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In late August, a crowd of thousands — primarily leftists and liberals — cascaded down Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley, Calif. They were marching on a spattering of right-wingers, Trump supporters and Nazis who were gathering under the mission to say “no to Marxism in America.” At the front of the march were about 100 people dressed in head-to-toe black.

According to many people present, this was the largest so-called black bloc they’d seen. This medley of black-clad anarchists, anti-fascists (known as “antifa” activists) and their fellow travelers was a response to the previous week’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. There, protests ended with 19 injured and 32-year-old Heather Heyer killed when James Fields, an admirer of Hitler who demonstrated with white supremacists, drove his car into a crowd.

This mass of solid black descending upon the park in Berkeley, hunting for fascists, was an intimidating aesthetic. That’s by design.

“Cops wear camouflage when they arrest people in city drug raids,” said Ben, a Bay Area activist. “But they’re in a city. It doesn’t help them, but it makes them look more intimidating.” Ben says he has participated in protests since 2000, including Bush/Gore, Occupy Oakland and Black Lives Matter. (The Times agreed to use only his first name because of the threat of harassment, online or otherwise, by activists.) “A group of people all dressed in black can be intimidating,” he said.

Is that intimidation the motive or just a benefit? Do black bloc practitioners dress up because, as many progressives wonder, they want to commit crimes? What do they get out of “masking up”? Where does uniform merge with tactic?

By now, you know the look. Black work or military boots, pants, balaclavas or ski masks, gloves and jackets, North Face brand or otherwise. Gas masks, goggles and shields may be added as accessories, but the basics have stayed the same since the look’s inception.

It’s impossible to say which anarchist street movement first donned all black. The generally agreed-upon genesis for the bloc’s current incarnation is the Autonomen movement of the 1970s, which grew out of class struggles in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and beyond. (Antifa groups, an overlapping but not at all identical set of people, trace their lineage back further, to those who fought against the rise of Hitler; generally, where there is “fa,” there’s been “antifa.”)

According to a history distributed by an anarchist news service in 2001, by Daniel Dylan Young, a continuing struggle in Germany between squatters and police evictors culminated in a 1981 action in which activists dressed in “black motorcycle helmets and ski masks,” wearing “uniform black clothing.”

Nearly immediately, the benefits of such a uniform were realized.

“Everyone quickly figured out,” Mr. Young wrote, that “having a massive group of people all dressed the same with their faces covered not only helps in defending against the police, but also makes it easier for saboteurs to take the offensive against storefronts, banks and any other material symbols and power centers of capitalism and the state.”

Both the ease of uniform procurement — the barrier to entry is just getting black clothes, with only your own ethical purchasing guidelines to steer you — and the aesthetic’s effectiveness allowed black blocs to spread. During Ronald Reagan’s visit to Berlin in 1986, a group of 3,000 showed up, according to Mr. Young; in 1999, a bloc of 500 was part of the “March for Mumia” in Philadelphia, protesting the imprisonment of the journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. That same year, between 100 and 300 people became the bloc at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.

It was a look so successful that the bloc’s greatest enemies considered adopting it. As Mark Bray details in his incisive “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” there have been occasional attempts to co-opt the bloc look by right-wing fascist groups. That’s died down recently, with the loose overlapping affiliation of nationalists, white supremacists and Nazis instead adopting an overdressed, old-fashioned style often referred to as “dapper.”

So, while they wear khakis and white polos, the black bloc are left with some particular defensive and offensive benefits of their very own.

The creation of mass anonymity protects practitioners from the threat of post-action doxxing by white supremacist groups, a process by which their identities and contact information, including addresses and places of employment, are publicized. People at home can use this information to harass and threaten. Similarly, police and other agencies have staff devoted to documenting demonstrations, and they work to identify people on film and video. These are among the reasons that some anarchists and anti-fascists advocate smashing cameras at demonstrations.

As surveillance techniques have advanced and proliferated — the rise of the high-resolution portable phone camera along with social media means more documentation and more distribution than ever — practitioners have evolved from covering up obvious markers like tattoos, birthmarks and scars to hiding biometric indicators like ears and noses. Some in black blocs say they have heard of people placing weights in belts to alter their gaits.

