Yes, there's a huge incentive to launch a false flag operation in order to give a justification for dismissing (or attacking) a wider group, but unfortunately the strategy works even if there is no false flag.
Has there ever been a protest movement that was big enough to gain attention but didn't have some small minority in it that went too far? Sadly nowadays there are probably people who just want to watch the world burn and will turn out to commit crimes under the cover of any protest, no matter the politics of the protest itself.
When politics (and the media) are so polarised, it's easy to highlight the worst examples of "the other side" while ignoring any inconvenient examples of one's own side, if necessary by erroneously attributing those examples to false flags.
The right to protest cannot meaningfully exist in a society where the powerful get to write the narratives about who the protesters are and what they are doing.
The thing with movements that are/were big enough to gain attention is that they get infiltrated, and those infiltrators are pushing farther to discredit them.
Has there ever been a protest movement that was big enough to gain attention but didn't have some small minority in it that went too far? Sadly nowadays there are probably people who just want to watch the world burn and will turn out to commit crimes under the cover of any protest, no matter the politics of the protest itself.
When politics (and the media) are so polarised, it's easy to highlight the worst examples of "the other side" while ignoring any inconvenient examples of one's own side, if necessary by erroneously attributing those examples to false flags.
The right to protest cannot meaningfully exist in a society where the powerful get to write the narratives about who the protesters are and what they are doing.