I grew up admiring “the crusading syndicated labor columnist” Victor Riesel, as the New York Times called him in its 1995 obituary. In a scene with overtones of On the Waterfront, Riesel had been blinded in an assault just after leaving Lindy’s restaurant in midtown Manhattan at 3:00 a.m. on April 5, 1956.
“An hour earlier,” the Times recalled, Riesel “had finished a radio broadcast in which he assailed the leadership of a Long Island local of the International Union of Operating Engineers.” The F.B.I. subsequently “arrested eight men and said the blinding was the work of garment district terrorists determined to silence Mr. Riesel.”
What Riesel was to corrupt labor unions Andy Ngo is to Antifa. Ngo’s new book is Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. With a publication date set for tomorrow, it was reviewed here over the weekend by Alex Nester for the Washington Free Beacon.
Ngo takes up the subject of his book in the Modern Wisdom podcast posted here and embedded below. Subject to the Antifa crowd that rules the roost in Portland, Powell’s Books has announced that it will not stock Ngo’s book on its shelves as a “safety precaution.” At the outset of the podcast Ngo observes that Powell’s features censored and banned books during the annual Banned Books Week. “Too banned to be part of the unbanned book week,” the interviewer comments.
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