 Regular viewers of this show will know there are few journalists in Britain who spout more irresponsible nonsense than talk radio's Julia Hartley-Brua, whether it be demonizing migrants or railing against lockdowns. The Murdoch-employed shop jock is a pernicious presence on our airwaves. And this week she kept her winning streak of chronic misinformation going. Here she is interviewing the discredited US journalist, Andi Ngo. There does seem to be one rule for one and one rule for the other. Now the argument on the day that Washington DC saw those protests and that that storming of the Capitol, the argument being that if they had been, say, Black Lives Matter protesters, they would have been treated very differently by law enforcement because they'd been black, not white. And yet we have actually seen very different law enforcement, very different media coverage when we see particularly Antifa, but also Black Lives Matter protests, almost sort of saying, well, these people feel passionately, it's somehow it's justifiable, it's understandable. But I imagine when it's your business or your home that's been burned down or you're living in fear every night, that the people coming into your neighborhood to do that, that it doesn't really matter what the cause is, it's still the same level of fear. Yeah, the arguments, the protesters or writers have been left-wing or far left and they would have been treated much harsher. That's absolutely not true. You can look, for example, how they were treated, let's say, in Seattle, the largest city in the South Northwest, when BLM and Antifa actually claimed territory as a separate sovereign city-state chads for more than three weeks. The federal response from that and the state response was essentially to let them go and do it. And this area, the no-go zone, which they set up a hard border that was manned by armed militias devolved into chaos and multiple homicides and shootings. Now, he was saying that the idea, if the left had gone into Capitol Hill, they would have been treated worse. That's ridiculous. The left wouldn't have got into the Capitol building. I mean, it's just unimaginable that they would have managed to get in there. We know that the police seem to be going light, potentially because of orders from above. So the idea, and especially it might not even be so much left-right as a black-white thing. I mean, the cops in America treat people differently based on their race. This is not particularly controversial, although I'm sure it is to Andy Engo. At the beginning of that clip, because I don't want to focus too much on what he said, I want to focus on who this guy is, what is his status as a journalist. And I said he was a discredited US journalist. Now, why did I say that? Now, Andy Engo isn't as famous in this country as he is in the United States. But across the pond, he's made his name by hanging out with far-right demonstrators and filming aggression from people on the left. So he's always posting on Twitter, look at these Antifa. They're the real fugs. They're the real violent ones. Now, he's often dismissed by leftists as a tall of the far-right. He always has been. But on the likes of Fox News, where he frequently appeared, he was able to put himself forward as an independent and objective journalist, someone who just takes a camera to protests. However, and this is why I say discredited, because it all began to fall apart in September 2019. A left-wing activist went undercover with the far-right proud boys group. Rolling Stone have a good write-up of the downfall of Andy Engo. So how a right-wing troll managed to manipulate the mainstream media. So this is from a while ago, and this is them sort of outing him as the activist he is. Let's go to that article. So they say, last week, the local newspaper, The Portland Mercury, reported that a left-wing activist going undercover as a member of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group known for promoting and engaging in violent clashes with leftist activists, had given the publication an 18-minute video that included footage of Engo with a group of Patriot Prayer members as the members discuss an upcoming brawl, including weaponry to be used in altercations with Antifa. Engo, who describes himself as a journalist, did not record the conversation and does not appear to have his camera or notebook out. For part of the footage, he is seen on his phone. So this is someone who is there. They're not really there to report on the far-right because what they tend to do is just take pictures of the left-looking aggressive who is there with a far-right group when they're planning what sounds like quite illegal stuff and he doesn't seem to think this is interesting enough to take notes for. The article goes on. The source told The Mercury that Engo and Patriot Prayer have an understanding that the group offers him protection when he covers rallies in exchange for favorable coverage. While this has not been confirmed, and Engo strongly denies these allegations, an audio conversation between members of the Proud Boys released by Willamette Week seems to confirm that such discussions between Engo and the Proud Boys had occurred, as one man is recorded saying that Engo was attacked on June the 29th because he refused