This American Life - 877: The Making Of

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

How one block in Portland, Oregon became a movie-set war zone that lots of people think is a real war zone. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription — or to give one as a gift!Prologue: What the movie Hearts of Darkness and right-wing influencers have in common. (8 minutes)Act One: Producers Zoe Chace and Susanne Gaber follow a bunch of right-wing influencers as they search for Antifa in Portland. (31 minutes)Act Two: We meet the so-called leader of Antifa in Portland. (16 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeated in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life, Myra Glass. And we've been talking here at the radio show recently about a certain genre of movie, which is the making of movie. A movie about the making of another film, usually a much more famous one. A classic is Hearts of Darkness, which is a making of documentary about the film of Apocalypse Now, which has footage that the director Francis Ford Coppola's wife, Eleanor, shot at the time the movie was being filmed.

Plus, incredibly, these recordings that she made of her husband without him knowing it, where he's talking about his self-doubt, his despair. This film is a $20 million disaster. I'm thinking of shooting myself. They're candid moments with the actors, Dennis Hopper, Lawrence Fishburn, who's 14 years old when they were making that film. Martin Sheen, who plays the main character, has a heart attack when they're there. 36.

I was 36 at the time. Marlon Brando, the film's most expensive star. At some point, Coppola realizes that Brando has not read the book that the movie is based on, Heart of Darkness. So he does not get who his character is. He's being paid a million dollars a week. And all throughout, there are hints and glimpses of what's really happening in reality

in the place that they're filming this movie. They're in the Philippines, where a U.S. supported autocrat is fighting a war against a communist insurgency. The movie's helicopters are U.S.-made choppers, flown by pilots in the Philippine military who keep getting pulled away to go back to the real war.

Wait a second, stand by. We just heard they're taking away five of our helicopters. The film apocalypse now is about Vietnam, but it's a big, mythic version of Vietnam, full of larger-than-life characters. The making of film reveals the normal-sized people building this grand cathedral, brick-by-brick.

You see the ridiculous lanes everybody had to go through to create their pretend war and their fake, impossible Vietnam. Which brings me to today's radio show. Today's show is a making of, of a different kind. It's people creating a picture of a place and a war that's happening there,

and that place is Portland, Oregon. We're going to talk about Portland as a concept where the city has come to mean in this political moment. Back in September, you may remember, President Trump declared on truth's social that he was going to send troops into what he called war-ravaged Portland to protect ice facilities there

that were, quote, under siege from attack by Antifa. Poking came to his attention, he said, by chance. You know, that was not on my list, Portland, but when I watched television last night, this has been going on. Protesters had actually been outside the ice facility since June. But Fox News, the night before, they were on a story about Portland.

And one thing about Fox's coverage, including that story, as the Fox's coverage includes lots of footage of protesters that is not filmed by professional TV news crews, but by the real altars behind the right-wing's idea of what Portland is. These are right-wing citizen journalists who've been there at the protests, covering them more than anybody. Especially live streamers who were there.

These are people who believe in Trump, believe in ICE, who streamed from the Portland protests saying that their lefty local government was soft on the protesters, letting Atifa run amok. Live streaming on YouTube next. All of these people right here are the Antifa of Portland, all in black. You come back, I'm going to fucking smokey, dude. Really?

Some of the citizen journalists became regular guests on Fox, talking about this. For people who say that there's not violence going on in front of these facilities, what do you say? It's a complete lie. There's lots of violence going on. I mean, these people are very dangerous, and they're unhinged just other night. And a week and a half after the president declared Portland to be war-ravaged and under siege, He invited these streamers to the White House for a roundtable on Antifa. It was remarkable.

At least three of these courageous journalists have personally been victims of Antifa attacks. Trump sat at the center of a U-shaped table, about a dozen of these reporters and streamers, for an hour and a half. And Flanking Trump at the table on his immediate left and right was the full political and law enforcement firepower

of the federal government. Christine Nome, head of the Department of Homeland Security, head of the FBI, Cash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. After the president's opening remarks, Christy Noam, head of DHS, fresh off the plane from Portland herself, talked directly to the streamers. I want to thank the new journalists here today for telling their stories and for being able and willing to go to the streets and to cover what's happening here in America. Many times the legacy media has looked the other way. Refused to tell the stories and how this network of Antifa is,

is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them. When the streamers spoke, it was an apocalyptic terms about Antifa, this supposed global network of anti-government, anti-fascists. Streamers talked not just about being personally assaulted by Antifa protesters, but putting their lives on the line every day. When Streamer said that she genuinely believed that if the president had not declared war in Antifa, people at this table would have been killed in Portland. He's one of the best known citizen journalists covering Portland.

Nick Sorder, he's been on Fox a bunch. Frankly, the cities and police departments are cooperating with Antifa, such as Portland. It's sickening. I've seen it firsthand, obviously. And President Trump, you mentioned that flag. So remember, you put out a truth right after I took this flag from that man that was burning it in the street. Do you know who he is? Oh, yeah, I know exactly who it is.

So why don't you give it to Pam? Give it to the Attorney General, and let's start prosecutions. The Attorney General, Pam Bondi, by the Senate at that point to say she's already started an investigation. The purpose of all this, the point the administration was making with this event was that in Portland, these streamers and citizen journalists were proving that the threat to America from Antifa is real. And then a massive nationwide hunt was called for. And this didn't just mean sending troops into American cities like Portland.

