About that "Undercover in Antifa" video...

The above video has been making the rounds on conservative internet. It's an undercover investigation by Steven Crowder, a popular internet personality, pundit and podcaster. I watched the whole thing and I wanted to make a few points. 

First, the video appears to show Antifa getting ready for violence at one of the various Berkeley demonstrations. You can see Antifa members passing out weapons and claiming that they have firearms. Crowder claims that the Antifa members were arrested. 

Second, the video claims that the mainstream media isn't interested in the video and both local and national journalists are shown passing on the story. 

So what's the problem? Well for one the raw footage is heavily edited. We don't know much of the context with these Antifa people and though I believe that they probably were up to no good, we can't be sure without the rest of the video. That might be part of the reason the media didn't pick this story up, but again, we can't tell because their responses are edited. There may very well be context missing from this video

What other context could their be? Well I think there is a slim chance that the Antifa people were calling for self defense, not murder. They kept saying if "things go down" then retreat to the car and pick up weapons. That sounds less like premeditation and more like just preparing for the worst. And I wonder if the footage that we didn't see showed them saying that. 

That being said, it's clear that, at the very least, Antifa was doing some stuff that looks really really bad. For one, claiming that he had a sawed off shotgun is a crime in itself if the Antifa guy actually had one. That's a federal offense of he didn't have a licence for it and I seriously doubt he did. And the AK's that they claimed to have would probably be illegal as well. Finally, I don't know if carrying knives is something that they can legally do in California, depending on the size of the knives and the local laws. For exposing that, Crowder does deserve some credit. 

But I don't really think he helped the cause with this video. It's very clear that this video was made to pander to people on the right and not trying to convince anyone else. It's not just the editing and the media bashing, though those won't fly for people on the left either. It's the fact that he seemed to be bashing transgender people. It's not really relevant that the ringleader of this group of Antifa and bashing that person is pretty much guaranteed to turn off anyone who like transgender people.  

This was my first time watching Crowder and I wasn't impressed. He strikes me more as an Alex Jones type, or, and this is a bitter insult for someone on the right, a CNN type. He seems a lot less interested in convincing people that Antifa is a threat and more interested in preaching to the choir and generating clickbait. Had he actually just posted the raw footage and some commentary it would be fine and a useful service for the country, but he really needs to be more professional.