It was approaching dusk on a Sunday in Los Angeles as protesters dressed in black began to torch lines of self-driving Waymotaxi. Within minutes, videos of fiery scenes began to appear on social media.
“Increasingly. More and more,” a group known as Unity in the field posted on X, and a video of a fiery vehicle.
The post was not unusual. Since the start of demonstrations against immigrant raids in Los Angeles, the unification of the Fields X account has sent out messages urging people to wreaked havoc on the streets and “give him hell.”
Experts say this is part of the left and right online ecosystem that has been growing in recent years. Some of the groups behind the accounts have expressed light emptying against praising peaceful resistance and acts of violence.
Left-wing networks tend to differ from right-wing groups in that they are usually decentralized without a leadership structure. But they can be extremely adept at using social media, and some are working hard to amplify and celebrate the acts of violent protesters in Los Angeles.
“Whether they threw a Molotov cocktail directly or not is actually less important than the ecosystem of encouragement and coordination they created,” said Joel Finkelstein, co-founder of the Network Infection Institute, a nonpartisan group tracking online extremism.
Los Angeles unrest follows a pattern that has unfolded in many cities over the past five years, in which the protests that erupt remain mostly peaceful during the day, but engage in violent clashes with police at night.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has given harsh criticism about the Trump administration’s policies and tactics as National Guard and Marine members were sent to Los Angeles amid ice raids and protests.
That dynamic tends to be distracted from the focus of the demonstration (in this case, the workplace immigration raid by federal agents), providing feed to those who oppose them. In this case, it was President Donald Trump and his supporters, who tried to dismiss the wider protests as the work of “paid rebels.”
“They’re doing this,” said John Lewis, a researcher at George Washington University’s Extremism Program.
He said that the story, imposed by some people on the right, in his words, “the roving band of antifa groups chasing protests from city to city” is unparalleled from reality.
However, Lewis added that although he is more fractured than the right-wing group, there is certainly normalisation of violence in some parts of the left.
“In one case, there’s a bit of anti-capitalist stuff, in another it’s a bit of anti-Semitism,” he said. “I think it reflects the nature of the online left-wing movement that lacks a cohesive central structure.”
Police say more than 300 people have been arrested since the demonstrations began Friday in Los Angeles. The charges include failure to disband, loot, arson and attacks on police officers. Police Chief Jim McDonnell said protesters shot commercial-grade fireworks at police officers and threw concrete at them.
Was it the act of a lonely wolf seizing the opportunity to target the police? Or was there a level adjustment and plan among the agitators?
Experts say it’s likely to be a combination of both.
“There’s been organized protests by people who are committed to a particular cause, and then there’s radical fringes,” said Dan Byman, director of the War, Irregular Threat and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“They might get in the air and call themselves anarchists or something like that, but they are young people who like to destroy.”
The Network Contagion Research Institute analyzes the rise of what is called “Anarcho-Socialist Recretism.” As with the police who killed George Floyd in 2020, it turns out that the confusion and violence that erupted in some of the major protests in recent years were not as voluntary as they saw.
Police officers clash with protesters at a May 2020 demonstration of George Floyd’s Minneapolis death in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
“What we found in our research was that there were groups that often tried to exploit the situation after darkness, and their coordination was somewhat refined,” said Alex Goldenberg, senior advisor at the Network Contacione Research Institute.
That has to do with demonstrators monitoring police movements and sharing tips on making the most destructive Molotov cocktail, Goldenberg said.
“They were trying to exploit an already unstable situation in order to cause violent clashes with police, create viral moments to inflame tension and attract others through emotional triggers,” he said.
Protesters in front of the building that erupted over George Floyd’s death during a 2020 demonstration in Minneapolis. (Photo by Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)
Shortly after its launch in 2019, the Network Contacione Research Institute focused on right-wing threats like Boogaloo, a loose, close-up rebel movement seeking violence against law enforcement and political enemies. However, it was soon discovered that a group of leftists was using many of the same tactics to incite violence.
A 2022 report by the Institute found that animus was growing online for years towards anarchist-type law enforcement. During the 2020 Floyd protest, the emergence of posts with anti-political rage, memes and coded languages rose by over 1,000% on Twitter and over 300% on Reddit.
“Assassination Culture”
One anti-political group, the People’s City Council, Los Angeles, has decided to use protesters and few people to call for officers to act in the protest.
Just before 1am on Tuesday, I posted the name and photo of an officer who told X was firing rubber bullets at protesters.
He reads the post “f —- g is irrelevant and is dropping off to protesters within the range of point blanks.” “f-k this pig!”
On Sunday, the group posted a video showing police officers’ lines on the riot device.
“LAPD is about to kettle right now,” the group wrote, referring to the crowd control tactics used by police. “Oink oink piggy piggy, we will make your life—- y…”
The violent protesters appeared to represent the mishmash of the cause.
Many of the police who threw objects and set fire to the fire were all dressed in black and their faces were covered in masks. Some have waved Mexican flags, while others have raised Palestinian flags. At least one man was photographed wearing a Hamas armband.
“Angelenos throws Modelo Molotov on the ice while wearing Kefier,” read X’s post by Field Unification. “We’re locked at f-k.”
The unity of the field, formerly known as Palestinian Action Us, describes itself as “a militant front against the imperialist American cationist axis.”
“The concept of Fields’ unification comes from Palestinian resistance,” the group said in a blog post last year that announced the name change. “It refers to coordination between all factions on the battlefield despite geographical fragmentation and ideological differences.”
Finkelstein, co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, said such groups and those who follow them represent what he described as “assassination culture.”
Field unification, for example, helps raise funds to cover legal costs for Elias Rodriguez, a Chicago man who was accused of fatally shooting an Israeli embassy worker outside the Washington capital Jewish Museum last month.
“My feeling is that there is a shared sense of loss of control under these complaints,” said Finkelstein, a psychologist and neuroscientist. “Who really feels hopeless in life? Most are looking for importance. I think they found it here.”
In response to a request for comment, Fields’ Unification wrote: “We will never condemn those fighting to free ourselves. When the Los Angeles public began to use direct action as a way to stop the ice, the media only saw violence of resistance and current status quo.”
“All actions of resistance to state violence are justified, and all power belongs to the masses.”
People’s City Council’s Los Angeles did not respond to requests for comment.
The violent parts of the protests in Los Angeles began dying Monday, but demonstrations against the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants have spread to several other cities, including Boston, Chicago, Dallas and New York.
So far, no one has experienced violence at the Los Angeles level, but whether it exists is an open question. The unification of Fields has made it clear that we are expecting repeat in cities like New York.
“New York, how are you going to beat Angelenos with your favourite entertainment (threatening police officers)?” the group said on X on Monday.
Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry are the latest celebrities to speak out amid the ice protests in Los Angeles.
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