Manhattan Republicans Get a Lesson in Mamdani-Era Self Defense
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Manhattan Republicans Get a Lesson in Mamdani-Era Self Defense
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January 30, 2026
Manhattan Republicans Get a Lesson in Mamdani-Era Self Defense
A New York Republican club hosted a seminar dwelling on vigilante fantasies in one of the nation’s safest cities.
Jacob Silverman
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The scene outside a 2017 subway derailment in New York.
(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
On a recent freezing night in Manhattan, visiting a historic Upper East Side townhouse, I plopped into a folding chair near a massive American flag and drank Cherry Coke from a red plastic cup as a retired FBI agent explained why he preferred to sit in a restaurant near the kitchen facing the front door. According to a mailer advertising his appearance, the former agent, Rob Chadwick, was here to educate an audience at the Metropolitan Republican Club, one of the city’s oldest conservative associations, about “the spread of ANTIFA-style political violence from Portland to NYC.”
The recent violence in Minnesota, where ICE officers killed two protesters in widely filmed tragedies whose conditions the federal government repeatedly lied about, was in the air—but mostly in the abstract. A Metropolitan Republican Club official who introduced Chadwick complained of “coordinated attacks” against federal law enforcement in Minnesota. The ad for Chadwick’s talk promised he would address “the escalating wave of targeted political intimidation and terror.”
It turns out, according to the narrative favored by elderly Manhattan Republicans and retired FBI agents turned personal security gurus, that any wave of political terror that might be roiling America is mostly targeted at Republicans and people who use deadly force to defend themselves.
“Ask the ICE agents we’ve seen on TV. Their life is over,” said Chadwick, without mentioning that some of these agents had in fact killed people—eight in the last month alone, who died either by shooting or while in immigration custody. “These are human beings who want to go home to their families.”
Chadwick held a variety of roles with the Bureau before retiring and transitioning to a career lecturing the lay public about personal security while acting as an adviser to the US Concealed Carry Association. (The relative strictness of New York’s gun laws was a recurrent complaint from Chadwick and audience members.) Now he was standing at a lectern in a building where conservative New York politicos had convened for decades, teaching the audience the same skills he had taught members of FBI SWAT teams. “I want you to think about tonight as your training,” said Chadwick. It was mostly about mindset, he explained—a means of developing a bias for action when the next …
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Manhattan Republicans Get a Lesson in Mamdani-Era Self Defense
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Current Issue
January 30, 2026
Manhattan Republicans Get a Lesson in Mamdani-Era Self Defense
A New York Republican club hosted a seminar dwelling on vigilante fantasies in one of the nation’s safest cities.
Jacob Silverman
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The scene outside a 2017 subway derailment in New York.
(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
On a recent freezing night in Manhattan, visiting a historic Upper East Side townhouse, I plopped into a folding chair near a massive American flag and drank Cherry Coke from a red plastic cup as a retired FBI agent explained why he preferred to sit in a restaurant near the kitchen facing the front door. According to a mailer advertising his appearance, the former agent, Rob Chadwick, was here to educate an audience at the Metropolitan Republican Club, one of the city’s oldest conservative associations, about “the spread of ANTIFA-style political violence from Portland to NYC.”
The recent violence in Minnesota, where ICE officers killed two protesters in widely filmed tragedies whose conditions the federal government repeatedly lied about, was in the air—but mostly in the abstract. A Metropolitan Republican Club official who introduced Chadwick complained of “coordinated attacks” against federal law enforcement in Minnesota. The ad for Chadwick’s talk promised he would address “the escalating wave of targeted political intimidation and terror.”
It turns out, according to the narrative favored by elderly Manhattan Republicans and retired FBI agents turned personal security gurus, that any wave of political terror that might be roiling America is mostly targeted at Republicans and people who use deadly force to defend themselves.
“Ask the ICE agents we’ve seen on TV. Their life is over,” said Chadwick, without mentioning that some of these agents had in fact killed people—eight in the last month alone, who died either by shooting or while in immigration custody. “These are human beings who want to go home to their families.”
Chadwick held a variety of roles with the Bureau before retiring and transitioning to a career lecturing the lay public about personal security while acting as an adviser to the US Concealed Carry Association. (The relative strictness of New York’s gun laws was a recurrent complaint from Chadwick and audience members.) Now he was standing at a lectern in a building where conservative New York politicos had convened for decades, teaching the audience the same skills he had taught members of FBI SWAT teams. “I want you to think about tonight as your training,” said Chadwick. It was mostly about mindset, he explained—a means of developing a bias for action when the next …
Manhattan Republicans Get a Lesson in Mamdani-Era Self Defense
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Manhattan Republicans Get a Lesson in Mamdani-Era Self Defense
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Current Issue
January 30, 2026
Manhattan Republicans Get a Lesson in Mamdani-Era Self Defense
A New York Republican club hosted a seminar dwelling on vigilante fantasies in one of the nation’s safest cities.
Jacob Silverman
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
The scene outside a 2017 subway derailment in New York.
(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
On a recent freezing night in Manhattan, visiting a historic Upper East Side townhouse, I plopped into a folding chair near a massive American flag and drank Cherry Coke from a red plastic cup as a retired FBI agent explained why he preferred to sit in a restaurant near the kitchen facing the front door. According to a mailer advertising his appearance, the former agent, Rob Chadwick, was here to educate an audience at the Metropolitan Republican Club, one of the city’s oldest conservative associations, about “the spread of ANTIFA-style political violence from Portland to NYC.”
The recent violence in Minnesota, where ICE officers killed two protesters in widely filmed tragedies whose conditions the federal government repeatedly lied about, was in the air—but mostly in the abstract. A Metropolitan Republican Club official who introduced Chadwick complained of “coordinated attacks” against federal law enforcement in Minnesota. The ad for Chadwick’s talk promised he would address “the escalating wave of targeted political intimidation and terror.”
It turns out, according to the narrative favored by elderly Manhattan Republicans and retired FBI agents turned personal security gurus, that any wave of political terror that might be roiling America is mostly targeted at Republicans and people who use deadly force to defend themselves.
“Ask the ICE agents we’ve seen on TV. Their life is over,” said Chadwick, without mentioning that some of these agents had in fact killed people—eight in the last month alone, who died either by shooting or while in immigration custody. “These are human beings who want to go home to their families.”
Chadwick held a variety of roles with the Bureau before retiring and transitioning to a career lecturing the lay public about personal security while acting as an adviser to the US Concealed Carry Association. (The relative strictness of New York’s gun laws was a recurrent complaint from Chadwick and audience members.) Now he was standing at a lectern in a building where conservative New York politicos had convened for decades, teaching the audience the same skills he had taught members of FBI SWAT teams. “I want you to think about tonight as your training,” said Chadwick. It was mostly about mindset, he explained—a means of developing a bias for action when the next …
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