\nThey couldn\u2019t discipline their own forces on the march \u2013 the \u201care they saying \u2018you will not replace us\u2019 or ‘Jews will not replace us\u2019?\u201d thing isn\u2019t meaningless, it shows them falling down on something the left had down a century ago \u2013 coordinating chants to be rhythmic and legible, a bare minimum of coherence for mass action.\n
\nAnd unlike the first or even second KKK with the Democrats, or the (P)IRA with Sinn Fein, they aren\u2019t properly articulated with a political party or even an existing memory of a social order to reestablish. So I\u2019m discounting them as vanguardists.
\n\nThere\u2019s another way the \u201cvanguard\u201d metaphor might work though and it\u2019s to think of them as skirmishers. In classical warfare skirmishers were irregular troops \u2013 poorly equipped, expendable outsiders \u2013 who deployed before (in position and time) the main battle troops. Their purpose wasn\u2019t to defeat the enemy on their own but to harass, pushing or drawing them out of position before the main encounter.
\n\nAnd I suspect they did that, that before this the system was coming together to grit its teeth and pass Trump through intact and resume normal operations afterwards without giving too much ground, and that\u2019s been blown open.
\n\nThere\u2019ll be some sort of revenge attacks somewhere that remind conservatives that any force that tolerates antifa is existentially unacceptable; all the lefties wearily settling in to grind him down will insist something be done now! now! now! and they\u2019ll overplay their hands. At the intersection some of the backlash will fall on formal government institutions \u2013 there\u2019ll be plots on Trump, ICE, Republican electeds \u2013 that are ringed with existing, pre-legitimized defenses.\n\n
People were already like \u201cwe need to bring crowds into the street to depose the elected president\u201d, and like, that is (or can be read as) revolution, and at that point they get to use the army against you, etc.
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