So Andy Ngo got punched again. Or something. And he claims he got really injured, badly, somehow.
And people are arguing about whether he's a journalist.
Again.
Which I actually think is an important thing to discuss, because it really pulls the pants off the "So you think it's okay to assault journalists because you disagree with them politically" position.
To be clear-- no, I don't think it's okay to assault journalists because I disagree with them politically. I also don't think it's okay to assault regular people because I disagree with them politically. Or, generally speaking, for any other reason.
However, if you're a journalist, you have a good reason to go into unusual, potentially dangerous situations, and if you go into those situations, you have an obligation to cover them, not participate in them.
When you participate in them instead, you no longer are functioning as a journalist, which means you no longer have a good reason to be in that situation.
Which makes you qualitatively no different than a dude who starts shit in a bar and gets punched. Which happens every single day.
(Also I don't understand this, but he specifically claimed that he was assaulted while engaged in reporting so he could write a new chapter for his book “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.” Which was published in February of this year.)
So basically, the point I'm trying to make is that whether or not Ngo is a journalist is relevant because if he gets punched while reporting, that is an attack on a journalist, which is bad in itself and because journalists do important work by recording and reporting on the facts of an event.
Whereas if Ngo was punched while stirring shit up, that is also bad in itself, but in the sense that dudes punch each other in bars across America every day for stirring shit up.
And when that happens, they don't claim to have been assaulted as reporters because they were writing a new chapter for a book called "Why Dudes Who Rightly Despise Me for Stirring Shit Up Are Destroying Democracy."