I'm not going to give you the standard liberal lecture about how violence is bad and you're being meanie poo poo pants if you punch people and won't you please think of the poor nazi's feels :'( While I'll never support the massively anti-free speech wing of the radical left, I'm not exactly moaning on the floor because some holocaust deniers got pepper sprayed. They can honestly eat a dick for all I care. I'm just curious whether all this semi-indiscriminate violence is really strategically sound.
I think that if we continue to be the ones who start fights and revel the most in the violence, we're going to quickly lose public sympathy. We can already see this happening with people cheering as the police arrest burger-Antifas, swapping memes about antifa getting btfo at Berkeley, etc. People are starting to actively dislike antifa (and by extension, anarchists and socialists in general) because whenever a rally that even might be right wing is planned, a bunch of upper-middle class teenagers with 2x4s show up to start a brawl. They attack medics, bystanders, even other antifa who lose their masks. It's a shitshow.
Now, obviously the alt-right would do the same shit given the chance. Hell, the neo-nazis might be worse. But since we're giving them the chance to play the victim, they're riding that train as far as it'll take them. If we would just wait for them to do something that the public would see as justifying violence, or if we could even just police the antifa movement better and stop assaulting people who are wearing red hats, or medics or whatever, the damage would be so much less. It's hard to overestimate just how much liberal brownie points you get by plausibly being the victim.
And for that one guy who's going to suggest that we just tell everyone who isn't a communist to go fuck themselves, I'd love to see you have a revolution without at least the implicit support of the majority. Good luck buddy.