Portland’s world-famous bookstore Powell’s is under fire for carrying a book by right-wing agitator and commentator Andy Ngo.
The book, “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy,” is available for pre-order on Powells.com and elsewhere. It is not currently on the shelves.
Ngo, who is from Portland, was once an editor for the Portland State University student newspaper, The Vanguard, before being fired for an ethics violation in 2017.
Since then, Ngo has become a vocal conservative commentator.
In a tweet Sunday, Ngo shared screenshots of people unhappy that Powell’s has his book, scheduled for release in February, listed on its site, writing, “Antifa are threatening to picket Portland bookstore @Powells if they don’t ban my book about antifa.”
A small group of protesters gathered Monday at the store in downtown Portland.
“Andy Ngo goes out of his way to dox the Black Lives Matter community which he considers ‘antifa,’” protestor Dustin Brandon told The Oregonian when asked why he was demonstrating outside the bookstore.
“He has put probably 95% of the people here, including myself, lives at risk, just through what he does online,” Brandon said.
Demonstrators gather at Powell's Books on West Burnside in downtown Portland on Jan. 11, 2021 to protest the listing of Andy Ngo's book on the Powell's website. Andy Ngo is a conservative writer and right-wing Portland journalist.
Powell’s responded in a statement Monday: “At Powell’s, a lot of our inventory is hand-picked and hand-promoted. And a lot of our inventory is not hand-picked. Unmasked by Andy Ngo came to us through an automatic data feed via one of our long-term partners, Hachette Book Group.”
Powell’s said the book would not be promoted and not placed on shelves.
“That said,” the statement continued, “it will remain in our online catalog. We carry a lot of books we find abhorrent, as well as those that we treasure. We believe it is the work of bookselling to do so.”
According to Powell’s, this isn’t the first time they have received pushback about books they sell.
“Decades ago,” the statement said, “we received credible bomb threats for selling the work of Salman Rushdie, and yet we carried on. We cannot behave any differently today when we feel differently about the book or writer in question.”
Samantha Swindler contributed to this report.
-- Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker