Okay theory questers, let's get real. Firstly, I was press secretary for a former state court judge who ran for governor in a southern state. Secondly, I consulted on two campaigns for an 11-term member of the US Congress. Third, I'm a third generation US Army veteran who self-identifies as an anarcho-syndicalist.
Having worked for two of the most far left political candidates you could imagine, I have a lot of experience with political activism. Having worked for Clear Channel and CBS Radio, been an associate editor of several small newspapers, having written for ESPN.com and been a professional, credentialed NBA reporter, I have a good bit of media experience as well.
In my experience, a lot of the anti-establishment protests we see are driven behind the scenes by American communists. Please see this wiki article so you can know the distinction between a real anarchist like myself and a marxist-lenninist who believes in totalitarian government:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
So I believe there are four distinct philosophies of social organization that have been attempted in human history that are relevant to this discussion:
1. Anarchy
Believes in the dissolution of coercive governmental authority and instead wishes to install goverment based on mutual consent. For example, conscription (a military draft) would not be possible in an anarchist society. It would have to be an all-volunteer military since anarchist principals are anathema to the idea of coerced military service.
2. Representative democracy
A fairy tale much like the tooth fairy. Has as much basis in reality.
3. Communism
A totalitarian form of government that represents itself to be a worker's utopia. Anarchists feel that any form of totalitarian government, regardless of what lofty ideals it purports to espouse, will ultimately act to keep itself in power rather than for the benefit of the workers that supposedly control it.
Here's a simple litmus test to find out if anyone you speak with is a communist. Ask them, in reference to the Tiananmen Square incident in China, if they think the heros were the people protesting in favor of free speech or if the heros were the people driving tanks and suppressing free speech. Any real communist will tell you that the heroic tank drivers were saving China from the evil counter-revolutionary protesters.
Since Communism is a totalitarian form of government, if you don't agree that it is acting in your interests, as the state-controlled media will constantly attempt to drill into your head, then you are subject to arrest, torture, execution and slave labor for expressing thoughts that are not compatible with the propaganda message.
4. Fascism
Government via the overt control of monied intererests for their own benefit and perpetuation. This is the current form of government in the United States. You don't believe in the tooth fairy do you? The operating systems for voting machines are proprietary and not subject to external review, making an audit of any election impossible since there is only one set of data, that which is controlled by the proprietary operating system. An audit, by definition, requires two sources of data.
The most obvious example of fascism is Nazi Germany where Fritz Thiessen, a steel monopolist, financed Hitler's rise to power. Once in power, Hitler set about racially cleansing Germany. However, not all Jews, gypsies and other marginalized groups were sent directly to be killed. IBM sold punch card technology to track the occupations of prisoners so that they could be diverted to slave labor camps such as Auschwitz, where steel and coal were processed for the benefit of the war effort, to the enrichment of the monied interests that controlled the government.
Fascism is the most overtly anti-labor, pro-capital form of government. It's no surprise that the US followed Germany into fascism since we absorbed the Nazi SS intelligence apparatus into what became the American CIA (OSS at the time). George H.W. Bush employed a former German Nazi during one of his presidential campaigns. His father, Prescott Bush, was a banker whose bank's assets were seized by the US goverment under the trading with the enemies act for acting in the interests of Nazi Germany during the war. The assets were later unfrozen and no real consequences ever came to Prescott Bush, sometimes referred to as Hitler's personal banker.
In the modern US, you can see the overt nature of fascist control of our systems of government via the two party system. It doesn't matter if a republican or democrat is chosen to the true elites since the same massive trans national corporations make large contributions to both political parties. Thus, only those who serve the interests of banks and trans nationals can be elected president. This is why Hillary changed the subject during the Brooklyn debate after Bernie proposed to remove marijuana from the controlled substance act. Even though Clinton claims to support Obama's presidency, she refused to indicate that she will respect states' rights on this issue if elected. Instead, she kept quiet, since she knows that decriminalization is not in the interests of the pharmaceutical industry that supports her campaign.
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So no, those weren't fascists. The fascists are the existing government, represented in this case by the police force. The protesters were almost certainly provocateurs whose actions were encouraged by the Communist party, which hopes to foment revolution in the US to overthrow the current fascist government and replace it with an equally totalitarian communist government. No real anarchist would infringe on anyone's right to free speech.