“I’ll often look through pictures from the demonstration and see if I can spot myself in any of them,” said Elle Armageddon, a Bay Area activist and writer. “If I can’t find any pictures of myself, I feel like I’ve done O.K.”

Elle Armageddon (likely not a birth name) is the author of “The Femme’s Guide to Riot Fashion,” published at the website of CrimethInc., which describes itself as a “rebel alliance — a decentralized network pledged to anonymous collective action.” The guide recommends that femmes, meaning people of any gender, with long hair use tucked-in braids, and that they layer masks for full facial coverage. It also reminds us all that “shoes make or break an outfit.”

There is solid beauty advice as well: “A layer of glitter or highlighter dusted over your cheeks can serve double duty, showing off your glorious bone structure while simultaneously providing a helpful way to determine which side of your bandanna was in contact with your face and which side is saturated in tear gas particulate.” (Also, jean shorts are probably not ideal.)

There is more practical advice on how to dress for a riot. One should decide on organic or synthetic gloves before participating in an action: Wool and cotton may allow chemical contaminants, like pepper spray, to absorb, while nylon can melt if you grab something hot, which historically has included some kinds of tear-gas canisters but can include various things on fire.

One Antifa “fashion don’t” is carrying cellphones. The American Civil Liberties Union reports that 72 agencies in 24 states and Washington, D.C., have “simulators” that mimic cellphone towers in order to track people.

These defensive methods work only if there are enough black-clad others nearby. A single person in all black and multiple face masks is an eye grabber. This effect of anonymity-by-mass has allowed for the offensive side of bloc tactics to flourish. The uniformity camouflages those who participate in illegal acts like property damage, refusing police orders or physical assault against white supremacists or Nazis. This willful protection of the group is embedded in the style’s aesthetic.

“People sometimes do things that are illegal, but I think they’re ethical,” Ben said. “I’m happy to be in this mass that creates anonymity for those people, even if they’re doing things I’m not willing to do.”

Tactical considerations aside, it’s this emotional connection with other members of the bloc that many practitioners highlight the most in interviews. “Uniformity of characteristics” and a visual sense of equality have a way of, as research published in 2015 put it, giving “rise to feelings of solidarity.” It’s why soldiers and police have uniforms. It’s why sports teams have apparel for themselves and their fans, why brands have logos and consistent colorways, why fascists get slightly too-short versions of David Beckham haircuts and pin frogs to their lapels.

But unlike hierarchal uniforms like those of the military, say — or even the difference between worker and management clothes at somewhere such as McDonald’s — black bloc fashion allows no room for rank to enter the style. It’s all black and that’s it.

(Other leftist movements use similar techniques. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Chiapas, Mexico, which rose after the 1994 passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, takes the approach of cultivating equality through anonymity by wearing balaclavas or handkerchiefs over the face, but pairs them with the militant gear of armed struggle or indigenous elements.)

Min, an activist who participated in the Inauguration Day actions in Washington known as J20, and who asked to be identified only by her first name, said that, because of the cold that day, many bloc practitioners were also dressed in parkas. This had the effect of erasing almost all identifying characteristics, including ethnicity and gender.

“It was like a goth party,” Min said. “There were queer people, black people, white people, Asian people, and, because, we were all wearing black, there was no way to even think about the things that are often barriers to our connection.” Min said this anonymity, where she was unable to identify even people around her, had a way of purifying her actions. “There’s a difference between me helping you because I know you and care about you, and me helping you because I want you to be helped,” she said.

Min is an artist. For her, this is one of the most unappreciated aspects of black bloc as a style. It’s tactical, and practical, and it’s also an art form with the effect of building solidarity long after the boots go into the closet. The experience of being enveloped in anonymity helps retain the movement’s ideology, after the balaclavas get folded up and stacked in the drawer.

“In spheres where we don’t have uniforms, we really embrace individuality,” Min said. “But black bloc creates a feeling of ‘Who you are is who I am.’ Of ‘It doesn’t matter who I am when we’re fighting together.’”