It also meant treating Antifa as a domestic terror organization. The president had just named it that. And he ordered the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to create a national strategy to investigate and prosecute them with the FBI, the Justice Department, and other agencies. And to go after left-wing groups that it says are funding political violence. A speaker at this roundtable named some of them, like George Soros's Open Society Foundations, organizations who, of course, deny doing any such thing. Since then, prosecutions are underway.

Just this week, the FBI claimed to have disrupted a bomb plot in Southern California by anti-capitalist anarchist leftists with a group called the Turtle Island Liberation Front. To be clear, there is no question that there are violent leftist groups in our country, just like there are violent groups on the right. But there were already laws in place and law enforcement going after them that has been one of the FBI's jobs forever. This is a new kind of crackdown at a new scale targeted only at political violence on the left.

America is a big country. We all, when the president owned down, rely on images and words from other people to understand what's going on elsewhere. And a vision of Portland, a movie about Portland. There's a place that's war ravaged, a hub for Antifa, ripe for military intervention.

That story. promulgated by these streamers and citizen journalists, amplified on right-wing TV and social media. That story is justification for all these law enforcement policies all over the country today. Along with another story, of course, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We wanted to see Portland for ourselves. We wanted to see the making of this story about what Portland is.

The reality, the behind-the-scenes, turns out not just to be very different, but a lot more interesting than the thing they're filming and the story that they're telling. Stay with us. Clarity is a competitive advantage, especially when it comes to the economy. That's because anybody can know what's happening, but understanding why it matters is crucial. Hi, I'm Kai Rizdahl, the host of Marketplace. We provide the context you need to understand how the economy influences our everyday lives, from our local

communities to the global conversation. You'll be smarter every time you listen, and these days that's priceless. Listen to Marketplace on your favorite podcast app. It's this American life. Act one. Living the American stream. Okay, so some basic facts before we head off to Portland. The way the president has described Portland, it might sound like an entire city under siege. But I think the first thing we need to clarify in this making of is that the entire conflict between protesters and police, the entire war, is happening on exactly one city block outside an ICE facility. Pretty much every day since June, protesters have been there, opposing President Trump's immigration policies, like other protests around the country.

Level of violence directed towards ICE is mostly blocking and slowing down their vehicles that are coming in and out, and small scuffles where federal police fire tear gas and pepper balls. There was one day in June when things flared up and were declared a riot. Protesters rammed a stop sign through a glass door, hidden nights agent in the head with a rock. But that day was kind of a one-off. What has been since then, when at a given day, it's anywhere from a half-dozen to 200 people with music, chanting, bullhorns. During the daytime, it can have a kind of carnival performance art vibe. A street salsa class, people in inflatable frog costumes. There's a guy dressed like Bob Ross with an easel and a pallet, doing an oil painting of the ice officers. But then at night,

they can get more confrontational with ice. Sometimes protesters have burned American flags, graffitied outside the building, shot fireworks. And it gets confrontational between the protesters and the streamers who makes it up with them. Usually they're anywhere between just a few streamers to maybe 30 or so. It gets really noisy and disruptive. People living near the ice facility complain to police about the noise. And when the streamers and citizen journalists say that the Portland police have let all this happen, there's truth to that. They haven't stopped protesters from blocking sidewalks or surrounding and delaying ice vehicles. They've allowed them to make noise. The judge ruled that it was okay. That was the state of things when one of our

producer Zoe Chase flew to Portland in October with another producer, Suzanne Gabbard. Here's their story. When we got there, it'd been about two weeks after the White House roundtable about Portland and Antifa. We got there after 10 on a Saturday night late October. It was cold and rainy, but there are a lot of people out here, wandering up and down the sidewalk. And it's not grimy protesters dragging furry tails in the mud dancing to I Will survive or whatever I was picturing the campy Antifa Portland protest scene to be at this point. What we walk into is more like a Trump rally.

I want you to picture. This is one long block with an ice facility on one side and a tall apartment building on the other. Two long sidewalks, a big street in the middle that leads to the old spaghetti factory. People are swarming both sides of the street, even late at night like this. There are a bunch of city cops and yellow slickers standing around.

and all these people wandering around with their phones on long selfie sticks, talking into the phones and talking to each other. Some of these people, Susan, I recognize, from the White House Roundtable or from appearances on Fox, but mainly I have no idea what I'm looking at. So we meet up with this one voluble streamer, she calls herself an analyst, Karlyn Borosenko, 128,000 subscribers on YouTube, and she's just pointing people out to us. The guy in a mask is a MAGA guy. The guy with the yellow hat right there is Antifa.

The guy with the flag is Antifa. Normally, Carlin's streaming from home. She's kind of a commentator about the streamers. She'll have like four different live videos up from four different live streamers. And it's like, camera one. No, camera two. While walking you through what or who to watch in the videos. Carlin's a recovered lefty, now very much on the right.

She considers herself an Antifa expert. She knows all these right-wing streamers and influencers, so she's a good person to follow around. Well, J.D. DeLay is there. He's got like 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube. He's in the Camo hat. I also spot Nick Sorter, 1.3 million followers on X. Cam Higby, 216,000 YouTube subscribers.

They were both at the White House. So, like, a lot of people out here, it's kind of like they're just showing what's happening. And I think a lot of people out here are trying to get the best flip. they can regardless of what side they're on. And what are they, why? Do you know what I mean? Like, why? It's not as though it's not covered.

We're in a reality show right now. And you can see the reality show from that angle or that angle or down there. You know, I mean, I watch the live streams for hours and hours of time on my YouTube channel when I'm at home. And it's like you have all these different angles. You can skip around. It's like, you know what it's like the big brother house where you can go in the kitchen or the bedroom just to kind of spy on people. Same thing, except we're actually

in it. And it's addictive after a while. It's like you start, like, there are characters in this story. There are people that are here all the time. So you get kind of like endeared to some of them. There's a reason so many right-wing streamers are in the same place at the same time, the weekend that we're here. Since the White House roundtable, more and more of these streamers have been showing up here. Then recently, the anti-ice protesters did this thing, which was Put up a poster with a bunch of right-wing influencers' faces and handles and real names on it, saying, don't take the bait. Meaning, like, don't give these guys content that they'll use as propaganda. The streamers saw that, and we're like, okay, well, we're now all going to come at once.

And we're going to make a lot of videos of you weirdos. And they're calling it Patriot Weekend. Some people are just standing around smoking and talking in the rain. And then these big circles form out of what seems like nowhere, with people pushing and yelling, like a playground fight. We ain't listening to that pedophile music, bro? With all these other people jostling to film the fight in the middle of the circle, which is a yelling fight, to be clear, usually not a fist fight.

And the people inside the circle are filming themselves being filmed and streaming that live to their followers. It's a circle of people and phones in a fight. I walk up to a group like this, try to push my way inside to see what's in the center. It looks like a dude in a bulletproof vest streaming a video of himself, yelling at a guy with a Captain America shield.

Stolen valor, we just proved it. It's disgusting. You're a liar. Apparently thousands of people are watching this online right now. Carlin and I elbow our way into a different crowd, but at the center, nothing's happening. It seems like some fight has just ended, and the streamers who are watching the fight

start talking to each other about whatever that fight was about. It's funny, like, now they're just doing, like, a talk show of what just happened. And that happens a lot. And it's like, it's one of those things again. It's like, it's a spectacle, right? You know, there's something going on over here, but then you get to run over there. And maybe you get to provoke something over here. And you just never know what's going to happen, you know?

That's why I'm hippie maga. I'm different. This is another rando chiming in. He's dressed like the dude from the Big Lobowski and a full robe with beads. What's hippie maga? Just about trying to connect And I'm trying to make more agreements than trying to win through domination

Like in a debate Instead of winning the debate By winning the debate, I'm trying to have a conversation Yeah So are you out here talking to people who disagree with you Is that your plan? I do, I do I just talk to whoever, basically

Yeah, got interviewed by the crow earlier over there Who's the crow? I have no idea, some internet, crow Lots of handles flying around that I don't know. Carlin looks around. Is there something people are, like, waiting for now? Like, what is everyone doing here? You know what I mean?

It's like 10.30 is really cold and rainy. Yeah. Well, you can see something's about to happen over there. It looks like a whole bunch of people are walking over there. So I don't know what's about to happen. Let's go see. Let's go see. Uh-oh.

Everyone is just standing around with their phones. Yeah, because it's like, if there's no fight at some point, then there's nothing really to film. Yeah. So, like, at some point, something has to happen or there's nothing to see. And, you know, what I've kind of seen is it's like, okay.

Putting out there, shame on you. Okay. Shame. Shame is a crazy person, and she likes to come and yell at. You're not a psychologist. Now someone comes up and starts scolding Carlin, an older lady, infamous on X, the Maga Granny. She went to prison for storming the Capitol on January 6th,

but she's flipped, and now she's at every anti-Trump event you can think of. The right one. I don't even know what you're talking about. What are you upset about, Pam? The big streamers can have tens of thousands of people watching them at one time, depending on what's going on, and they make real money from that, from paid subscribers. Fans tip them in real time. One streamer out here tonight,

He got into this after streaming Fortnite. This pays more, he told us, being out here. Another streamer, Tommy Boy, quit his job in local government. He says he makes more money streaming. But most streamers are more like Mike Ross. An out-of-town streamer. I followed him around for hours. He says he made money on crypto.

So this is a hobby for him, not a job. Not yet, anyway. He's a very tall white guy and a big brown sweatshirt with a phone on a tripod. so we can film from really high up. He's a mental health advocate and a disabled veteran. He goes by Mentally Idaho on X. He's relatively new here, relatively few followers, 6,000. His vibe is high school football coach.

I flew back this weekend for Patriot weekend and just filming and live streaming and trying to get angles that other people don't get because I can do this and record what other people can't do. Yeah, you have like a big fish pole. You can get up really high. Plus you're tall. Yeah, so I kind of do stuff like that. What do you think of all the chaos?

I just got here, honestly. But you don't have an answer. I don't have that. Dumb fuck. Mike said this thing about the way people talk to each other here. How mean and juvenile and graphic and vulgar it is. It's really like walking around inside social media, like we're in the comments section in real life.

Remember, every person's streaming here is not alone. They have this invisible mob surrounding them, sometimes animating them like a video game avatar. Mike's chat points him in various directions, saying, go here, go there, collaborating and making things happen that turn into content. While I'm there with Mike, one of the streamers gets arrested,

and his wife is really upset. Mike tells her they're going to get help from the chat. Say it again? It said that he might have to pay bail to get out. Okay. People want to know how to give money. So in a minute we'll walk down to Tommy's chat and you can talk to both chats about that, okay? You have a VINMO? Yeah. Okay. We'll get you set up. My phone's about to die. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, check this out.

USB C or lightning? There you go. Whoa, there you both. There are you go. Breathe. Give me a favor and take some deep breaths. Mike sees himself as a helper. He got into activism around mental health issues. After a hospital staff, he says, medicated him against his will. He's been diagnosed with PTSD. Severe complex PTSD comes from a life of trauma.

