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[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I would distinguish the protests from the rioting, although there is an overlap in the groups. While the rioting here appears to have been instigated in part by a white supremacist, I don’t think there was any one group or ideology controlling the riots. Anarchists, white supremacists, people who just like to burn things. They were all out there. I kind of think there were probably more people who just like to burn things than any ideologically-driven rioters, but who knows. There was a narrative at the beginning that the rioters were mostly outside agitators from other states, and there were certainly individuals and groups who made the trip from elsewhere. But arrest records show that many of those arrested were from Minnesota, although a lot were not from the Twin Cities. But there is also a narrative from the right that the riots here were exclusively the work of Antifa and leftist/anarchist groups, which is demonstrably false.

i lived in East Lansing for years, so I can hardly hate on people for burning random stuff.