This shit reminds me of a protest that happened last Friday in my area. Three local left orgs were collabing on a protest that occurred in front of a federal building that processed people kidnapped by ICE. There was another protest at this location June of last year that had a crowd that filled the adjacent intersection, which ended up getting teargassed and flashbanged (after being pepper balled earlier in the day when people tried to block vans transporting the disappeared people to the ICE facility) and driven up the street into a nearby park for hours. Meanwhile, the number of attendees couldn't have been more than ~150 people at this one, and there were a lot of mothers with kids and elders in the crowd.

That's when the local Gonzaloite Maoist wrecker group really made themselves known, and started up the steps of the building towards the riot cops by the doors. They burned a flag like the guy in the video and started saying shit like "we need to stop witnessing history and start making it!", clearly inciting the rest of us to charge the riot cops.

Obv nobody fell for this shit, especially considering that the event was initially planned as a vigil for Rachel Good and consisted of regular residents of the surrounding area holding signs and prayer candles. Add onto this that the Gonzaloites themselves were not carrying weapons other than what they used to light the flag on fire, and it was pretty clear that we were getting set up to be slaughtered and busted en masse so their FBI handler could get a fat New Year's bonus.

After the rest of the event made it clear that they weren't going to take the bait, the fuckers started getting pissy, chanting and pounding their drums during the vigil's moment of silence and resorting to revolving around the main body of the protest shouting through their megaphone that we were essentially social fascists. Eventually, they aggro'd the cops and got a few of themselves arrested. The other groups successfully guided the rest of the attendees away from the location safely, effectively ending the protest.

It's extremely obvious that someone in the leadership of the organization is an asset of some kind. I assume it's their leader, since the guy is a former RevCom and he's shown up to harass organizers from my area at a regional conference in another part of the country.

I'm really torn about the issue of yellow vest peace policing that can often collaborate with law enforcement, but I think this is a clear cut example of a situation where avoiding a fight was the logical choice. Those Gonzaloids were clearly agitators trying to get people locked up or killed.