to hear about this, Why don't they want me to listen to it?
Like, let's see what they have to say. I mean, a
lot of conservative libertarian friends in college, you know, I found them and
they were not the people who I thought they were or who I was told.
They were people who believed in the pre market, people who believed in
capitalism, and they were just regular people. They weren't these gritty, greedy
like bankers who cared about nothing. And that really made me realize that there
was a lie being told among a lot of antifa activists that were trying to
humanize a lot of these people but they're just regular people just like us.
They just have a different opinion, and so there's that's kind of what started
driving me towards the free speech around. I will tell you though, I
the last time I saw them, they invited me to a gig. As
I mentioned and TIFA at the time, and even before then, it was
very much in common with like the music mop and the anal punk movement,
the cross punk movement and all that. So then invited me to this show
and I saw a lot of my friends. There was a lot of them
actually, and off the corner, in the peak corner, you know,
in the backyard gig, you actually had this couple who were was having they
were having sex, they were having an intercourse. They were just like all
blown out, like just doing doing their businesses. You know, this is
not surprising, but yeah, you know, and like at the time,
I remember thinking, oh, that's gross, but okay, you know,
unsurprisingly it's not the first time that that had happened, but it was happening,
so okay. There's a lot of people snickering and just talking about it.
And then one of the owners of the house, who happened to be
a gang affiliated fellow like he went up to them and started like he kicked
them from behind and stuff, and I was like, to me, I
was thinking, like, oh yeah, like, what the hell do you
expect? You were literally having sex in somebody else's home, like in public,
okay. And then I saw one of my friends run up to the
situation. You know, he's kind of he tried to be a pacifist,
you know, trying to like, okay, let's let's try to calm down.
And I'm just thinking, this guy doesn't know who these owners are,
Like, these are guys. He's about to get his he's gonna get beat
up. So went up to him. I pulled him by backpack and I
told him, dude, you need to not get involved. You didn't see
what happened. We need to get out of here right now. And then
I looked over and the couple having sex, well, they were my friends.
So that's when I knew that I was somehow involved, even though I
didn't want to be involved. So spare people in the details. If they
want to know more, they can buy my book. But the point being
is we got into this huge fight where there was multiple different The gang unit
was called the Canine Unit, was called. We had a helicopter circling around
and I I was beat up. There was a lot of my friends beat
up. And then I made me realize, who the hell am I hanging
out with. I don't want to be around these people. And that's when
I realized I needed cut ties. And this is not even an ideological tie,
because to an extent, I still very much believed in a lot of
the same things. But it was just made me realize that I needed to
have a clean break from this. Otherwise I was not gonna it was not
gonna go well with me. That's absolutely fascinating. Did it result in sort
of downstream ideological shifts in your thinking? I mean, it sounds like your
core thinking has remained the same, But did it change the way that you
looked at the world and sort of maybe other aspects? You know, as
you mentioned, my core beliefs are still very much the same. I still
love animals. I mean, I still love people, and I still hate
the government to this day. And that said, the way that I mean,
it's just an experience. You know, everybody goes to different experiences,
and that's just happens to be mine. It happens to be a little bit
more exciting than others and stuff, but I think that it has a lot
of the same key elements to any other experience. Like you meet people throughout
your life as you grow up and that are not good people, and you
want to get away from them if you Fortunately, you realize soon enough that
they're not the people that you should be hanging out around. You know,
take away like the Antifa on the politicalness of like my story, and you
can have the same conversation about somebody a drug addict. You know, it
just happens to be my storehouse, but happens to be on the happens to
deal with politics and with activism. Yeah, and you know we're recording this
on the day. There's been some, let's say, to put it mildly
civil disobedience on college campuses from some folks that are crossing where what I would
say is a line from free speech. I think a lot of the free
speech that's exercised here have been you know, in disagreement with, but it's
been perfectly fine. In other cases there's been some some line crossing. But
I bring that up Gabriel too, to ask what the New York Posts,
for example, wrote a story about the affluent backgrounds of a lot of the
people that are involved in these protests. Yeah. I always hear that story
and tell us more. Yeah, but there's there's two stereotypes of an Antifa
activist that I've always hated. And this happens to be a lot with conservatives.
