*paid agitators

The problem is that these guys are there to be punched. Like, they get off on it. They get paid to be punched. They openly court getting punched. It’s their payday. The thing that will catapult them into the upper eschalons of the grifter scene. They’re a entire cottage industry built around influencers lining up to be the next Horst Wessel.

This is a strategy that’s put to best effect in countries like Israel, via their Settler movement. Civilian agitators move into a neighborhood and commit abhorrent crimes against the local population. Israeli military officials surround the village, waiting for local Palestinians to do anything in self-defense. If the Palestinians remain passive, the Settlers escalate. If they try to step in to rescue their friends or neighbors, the IDF open fire claiming they are defending Settlers from terrorist attacks.

What’s the play in this kind of scenario? Idk. Ultimately, its not the Settlers/Influencers who are at the root of the violence. It is the military/paramilitary who use the radicalized civilians as an excuse to retaliate with lethal force. But they’re not nearly so easy to displace as the civilians operating at the tip of the spear.

Or even better prove to their viewers without a shadow of a doubt that they’re overreacting and lying to their viewers.