[legitster]

The point is that once you have a protest and a counter-protest, at that point it's pretty hard to tell who is who anyway.

> “We’ve got criminal damage, violence, weapons offences, football banning orders. These are criminal thugs. Any suggestion that they’re patriots, or they’ve got a cause that they’re protesting about is nonsense, and frankly, most of them are going to be charged with violent disorder and most of them are going to prison for a few years.”

The police interviewed in the article heavily imply that the vast majority of crime is being done apolitically by opportunists - how much they hate or love immigrants is fairly irrelevant - people are showing up just because there is a protest to smash and burn things.

[ubercow13]

The protests and counter protests basically happened independently on separate days. I haven't seen any reports of violence or disorder on the days of counter protests.

I think you have misread the situation. The police officer is noting that the instigators of the far right protest violence are probably motivated by simply wanting to cause chaos. That doesn't imply people who instigated or attended the peaceful counterprotests did. Indeed they seemed more motivated by wanting to prevent more chaos and violence.