And it sucks because when you pink like Antifa in this light, all
of a sudden, you lose credibility. The reason whenever they look at the
Antifa activists or rested in Portland, the reason they're like, oh, they're
all white Orland is like ninety percent white. Go to what do you want
them to do? Well, yeah, like it's just go to La and
go to like Georgia. Look at the act like, you know, I'm
brown, Like the people around me in Los Angeles were brown. Like it
just kind of reflects the demographic of the city in which they're operating. It
is not necessarily because like, oh they're white as far as them where I
like being affluent. There is a little bit of truth to that, but
it's overblown. The fact is is that when I mean I grew up poor,
like I grew up with like a little money and stuff, like I
used to tape duck my shoes because like I couldn't afford to buy some you
know, I remember, And this sucks because when I turned nineteen and I
didn't want to rely on my parents, I had a toothache and I knew
I needed to go to dentist and I knew I needed antbiotics, and I
didn't know how to get them. I didn't know what the hell to do.
And that sucks, It really really sucks. And that's a whole other
conversation about that. But at the same time, the thing I can tell
you, though, is that there's a lot of people from different socio economic
status in the anti fascist movement. One of the reasons why you've seen more
of like the affluent backgrounds is because it's been info trading into college campuses nowadays,
and you have a huge movement every since, like the early to mid
two and twenty and tents, when you have a lot of college students who
are listening to the type of music or they're being involved there, they're being
indoctrinated or like I was with my with my middle school teachers, in my
in my high school teachers, but with college professors now who can afford to
go to ASU, to use CLA, to Stanford, to some of these
colleges. Well, you know, they tend to be people who would not
necessarily have money because there's a lot of student aate, but they're not necessarily
people who can, you know, who can. They don't have as much
money as like they have more money than your average person, like who at
the time. I mean, I went to community college like starting off,
you know, that's all I could afford, and I worked so hard to
afford that. That's again, that's a different conversation. But whenever you hear
conservatives say they're just white, they're just rich, it's just you lose credibility
because the vast majority of people who are in the anti fascist movement or who
are radicalized, they understand that it's a lot of them are not. And
you kind of you when you paint with such broad brushes, you basically exclude
people like they don't you know, you make them feel like they don't Why
should I listen to them? They don't even know what the hell like my
experiences is, my experiences are. Yeah, I was really eager to hear
your thoughts on that, because it does get brought up all of the time,
and you know, there's I'm sure that it's it is true for a
percentage of the population. As you say, now, I want to ask
you sort of addressed there, what misconceptions the right might have about Antifa.
I also wanted to ask what misconceptions the left might have about Antifa when you
know there has been a concerted effort at least there wasn't twenty twenty to kind
of downplay Antifa. Although lots of people were killed in those riots. Every
time I look at the number, I'm actually always surprised by it how many
it is. A there's a few different lines. So first of all,
from the left, it is so frustrating to hear that Antipa has never killed
anybody. In my book ided to multiple different like antifa groups throughout history that
killed people as well as in modern history with American history. But not only
that. But I always hate how specific they are because when they say and
Antifa has never killed anybody, but then they go, but the extremest right,
and then they say the neo Nazis, they point to all these like
different groups. Well, when you're looking at left wing radicalism, you have
to go beyond Antifa, because they are not the only left wing group.
There is multiple different radical left wing groups that have killed people like you.
