The media has tried to depict the anti-Trump rioters as "peaceful" protesters. But there's nothing peaceful about them. The groups under the surface are some of the same ones that show up at most protests.
So yes ANSWER is here
Along with the anarchists, core organizers of the protests have included the ANSWER Coalition, a group with roots that trace back to supporting the Soviet invasion of Hungary in the 1950s, and the Socialist Alternative, a Trotskyist group on the other side of those forgotten Communist civil wars. Those groups’ organizing muscle has long made them important, if controversial, elements of the US left (they were central to protests against the Iraq War in 2003), and they now find themselves marching with Bernie Sanders supporters, civil rights advocates, and thousands of Democrats shocked at Trump’s election.
Or rather the latter are marching in ANSWER rallies. Because it's the hard core left that quickly dominates any organization or movement they join in. Here's a brief reminder from the Freedom Center's Discover the Networks
Run by Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center—an organization staffed in large part by members of the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party (WWP)—the fledgling ANSWER depicted the United States as a racist, imperialist, sexist, militaristic nation guilty of unspeakable crimes against humanity.
The libertarian author Stephen Suleyman Schwartz in 2002 described ANSWER an “ultra-Stalinist network” whose members served as “active propaganda agents for Serbia, Iraq, and North Korea, as well as Cuba, countries they repeatedly visit and acclaim.”
But the more mainstream elements of the left like to pretend that the Marxists are out there, rather than in here. And when that women's march materializes, guess who gets the credit?
Organizers around the country are also planning a women’s march on Washington the day after Trump is sworn into office, which ANSWER plans to attend.
Behind the publicity stunt is the same old red flag. And it might be interesting to explore the treatment of women by Socialist parties. Including the SWP.
This isn't news. But here's where it does get interesting.
The protests have also shown some signs of national organization, using public and private Facebook pages and, so far on a local level, encrypted methods of communication.
Which is to say it's a fake grass roots movement that is nationally organized and is beginning to employ the tactics more associated with Al Qaeda.