[Note: I know the Black Bloc is not a formal group, but an informal manifestation; there are no members, only participants]
There has been a lot of online chatter recently regarding how to handle the Black Bloc; as if the movement were a parent dealing with their unruly teenager.
The most extreme suggestions seem to be concerning unmasking the Black Bloc, either at demonstrations or afterwards, and handing them over to the police or other state authorities.
The idea scares me. Not from a "no snitching" stand point since we are not talking about a community dealing with a murderer or rapist, but from a Sylvia Plath standpoint of "Never do the enemy's job for them."
Are we actually ready to be the police? Are we ready to be collaborators?
Especially considering that the judicial system is rife with complaints of racism, classism, sexism, ableism... do we as a community who fight back against oppression every day want to hand anyone over to face the full brunt of that oppressive system with the naïve expectation that they will receive fair treatment and a fair trial?
Let me break the whole 'we should not be hunting the Block Bloc down like rabbits' notion down...
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Firstly, how does one go about trapping or catching a Black Bloc participant? Should eager against-the-Bloc activists come to demonstrations armed with a modified black butterfly net? Should it be an old school swarming technique? Laying down traps with Cliff bars or NOFX CDs as bait? Or something more DL, like just pointing out a suspected Black Bloc participant to the police and then letting the police do the dirty work for us, pre-emptive strike style.
If this were the case, surely the movement could get a police/ government grant for building a specialized Black Bloc detector machine, inputted with a list of stereotypical Black Bloc traits to look out for. Anti-Bloc activists could stand beside the police as they choke off entrance ways to rally gathering points and while the police illegally search people, they could use the specialized Black Bloc detector machine on the crowd.
Maybe, again pre-emptive style, posters could go up along a march route the week before a demonstration as a sort of CSIS/Police Public Service Announcement warning people to immediately call 9-11 if they spot anyone wearing all black and looking anti-social. Does your friend wear black and vote for the NDP, better report him to the police just to be sure! "You're either with us or against us," right?
Call the Black Bloc or its tactics what you will, but I'm not into witch hunts. I don't think we should be doing the police's job for them. Which is what would inevitably happen if activists were encouraged to spy on each other and report any activist who had any sentiments towards radical activism to the authorities. Who needs enemies with comrades like these?
And what exactly would these anti-Bloc activists do once they caught a Black Bloc participant? Well, turn them over to the police, of course! I mean, these dastardly black clad ninjas purposefully went out of the way to ruin the Labour/NGO march on Saturday. That must have been their sole purpose on the weekend! How dare they steal Sid Ryan's thunder!
Nevermind that the mainstream media is controlled by mainstream corporations, it's the Black Bloc's fault for the lack of media coverage they wanted. The Black Bloc scourge on the movement must be stamped out at all costs. The movement must be sanitized of troublemakers! Forgot the whole innocent before proven guilty notion. We need a pre-emptive strike!
Ah hell, I could go on with the humour but let's get serious here. In regards to the movement's relationship with the Black Bloc, are we activists really ready to collaborate with the authorities so far as to hand over suspected Black Bloc participants directly to the police? Does the movement really want on their hands that they handed over innocent people to a judicial system; the same police officers with a police chief who is willing to lie to the public?
Games in babble threads like "Unmask the Vandals" further feeds the notion that we should be working with-cough-for the police as opposed to a movement united against excessive police powers and police brutality.
No one says you have to agree or condone with what other demonstrators choose to do at demonstration. But calling for a police collaboration campaign or a form of activist vigilantism is very dangerous and divisive to the movement as a whole. Look at it this way, if a marshal turns someone they can only suspect participated in a Black Bloc action over to the police and they are subsequently beaten senseless by the same police, can the marshal just say they were doing their job?
Also questionable is the rabble.ca TV piece: Did you see these provocateurs? http://rabble.ca/rabbletv/program-guide/2010/07/features/did-you-see-the...
Again, it encourages a form of activist vigilantism. What are we supposed to do if we see the people highlighted in the posted video walking down the street? Turn them over to the police, expecting some kind of 'I'm a good citizen award'? Or beat them up because we suspect they are police/agent provocateurs as the video seems to suggest?
As for the actions of those who conducted property damage at the G20 demonstrations, if we want real debate about these tactics, we first need to stop with this blaming outwards mentality. What I mean by that is this belief that any/all vandalism that occurred during the Summit had to be the work of agent provocateurs. Yes, perhaps it was. But what happens if it wasn't?
There are activists who just don't want to accept that some the roughly 250 activists who conducted the property damage over the G20 protests might actually be from our own movement and not the devious work of some outside force? Yes, a movement that is capable of quiet, prayer-based sit ins is also capable of property destruction. We are capable of both. Diversity of Tactics is occurring organically within the movement transcendent of all the screaming matches we have at organizing meetings about the topic.
