Which is all fine and well...until you realize that oftentimes the cops are on the side of the fascists.
Police chief orders investigation of "allegations of injury as result of law enforcement action."
www.huffpost.com
Portland wasn't the next Charlottesville. But activists say police almost accidentally killed an anti-fascist protester.
www.huffpost.com
Police fired flash-bang grenades when some anti-fascist protesters became aggressive.
slate.com
In 2006, the FBI warned that white supremacists infiltrating local and state law enforcement posed a threat to national security. Some are asking, what's been done to curb the trend in the decade since?
www.pbs.org
And yet, they are.
www.esquire.com
...given the overt blessing of the government RE:fascism I don't necessarily believe that police precence is a positive -at all.
Yes, but I am still not clear what solution to the problem you would recommend.
Obviously the police should not allow themselves to be infiltrated by fascists, but that's a separate problem.
Are you saying that, for whatever reason, it's regrettable under the circumstances that the police turned up at all, since that prevented the antifascists from opening fire on the Nazis and trying to deal with their presence that way?
My take on it is quite simple -- as far as possible, the state should have the monopoly, with some carefully designed exceptions, to the lawful use of force. People also have the right to peaceful protest and counter-protest, subject to legal restraints, and everyone has, or should have, the right to go peacefully about their lawful business with as little disruption as possible.
So my main problems with all this are first, that the Nazis were allowed to stage their counter-demonstration at all, at least anywhere near the protesters; second that they're allowed guns at all, and third that they're allowed to wear them in public when attending a counter-demonstration, presumably to intimidate their opponents and the general public.
Those are all problems for the legislature, and possibly, if the police have any discretion in dictating how protests and counter-protests are routed, for whoever oversees the local police. The Nazi demonstrators shouldn't be allowed guns in the first place but, since they are, their guns, at least, should be kept well away from the protesters and the public at large.
That's the problem.
But since the problem was allowed to arise in the first place, by allowing armed Nazis to demonstrate at all, I'm struggling to think of any circumstances in which it would have been right for the police simply to decide to let them and the antifascists get on with things and hope not too many people were killed and injured and it didn't take too long to clear up the mess afterwards.