> It's important to understand that a majority of the violence was initiated by folks that were seeking to take advantage of the protests to carry out violence:

Yeah, all of Antifa and a lot of BLM. And yes, a lot of unaffiliated looters.

> www.washingtonpost.com - who-cause-the-violence (it wasn't antifa)

The WaPo article you mention clearly has TDS, and it supported Biden who said Antifa didn't exist. It probably won't be that accurate in this regard. I'd suggest looking for streams from people at the protests.

Videos of Antifa violence are everywhere, and there are comparatively few (and minor) videos of right-wingers. Considering how social media is left-dominated, it doesn't seem to be censorship related, leaving you to just conclude that Antifa was much more violent.

And from reports from friends who were at various rallies, the level of potential violence was incredibly lop-sided. The worst Proud Boys protest in Portland had the PBs shooting people with paintballs if they tried to block or attack vehicles. The worst Antifa violence was straight-up unprovoked murder. Second-worst was throwing molotovs at counter-protestors and cops. Or maybe trying to burn down residential high-rises with people in them. And with 190+ night of it, there were a lot of runners-up.

> Does that change your reasoning about the situation at all? An overwhelming majority of peaceful protestors turned out to protest police violence and racial inequality, and a very, very small minority carried out the bulk of meaningful violence.

There were a few days where the majority seemed to be sincere, but once the big crowds left it was just anti-society vandals. All the statue-removal fights, for instance, were entirely warriors and no poets. Portland doesn't seem to have ever had a single sincere protest, and there are now articles about actual black BLM members telling Portland Antifa off for ruining their credibility.

> Does that invalidate the movement?

No, not at all. But you can't reasonably claim huge turnouts of mostly peaceful people because there were months of violence. The majority, by far, was unreasonable and violent. People were killing in the first day of looting in Minneapolis. The days of protest in Kenosha were violent from hour one.

But what does invalidate BLM is that the organization has known scammers for leaders, supports nonsense such as marxism and ending the nuclear family, etc. It supports black disempowerment through rhetoric that calls hard work and good fathering 'White'. It actively supports looters, both in words and money, even when they burn down black areas. It decries all personal responsibility. (Read many of the black voices who say this.)

When protestors/rioters in Minneapolis burned the first police station it was a good target. Nobody lived there, or did business from there. Nobody's life was destroyed and the cops had to work out of an ugly warehouse for a while which is a stinging rebuke in a way a few days off with pay isn't. Good target selection, good effect. And most people recognized it and they didn't get a lot of flack for that burning.

Later that night blocks of the city burned, where people lived and did business. Many lives were destroyed and some lost that night. And BLM came out strongly in support of the violence, most of which was against black people.

> I only ask that you empathize with those who have been at the receiving end of institutionalized violence themselves.

Sure, but you wouldn't wish BLM on your worst enemy. They aren't actually focused on anything that will help, they just push the lies about Breonna, Floyd, Blake, and others.