Literally, if you want to, if you want to play the game that
the rights killed as many people, which is, you know, this whole
conversation, well, let's go and talk about like the Bolsheviks, Let's go
and talk about like the Communists, all of these people that are very much
ideologically aligned with Antifa, with the Communists, with the socialist They've killed many,
many, many more people than anybody on the right. Halse and I
also take objection with the fact that like the KKK or the or the neo
Nazis are from the right, but let's okay, sure there, let's put
them in there. Even then, the left has killed far more any more
people and millions of people. That being said, I always if you want
to play that game, then Antifa has never killed anybody, which is false
just because there's numbers out there. Okay, Well, the private Boy,
the Proboys, I've never killed anybody, you know, like they've never killed
anybody. That you can play that game from the right now if you want
to make the argument the proud Boy belongs to a right movement, a rational
movement. Okay, maybe the rights kill people, which is again like that's
a different conversation. But the misconception, the first mistake that the left does
when talking about the right of the antifa is that anti belongs to a broader
left wing tradition that you cannot ignore. You just cannot ignore, like everything
that the left wing anarchist movements have done throughout history. And then the second
thing the misconception is then Nadifa actually exists. It's not necessarily a group,
it's not necessarily like they don't necessarily have meetings, but it's not an idea
like Jerry Nandler, representative Jerry Nadler of Joe Biden's like to say, like
it doesn't exist, it's just an idea. It's like, no, that's
not true. Like they're out there and they're doing things. And the longer
you continue to ignore the fact that they're out there doing things, the easier
it is for them to continue to act without any strong opposition, without any
opposition. And this is actually one of the things that Trump did right when
he was a president. There are a lot of things, but this is
one of the things that I appreciate about him when he was in office,
is the fact that he was willing to call out Antifa, who was willing
to call out left wing radical movements, because when you don't call them out,
which we have not seen like anybody really at the national stage call them
out for three years, and now you have all this campus protests, you
have all of these people that are chanting death to America, death to Jews,
death to Israel, And it's like, what the hell, Like that
is not okay even like and it surprises me too, because you know,
like death to America, death to Israel is like okay, that's like a
thing that anarchists would say, but the death to Jews, Like I'm very
surprised that, like there's not like other people like saying like what the hell
this is not okay from like the like the radical left, like the antifaul
like chapters because one of the things that that they pride themselves of and like
they'll talk about like anarchist movements, like protecting Jewish people, you know,
all these things, and like they're not speaking out about it because I mean
they have Twitter accounts, they have Facebook accounts. They shouldn't have well actually
it probably should have, but it sucks that they have them. But at
the same time, they're not really releasing statements like they would have whenever George
Floyd, the George Fullyard protest. They could and they still have not condemned
the call for the extermination of Jewish people. Yeah, that's I actually,
I am so glad you brought that up, because I was thinking the same
thing today, you know, and on the right, everybody, and I
think part of this is because the media tends to be left, so on
the right, everybody rushes to denounce, you know, everything, We don't
need to get into Trump's you know, Charlottesville, all that stuff. But
it is true that, you know, conservatives will always because the media is
constantly asking, asking, and asking. But the organizers of none of these
campus protests, some of which are clearly Antifa, at least in Antifa adjacent
like the one in Columbia. You said, like there's one off campus,
that there's a video of them off campus at the subway station chanting go ahead,
yeah please. Another thing, another misconception of both that the left and
the right get wrong is that the black block Antifa. The black block is
when you dressed in all black and then you, you know, cover your
face to make sure that you're not recognized with the police. If they take
a photo of you, it's hard for you to identify you. That's a
tactic. The black block is a tactic, and you could change it with
many different things. In Portland they had the moms for I forgot a called
moms are Antifa. They were wearing like shirts that said mom on it.
That's the same thing. A lot of them were now mothers, a lot
of them were not dads. They just put that onto for pr purposes.
So even though you don't have like the black block per se, you could
still be part of the Antifa movement. And and you know, I haven't
seen specific videos that you mentioned it, but I would not be surprised if
they are, as you say, like Antifa or Antiva adjacent groups, because
the black block and like the garments don't make you Antifa. And can you
tell us, Gabriel, about what you're doing now at you know, in
your position now you're advocating for free speech, and can you tell us about
you where you're making having an effect in your sort of day to day now?
Sure, So I'm at our America and I've been an activist for a
really long time, and one of the things that I started to realize is
that there's a lot of toxicity just from the left and right, and I
didn't like it. So I started searching for something better to do, and
I found Our America, which I helped launch it. I'm not the founder.