I know this is a hot topic right now, and I think discussion is always healthy. Screaming at each other from the assumed moral high ground is not. On Saturday June 26, 2010, despite all the rumours that the more radical Get Off the Fence group would hijack the more peaceful Labour / NGO /Peace march at Queen's Park -- which still got attacked by the police -- the organizers from each group were able to sit down and work out a solution to overlapping start and finish times to respect each other's space. That would not have happened if entrenched activists from both sides were too busy denouncing each other.
That was a much better problem solving technique then leaving it up to some vigilante rule of the streets.
Can you imagine an outraged union activist marching into the crowd of Black Bloc participants and unmasking one of them, only to find himself staring into the face of his own son.
I agree with many of Krystalline's writings but this was just a bad piece.
Neutralizing the Black Bloc doesn't automatically require 'collaborating' with the police. Groups of protesters could stand in their way and obstruct them from commiting acts of vandalism. No need to assault them or turn them over to police.
As it stands now, the messages of the majority of protesters are not being heard by the mainstream media. It's all smashed windows and burning cop cars. No, it's not fair. Yes, it's a failure (or would success be a better word?) of the corporate media, but that's the world we live in.
Change is going to come, not from kids smashing Starbucks windows, but from winning the hearts and minds of the general population. As long as the Black Bloc groups are allowed to run wild, the general population is only going to get this negative spin on the protests by the mainstream media.
Look at the numbers. A majority of Torontonians think police actions were justified during the G20 and that the Black Blockers should be charged under terrorism laws. Clearly, the protests were a PR disaster and we all know why.
If activists are only interested in preaching to the lefty choir, then this status quo is acceptable. If they want their messages to reach a larger audience, they need to neutralize the Black Bloc group that allows their messages to be stifled. Yes, the government, police and media are greater enemies, but the activist community has very little power agaisnt them; with the Block, they could potentially achieve success.
Why conflate a "no mask" policy with "hand em over to the police" approach? I've never heard *anyone* link the two anywhere on Rabble or Babble. The Thursday Indigenous peoples' march had a no mask policy.... so does this make them cop collaboraters? Guess it does according to your logic.
Spare us the distortion and diviseness, please. Ditto for the hyperbole and stereotyping. I expect better from Rabble. This is a serious and needed discussion, and exagerrating the claims and abilities of both "sides" doesn't do the issue justice.
It was not the BLack Bloc that stole the capitalist media's focus away from the real issues that protesters were trying to bring attention to...it was the media itself that failed to focus on the real issues. It does not matter how protesters behave at demonstrations, the media only ever focuses on their behaviour, and not what people are protesting for. For example: The demonstration for Indigenous rights and solidarity which was a nice peaceful demo prior to saturday's protests recieved alot of media commentary. But the majority of that patronizing commentary was about how nice and peaceful the demonstrators behaved and not about what the issues are. Infact alot of media chatter was fixated on the "offenciveness" of flying the Canadian flag upside down! If activists believe they are going to successfully use the capitalist media to win people over to their side, they are mistaken. Some capitalist media sources, like CP24 for example, may as well be on the payrole of the Police Services Board. Even the "beloved"CBC fell unquestionably into the police-state PR scheme of criminalizing dissent in the minds of the public long before any of the anti summit demos ever happened. It is not surprizing that public opinion polls show the majority of people support the police handling of the demonstrators...they won that PR game long before any of this came down. But one has to wonder, if the opinion poll question was phrased such as: "Do you support police violence used against innocent people for political gain?" What would the outcome of the poll be then?
nice article.
green grouch, this is the type of responsbable work rabble has to be doing.
shawnsage, collaborator scumbags need to be neutrailized. how much did stepehen lewis get for sitting at the table?
Bopaul, your point about the media is valid. The country badly needs a professional media outlet that report the news professionally and doesn't try to have an angle about what they cover and don't cover. Decades of professional journalism standards have been completely thrown out the window in the last 10+ years. Shaun and Green Grouch make excellent points as well.
Here's a wonderful response I received about this issue re: how the movement treats each other regarding contentious issue since the comment I posted below reflects the sentiment that I'm trying to avoid. It was posted publically on my facebook wall but I will omit the poster's name since this is not about him but about the issue.
Quote from the person I was mentioning above and therefore not my voice from this point on:
"We as the Citizens of this country have the right to take certain actions that prevent people like the Black Bloc from doing what they do. And really bud, a 300 pound cop aint going anywhere, at most they weigh at around 220-250 including the gear they have on.
