Berkeley antifa

Something very strange and awful happened in Berkeley yesterday: Black-Clad Anarchists Swarm Anti-Hate Rally in Berkeley

An anti-hate rally was disrupted when scores of anarchists wearing black clothing and masks stormed the demonstration in Berkeley and attacked several supporters of President Donald Trump. But police were able to head off any wider violence.

I wasn't there, and have no standing to comment, nor any deep understanding of this.

But I do know that this is not just an isolated incident. Some very strange and awful things like this have been happening around these parts for years, going back (at least) to the strange and awful Occupy Oakland period of 2011.

I never really felt that I understood Occupy Oakland, and as you can see in essays like these and these and these, a lot of other people have strange and awful and confused understandings of what happened then, too.

In particular, what happened yesterday in Berkeley sounds very much like what happened in 2011 in Oakland: Black Bloc: The Cancer in Occupy, and Infiltration to Disrupt, Divide and Misdirect Is Widespread in Occupy.

Sorry I have nothing more intelligent to say about any of this. But I do feel like it's very strange and confusing and I don't think any of the surface coverage (nor, really, any of the claimed "deeper" coverage) is really helping me understand it very well. After all, this sort of really strange and weird stuff goes back nearly 50 years, at least, in these parts.