Hundreds of protesters clashed at a protest over a Confederate monument removal on the weekend in Dallas.
Late on Saturday night, Aug. 19, officers in riot gear, and some on horseback, forced hundreds of protesters away from a Dallas cemetery, Star-Telegram reported.
In the midst of the protests, two groups squared off at Pioneer Plaza after a heated exchange that appeared as though it might get violent at any time.
Video was released showing members of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and far-left extremist group Antifa facing off. Tensions between the group escalated when an Antifa member punched a Black Lives Matter activist.
In the video captured by an onlooker at the scene and posted on Twitter, the BLM activist is seen standing in front of the Antifa crowd shouting out: “Take the mask off! Take the mask off.” His fellow activists can then be seen chanting with him loudly, “Mask off! Mask off! Mask off!”
The BLM activists can be heard telling Antifa to leave the city.
The Antifa crowd start yelling back at the BLM activist shouting out, “He’s a cop! He’s a cop! He’s a cop!”
After the chanting, a masked, male member of Antifa stands right in front of the BLM activist and hits him in the face. Another BLM activist can be heard shouting in anger and shock that one of their members was hit.
WARNING: Offensive language
Not long later a young female member of Antifa then starts yelling that the BLM activists were pushing her. Both the female and the BLM activist can be seen hurling insults at each other.
At the end of the video, things can be seen calming down while a BLM activist speaks to the crowd, saying, “We ain’t gonna let some outsiders make us look bad.”
The video posted on Twitter on Aug. 20 has garnered over 2,921 retweets and over 4000 likes.
Last week President Donald Trump condemned the violent protests in Charlottesville, where the two groups also showed up—some with weapons—to counterprotest a white nationalist rally.
“You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and horrible. And it was a horrible thing to watch” at a press conference on Aug. 15.
However, Trump added that it was the Antifa protesters who seemed to have started the violence.
“There was a group on this side—you can call them the left, you’ve just called them the left—that came violently attacking the other group, so you can say what you want but that’s the way it is,” he said.
From NTD.tv
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