There are those within the civil rights movement, and on the extreme right, anarchists and others who think that some kind of violent civil war would help their cause.. On the right, neo-Nazis, the militias, and the Boogaloo boys, to name a few are among those who promote and threaten such violence. There are those who inspire others to act violently. including Qanon, who the FBI has named a domestic terrorist group for that reason. Both Trump and the GOP leadership have welcomed Qanon advocates into their political tent and has called Nazis and armed militias storming state legislatures as "some fine people" or "good people, who " love their country and like him". So far the Boogaloo Boys are the only ones caught by law enforcement infiltrating peaceful demonstrations, agitating, urging violence to commit arson, window-smashing in an attempt to pin blame on, peaceful protesters... Not one FBI report has found that "Antifa" activists from the left have been involved in any of the George Floyd re-inspired street violence this summer in Portland, Oregon, or elsewhere. .This fear of "Antifa" was hyped by Trump's loyal media. Videos of violence attributed to protesters and filmed for pro-Trump advertising were of a pro-democracy protest in Ukraine several years earlier. Guess the Portland made for TV videos of spray painting graffiti and window breaking were not violent enough to make the point they wanted to convey that these acts deserved a military crackdown...
Lessons learned from demonstrations than began peacefully and turned violent, was that the more "federal agents" clad for war inserted themselves outside the federal building perimeters, the more violent the protests became If those Fox viewers believe that suppression and domination by such militarization will make a Trump second term more peaceful, they are fooling themselves. If anything was learned from the civil rights movent in the past 40 years to Portland, such heavy-handedness only creates more violent reactions and many martyrs for civil rights causes. What Trump's federal agents in Portland did was to make him look like a fascist leader of the 1930s That is what is in store for the country if Trump thinks winning the election means he can get away with such tactics. We will be facing more violent racial strife, not less. Trump fans the flames of violence with his white nationalist rhetoric and his "federal agents".
Quoting Martin Luther King, demonstrators often cite remarks he made that demonstrations and protests are the way the voiceless get heard, but the clause immediately after King's words that are often left out is that riots are counterproductive and hurt the cause. That is why he advocated non-violence and civil disobedience in the place of "riots". They were far more effective in advancing civil rights than the violent alternative. The last of his great followers and a fellow marcher with King, John Lewis, was laid to rest this summer. What King advocated and Lewis practiced, peaceful marches and civil disobedience, were very effective, leading to the passage of a historic civil rights legislation. Yes, civil disobedience and peaceful marches can and do inspire violent police response with dogs, teargas, clubbing, beating marchers, but in so doing, also create martyrs and create sympathy for the civil rights movement. That is what happened this summer when the marchers became multi-racial and public opinion "woke" to realize that police brutality was not happening in an isolated few cases, but policing practices of dealing with a racial minority more brutally than with the white suspect was widespread and justified the protests.
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