A little of the violence is real, indeed more and more of it is real, but the vast majority of it is still imitation violence by astroturf, which I conjecture is imitation riot theater instigated by the government against itself to dramatize its imitation austerity theater.
Observe the trash fires at 0:14. Real rioters burn stuff more valuable than trash, and light bigger fires.
Observe at 0:24 the group of protestors armed with white sticks, all the sticks identical, and all rather small and light, suitable perhaps for disciplining a woman or a small boy, but definitely not the sort of thing that one should strike a man with, particularly a man wearing armor. That the sticks are light, indicates pretend violence. That the sticks are identical, indicates astroturf. Someone has got in a big batch of mass produced sticks, and handed them out. The sticks are white, for maximum visibility, to make a good image, rather than to shatter the bones of one’s enemies.
At 0:51 , observe some real violence – directed, of course, at a non state enemy.
At 1:06, observe the police detonate a noisy teargas canister a couple of feet downwind of their own feet, rather than at the protestors. Similarly at 1:16, where the police are almost teargassing themselves.
At 1:42 observe a little petrol unsurprisingly fail to set a stone building on fire – someone has thrown a tiny little molotov at a target that it cannot possibly harm. Indeed, places where it is so obviously safe to place a molotov are few and far between. Someone set this molotov for the least possible risk of damage.
At 2:10, another white stick, absolutely identical to every other white stick we saw in the video. The whole riot evidently has a single weapons supplier, a strong indication that this is an astroturf rent-a-mob riot. Observe the way he is carrying the stick, revealing how light it is.
The Greece posts are a howl.
I suppose it’s an extension of the way that democratic governments routinely subsidize pressure groups and think tanks to compel the governments to do what the governments anyway want to do.