I am surprised that even liberal media outlets that are covering these protests extensively like MSNBC, just don’t understand what is going on here. MSNBC showed protesters dressed in black wearing black masks, smashing windows and starting fires, one was carrying a black flag with a white Anarchy symbol:
The commentators have described them as Anarchists, which is true, but not the full story. They are the Black Bloc. There are many theories about their methods of Direct Action, but no unified political cause, since there are many political factions in the Black Bloc. But there are common theories, for example, by engaging in violent actions, they take the police attention away from peaceful protesters. They sometimes “unarrest” peaceful protesters by snatching them away from police. They also shift the “Overton Window” far to the left, which seems to be a well-calculated political move. Radical, violent leftist protest makes peaceful leftist protests seem more reasonable. This is a matter of long debate within leftist protest movements, but ultimately, nobody can control the Black Bloc, and they will show up at protests and do whatever they want.
Eh, I don’t see the Overton Window moving any. There was a big peaceful march in DC today. All the headlines were about a much smaller number of violent protesters. Trump’s DOJ will gleefully conflate BLM and other movements with these fools.