So ever since I was like, I have borderline personality. Ever since I was a kid, I've been traumatized. I've been abused. I've been picked on. I've been beaten. And so my whole life, and I go become a Marine and learn to stand up for myself. I stand up for other people. You stand up for the weak, for the vulnerable. So that kind of propelled me into use my abilities and my skills to help people. A lot of people I talked to out here had oddly similar stories, tough childhood,

and then some life-defining very American trauma that seemed to explain what they were doing down here. The war in Afghanistan, the financial crisis, the COVID-locked, and each of these people seem to find an antidote of sorts to those events via the streaming thing recording this real-life live-action political video game being one of the good guys finding a community of people not just online but in real life but in an online sort of way a little audience who cares about what you care about and thinks what you're doing is important for example like with Mike, he's not getting along with his wife right now. Talks about that openly with his chat.

She doesn't want him here streaming. She thinks he could get himself into some kind of vigilante violence situation. Mike is like, that's not me. And the chat is supportive. They ask questions. They talk about their lives. Mike's reading the comments out loud. I was spiraling in the drain.

It took a big family push, but I got help. I'm still here. Still has some very rough times. but I'm still here. That's awesome, man. See, that's in the chat. Some streamers are very committed to documenting, like Mike. Some people come here to argue with the other side.

Some are in it for the thrill of it. Like, a streamer named Moe told me he used to be addicted to meth, but now he's addicted to streaming. Some people are trolls. They're here to rile the protesters up into doing something that makes them look dumb or violent. Something fascinating that happens though when you're watching those guys is

lots of times they're trying to prove that the protesters are the cause of the violence but in fact when you look at the footage often what the footage reveals is exactly the opposite it shows clearly that some of the violence would not be happening at all if the streamers weren't there here's an example from the night that we were there before we got there

these guys Ryan and Cam were filming themselves, tried to come into this canopy tent the protesters set up on the sidewalk as a sort of home base. A protester in a black helmet with a red anarchist sticker on it steps in front of them. Hey guys. No fastest allowed in town. No fastness allowed. Good thing I'm not a fascist. A protester in a fuzzy skeleton suit glares at them.

I'm getting medical treatment, she says, to the phones looming over her. What are you getting treated for? Herpes? Whoa, whoa, whoa. And then, in a sort of, I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll pull. Puff and I'll blow your house down move, Ryan and some streamers just bust through the tent as a group to make the point that this is a public sidewalk.

Which it is. They are correct. But a guy in shark pajamas is almost knocked to the ground. As everyone spills out of the tent altogether, you hear the protesters cry, assault. And Ryan says he got maced and pours water on his face. Later, Ryan took a leaf blower from the protesters' supplies and moved it down the street. I asked him about what he was doing.

Like, what's the idea behind what he's even doing? You took a leaf blower? Yeah, I grabbed a leaf blower. And I moved it 50 feet down here. Okay, so you just moved it and... Oh, I just did it to piss him off. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Ryan's a former Trump campaign guy

and a former college football player. He's big and broad. Ryan has a track record here. The Portland police have noted that he reported he'd been attacked by protesters He was surrounded by more than 15 of them and then pepper sprayed while on the ground one time. And the police have also seen him, quote,

antagonizing the protesters until assaulted, end quote. His ex-bio reads, right-wing provocateur. For example, some guy goes, oh, FU fascist. And like, oh, seriously? And I'll walk up in their face and say, what do you want? And then they'll push me, and I'll push him right back, and they fall to the ground. That's provocative.

And then that leads to violence. It's a night out of the entire summer, though. So you don't think, even though you call yourself a provocateur, you don't think you're really provoking them? With my physical actions, no. But my presence, yes. Okay. Yeah. And is the point of that in order to make them react so that you can prove your point that they are violent?

It's to prove my point that they think they own the city. And my point, I do it to, you know, to take away their nadir that, you know, they can do whatever they want. This is precisely, exactly how many of the streamers and right-wing influencers feel. That even if Trump is in office, there's a double standard when it comes to the left and enforcement. The January 6th protesters were cracked down on and these protesters are not. So, yeah, they might get in a protesters' face and taunt them or film them If the protester responds with aggression, well, that's just revealing who they are.

It's fair game. I want to pivot for a moment to say something about the cops. The cops are a great focus of the streamer's ire. They think the cops are in league with the protesters. They call them coptifa. Say they don't arrest the protesters enough. The protesters would disagree. The night we were there, though, everyone agreed.

was a big turning point. It seemed the cops were cracking down. In fact, hours before Susan and I showed up here, 30 of them had descended on the protesters' tent and demanded its removal. The tent had been cleared before, but not like this. This time, there was less warning than usual, and there was just so many police.

In general, people said there were a lot more police all of a sudden patrolling everything and issuing citations. And what made this happen, the streamers will tell you. A lot of it comes down to this one video, of course. From early October, a video from Ryan, actually, featuring the most known fox ubiquitous guy down here, Nick Sorter. He got into a scuffle with protesters. He was filming them.

One of them started yelling at him, and then pushed him with an umbrella. Then a crowd formed, and he got pushed into this hole. It's more like a huge dip in the ground covered in grass. It's called a bioswale. It's for rain runoff. Two of the protesters and Nick were arrested for disorderly conduct. Nick spent the night in jail. Donald Trump texted him.

