***Antifa tactics, and our response.***

[Justin///M]

I'm not sure this is the right forum, but since many PA protests/rallies are spawned from this forum, I thought I would put it here.

Yesterday, I met with a Pittsburgh attorney to discuss tactics involved with any potential future protests/rallies in Pittsburgh. We spent about 2 hours together and it was very eye opening and educational. One of the topics that we spent about 45 minutes on is how to deal with counter protesters, specifically Antifa. Before I begin, he has the experience to talk about this, because he showed me many vidoes of he himself at places like Charlottesville, and all over the country, where Antifa and such were at. He even spent time in the hospital after getting hit by Antifa in Charlottesville. He is extremely pro 2A, and likes to be an "activist's" attorney, he even stepped out at the Pittsburgh rally to offer his support and services if needed. He goes to these protests to gain insights and knowledge such as what he shared with me, to share with you.

We spent a good 45 minutes talking about Antifa, how they're state sponsored, and their tactics, and that we need to be prepared for them. He based our need for preparation on the fact that there's moles in every pro 2A group, and that what we plan is known far and wide. He believe Peduto may intend on using Antifa to counter us in the future. We heard this about the Pittsburgh rally, too, so I am skeptical, but he countered with the fact that now there's a reason for Peduto to counter us.

First, he suggests everyone watch this short video, it gives good insights about how a protest spirals out of control and how the police responde: "How to stop a protest." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT9bit2-1pg
He then broke down Antifa like this;

1) There's three groups of Antifa at any given protest: Greens, Yellows, Reds.

a) Greens are the useful idiots. They're the flag wavers and chanters. Sometimes they'll be old women, children, and everyone in between. They're there just to make noise. They may not even know exactly what the cause is. We've seen this, we often accuse them of being the "paid protesters," and they are. They're the largest group.
b) Yellows are trained and know what they're doing. They will try to provoke us. They will get in your face, spit on you, maybe even hit you...., then run. They are "rabbits." They will try to get you to give chase and follow them down the "rabbit hole." They're leading you to the reds. The yellows are a smaller group than the greens.
c) Reds are highly trained and they're often trained by union halls. They will have brass knuckles, billy clubs, pipes, etc. They're there to work you over when the yellows lead you to them. If you get drawn in, the greens will surround the kerfuffle to prevent anyone from seeing what's going on, and prevent filming. The greens will string out big "peace" signs to block any view. He noted that reds can sometimes be identified by being very tall and dressed in some sort of uniform, tall making it easier to see over the general crowd. He also said the reds and yellows also communicate on the deep web using TAILS, and he suggested that if we're going to make street protests a regular thing, that we consider a more encrypted version of communication.
d) He said watch videos of protests involving Antifa, including the one above, and you'll be able to pick out these groups. He showed me a video of him at the local tree of life march, where he jumped in front and filmed in "selfie" mode, and he was able to show me "reds" closing in on him until he got them in his view finder, and then they backed off. The greens were the marchers, the yellows and reds were on the sides.

The point of this discussion was to tell us how to be prepared for them and his advice boiled down to;

1) NEVER LEAVE YOUR GROUP. This was ultimately his point, because as outline above, this is what they're trying to do. They have no problems with leading you to the reds where you'll be put in the hospital or killed, and like Charlottesville, few will be arrested. Mr. Murphy himself even had a trip to the hospital, and he is friends with someone still in physical therapy trying to recover.
2) Regardless of their taunts, NEVER LEAVE THE GROUP, and don't engage them.

I think this was important to share here because we made some mistakes in Pittsburgh that could have gotten people hurt had Antifa showed up. We should keep this in mind in our future protests/rallies.


TAILs, by the way, is a standalone operating system that runs off a USB drive and leaves no trace on the host machine. It uses encrypted tools like the TOR browser, and encrypted chat app, email, etc. Here's some info on that. https://tails.boum.org/