Photojournalist went undercover to expose white supremacists at riots, but found black bloc anarchists instead

Photojournalist Jeremy Lee Quinn was furloughed this year, so he set out to document the protests and the riots that beset cities across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd. Quinn expected to discover white supremacists caused havoc and violence at riots, but what he actually found shocked him — violent left-wing anarchists who were extremely organized.

On May 31, Quinn covered a Black Lives Matter protest in Santa Monica, California, where "suburban moms" were kneeling. Then he was alerted to a shoe store being looted about a mile away.

"He arrived to find young people pouring out of the store, shoeboxes under their arms. But there was something odd about the scene," Farah Stockman wrote in the New York Times. "A group of men, dressed entirely in black, milled around nearby, like supervisors. One wore a creepy rubber Halloween mask."