Some people like put that out there, like oh because like I,
But I am the smokesperson in my help launch it. And I think it's
great because the purpose of Our America is to unite Americans, not as Republicans
democrats, but as Americans advocating for our America. And we are not a
constructed organization or a liberal organization, but we are not a centrist organization by
any means. We believe in specific issues. We believe that people have the
right to fre speech, that that people have the right to practice the religion
with that government interference, the right that criminals should be punished and not just
let on the street, as well as we want to support the police when
they're doing good work. We want to make sure that the government stays out
of the economy to make sure that to keep a check on inflation. You
know, some of these ideals are very foundational to what it means to be
an American, and that the vast majority of Americans agree. We've done polling
and other people's polls. They confirm that on these issues, you'll have eighty
ninety percent of Americans agree with these statements. Yet as soon as you put
it into the context of like a Republican or a liberal or a Democrat or
what have you, then all of a sudden, people they want to go
back to their group. They're very they don't want anything to do with the
other side. So what we're trying to do is to really show that there
is another alternative that again, eighty ninety percent of Americans agree with us on
these core issues, so we should be working on specific issues as opposed to
just seeing everything to the lens of partisanship. I sometimes get pessimistic about this
coalition of you know, people on the right and left who can come together
on these critical conversations about things like free speech. I mean, actually,
even just this debate about what's happening at Columbia and Yale is splintering some people
in those camps. And going forward, I mean, there are so many
powerful coalitions between left and right post Trump especially things that kind of scrambled and
it's the landscape is different. What's your perspective, Gabriel, You know,
having been go ahead, we have to remember that the voices Antifa and the
voices in the in the extreme right are very minute when compared to everybody.
One of the problems is that a lot of times you have these people making
a lot of noise and it's you know this, I just saw a video
of this guy yelling and he's and he was saying what was he saying,
like the more you silence us, the more the louder we speak, or
something like that. He was being arrested, and you see this video and
you're like, oh man, there's a lot of people like that. No,
Like, he is literally alone. He is one of the few people
who are actually believe in what they believe. So one of the problems that
you have is when institutions, particularly in the college space, they are failing
to hold these people accountable, who are who are occupying spaces illegally, who
are are defacing property, And when you fail to do that, you embolden
them. You embolden this tiny minority of people and they make themselves look bigger
than they are, but as I mentioned, the vast majority of Americans don't
like them. Let's keep things in in context for a second. Everybody knows
that academia is left leaning. We're not even talking about left like far left.
It's left leaning. And yet somehow, when it came to the president
of Harvard, President Gay, she was fired, and people were saying it
was the al right, there's no conservatives or even right wing people in the
Harvard board. It was all liberals, all liberals. Liberals took care of
their own there. And you can argue the merits of whether she had been
pushed out or not, but the fact is that the majority finally did something
against this extreme leftist factions. And I feel a little bit. I feel
good about what Columbia's doing right now. They're saying like, no, we're
not going to take it, or same thing for Google. Google they just
fire twenty eight employees. They just hire twenty eight employees. And we have
to remember the fact that when you look at Google, they hire undreds of
thousands of employees. Probably maybe that's an over exaggeration, but thousands and thousands
of employees, and it was only twenty eight people. And Google has said
to them. No, we are not going to listen to these twenty eight
people. You are fired. Anybody else who does this, who tries to
illegally occupy our offices, is going to be out. If you continue to
do that, and you continue to shut down those tiny, tiny, those
tiny numbers of people who are just extreme, then you won't get it as
much anymore. Gabriel Nadales, What else should people know about what you guys
are doing with all of your excellent work, you know, I mean,
one of the things that we're doing right now is we're really taking a look
at our plan for the next couple of years. We really want to start
focusing on free speech and really to give people a voice who are sick and
tired of the toxic politics because the minority of Americans believe in America, the
majority of Americans don't want to be lumped in with the far left and the
far right. So we're giving them a home to be able to express themselves.
And where can people find out about your work? Sure? I mean,
people can check me out on Twitter at og Nadalas, or check us
out on our website at join Ouramerica dot org. There you go, Gabriel
and Nadalas, thank you so much for sharing your story, for being so
open. Just appreciate it very much. I thank you, I appreciate the
opportunity. Of course, you've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio
Hour. I'm Emily Kashinski, culture editor here at The Federalist. We'll be
back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for
the frame.