a term to keep in mind when watching this happen...

[BGBD]

Agents provocateurs.

a person who commits or who acts to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation or entice legal action against the target or a group they belong to. An agent provocateur may be a member of a law enforcement agency acting out of their own sense of duty or under orders, or other entity. They may target any group, such as a peaceful protest or demonstration, a union, a political party or a company.

[Hekate]

1. Oh hell, yes. KnR

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Coupled with herd mentality.

One person lights the fuse and the rest follow.

[crickets]

7. Exactly.

In the instant information age, once someone lights a fuse in one city it can easily hop to another. All it takes is a few people who show up for the mayhem rather than the cause, and crowd psychology will take care of the rest.

[love_katz]

3. That is what it looked like here.

The people doing most of the smashing just seemed...wrong, something off about them. Too many looked like they could be Proud Boy types.

[BGBD]

5. A CNN

reporter last night, maybe Sara Sidner, said it looked like the protesters lighting fires had devices that could light them very quickly. That isn't something a person just showing up to a protest would have. That's the mark of someone who has done this a lot.

She was in Los Angeles.

Robert Evans @iwriteok was in Portland. He covers protests nearly every week there. He said he didn't see much evidence of APs there, but things in Portland were pretty calm compared to other cites. Portland has protests with broken windows and tear gas kind of often.

[uponit7771]

6. +1

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. This is definitely happening in the Twin Cities. All of the people arrested in St. Paul last night

were from out of state.

[mahina]

8. Mmmm HMMMMM.