Virtually everything in activism is designed to be a provocation: Drag Queen Story Hour, for example, sells itself explicitly as a provocation. Mid level violence, or provocation, is a sophisticated unconventional warfare tactic, as is explicit in activist manuals like Beautiful Trouble. As they put it, Your Real Action Is Your Target's Reaction.
You'll probably perceive it as being passive aggressive or something of that kind. A kind of quintessential sense of it is "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" with the finger right in your face - but certainly not actually touching. This is a provocation. I'm not touching you because, in fact, I am not touching you. I have not made physical contact, but I am doing something annoying. I am certainly invading your space, your sense of person. I'm not necessarily threatening you but there's a veiled threat within it.
It's intended to put you in a bind. If I've done my mid-level violence provocation correctly - like blocking traffic in the road, a semi-violent demonstration that's not really a protest - you are in a dilemma. The two horns of this dilemma that you get to pick between are don't react, or overreact.
What do you do? It's not exactly a peaceful protest, but I'm not really doing any violence. I'm not popping off fireworks or burning a building down or rioting, I'm just in the way. I'm doing something technically probably just barely legal. You have to respond to this, one way or another. If you just merely accept that I'm doing it, then you've caved in; you've demoralized yourself. You allowed to pass something you knew you shouldn't have. You lose some of yourself your ability to tell right from wrong. You reduce yourself and your ability to see yourself as a decent person, and your ability to do right action.
A PSYCHOLOGICALLY SOPHISTICATED THEATRICAL PROVOCATION.
A mid-level violence provocation is crafted to be just below the threshold, where it's clear you must do something, but gives you no good options. You might react, but a well-crafted mid-level violence provocation will proceed so that if you react it will be by definition - or at least, in perception - at once framed and sold as an overreaction.
So, "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" You can just leave the finger there and just be annoyed and get madder and madder and hate yourself more and more; or you can slap the hand away. The second you slap the hand away, I guarantee you, someone will capture that reaction. It might have been completely appropriate with full context. But they will capture it, and present it out of context. It will be framed so that you look like you were the bad guy. They are trained, and know what they're doing. The provocation will be made to look as minor and irrelevant as possible, and the filming will then in the distribution and the narrative and the framing will make it look like you were a psychopath.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
The only way you can beat a mid-level violence provocation is to point out the dynamic of a mid-level violence provocation. Remember: Your Target's Reaction Is Your Real Action. Their activism is designed to make you either give in, demoralize yourself and let them get away with it, or you're going to overreact. Or, at least, that's the way they'll make it be perceived in the social or professional or legal circumstances that you find yourself in.
The only way you can circumvent this is to actually catch it and point out that this is what they're doing. You cannot react but you cannot not react. The only solution is to capture it, frame it and expose it as exactly what it is - mid-level violence. It's a sort of passive aggressive provocation meant to achieve one of these two outcomes - demoralisation or overreaction.
What you have to do when it's "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" is you have to point out the tactic. "You're not touching me at all - that's correct. But you're provoking me". And if you can convince people that this provocation is happening, you've reset the framing. You've reset the framing to where you're going to be justified to react to provocation continues. The law is going to be justified to get involved if the provocation continues, in order to stop further harm. Your goal becomes exposing the provocateur causing it as a provocateur. This is impossible unless you understand the dynamic. It's impossible to understand the dynamic unless you study it. Remember, this is an unconventional warfare tactic designed to make you destroy yourself by one means or another - giving in or overreacting.
Like they said, their real action is their target's reaction. They will use it against you.