I was jus reading the article that J. Kb linked in his post and saw this:
The worst nights follow the same script: A large group takes to the streets calling for an end to police violence and systemic racism. A small fraction commits low-level crimes — often lighting small fires, graffiti-ing buildings and throwing fireworks or water bottles at officers. The police respond with force against the entire crowd.
Portland’s protests: 3 months in, no end in sight
A small fraction commits the crimes (sorry, arson is not a low-level crime) and the crowd supports them. They do not stop them and they even allow them to hide and disperse among them. That is being complicit in the crimes they commit. Let me make it clearer: If you are either giving them support or allowing them to do their crimes, you are an accomplice and guilty just as them.
There is no way that a couple of dozen Antifa assholes would have survived a beating by a thousand protesters from day one. After 3 or 4 days of such ministrations, there would be no Antifa willing to go forward and risk blood and limb to go set capitalist stuff on fire for the revolution. Mom’s basement is cool, ICU is not and the morgue even less.
So no, there is no minority doing bad things and a majority suffering for it. They all are guilty and deserve no pity or commiseration.
Watch the videos, it’s orchestrated. You’ll see the so-called peaceful ones run interference for the violent ones. There are videos where protester ranks will suddenly open, someone will run out and hit/kick/throw something and then fade back into the crowd as the protester ranks close back up. They are all complicit.
Full mag dump. No mercy.
This “few bad eggs” hypothesis might have been true on day 10, or thereabouts.
Today, it’s simply not credible that anyone going out to “protest” has any misconceptions about what’s going to happen.
Notice how the damned crap runs on a schedule? Peaceful Protests until 10:30 at night in Portland, then suddenly the backpacks get opened, the all black clothing and gas mask gets donned. The hammers and baseball bats appear. Every night. I bet the cops can set their watches by the changeover.
I saw the same thing happen in Minneapolis and Saint Paul Minnesota on May 27-31 while watching the riots live on TV from 60 miles away. There it appeared to be happening about 6-7 pm, just before the “curfew” started.
The reporters doing live TV stand-ups in the protests even commented on it. Families (WTF?) and brightly dressed protesters leaving, and black clad groups of young people showing up.
(Minneapolis Saint Paul TV News covered the riots 18-20 hours every day from about Wednesday through Sunday Midnight. They all took a break from about 2 am to 6 am.)
If I can see it, anyone in Law Enforcement can see these riots are planned and controlled by someone(s). There are individual crazies out there, but there is definitely a group in control and directing the action.
The “felony murder” rule comes to mind. If you are simply the getaway driver for the armed robbery crew, and one of your buddies caps some unfortunate, YOU are facing murder one charges, because, in the course of committing a felony, one of *YOUR* crew killed somebody.
I do not see how a parallel Principle does not apple. Of course, IANAL, I do not play one on TV, nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn last night. YMMV, objects in mirror are closer than they appear, do not iron clothing while wearing, etcetera.
I keep hoping that, having declared antifa to be a terrorist entity, whatever remains of our DOJ will follow the money and prosecute the sponsors. I’m not sure whether anyone here reads theconservativetreehouse.com, but perhaps some calls to Durham’s recently outed “chief investigator” might be helpful.
YMMV….
Absolutely, as you said, Miguel: these folks are complicit and are accomplices.
It’s funny that they are the same people who say “one bad apple spoils the bunch” in regards to police, but fail to turn that on themselves.
These are trained and paid protestors, the leaders are trained on how to get more people involved.
Mostly peaceful means what, exactly? The does that mean most of the people present didn’t engage in violence? We know that the US military in Iraq had fewer than a quarter of them in combat. Does that mean it was a mostly peaceful war?
What exactly is violence? If I put a gun to your head and demand your money and you hand it over without me having to shoot you, was that a peaceful robbery?