We are behind you 100%. Basically keep your head up like he was Tupac. Nick ended up released and not charged with anything. Immediately afterward, the Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Division, opened an investigation into, quote, viewpoint discrimination by the Portland police. Nick himself has started the process to sue the police department for $10 million, alleging systemic bias against conservatives saying the department was riddled with Antifa. Six days after the arrest, Nick and the other influencers were at the White House,

doing that roundtable, yes, anding the president's promise to send the National Guard into Portland. to police this block because the police were not. And that got a ton of coverage on right-wing media. And that's why the streamers think the cops are acting differently tonight. Some of them, including Mike, the vet from Idaho, think the cops are scared of all this exposure. All the streamers coming down here, the pressure that's been built from it and, you know,

Fox News talking about them, they have to enforce the law and it has to be equally. It's definitely changed things. But why take Mike's word for it? Guess who showed up for Patriots weekend? It's Nick Sordor himself. He's right here. What do you think, Nick?

Do you think that, like, stuff like what happened to you changed what the police were doing? I mean, it sort of brought the, it brought nationwide attention to the issue. Obviously, that my intent was to bring nationwide attention to the issue, but not in that manner. Not in the manner of getting arrested. Not in the manner of being arrested. But I was on Laurie Ingram's show, I guess, three hours before I was arrested. The fact that I had just done that hit and it was fresh and then I was arrested on that Thursday night and then that whole Friday was just nonstop coverage of the arrest ever since then.

I mean, they've pretty much been talking about it in at least one segment of each show every night. So, I mean, I've done probably six or seven primetime Fox hits since. Standing here on this block full of streamers, I just want to point out, this is the dream. Saturation coverage, with footage these guys filmed stamped with their handles. Anyway, after all the attention Nick got for his arrest, including the Department of Justice investigation into the Portland police, it seemed to the streamers that the cops were policing the protesters more strictly,

like clearing the tent and everything. So we asked the police, Were the streamers right? Were they policing differently after Nick's order? And they responded, they were doing more enforcement, but for a different reason. Quote, if there was any change, it was in the crowd's behavior. We began to see an influx of streamers, the people who want to monetize this situation. Still quoting the police here, they went on.

The increase in the number of live streamers and personalities in the area contributed to an environment where tension and confrontation escalated. Many of these individuals were creating content for audiences that reward intensity and conflict, which can sometimes amplify volatile situations. In other words, the live streamers made the protesters act up and the police crack down on both of them. That is definitely not how the streamers interpreted things.

On this night, certainly, they just thought they were winning. It's after midnight now. The streamers seem to be on a high. They've seen the cops clear the protesters' tent. The cops seem to be listening to them. They're filled with this we're winning adrenaline. They want to do something. So they start this march down the street towards this apartment.

Something like 30 odd people marching with their phones a lot, yelling someone's name. Chandler. Chandler. They open the door to this guy's apartment. It just opens, which is shocking to see and feels a little scary. Like, is someone to get dragged out and beat up in some soccer hooligan-y way? Chandler!

Chandler! I find myself next to Chad Katen, the guy in a bulletproof vest, who was yelling about stolen valor before. We're just a few feet back from the apartment door. He's streaming as we're talking, which is always how it is. What's going on here? So Chandler has been operating the Antifa out of here. They've been running this neighborhood, and these Patriots have had enough.

They're taken back their streets, and this has been Chandler's. This is where they have attacked Patriots and ran in here. This is a safe house, and this is where Antifa hangs out here in Roe City. A lot of this stuff turns out not to be actual fact, but more like Chad's interpretation of things, which others would strongly disagree with. But he is speaking the way most streamers and influencers would about Chandler's apartment. That is Antifa headquarters. Another streamer, Nick Shirley, runs up to Chad. Chad catches him and his viewers up with the not exactly true things that he told me.

They're just letting Chandler know that the bullying is. done, and they're taking back their streets for, yeah. This is Rose City headquarters. It's a storefront because he's a trust fund baby, and this is where they have their furry parties and all that. Really? Mm-hmm. I'll just clarify, this is not a storefront.

It's not the headquarters of Rose City Antifa. Chandler isn't a trust fund baby, and there don't seem to be any furry parties here, actually. But anyway. So this is the spot where Antifa, what? They just their home base down here. Yeah, this is where they hide. This is the safe house, known as a safe house.

Are you a fashion? At this point, Nick takes over from Chad, narrating for his live stream. He knows Chandler. A lot of the people watching his stream know Chandler. Any regulars who tune into the Portland scene down here know who he is. He's honestly, he seems like a very, he's like a very normal person when he talked to him and have conversations. But he has been the most well-known person for being. the head of Antifa here in this part of Portland, Oregon.

So what are people doing outside his house right now? Yeah, well, Antifa's kind of been defeated today as they took down his encampment, so I think he'll want to see what Chandler had to say and he was going to do anything about it. Chandler pokes his head out the door. He looks like a sleepy, tousled, blonde college kid who just rolled out of bed.

He seems completely unfazed by the mass of shouting people and phones just outside his house. A few of his friends, the protester in the fuzzy skeleton suit, another in a kaffia and goggles, a couple in all black are hovering around him. Chandler stands in the middle of the open door and starts addressing the group of chanting, angry, excited, victorious people. It is entirely to the advantage of the powerful to have us, the working class, blame the powerless. Does that make sense? It is also very surprising to me to hear this Orson Welles'

type voice come out of this young person's mouth. It is entirely to the advantage of the ruling class to convince you to blame the powerless, to blame the immigrants, to blame the left, to blame the right, to blame the rural farmers, to blame the liberals in the city, to blame the conservatives, right? He's ringed by streamers and phones, some of whom are just filming without comment, but a lot of whom are yelling at each other and teasing him. Because of the way Chandler talks, the whole thing. feels just of another era, as though he's on a literal soapbox and people in bowler hats

are on a cobblestone street, booing and throwing tomatoes at him. But it's just phones, bobbing everywhere and people narrating and arguing while he's talking. So when your snap benefits run out soon, when you go hungry, remember, it is the powerful. It is not the poor. It is the Democrats. It is the Republicans. It is the ruling class. It is the rich. It is the people who... What our economy does,

does that make sense? They own our industry. They own our fucking housing. They own the hours of your fucking life. Thank you, Chairman. There is no left and right. There is only rich and poor. There is only powerful and powerless.

