US President Trump in a series of tweets on the violence and riots during “Black Lives Matter” protests tried to make these protests a conspiracy of Antifa and other far left organizations. His tweet on 31st May 2020 said that he would designate Antifa a terrorist organization.
On 2nd June 2020 he tweeted that New York was lost to looters, radical left, and all other forms of lowlife and scum.
On 15th June 2020 he implied through a tweet that Antifa and other far left organizations are the one behind the violent riots which happened during the “Black Life Matters” protest.
Although he may not be entirely wrong in saying that Antifa is coordinating with the Black Lives Matter protests, there was no evidence presented by him for such assertions. This invocation of Antifa was a clever ploy of President Trump which enabled him to address the movement without talking about its central demands. As Jennifer Mercieca, an associate professor at Texas A&M said that instead of addressing the central concerns of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, Mr. Trump has cast the leftists, anarchists and Anti-fascists as a separate, aggressive and anti-American group which used the protest to cause mayhem across the US. This is a distraction technique called the red herring, eventually drawing attention away from the movement’s fight against racial injustice and tarring it in the process
By targeting Antifa, President Trump tried to turn focus away from the largely peaceful protests which were supported by a cross section of the US population including the far left organizations.
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