The videos of “anti-fascists” kicking a lone, defenseless EDL member and then laughing about it reminded me, by contrast, of this moment from the 2009 post-election anti-regime demonstrations in Tehran.
Iranian police charged into a peaceful march and violently broke it up. But after one policeman– apparently injured or overcome– got isolated in the crowd of demonstrators, some of the protesters came to his aid, protecting him from other demonstrators and offering him water.
He may have been clubbing them a few moments earlier, but they recognized him above all as a fellow human being in trouble, and acted accordingly.
And surely they gave that policeman something to think about.
They are the genuine anti-fascists.