You are among the powerless. We are among the powerless. Is that makes sense? People are starting to get restless, like unsure what to do next since this Chandler catharsis seems to be getting old. Chandler is still harboring terrorists after trying to gozzle our knobs all night last night. Eventually, people do start wandering away from Chandler's house. Carlin is giddy. Is it fun, though?

Yeah, it's a ton of fun. Aren't you having fun? Wasn't that fun? Fun is not the word, but like, you know, I'm looking for something to happen, and it was happening. Yeah, it's an adrenaline rush. It's like, this doesn't happen every day, right? Yeah. But it does seem like you guys are like making it happen every day. It seems like people are making it happen every day.

Oh, yeah. I give my business card to the guy who's famous for dressing as a frog at these protests. He was acting as a bouncer. Can you just give this to him? The scene at Chandler's ends with a bunch of streamers taking group photos of themselves simultaneously with their phones. Good job, boys and girls. You are all good kids. It's like 30 people.

Then some of them bring their phones close and bid fond farewells to their viewers online. I'll see you guys tomorrow. I love you guys. We won tonight, baby. We won. We're doing it right now. So I'm going to help. I love you guys. I'll make a post when I get home. All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.

You can't help feeling like this is so performative and absurd that even the menacing moments are just part of a drama they invented to keep whoever's watching on social media entertained. It's cartoonish. It's over the top. And the search for red antifa on this block can mean a random ice protester and a frog costume. It can mean that person who hit a right-wing influencer with a flagpole and then ran away. But here's what else the word antifa now means in America, partly because of the story the streamers are telling about Portland.

There's a great smoohing that's happening now. protest means Antifa, Antifa means violence, and Antifa is rampant, organized, networked, well-funded, and belongs in the sizzle reel with the much more famous foreign terrorist groups that Americans all know. Remember, DHS head Christy Knoam at the White House Roundtable with the streamers. This network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them. So let's go inside the Antifa safe house, see for ourselves, and talk to the head of Antifa, so-called. After the break, the frog guy gets us in. Zoe Chase, coming up, Chandler's apartment, could you be any more excited?

That's in a minute in Chicago Bubbock Radio, when our program continues. It's this American Life from Ira Glass. Today's show, The Making of. We're taking a look behind the scenes at the people who are creating a story about Portland that's fueling a national crackdown by the FBI, the Justice Department, Treasury, the IRS, DHS. We've arrived at Act 2 of our program, Act 2,

inside the safe house. Okay, so where we left off, our producers, Zoe Chase, and Suzanne Gabbard. We're trying to actually meet the so-called leader of Antifa. We pick up our story a couple nights later, outside his door. Oh, we're here. The Antifa Safe House. We're welcomed in, and the first thing we see is this sign that's posted right in front of the door. Three cameras and the Second Amendment.

That's a lie. What does it mean? It's supposed to imply. that there are three cameras and also that I have a gun, but I have neither of those things. There are no cameras in here, and I don't have a gun. So why did you put it up? To dissuade people from walking in and, you know,

doing weird, done stuff. Just a prop, no real guns, like so much else around here. So Chandler's apartment, it both looks like a safe house for a socialist and a dude living alone in his 20s. Two chairs, one desk, Kitchenette, he offered us tea in measuring cups. Two bookshelves, science fiction, Dune, Hitchhiker's Guide, Fahrenheit 451, Orwell, Vonnegut.

But also, the complete works of Rosa Luxembourg, the rise and fall of Swedish social democracy, psychology books. Chandler said he'd been planning to do cognitive behavioral science before he dropped out of college. My name is Chandler Patey. I'm a carpenter. And I guess I have an apartment that is right next to ICE, and I am an activist and protester, and I can't call myself an organizer for this protest, but I do usually organize outside of this event because there's no organization on this one. Okay, so are you the leader of Antifa? Unfortunately not, or rather fortunately not, because first of all, obviously, I mean, you know, that doesn't make any sense. Antifa is not an organization. There are organizations that identify themselves as anti-fascist, right?

But there are organizations that identify themselves as socialist or conservative. And they aren't the entirety of that thing. So it just doesn't make any sense to say that you are the leader of conservatism or that you are the leader of socialism, right? Because it's an ideology. You can't be the leader of an ideology that doesn't make sense. I think it's important to be as clear as I can. about this question, what is Antifa?

There are organizations with the word Antifa in their name. Steel City Anti-Fascist League, Atlanta Anti-Fascists. One is famously from Portland, Rose City Antifa. It has a website. It has a flag. But the idea that all these different Antifa groups or anarchist groups are connected with a funding stream and a leadership, there's no public evidence that's true. That was the conclusion

of the FBI during the first Trump administration. Trump's former FBI director famously said there are violent anarchist extremists who identify as Antifa in this country. But he said it was an ideology, not an organization that the FBI could target. Self-radicalized lone actors, he called them. The current Trump administration, the second one,

has obviously gone in a very different direction. So in this environment, you probably wouldn't want to be publicly identified as Antifa or the leader of Antifa right now. So why are people calling you the leader of Antifa? Because there's this idiot named Vali Ray, who's a streamer, he's very dumb. And I tried really hard to be nice to him for a long time.

