This is just pretty disingenuous, for you especially.
I keep hearing this on here, over and over. No one condemns Antifa/BLM.. or even more oddly that people defend them.
As far as I can tell, every past case of violence has been correctly and accurately reported and attributed to whichever group committed the act. There have been condemnations of violence at every single rally from people on the left and the right. I haven't seen anyone on this forum stick up for Antifa or BLM. I haven't seen anyone of any repute cheering on the violence from these groups.
For that matter, the false equivalency game going on between Antifa and BLM, let alone Antifa/BLM and nationalist/supremacist groups, just isn't fair at all. Antifa are the typical anarcho-punks, anti-establishment types that have been around for decades being violent, but rarely if ever do they escalate beyond regular street violence. They're misguided kids disenfranchised with the system.. and while I don't think there is a person here that agrees with their methods, their intentions are certainly more honorable than racial or nationalist supremacy.
BLM by all accounts have been protesting peacefully at these events, and in fact they have come to the defense of others who are being attacked by Antifa and Nationalists/supremacists. They also don't wear masks. They're protesting for the perceived injustices the black community has faced over the decades and I doubt there are many people in the country that disagree with that position, probably not even you. I can see the comparisons between Antifa and Alt-Right/Nationalists to some degree, but it just a smear tactic to include BLM in that discussion. I never see BLM members clubbing folks like Antifa or Nationalists. It's racist propaganda to smear them like this. I don't even see them armed with more than signs and banners.
It just doesn't make sense that people want to draw false equivalency between these groups with very different intentions and methods.
1. It's not disingenuous at all, particularly because you yourself in this defense decry their low level violence but equivocate about their intentions. Imagine being a conservative, where the intentions of Antifa seems to be to silence mainstream political opinions which you might hold, by violence. And they have succeeded in shutting down conservative speech and chasing it off of college campuses, which ought to be the most appropriate place for free exchange of ideas.
Far from being anti-fascists, they are obviously fascistic themselves.
2. As far as BLM goes, I do think this is a more complicated case, because a lot of what BLM has done is address valid complaints of the black community in the US. But they've (or at least a subset) also encouraged a good deal of racial identity politics which can be very ugly indeed and explicitly advocated violence which was then acted upon by activists associated with their group, in several cases through assassinations of law enforcement officers. Haven't you watched the speech given by a BLM activist in Milwaukee in which she pleaded with BLM members to stop burning down black business and neighborhoods (thus acknowledging the violence and rioting so well associated with the movement)? CNN showed that part of the speech, but edited out her conclusion, "So go down to the white suburbs and burn their shit down." It was an explicit incitement to violence predicate on race.
Are you ignorant that this happened?
You don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water, but pretending that there isn't a very dysfunctional and violent side to the BLM movement is to deny the reality for political reasons.
3. I honestly haven't seen a lot of leftists disavowing Antifa, either in personal conversations or in the media, and when they do back down a bit and say maybe they shouldn't be hitting people in the face with bike chains, they always add that their heart is in the right place. Fuck that. Their hearts aren't in the right place, and their intentions aren't good or healthy.
Perhaps this is an example of the bias that affects us all, and I simply don't focus enough leftist disavowals of Antifa. I'm open to that. If you could point out a few of the more vehement examples that could help me readjust my view.