Every so often you get a round of enlightened leftos who complain about antifa wearing masks because it's bad optics, as though nobody had pointed out that masks are scary before they did, and none of them think "well gee, maybe they don't want the fash to know who they are"

Optics concern trolls make everything harder and more dangerous.

Straight up, if the options are
1. Have to make your group more scary to normies
2. Allow fascists to run wild in the streets
3. Confront the fascists but make yourself and your comrades the targets of retributive violence

then I would think the choice is obvious.

And here's a thought:
Maybe the reason the "optics" are so bad are because a bunch of gormless rubes rush in to condemn anyone getting bad press lest we frighten the libs.
Maybe one way to make the optics better is to, you know, defend them.

I've been talking about this for years: