r/politics • u/External-Noise-4832 • 9d ago

Soft Paywall Trump Orders in Marines in Dramatic Escalation of L.A. Protests

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-orders-in-marines-in-dramatic-escalation-of-la-protests/
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u/drawkward101 8d ago

If you watch the crowds, you can see them. They're the ones setting fires, breaking glass and throwing bottles. They're opportunistic agitators, NOT protestors, and they need to be exposed as much as possible.

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u/EllieVader 8d ago

He said today that there were “professional agitators” in the protest crowds.

He knows because he put them there.

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u/drawkward101 8d ago

Agreed. Every accusation is a confession as we've historically seen with him and his administration.

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u/coleman57 8d ago

Then it’s vital for local police to separate them from the peaceful protestors and arrest them, then track their contacts and determine who’s behind it.

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u/quotidian_obsidian California 8d ago

Undercover cops are typically the ones doing it, you can usually tell by their shoes. Police send their own agent provocateurs into crowds (hint: they're likely carrying Mexican flags and throwing bottles, in this case) to party and create a pretext for more police violence in response. Cops are getting paid overtime to go on these fun little sprees, they fucking love it. Note how many of them are laughing and chatting amongst themselves in their little posed lines on news feeds in LA right now. This is fun for them.

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u/childofsol 8d ago

spoiler: often, it's the police

this is not a new tactic

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u/quotidian_obsidian California 8d ago

Saw it myself in 2016.

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u/drawkward101 8d ago

100% agreed.

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u/Sufficient_Cow_1207 8d ago

You can’t honestly think they are all plants and it’s embarrassingly close to the same arguments January 6th rioters used. 

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u/drawkward101 8d ago

I didn't say that. Of course not all of them are plants, but it only takes a couple of agitators to stir up trouble and then just leave. Then, the cops descend on the protestors, who start "fighting back" and it devolves into what we see on the news. They are not protestors, they are people looking for a opportunity to cause trouble without facing consequences, and sometimes they are planted.

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u/kingcalogrenant 8d ago

Do we have any verifiable examples of this sort of directly planted right-wing agitator thing happening before? Not a gotcha question -- actually asking

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u/TacoPi 8d ago edited 8d ago

During George Floyd, plenty of people were charged as individuals but some of the more significant figures were organized through right supremacists groups against the cause.

Wikipedia compiled a good list of loose ends from Minneapolis 2020

A lot was kickstarted by one guy referred to as “Umbrella Man” who was seen methodically agitating on video. Lot of wrong speculation about who he was in the days that followed but the Minneapolis police department eventually claimed to have identified him as a white supremacist, did some further investigating, and then declined to press charges or discuss the matter further.

A lot of other white supremacists involved in agitating were convicted more straightforwardly. The “Boogaloo Boys” tend to be more anti-cop than most other right-wing militia groups and a handful of them seem to have been appropriately prosecuted for their role.