Just in time for the Charlottesville violence over the weekend, The Washington Post published a humanizing profile last Friday of the kind of violent radicals who populate Antifa, titled “What draws Americans to anarchy? It’s more than just smashing windows.”

"By day, they are graphic designers, legal assistants, nonprofit workers and students. But outside their 9-to-5 jobs, they call themselves anarchists — bucking the system, shunning the government and sometimes even rioting and smashing windows to make a point." Yes, and sometimes these mavericks also smash the heads and cameras of journalists covering their riots and sucker-punch Trump supporters who happen to get in the way. But hey, they're graphic designers, legal assistants, students -- everyday folk like the rest of us!

The article focuses on Dylan Petrohilos, 28, Sammi LeMaster, 22, and Legba Carrefour, 37, part of a group of Washington-area activists in many causes. They and their fellow anarchists see violence and vandalism "as a necessary way to draw attention to poverty, racism, educational inequality and other problems."

The article notes that they wouldn't be happy with any U.S. leader, although they are particularly "angry with President Trump":

“The Trump presidency has certainly given a boldness to fascists and racist movements throughout the country, and that’s a moment where anarchists are ready to respond in a way that many others aren’t,” said Samantha Miller, 32, a D.C. anarchist who helped organize the Inauguration Day protests.

Carrefour and others launched a group called DisruptJ20 (the name a nod to the Jan. 20 inauguration) to organize.

The anarchists already met regularly in “affinity groups,” to talk about current events, upcoming protests and weekend plans, so there was a built-in system to spread the word...

Carrefour and LeMaster belong to one group whose members hold weekly potlucks at a rotating list of apartments, with deviled eggs, banana bread and the occasional Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen chicken takeout on the menu. They typically start late, and participants joke that the group runs on “anarchist standard time.”

Ha ha! They have a sense of humor -- just like other everyday folk!

Carrefour said he knows that some people who are sympathetic to the anarchists’ general beliefs would not approve of the tactics used at the inauguration. But, he said, recruiting more anarchists is never the goal.

“The notion of convincing people is a liberal idea,” Carrefour said. “I also think it’s important to attack the symbols of capitalism. It’s just property at the end of the day.”

Except it's not your property, jackass. Muhammad Ashraf, whose 2015 Lincoln super-stretch limousine was burned by rioters on Inauguration Day, took a $60,000 hit on the loss. “When that car becomes a source of your livelihood, it becomes a part of your life. I don’t know if the protesters understand that when they destroy something — the way I felt when I saw my car burning, it really hurt me deeply even though it’s just a car."

Sammi LeMaster has embraced anarchism for its sense of "community." She said, “It takes awhile to get used to the label because it comes with a lot of baggage. People assume that anarchism is so extreme. But I associate it with wanting everyone’s needs to be met.”

She's caring, not like those evil capitalists like Muhammad Ashraf and Donald Trump!

Mike Isaacson, an anarchist, PhD student and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who teaches a class on the political economy of fascism, said anarchy is “the idea that we should be seeking to liberate everyone because, when we are all looking out for each other, we all ultimately benefit.”

Well, except for the people whose heads they bash and whose property they destroy. But everybody else benefits!