antifainternational:

Antifa’s fight is best summed up by the motto “respect existence or expect resistance.”  We are fighting for the right of people to live their lives peaceably and without threat of discrimination, dehumanization, vilification, scapegoating, deportation, abuse, violence, enslavement, or genocide because of their ethnicity, race, religion, language, gender or sexual orientation, migrant status, or disability.

You’re correct that the videos you’re seeing are carefully edited to make antifa look like the aggressors.  There’s a clear pattern going on that runs like this:

a) fascists/far right bigots announce a public event to incite violence against their perceived enemies, recruit more followers, and gain publicity.

b) in their back channels, they make plans to bring weapons and discuss ways to hurt counterprotestors.

c) the day comes and the people in the community they’ve chosen for their event stand with anti-fascists in opposition to them.

d) some of the more tech-savvy fascists deliberately try to provoke counterprotestors by threatening them, harassing them, endangering them, or assaulting them.

e) the counterprotestors use every means imaginable to stop this without resorting to physical force.  When none of it is effective & they resort to physical force, the fascists record it, then post edited videos showing only the reaction to their harassment & assaults, then immediately start begging online for money via crowdfunders etc.

Examples:

a) Andy Ngo’s famous video of his “assault”.  Here’s a video with footage he cut.

b) From that same event, the “innocent elderly gentleman” who was “assaulted with a crowbar” by antifa is well known local nazi John Blum, who came to the event with a collapsable police baton which he was threatening antifa with for several minutes.  

When he did get hit, it was while he was attempting to bludgeon two counter-protestors with it.

c) Likewise the “antifa attacked people with hammer” thing from this weekend!  Andy Ngo posted a video showing antifa throwing a hammer at people on bus, but cut out the part where one of the nazis charged off the bus swinging the hammer at people’s heads & antifa disarming him.

d) Likewise the “antifa attacked an innocent father and his 5-year-old daughter.”  That was Johnny “shitty 300 cosplayer” Turano and his 24-year-old adult daughter Bianca, who travel the west coast harassing leftist protestors like they did this past Saturday, showing up at an entirely peaceful counterprotest and harassing people for the better part of an hour.  Johnny repeatedly tried to smash people in the face with a metal shield before the crowd made them run away by dousing them with water and pushing them.  Here’s a particularly creepy video of the two of them getting tattoos, which we’re pretty sure a five-year-old wouldn’t be allowed to do.  Here’s another video of them calling an actual five-year-old girl a terrorist.  

You have to ask yourself why people would be going to these lengths to make anti-fascists look bad.  Maybe it’s because they see antifa as a threat to their political goals + they also see an opportunity to make bank off of gullible conservatives by revving up the ol’ right wing outrage machine.  

Look, at the end of the day, if you’re not smart enough to recognize that facism is bad and should be fought against, maybe you should take a long, hard look in a mirror.