New York magazine complained Monday about recent attacks on unarmed Trump supporters by Antifa, "anti-fascist," assailants, but only because the attacks play into the right-wing narrative branding Antifa as the "real menace."
"Antifa Beats Up Trump Supporters, Fuels Right-Wingers," New York magazine's Benjamin Hart wrote.
Despite the fact that Antifa evaded police and attacked right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley, Calif. on Sunday, Hart said "the violence ended quickly," and "the vast majority of the day's events were peaceful."
Hart explained that despite the primarily "peaceful" events, Antifa's actions will only fuel "right-wingers."
"Nevertheless, images of defenseless Trump supporters being mobbed by their ideological nemeses lent stark visual support to the conservative narrative that antifa is a menace equivalent to white nationalism," he said.
Hart quoted the Washington Post, which described videos showing how Antifa smacked protesters to the ground with homemade shields, kicked and punched a defenseless man, and attacked a conservative leader with pepper spray and water bottles.
"Such clips energized right-wing commentators who saw proof that President Trump was right when he said that 'many sides' played a role in the Charlottesville violence, which featured scenes of antifa clashing with white nationalists," Hart wrote.
Hart said statistics show right-wing extremists are still more likely to cause violence than Antifa, and that conservatives do not acknowledge that fact.
"That pesky fact is unlikely to dissuade right-wingers from holding up small-scale violent incidents like Sunday's to drive home the point that left-wing agitators are the real menace facing America," he concluded.