Having played up the violence that accompanied the peaceful protests over George Floyd's killing to his intended audience, Trump went further by giving his supporters a tangible enemy. Relying on a familiar scapegoat, Trump and his colleagues, such as Attorney General Bill Barr, almost immediately pinned the blame for the violence on antifa, threatening to label the group a terrorist organization. Indeed, Trump sycophant, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz had a tweet of his flagged for promoting violence by Twitter, as he called for antifa to be hunted down as terrorists. From Trump's perspective, blaming antifa was expedient, and easily inflamed the emotions of his followers.
Antifa is short of anti-fascist. Calling antifa an organization is generous. It is not really an organized group, so much as a collection of like-minded individuals who use modern technology, such as social media and the dark web, to coordinate activities. People who claim to be part of antifa target conservative events and engage in efforts to disrupt them. For example, people claiming to be part of antifa often show up at college events where controversial conservative speakers are scheduled to talk. They have shown up at the protests when Trump was inaugurated. Most notably, antifa showed up in Charlottesville when white supremacists marched to protest the removal of a statue of confederate general Robert E. Lee.
When antifa shows up at these events, they engage in violent disruptive behavior. At Trump's inauguration, antifa broke store windows and threw rocks at police. Antifa engaged in similar destruction when conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to speak at Berkley. In Charlottesville, antifa antagonized heavily armed white supremacists who, quite frankly, were already itching for a fight.
There was just one problem. The police who were on the scene and the FBI have stated that there is no evidence that antifa was involved in the violence that erupted from the protests.
The cause of the violence in the early days of the George Floyd protests was multifaceted and complex. On one hand, you had young people rightfully angry and frustrated by the failure of this country to properly discipline and prevent police brutality aimed at African-Americans. Faced with such strong emotions, some people responded with violence. In particular, when faced with heavily armed response teams from the police, who indiscriminately used hard-line tactics in an effort to control and disperse crowds, some people, filled with emotion, responded by pushing back and throwing rocks. In a way, this was a reaction of powerlessness against a police force that was responding with the very same types of brutality to which the protestors were objecting.
Some of the violence, and in particular the looting, was perpetrated by opportunists who saw chaos on the streets. With the police distracted, it was the perfect time to break into Target and take whatever they could carry with the hope of selling their bounty on the black market. Interestingly, if you looked at the videos that were circulating that documented the looting, there was an awful lot of diversity among the looters. The sad reality is that there are some truly immoral people in society just waiting for a chance to make a quick buck, especially if the chances of getting caught are low. It is important to note, however, that the political leaders closest to these situations, such as the mayors, reported that there was a clear distinction between the people peacefully protesting police brutality, and the pockets of violence that broke out. It is a distinction that unfortunately neither Donald Trump, nor many of the police recognized.
There has also been evidence of forces from outside of the communities where the protests sprung, traveling to the protests and instigating the violence. Many saw the video out of Minneapolis, for example, of a young, white male, dressed in black, wearing a gas mask and carrying an umbrella to hide a hammer, breaking the windows of an Autozone store and walking away. To date, no one has identified this person satisfactorily. However, he was not the only one. There has been evidence of yet another loosely affiliated set of individuals, known as the boogaloo bois, stoking violence. Like antifa, it would be generous to describe the boogaloo bois as an organization. Generally speaking, these are young people, who are convinced that a second civil war is coming, which will be based on racial lines. They get their name from an '80s sequel of a movie on break dancing called, "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo." Some pervert the word "boogaloo," and call it "the big luau." Bizarrely, some individuals sport Hawaiian shirts as their uniform. And there have been reports of white men in Hawaiian shirts stoking violence.
The point is that there is no one single cause of the violence and looting. Blaming a single group, when the actors were from various sources with various motivations, falls right into the hands of those people who don't pay very close attention to political news and current events. These are the low information voters who make up Trump's base.
By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.
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Photograph is of a Target store that was looted in Minneapolis, and was taken by Lorie Shaull on May 28, 2020. You can find licensing information at this link: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Target_on_Lake_Street_is_looted_and_graffitied_on_Thursday_morning_after_a_night_of_protests_and_rioting_in_Minneapolis,_Minnesota_(49945831221).jpg
Photograph is of a Target store that was looted in Minneapolis, and was taken by Lorie Shaull on May 28, 2020. You can find licensing information at this link: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Target_on_Lake_Street_is_looted_and_graffitied_on_Thursday_morning_after_a_night_of_protests_and_rioting_in_Minneapolis,_Minnesota_(49945831221).jpg
References
Mallin,
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Park, Madison, and Lah, Kyung, “Berkeley protests of Yiannopoulos caused $100,000 in damage,” CNN (February 2, 2017).
Pearce, Matt, "Who was responsible for the violence in Charlottesville? Here's what witnesses say," Los Angeles Times (August 15, 2017).
Schreckinger, Ben, “Fringe groups point finger back at Trump, Democrats,” Politico (June 2, 2020).
Timberg, Craig; Dwoskin, Elizabeth and Mehenment, Souad, "Men wearing Hawaiian shirts and carrying guns add a volatile new element to protests," The Washington Post (June 3, 2020).
"Who Are Antifa?", Anti-Defamation League (site accessed June 4, 2020).
O'Connell, Oliver, “Questions raised over masked white man with umbrella seen calmly smashing windows before Minneapolis riots,”Independent (May 30, 2020).
Park, Madison, and Lah, Kyung, “Berkeley protests of Yiannopoulos caused $100,000 in damage,” CNN (February 2, 2017).
Pearce, Matt, "Who was responsible for the violence in Charlottesville? Here's what witnesses say," Los Angeles Times (August 15, 2017).
Schreckinger, Ben, “Fringe groups point finger back at Trump, Democrats,” Politico (June 2, 2020).
Timberg, Craig; Dwoskin, Elizabeth and Mehenment, Souad, "Men wearing Hawaiian shirts and carrying guns add a volatile new element to protests," The Washington Post (June 3, 2020).
"Who Are Antifa?", Anti-Defamation League (site accessed June 4, 2020).
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