But he is just like, he's just so malicious and stupid. So he just like makes stuff up to be sensational, you know? And he'll just like try and over-dramatize the things that happened. and sometimes that would include vilifying us. I asked Vellie about this, and he said he's been filming Chandler for six and a half months, and he stands by his claim about him 100%. I'd say Vali Ray is like Chandler's Moriarty, his Lex Luthor, his Joker. Except Chandler has so many nemesies, it's sort of hard to pick.

Anyway, here's Vellie Ray's stream from a few weeks ago. I'm following Chandler. Chandler, I love you. Chandler! Chandler! Don't go! Chandler! Someone in Vali Rae's chat posted,

you're like Brando and streetcar named Desire right now. Chandler! Chandler, you just walked in a full circle. That's because I was trying to walk away from you. You just walked in a full circle. Initially, when Vali Ray came around, Chandler would do the thing that he does. He talked to him.

Speechifying about political corruption and capitalism, unbidden. And Chandler says at some point, Belly just started calling him the leader of Antifa. He started it, and then other people started repeating it because it got them clicks, right?

And then as that kept happening, and then they found out that I live right here in the so-called Antifa Safehouse, and then they came up with all sorts of weird fan fiction stories that got more clicks if you just say leader of Antifa in them. So, like, it didn't matter.

that it was me. They just wanted that word. You were a main character. You were a main character in the story of the protest. That's true. It is easier to like give a face to something to get more clicks, right? Yeah. This is going to sound facetious, but it's not. Was there anything actually flattering about that? A little bit. It was like a joke that my friends and I, like we all thought it was hilarious at first, and then we realized that, oh, that's actually not funny anymore. And so now I, like, I actually, like, get mad at my friends or other protesters in general if they, like, even joke about it anymore because it's like, stop saying that. That's, like, really, really annoying.

It makes me look super conceited if, like, that joke continues, right? The other reason to get mad at this joke, of course, is that it seems it'd be dangerous to be called the leader of Antifa by people who have a direct line to the White House and the director of the FBI. I'm surprised the FBI hasn't been here already, or have they? I mean, they're at ICE sometimes. Or they, I mean, there are people who claim to be FBI at ICE sometimes. And I have, like, been detained while the FBI was there. And then they talked to me and asked me, like, so how are you organized?

And, like, who's your leader? Is someone paying you? Which is all hilarious shit for the FBI to be asking. Like, are you that? Are you incompetent? Are you stupid? Are you pretending to be stupid? Or do you think that I'm stupid?

Like, which is it? Like they're trying to get you to admit to being the leader of Antifa? They asked, for a while, they would ask everybody those, basically those same questions, right? It was just really funny because it's like, obviously, you know we're not being paid. What are you talking about? Can't you just, like, look at all of our private information? And then two alleged FBI agents gave me a brief interview where I didn't really answer any of their questions and just ask them how they feel about capitalism and, you know, corporate oligarchy and things

and just disregarded everything they said. It was pretty funny. You're playing into what they think is Antifa, you know, when you go in there to an ICE facility and you're talking to DHS and you're talking about how we need to get rid of rich people. I say get rid of is not accurate, though, right? Because I'm a democratic socialist.

I like democracy, right? What we need isn't to just go to the rich people with a small group of violent Antifa rebels and then, like, kill them. That's dumb. That won't result in lasting change. What we need is to convince everyone, right? This next piece of economic analysis from Chandler is going to play differently to you once I tell you what his father did for a living.

So listen a little closer than you maybe were going to, okay? Rich people hate us. They will do everything that they can to consolidate power, right? They will destroy the United States economy and therefore the global economy so that they can drive everybody out of business and then buy up fucking all of the shit that people need to sell for the lowest possible. and just keep consolidating power over and over and over. Now, Chandler was a kid during the financial crisis of 2008, and he saw a very particular side of it in his own house. So my family started off being kind of wealthy up until,

so my dad worked at AIG, Merrill Lynch. That, oh, is the sound of someone thinking, oh, your dad was in the business of mortgage-backed securities. that crashed the economy 17 years ago when you were at a young and impressionable adolescent age. And now you're a committed socialist. Oh. And then was like a higher-up, like a marketing director

or some shit like that. And so we had like a pretty big house that like they built and like designed themselves because my grandpa is a structural engineer. My grandma is like a designer or like an interior designer or something. My mom also has a degree in interior design or something. And so they're pretty wealthy, not like super rich, but like pretty wealthy. But I don't know if you know, but in AIG, Merrillinch was one of the parties mainly responsible for the 2008 financial crisis.

So when that happened, my dad lost everything and then went crazy and became a crippling alcoholic. And then I just like didn't really see him very much ever again, which was fine because I never really saw him very much to begin with. And he was kind of weird. I'm sorry. Oh, it's fine. Just to say, Chandler denies his economic analysis comes from his personal experience. He says it comes from observations about history.

Fair enough, nonetheless. Chandler does not like to talk about his family much. He says he doesn't really keep in touch with them. He grew up Mormon, just outside Portland. His dad died earlier this year. He has found a family of sorts here at the ice facility. Sorry if that's corny to say. While we were there for a few hours, people stopped by and changed their clothes, used the bathroom.