an offer of protection and the Engo was fucking told that if he wanted protection from the Proud Boys, he went in with us and he went out with us, the man says. So this all presents him as not a neutral journalist, someone who is basically almost participating, really, as someone who is on these far-right protests and is propagandizing on their behalf. That's what it seems like is a huge far-right talking point to say the real aggressive people are Antifa, you know, the real fascists are Antifa, we're just patriots. That's the argument you'll hear from the far-right, which is one that the work of Engo sort of strengthens. And it seems that that's what it's intended to do. Now, you might say, look, this is, you know, he's an activist, Navarro Media, they're also activists. To some extent, that's true. We, though, don't make up conspiracy theories. We don't make up conspiracy theories and the Engo has. This is from that same Rolling Stone article. You can go read the whole thing, I do recommend it. Now, this says, in the hours following the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, which took more than 20 people's lives, Engo was instrumental in promoting the conspiracy theory that Antifa had played a role. When that was thoroughly debunked, he helped perpetuate the theory that the man behind the date in Ohio shooting was a member of Antifa, despite the fact there is no evidence he was involved in local activism or organizing. So this is someone who's saying, these mass murders are the fault of Antifa. And we all really know what that's about. You know, when you say this group are murderers, if you're the favorite journalist of the far-right, then that's sort of sending a message, which is violence is somewhat okay. So you might think, you know, Julia Hartley-Bruer probably shouldn't get this guy on the show. He's posing as a journalist and author. Actually, he's an activist and an activist with some fairly unsavory groups who talk radio, wouldn't like to explicitly be giving a platform to. You might think that even if she did get him on, at least she should challenge him somewhat. You know, she's asking him about an issue which is very relevant to this. She's asking him about Antifa and how right-wing protests go, how left-wing protests go, and she doesn't really challenge him on the fact that maybe he's a bit more of a participant than a journalist here and that, you know, lots of stuff he's reported in the past. Wasn't true. This was picked up by my esteemed colleague, Ash Sarkar. She tweeted a bunch of the points I've just shown you to Julia Hartley-Bruer and asked, Hey Julia, is this the same Andiengo who circulated utterly discredited conspiracy theories after a far-right terrorist attack in El Paso who is said to have had a protection arrangement with a white supremacist organization and was party to their plans to cause violence? Very good question. Julia Hartley-Bruer responds, I've no idea. I'm not responsible for what my guests do. Now, in response to this, Ash points out the obvious. What do you mean you have no idea? He came to talk about his book, which is about Antifa and he has a history of pushing discredited conspiracy theories about Antifa. Shouldn't a journalist know about that before interviewing him? So you could challenge him on it. Julia Hartley-Bruer, because she takes journalism so seriously, her responsibilities as a national broadcaster so seriously, she said, Jaune, you think everyone who doesn't share your views is a neo-Nazi collaborator, Ash? It's boring now. Now, clearly Julia Hartley-Bruer hadn't read that article because the article suggests that yes, there is actually some evidence that he was collaborating with neo-Nazi. I mean, he was clearly fairly close to them. That's what the Proud Boys and the Prayer Boys are. Was it the Prayer Boys? I forget all of their different names. Anyway, we'll go with the Proud Boys for now. That's what they are. We can assume that Julia Hartley-Bruer hasn't bothered reading those. Julia Hartley-Bruer, let's go to her final tweet. She says, I think Mr. Andy Engo has done some important work covering violent protests and I invited him on my show to discuss his book about that work. If you want to ask him different questions, why don't you DM him? I'm just not interested in your tired agenda. It's not my responsibility to ask about how he's done work in exactly that domain before, which has proved to be conspiratorial and fake. It's a bit like interviewing David Irving on The Second World War and saying, oh, the book was good. Why would I have asked him about the fact that he's been convicted as a Holocaust sniper? What's relevant about that? Of course it's relevant because the fact that someone spouts racist conspiracy theories in one part of their discipline means that you probably shouldn't believe what they say in the rest of it. I mean, especially if it's completely related, as it is in this particular instance. Actually, I said that was the final Julia Hartley poetry. I apologize, there's one more. Let's go to this. This is the final one. Ash, Sarkar and Chums are jolly angry with me for interviewing and the end go about his new book. Not asking him the right questions makes me a fascist or something. They'd be even more cross if you retweeted the interview. That would make you a fascist too. So don't do it with a winking face. I suppose it is one thing to get caught out interviewing a charlatan without doing the background research. It's kind of another to double down and saying, why would I do the background research on someone I'm interviewing even though their background story is directly relevant to what I'm interviewing them about? Julia Hartley Brewer might not be responsible for everything that her guests do, but she is responsible for what she does when her guests are on her show. And she's also kind of responsible with who she brings on and why. You know, and for what purpose. And she brought this guy on to legitimize a framework that she's very heavily invested in, that she's really built a career of. Which is, you know, to portray the left, to portray progressives, to portray black people, brown people as some kind of inherent threat to people's safety. And therefore a force that needs to be like clamped down on. Which kind of leads to all scary things, all kinds of scary things. And this this thing with them, the proud boys and sort of the way that they use journalism in this way. This is a tactic that kind of reminded me of something that was developed against Muslim communities in the UK, actually, which is when you read more about the kind of strategies that they would employ, they kind of resonate, which is, you know, far right groups like Britain First would go into mosques or Muslim neighborhoods and basically start, you know, behaving in a really threatening and provocative manner. And then when they get a reaction, they start filming and then use that footage to spread fear and say, you know, look out or violent and threatening this group are, they need to be cracked down on by the police, by surveillance, by border police or whatever. And, you know, that's what you do when you don't have an argument. You sort of rely on good old sort of state power to do it, to do it for you. But, you know, and I might kind of end up proving to an extent, Judy, one of Judy Hartley Brewers, her last tweet there in what I'm about to say, but we need to be really careful here. And it's because it's easy to write someone off like Hartley Brewers as sort of just a fringe sort of somewhat comical voice because, you know, she holds a lot of power. She's regularly invited on to BBC Question Time to, you know, flagship BBC shows. She has her own show, a really big radio station. And this kind of like lurched to the far right in this way and this entrance of far right thinking into the mainstream and into actual government policy. It often starts in this way. It starts as kind of fringe voices that people don't take very seriously. So they kind of keep their eye off the ball while they amass a huge amount of social and cultural power. And then we get caught off guard when suddenly the political spectrum has swung very, very far to the right. And it's swung so far that it's very difficult to then pull it back. And this kind of, you know, and I call to this before this sort of shock, jock, conspiratorial sort of style of radio propaganda that has been popular for a very long time in the US. And I don't think it played an insignificant part in the transformation of the Republican Party and the eventual election of Donald Trump. And we're seeing these same tactics being used in the UK and really ramped up of this particular brand of very well resourced, financially backed, right-wing media. And it seems particularly prevalent in the radio space. You know, Bolsonaro himself to think of another person as well as the example of Trump and sort of the shock, jock media. Bolsonaro himself started off as a kind of fringe, you know, having a fringe sort of like media profile, having a segment on television that was sort of seen as a comical thing. And then it sort of is how he consolidated a huge amount of power. And that brings us to what many have portrayed as a kind of buffoonish, you know, attack on the Capitol. You know, we see kind of the pictures of people dressed up and all of this and we kind of part of it, it becomes very heavily memed, right? And it sort of, we look at it as being a sort of chaotic thing that that fails and then it ended up in Donald Trump leaving office and then, you know, that's kind of the lid on that. But it's easy to brush those moments off but this is really the far right and groups like Proud Boys who are being connected to these kind of journalists that are portrayed as neutral journalists. And are allowed to carry that cloud for a long time. But this is really the far right calibrating itself. They're testing the waters. They're testing out different coalitions and different narratives and figuring out what it can get away with. That it's a sign of deep organization and deep embeddedness. And I want to remind people that these kinds of fascist insurrections, they always fail before they succeed. And the fact that they're getting signal boosted, you know, in the context of, in that context of growing social and cultural capital, the fact that figures like Andy are being signal boosted in what we can say is mainstream radio in the UK is very worrying. It's an incremental stage in what is a longer, wider trend. And so we need to be very careful.