After years of waging a subversive war against the western world, radical leftists think they can polish their image overnight and pretend as if they were always an amicable movement of civil rights advocates.  Much like the "fiery but mostly peaceful" BLM, Antifa is facing a political optics crisis and they are desperate for some spin.  With the help of the establishment media and Democrat politicians, they think they have found the solution.

Like any other well organized network, Antifa activists in the Portland epicenter have changed tactics almost overnight.  They are pulling back from their typical black-bloc outfits, physical assaults and intimidation and dawning inflatable cartoon animal costumes instead. 

The narrative?  "See, we're not violent at all.  In fact, we were never violent.  Trump is a crazy authoritarian trying to create fear over crimes that didn't happen..."

The PR stunt is rather obvious and clearly coordinated with progressive journalists and Democrats who are undertaking a propaganda crusade to deny Antifa exists.  While apparently operating on a classic decentralized terrorist cell structure, this does not mean that Antifa does not have top-down leadership or organizational meetings.  As Project Veritas recently exposed by going undercover, Antifa is very real and highly coordinated.

Antifa and associated movements have engaged in violence for years, protected by NGO cash and Democrat leaders in blue cities.  This was Antifa in Portland in the past two weeks:

The attacks are constant.  Anyone who goes near Antifa operations and deemed "unfriendly" is threatened or beaten.  People who defend themselves are arrested by Portland Police while the activists go free.  For now the violence is mostly limited to assault, but tolerance for this behavior has encouraged Antifa agents to commit bombings and murders in the past.

The standard weapons of any Marxist revolution are lies, misdirection and denial. The goal is to commit acts of intimidation, mob destruction and terror to provoke a defensive response, then the provocateurs claim that the defensive response is "authoritarian oppression". 

In other words, they gaslight their opponents into doing nothing because every act of self defense hurts their political position.  Thus, Antifa is free to wreak havoc with impunity while good people sit idle, fearful of being labeled "tyrants".  The political left declares themselves the good guys (Anti-Fascist), making anyone who opposes their malicious activities the "bad guys" (fascist).  However, declaring yourself the good guy does not make it true. 

The problem is that every society has an invisible line, a point at which they are so fed up they stop caring about optics.  The political left has crossed that line and now many Americas do not care what the Trump Administration does to them.

Trump's latest efforts to investigate and dismantle the radical left have struck fear into groups like Anitfa.  The sudden change in image is not a coincidence, just as it's not a coincidence that Antifa leaders have been discovered escaping the US to countries like Sweden.

The panic is palpable.  The abrupt change in direction for Portland Antifa will not last, of course, but it proves that these people are fully aware of how they should be acting.  They know what they're doing is wrong, otherwise they would not be attempting to rewrite history.  Their most likely next step as pressure mounts will be to rebrand completely, forming new groups with new names but using the same networks, the same methods with the same goals.  

Mentally unhinged ideologues are incapable of long term peaceful behavior or protest.  Their declarations of peace are a facade.  Their happy cartoon costumes hide a vile calculating core.  Compromise is unthinkable for them.  Diplomacy is considered a weakness. Only when they are backed into a corner and facing legitimate consequences do they pretend to be reasonable.