How the far right is meddling in the BLM protests

Dave Neiwert has been reporting at Daily Kos on the sinister role that far-right extremists have been playing in relation to the Blck Lives Matter protest uprising that has been going on for weeks.

In 'White supremacists' arrested while trying to amplify protest violence, Richmond mayor says Daily Kos 07/27/2020, he writes:

We’ve had evidence for some time that right-wing extremists have been lurking at anti-police protests around the nation, amplifying the violence by engaging in vandalism, assaults, and attacks on police — often while pretending to be there to support Black Lives Matter and antifascists leading the protests.

This weekend in Richmond, Virginia, police arrested several such saboteurs during a Black Lives Matter protest, according to city Mayor Levar Stoney. “White supremacists” were carrying pro-BLM signs and breaking windows at downtown businesses, Stoney said, but were stopped when BLM protesters pointed them out to police.

"We've spoken on many occasions about those who've chosen a more violent route to express their discontent, and what that does for the overall movement towards social justice," Stoney told reporters Sunday. "Last night that reared its ugly head right here in the City of Richmond ... We saw some violent actions, violent protests, spearheaded by white supremacists. And frankly, it was disgusting. Disgusting. As they held plywood shields that read, BLM, these folks toured areas of damage downtown, The Fan, breaking windows, tagging private property with hateful language." [my emphasis]

See also his pieces:

• Militiamen's reactionary presence at protests threatens democracy, and police appear on their side Daily Kos 07/31/2020
• Don't be fooled: 'Boogaloo' may attract all kinds of fans, but it's a violent far-right movement Daily Kos 07/14/2020

When we're dealing with anything so complex as the current uprising set off by the sadistic murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis cops, we need to be able to walk and talk at the same time. A small demonstration, like a picket line in front of a store, is relatively easy for the organizers to keep orderly and focused. The same is true for most union protests, even larger ones, not least because unions have practice in organizing protests.

It's always possible for passions to run high and for individuals to get rowdy even at those kinds of protests. And there can be genuine bad actors like the Bougaloo Bois at work whose goal is specifically to discredit the protests.

Large protests like the big antiwar demonstrations in the 1960s, the marches against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the civil-rights March on Washington in 1963, the Women's March after Bunker Boy's inauguration in 2017, or today's Black Lives Matter marches, are more complicated phenomena. Even a large march or protest can be well-organized. But they inevitably attract people with a wide range of ages and motivations, including people who are mainly attracted by the excitement. And some of them may cause trouble against the wishes of the organizers.

Jerry Brown has some relevant remarks in this Facebook video, Trump is so bizarre and so deviant in so many ways ... 07/27/2020. Referring to his years as Mayor of Oakland (1999-2007), he says, "Look, Oakland, I was there, they've got several hundred anarchists that like to break windows, light fires, and protest. But local people can handle it." He's referring to a local group of "black box" anarchists there. But Jerry is capable of making practical judgments about real situations, and he could hardly be more critical of Trump's use of paramilitary goon squads against local protesters:

See also, Former CA Gov. Jerry Brown on COVID-19 and Protests Amanpour and Company 07/29/2020:

But the weeks of the nationwide BLM protests have been for the most part peaceful. Republicans and white supremacists are quick to condemn any protests that disturbs their own comfort even momentarily as "violent." But that's not a definition the rest of us should accept. I'm not inclined to split theoretical hairs over whether breaking a window during a demonstration qualifies as "violence". But anyone with a brain or a conscience should be able to distinguish between violence against property and violence against people. And when it comes to toppled statues, I'm not going to cry over them or spend a lot of energy moralizing about an unauthorized toppling versus a procedurally correct one. Especially since American culture makes a fetish about the nobility of toppling statues related to regimes of which the American government disapproves.

Here's a tenth-anniversary reposting of the famous toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad in 2003, April 9, 2003: Saddam Hussein's statue falls 04/09/2013:

Commentator Lara Logan was giving it an enthusiastic propaganda commentary. The footage was frequently used in introducing news reports on the war and in retrospective accounts. Often the footage was shown edited to make it appear that the statue toppled immediately off the pedestal, which we see in that footage actually happened in two stages, which doesn't have exactly the same theatrical affect. Shots from a longer distance showed that the crowd attending the event was only a couple of hundred people at most, although that clip shows people walking by the scene as though it was no big deal. It was also the very next day that massive looting broke out in Baghdad - and I mean massive, not just a few broken windows - which most accounts of the Iraq War identify as an extremely important moment that discredited the occupation in an important way at an early moment.

But that statue-toppling became an iconic moment, especially for Iraq War fans. It's worth remembering that the Confederate armies commanded by Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson killed far more soldiers of the United States armed forces than the Iraqi army of the guerrilla fighters during the long disaster that followed the statue-topping ever did.