I just saw the excellent film, One Battle After Another, and one of the themes is the bumbling incompetence and self-importance of both the anarchistic far left and the fascist far right. There's precious little that's admirable about either side, but what IS admirable is the human connections that exist outside political ideologies.
When Yglesias writes about the need for a "smart protest movement" against Trump's authoritarianism, he makes a few points about 2020 and the George Floyd protests as being basically counterproductive. I think there's some merit about that, in that widespread street disorder usually helps authoritarians. I also think that the nature of the Floyd protests was amplified by Covid and having lived with four years of Trump. Yes, the basic idea of state violence against Black people was central to the protests, but this was also just a broad based protest against Trump and the forces of reaction that he represents.
What I also believe is that the Floyd protests were absolutely hurt by agent provocateurs. These came from both directions. Anarchists saw the protests as a vehicle to smash Starbucks and rightists saw the protests as a vehicle to smash Starbucks so that people would think there were more anarchists than there really are.
At the moment, Portland may be giving us an important lesson in how to protest Trump and Miller's fascist power grab: mockery. Trump's delusional ramblings about Portland being a war zone are because Fox is playing clips from the worst moments of 2020, and this addled old bastard thinks that's current footage. Instead, protesters are dressed in inflatable costumes, playing music and basically created imagery that directly contradicts "Portland is a war zone!"
Trump's outrages are, well, outrageous, and it's natural to respond to outrages with rage. What the inflatable costumes do is both mock the power that Trump and Miller wish to project and mock the assertions that these cities are hellscapes.
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