I’m seeing more and more people post this on twitter, and also a lot of hypothetical think pieces hitting the news today, but is this really the case? Apparently they’re claiming the Alt-Right is organizing behind the scene to install provocateurs in riots to attack police or start looting to make everyone else look bad and cause push-back to lead a second Civil War.
Now, everything I’m seeing that supports this is just pure hypotheticals and random anecdotes which we know right now don’t really mean much. One out-of-state car in one city had a “white supremacist” symbol on it, and “people are talking” on the internet are pretty much all I can find supporting this. There is also the now-discredited rumor that white Christian militias were arming children and having them patrol the streets in Atlanta.
This just seems completely unlike anything the alt-right has done so far in terms of organizing and push-back, and seems to be basically like the people on the right wing blaming out-of-country leftists (or Russian) interests paying ANTIFA people to riot.
I have no difficulty believing that there are a few alt-righters pouring gasoline on the fire but the “vast majority” is impossible. These are a large number of looters and rioters. Plus, most are black; just how many people could possibly be black AND alt-right at the same time?
All the specific stories of looting and property destruction I’ve heard of have been suspected to be from the alt-right, but then again they could have been anarchists as well, or more formal agents provocateurs not connected to alt-right organizations.
I haven’t heard of any other type of violence in the protests, except maybe throwing water bottles at the police, which is really small potatoes compared to what the crowds have been a victim of. But I’d concede that this type of violence could be more generally dispersed through the crowd.
That must be the left-wing conspiracy theory (it’s all the alt-right’s doing!) whereas I’ve been subjected on Facebook to the right-wing version (it’s all George Soros’s doing!). The usual hyper-partisan fantasy bullshit.
I’ll go with what others have said. I haven’t seen any claims outside of this thread that the “vast majority” of people causing problems are agents provocateurs. But there have been a lot of claims that a smaller number of agents provocateurs, who are not local to where the protests are happening but who show up at protests all over the country, have acted to trigger rioting and violence.
Possible theories:
Elected officials, police authorities, news teams, and ordinary people all over the country are engaged in a concerted campaign to deceive the public by claiming these people exist when they don’t.
There is a secret left-wing organization that is able to conduct co-ordinated attacks all over the country while remaining so clandestine that no authorities have been aware of their existence before this month. And this organization is infiltrating protests all over the country and inciting incidents to turn them violent to advance their own political agenda but have chosen to not tell anyone what their message is.
There are powerful people who don’t like the avowed issues that people are protesting about and seek to discredit these protests by hiring people to show up at peaceful protests and start trouble.
The mayor of St. Paul claimed that every person arrested was from out of state. Today they had to correct that to 20% being from out of state. (Officials made claims that the riot here in Rochester was instigated by non-residents after a peaceful protest.)
Who those 20% are isn’t at all clear now. Undoubtedly some are Antifa and similar troublemakers, and some are white nationalists and other thugs. And local hotheads unquestionably exist.
Lots of smart officials across the country are saying today that we should stop looking at the tiny minority who are starting trouble and concentrate on why the protests were needed in the first place, something that is far huger and far older than George Floyd’s death. I agree with them.
My guess would also be complete bullshit or close to it. A lot of the looters seem in video clips seem to be relatively ordinary local people just destroying or stealing (which doesn’t mean they aren’t also angry). Some clips show people who don’t seem to be that. But lots of basically left protests in recent years have had a vanguard of organized left wing/anarchist groups being particularly destructive, and violent toward the police. In no case I know of have they been actually shown to be ‘alt-right’.
Perhaps from a moderate left POV it’s believed that property destruction undermines the legitimate cause so that’s something right wing, not left wing, groups would do. But more extreme left people don’t believe that. They believe that violent and destructive protest will bring about harsh reaction from ‘the establishment’ which will radicalize the moderate left. That’s a standard play for decades in many places. It doesn’t necessarily work, but it’s not irrational. Again that doesn’t exclude some miscellaneous right as well as completely non-ideological ‘let’s have fun destroying stuff’ type people, but the ‘mainly alt right’ theory is ignoring Occam’s Razor.
Anyone else notice that every state is saying these agitators are from out of state? So I guess the Californians are driving to burn down Portland and the Oregonians are headed south to start shit in LA?
My town in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue sure seems to be looters under cover of general protests. Several malls in the Seattle area were targeted today. Sure looks like groups that specifically went out to loot and not alt right or alt left, just a buncha fucking criminals.
I just watched a few hours of the coverage in Bellevue, and it’s a typical Bellevue millennial kinda crowd. The crowd isn’t made up of looters or agent provocateurs.