Someone gave him $10 for the water bill. A big wagon of medical supplies was sitting in the middle of the furnitureless living room. People had dragged it here after the camp was taken down by the cops. Some helped themselves to beef soup Chandler had on the stove, not the vegan, of course, who called it flesh soup. Chandler found a partner, a romantic partner down here at the protest. His first significant romantic partner ever, he says. They came by for a second. In any case, Chandler has a sign up on his bedroom door that says,

Don't go in my room, that's fucking weird. Implying that enough people came by and tried to go in his room that he had to put a sign up. Also, Chandler is autistic. He calls himself very, very autistic. And something that he attributes to his autism is his ability to talk and talk. and talk very calmly to whomever's talking to him, however they're talking to him. Even if, in my opinion, it very much makes him look like the leader of Antifa. Like our night with the streamers when he gave that press conference of sorts standing in his doorway.

I mean, you coming out was this incredible catharsis. And they were talking to us like this was like spiking the football. It was a victory lap. Like the camp was down and now they were teasing. bullying, yelling at the head of Antifa at the Antifa safe house, wildly outnumbering him and making fun of him and his friends. And why would you give them that content? The content that I'm giving them is good for me.

Why? Because no matter how many people I failed to convince, it is almost guaranteed that there is at least some people in their audience who responded positively to what I said. How do you figure? Because I have seen it. I go to their comment sections. I like look at their comment sections.

I fucking, especially on Valley Rae's videos, there were so many of his fucking viewers that actually were on my side. So like you really think that the commenters on the live streams are turning into Democratic Socialists some of them? No, no, no. That would be crazy.

That would love that. But no. I can only convince them on one point at a time, right? Chandler isn't always so above at all. He admits he takes the bait sometimes and gets aggressive, physically aggressive, which of course gives the streamers exactly what they're looking for, which is footage of the violent Antifa. He pulled up a video of a fight he definitely participated in

with someone named Bean and that provocateur guy, Ryan, we talked about earlier, and someone else called Right Side Rebel, who has long swishy blonde hair. And then I get pulled off of right side rebel while Bean is being restrained. Everybody pulls me off of right side rebel and they let her go and attack Bean again. And then I restrain right side rebel again.

And then it fizzles out after that, right? Don't you think, I mean, this is exactly what people are out there to stream. This is what they want to see. There was six more, like, I don't know how many more fights that night. But, uh, but yeah, afterwards I went and I apologize to right side rebel and, you know, we like smoothed it over. I was holding you back. I apologize if it seemed like I was, sorry for knocking your phone on your face. Like, actually I apologize. It was the very heated moment. You guys just united the country. Oh my God. I was just trying to. So there was no reason for us to

stay mad at each other. And then we like kind of, we were very friendly with each other and like had another interview with right side rebel afterwards just like and we're like hugging and stuff you know showing that we're our friends now are you friends with right side rebel friends is a strong word but you know i was like friendly right just again so this clip is so easily could be on fox and maybe has been on fox and um it's just you know it's like exactly exactly what the administration wants to see in order to carry out their policies I absolutely regret this a lot. I was just so angry at Ryan.

So small and intimate, really, what's happening here. Yeah. Yeah. We know all of these people, well, most of them. So it's like it's so small. It is really something that it travels up all the way to the White House. Right. The point is, these people know each other.

They're in the same cast. They perform the same play night after night on the same small set. They're like the dancers in West Side Story, coming out, dancing together on a city block, then going home to their respective neighborhoods until the next night, when they're dancing, fighting, in front of an audience again. These conflicts, these pint-sized scraps on a street corner, are not the sort of thing that in the past our government has sent the most powerful military in the history of the world to resolve.

They're not the sort of fights that have led to anyone being labeled, a domestic terror group and top national security priority. Maybe there is evidence out there that Antifa deserves that sort of treatment. But it's not in Portland. Though I love the smell of napalm in the morning, there's no war here. Zoe Chase is a producer on our show. Suzanne Gabbar, up to report this story. in the week since they were in Portland in October,

things have actually quieted down in front of the ice facility. Fewer people out on the street. Some of the streamers have moved on to other cities and other issues. We'll be singing when we're winning. We'll be singing. I get no doubt, but I get up again, because the hell are going to keep me down. I get no doubt, but I get up again,

Well, our program was produced today. I get no doubt. But I get up again. Yeah, they're going to keep me down. I get no doubt. But I get up again. Yeah, we're going to keep me down. Well, our program was produced today by Nadia Raymond and Suzanne Gabbar.

It was edited by Laris Dorcasterski, Nancy Updike, and me. The people who put our show together include Fia Bennon, Michael Comette, Ruthie, Ruthie Petito, Catherine Raimondo, Stone Nelson, Ryan Rumory, Ike Sris Kondar, Francis Swanson, Christopher Swatala, Marisa, and Texter, and Julie Whitaker. Our managing editor, Sarab Duraman. Our senior editors, David Kastenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks today to Nick Padani, Conrad Wilson, Troy Brindelson,

Lillian Manjo Hughes, Faza Patel, and Phil Richard at KCOW. I've said this before, and I'm saying it again right now. If you sign up as a This American Life Partner, you help us continue making the show. Plus, you get bonus episodes. The one that we just sent out a couple weeks ago and the one that we were about to send out, I am so proud of.

such good episodes. You also get to listen ad-free and you get an archive of greatest hits episodes conveniently right in your podcast feed. Join at this Americanlife.org slash life partners. That link is also in the show notes. Thanks this week to life partner Mike Seton. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder Ms. Tori Malatia. You know, hanging around with family for the holidays has been reading children's books to his nephews and nieces, and he realized something, reading Curious George. The guy with the yellow hat right there is Antifa. I'm in our glass.

Back next week with more stories of This American Life. Thank you.