I'm very concerned about what happened Wednesday in Berkeley against a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos. I watched the thing on live TV, and the people committing the violence were not the students, who were protesting peacefully. On Thursday I heard on KCBS that the people who caused the trouble arrived marching in formation, wearing all black, masked and carrying make-shift shields. It was these people and these people alone who caused the violence. I later learned that they may have been from a group known as Black Bloc.
As I watched the protest, another thing caught my eye: the complete inaction from police in face of the vandalism. The KCBS report also mentioned that ATMs in the vicinity of UC Berkeley were vandalized and rendered inoperable. Where were the cops? Granted, at Cal, but still. I bet reports were coming in, but no cops appear to have been dispatched. It seems that cops were ordered to not engage and/or stand down. Period.
The speaker at Cal was a radical white supremacist. The people who caused the violence were too organized to be just a group of protesters. The cops didn't engage even though in the past they have violently engaged with unarmed students not carrying shield and unmasked. By themselves these things mean nothing, but together they start forming a pattern.
To me, the whole thing was orchestrated by Milo and his extreme right wing, neo-Nazi cabal in order to discredit the left. Why would the Breitbart editor speak at a bastion of liberalism like UC Berkeley? So what if he’s an alum? He is well aware the bastion of liberalism that Cal is. As a liberal, I don’t see myself speaking at Ave Maria University even though I was raised Catholic.
We need to stay VERY vigilant about infiltrators. For instance, I visited the Yes California Facebook page, and saw that an outspoken supporter had horrible posts about Hillary Clinton on his Facebook wall. This does not fit the profile of a person trying to divorce himself from Trump's America.
We cannot afford to forget that these people are extremely well organized and trained in military techniques. Much more so than liberals are. I strongly believe that there is a concerted campaign not too dissimilar to the Nazi Youth attacks, but from people I filtrating left/liberal/progressive #resist efforts.
As of right now, Black Bloc, the allegedly Anarchist group, is an infiltrator of peaceful protests. They may have good intentions, but their practices harm our message. In addition, Black Bloc lends itself beautifully to government efforts to undermine the opposition.
Cops or other government operatives could pass themselves as a Black Bloc contingent in order to cause mayhem. We know these people as agent provocateurs, but thanks to Black Bloc they no longer need to infiltrate quietly. When it comes to protests, the government always benefits from the violence. Therefore, it cannot be trusted and much less tolerated.
For all we know, Black Bloc has been co-opted. It may be indeed be populated by youth with good intentions, but we need to keep in mind that we tell our youth that serving in the military protects our freedoms when in reality they go to war over oil. Why wouldn’t government operatives corrupt Black Bloc too?
If you happen to be at a protest and notice people who don't belong, photograph them, surround them to prevent them from inciting violence, and ask them to remove their masks. We are protesting for our lives, and we don’t hide our faces and neither should any protestor.
We cannot sit still while a fringe group in this country makes *us* look like the fringe group and the fascists as the mainstream. Making it seem like the violence is coming from the left is how they are doing it.
Yes, this is all speculation on my part, but it's generated from having paid attention and connecting dots. I truly hope I'm wrong, yet it's better to raise the voice and be wrong than to remain silent and be right.
