"Our attack is merely the beginning," Antifa’s terror manifesto read after they led a premeditated and well-coordinated assault on our Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. They hoped we would cancel a scheduled event the next night with founder of the Proud Boys Gavin McInnes as a result of their violent outburst. They were wrong.

It is not easy to be a Republican in New York City, but our ragtag group does the best we can to fight for conservative values in the belly of the beast. Earlier this week, we refused to back down in the face of extreme oppositiony from the leftist mob. Those of us who have been in the fight since at least the 2016 Trump campaign have seen our fellow patriots demonized, ambushed, insulted, defamed, beaten, and robbed of their livelihood. From our experience, we know that to acquiesce to their ultimatums and threats is to surrender. We stood defiantly in the face of those anti-American terrorists in the street, and welcomed Gavin McInnes to our event as he held a rubber sword to honor legendary Japanese anti-socialist Otoya Yamaguchi.

The leftist terrorists shouting unoriginal slogans in the streets were enraged that we exercised our 1st Amendment rights. Despite all their threats, the event proceeded, largely thanks to the great work of New York’s Finest. They guarded the doors even while chanting Antifa berated them as “Pigs” and “Fascists.”

After leaving the event, a colleague and I witnessed a right-leaning independent journalist being assaulted and mugged by multiple masked Antifa thugs who did not want their likenesses revealed to the greater public. We saved the man from a vicious mob beating from Antifa, who called me a "Nazi" despite my being Jewish and having family who died in Europe during the Holocaust. These Neo-Brownshirts even attacked the man's girlfriend, showing that these enemies of America will stoop to any depth in order to shut their opposition down, all under the guise of “Fighting Fascism.” 

Like all bullies, Antifa wither when they are directly confronted. They only advance on Trump supporters when their basement-dwelling army of unemployable dope smokers clearly has the numbers. When they don't have a sizable advantage, they are routinely embarrassed and sent crying back to their trust-fund parents on the Upper West Side. However, there is an ace in the hole that these cowards do have that patriots fail to realize at their peril. The swamp has shown time and again they have Antifa’s back.

After meeting with the police to give a statement on what I saw, I was confident that justice would be served. I could have never imagined what was next to come. A complete inversion of reality was widely reported by the press, who seized upon the incident to fabricate an "October Surprise" to damage the GOP's chances for November's midterm elections. Top Democratic officials, including the New York governor, New York City public advocate, and the attorney general all badmouthed the Proud Boys publicly and called for their prosecution for defending their rights and engaging in self-defense during other incidents that night. Antifa assailants are referred to simply as “protestors” while a multiracial and multiethnic group of Proud Boys are defamed as “White Nationalists” in the press, being simultaneously “doxxed” by the online wing of the Antifa mob. Now, the feeding frenzy has started. Our stand for freedom against leftist terror has been completely spun. Out-of-context quotes from Gavin McInnes are being used to paint him as a right-wing militant leader when he in all actuality he just runs a patriotic fraternal group who like America and beer. Antifa’s acts of terror and manifesto promising more violence were glossed over completely in nearly all reports.

This is what makes Antifa so dangerous. It is not their fighting skills, which are subpar at best, but it is their immense establishment support. These people would be laughable otherwise, but they operate with near impunity due to supporting the establishment's values of open borders, globalist socialism, censorship, social degeneracy, and limitless centralized power. There is an organized network of leftist lawyers who will defend these terrorists free of charge, and countless deep state apparatchiks working as judges, journalists, law enforcement officials, university administrators, and federal bureaucrats who regularly abuse their power to protect these unabashedly violent activists. This is a far worse problem than Antifa merely getting payoffs from Soros and other far-left oligarchs through their shady non-profit networks.

Even conservatives -- such as the shameful New York Republican candidate for governor Marc Molinaro and other #NeverTrump crybabies -- are turning their backs on the men who stood up against Antifa terror. It has become fashionable for spineless conservatives to throw the Proud Boys to the wolves for actually standing up for their rights. We have seen this in the past, when Sen. Marco Rubio and current Senate candidate Mitt Romney defended Antifa to score political points against President Trump. If we do not have the courage to stand with those who defend their right to public assembly and self-defense, as the Founding Fathers did, the Republic is all but lost.

It is truly surreal to watch these events unfold in real time, and then have the media report the exact opposite of what took place. It is difficult for outsiders to understand just how calculated, nefarious and dishonest the corporate media has become in the age of Trump. Although it might not be a widespread popular sentiment, Trump is a hero for calling out the purveyors of fake news. While it may inconvenience ivory tower Republicans concerned about their prestige and social status, Trump having our backs in this fight makes all the difference.

This event has changed me and many of my friends. I used to consider myself a live-and-let-live libertarian who thought that nonviolence and understanding would solve our laundry list of societal problems. Attempting to organize peaceably has shown me that this is no longer tenable. The leftists tuned us out when we talked about nonaggression, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, free-market economics, and all of our other talking points. These people are jackals and on the march. Complacency only emboldens them. It is time for unity to emerge amongst the right, along with an understanding that we are all under attack and all in this together. Whether you are a moderate Christian like Brett Kavanaugh or a rowdy Trump-supporting Proud Boy or anywhere in between, the organized left means business and are rapidly advancing to destroy you and everything you hold dear. Squabbling amongst ourselves only emboldens this existential threat to our civilization. These forces will have to be stopped if we are able to retain a semblance of our free society moving forward. We all must wake up if we are to have a chance of defeating the left. We are all Proud Boys now. 

Gavin Wax is the former deputy political director for the Nicole Malliotakis Mayoral Campaign and the New York State director for the 2016 Ted Cruz presidential campaign.  He is also small business-owner.  His work has appeared in The Daily Caller, The Federalist, The Washington Examiner, The Hill, Townhall, The American Thinker, and Newsmax.  You can follow him on Twitter at @GavinWax."