You did not have necessarily Black Lives Matter people being tear gassed in Portland.

You had people that were destroying property, throwing things at the federal building for hours,

then they were tear gassed by federal forces and for a time by the Portland police,

but they can't use tear gas anymore. There's no part of me that believes that had that been

Black Lives Matter protesters attacking the Capitol building, that there would have been any

response different at all. I don't think the response by law enforcement would have been different in any way.

I think law enforcement was responding to an attack, and that's what they did.

I don't think that they were looking at who was doing the attacking.

Welcome to the unspeakable podcast.

I'm your host, Megan Dow.

My guest is journalist Nancy Rommelman. Nancy is based in New York

City these days, but she was a longtime resident of Portland, Oregon. As that city erupted into

protests last summer in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, Nancy began covering the action

for Reason magazine. In this conversation, she helps define the

boundaries between some of the protest groups, leftist so-called anti-fascist groups like

Antifa, anarchist movements like Black Block, and the peaceful protesters whose efforts were

sometimes overshadowed by extremists. She also talks about white nationalists and their

adjacent groups

and contrasts some of the larger assumptions about all of this activity with what she's observed

firsthand on the ground. Now, this conversation is divided into two parts. The first half was recorded

in late December and focuses mostly on summer events and what led up to them.

The second half was recorded just a few weeks ago and includes discussion of the January

...