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: Althouse

"The building block of antifa is what's called an affinity group, people you live and work with and trust and know in real life...."

"All the planning is done within that closed bloc, and they don't let everyone know [what they're going to do]. I didn't know that they were going to burn the Portland Police Association when I joined. What they did was put a call out that said, 'Anyone show up in black that night at this place, and you can join the action.' That's called a semi-open bloc.... Basically they're baiting the police into overreacting.... They come in, they attack the cops, they get out. Antifa goes for a certain type of violence, a mid-level violence. Most people aren't practiced in violence, and what they'll do is, they'll either back down or they'll overreact. Antifa basically as a group does the equivalent of just pushing someone on the shoulder, and again, and again.... But a big thing for them is they have convinced themselves that they're doing something good. They're very big about trying to maintain, at least in their eyes, the moral high ground. Part of that is not killing people. They want that moral high ground and they construct it. And that's kind of what they do by using that mid-level of violence. They want you to overreact because not being extremely violent is how they convince themselves they're better. And it's also great propaganda...."

Full post as published by Althouse on October 12, 2020 (boomark / email).