Point being, IF we see the Black Bloc doin somethin stupid. Jump in there and take the Mofo down hard, even if it takes a dozen of you to do it. And if he has a weapon, let him use it. Better to paint them as idiots so there is further investigation into the incident. But really, if that was happening here in E town, you bet your ass i would go in there and knock the idiot up side the head and beat the piss outa him for the actions he was taking.
Then when the streets are cleared and the black bloc's bodies are laying there all bloodied and needing medical assistance. Deny it to them and let em die. Leave them as examples of what happens when people try and take legitimate protesters and paint them as evil criminals."
Excellent post, KK!
What's really troublesome is the similarity between the current "rabbit hunt" mentality and the rhetoric of the McCarthyite social democratic left in the 1950's. The "communists" were seen as the enemy of democracy and were to be hounded out of the labour movement and the CCF and turned over to the repressive state apparatus.
David Lewis played a particularly shameful role in the union witch-hunts. He and his ilk were enabled by the vast majority of social democrats who had no clue about the repressive nature of the capitalist state and sought accommodation with it, rather than resolute opposition to it. Social democracy bought into the Cold War as much as anybody else.
Today they are using the same rhetoric about the black bloc as they used against the communists.
I have. Here's just one example: Expose the vandals
Why on earth would we collude in 'capturing' the Black Block when the police force appeared to have no interest whatsoever in apprehending them! Indeed, we would be ridiculous in trying to help police locate these people. Reality check, please. The cops were much more interested in grabbing and shoving around innocent folk who happened to be standing by, some were not involved protesting! They acted in a cowardly manner picking on people who could not possibly defend themselves. The numerous videos don't lie: we can see clearly who the thugs are! This is an abominable circumstance and it is very sad to think that some people support the police simply because they themselves weren't apprehended and treated like a herd of cattle! This is more than unacceptable. They could be next!
I read in the West Coast Province a couple of days ago that 15 officers hired during the Olympics in Vancouver were accused of: sexual harrassment of their own female offices (2 cases), one left his loaded gun in a port-o-pottie, one was drunk when off duty and harrassing people, one was in a scuffle with a citizen, it goes on and on. These were reports made by their own fellow officers! Unfortunately, I do not have the piece with me as I write. These officers were 'stationed' on a ship in Vancouver during the Games. Naturally, not much will come of it as I understand it. Some were from the Peel region of Ontario!! The latter were likely involved in the protests on that fateful weekend in T.O.!!!
However, in today's Province there is a horrendous front page story (with photos) of a family who was terrorized by numerous police officers as they were viewing photos on the second floor of their home of a recent fishing trip: mom 57, dad 63, daughter in her late 30's and her fiancee. The cops 'thought' they'd smelled marijuana from the house when they patrolled the neighborhood on a number of occasions!!! That gave them the right to a warrant and off they went. The daughter answered the door after a pounding only to discover about a dozen officers on her parents' porch pointing handguns at her. There was also a cop with an "assault rifle right next to her". There were more officers behind trees at the side of the house, and still more "at the rear". The daughter complied with the request to call her parents downstairs. They all stood on the lawn with police surrounding the four!!! They were then handcuffed and put into two separate squad cars.
The daughter explains how horrifying this all was to all four of them and how heartbroken she was to see her parents handcuffed and going into a separate cop car without her! She states that "None of us have any kind of record or history with the police. My mother hasn't even had a traffic violation." The neighbours of course were all looking out the windows and she added "This was the most embarrasing and humiliating thing that has ever happened to anyone of us". The cops now have done an "oops" - and admit they "screwed up". They had already checked the family and "paused" when they saw that the family was squeekie clean!!! This was BEFORE the handcuffing. Wish you could all see the mom: this grey haired thin little woman! The cops are now admitting that this family is an "Upstanding family" but guess what? They can file a complaint! Oh what fun! To top it off, they were already under stress as dad's mother had died on Friday! Well now the arrested mom is "beyond FURIOUS" and has already made a verbal complaint to the Abbotsford Police Dept. station. Maybe they messed with the wrong dame!
The cop simply "smelled" the alledged marijuana and hadn't even used a dog to confirm his false assumption BEFORE getting the warrant. How easy it is for them to obtain a warrant! As I have said before on babble: polices forces throughout Canada need a damn good clean up!! We all know about the former New Orleans Police Dept. and the former L.A. Police Dept - make one's hair stand on end!! People must take a stand and not allow make excuses for breaches or minimize the implications of what happened in T.O. and what happens throughout the country on another level. Many people are too intimidated to speak of these breaches.
Here is an important article, written by an activist on counterpunch: It explains better than I ever could the importance of supporting our G20 activists on trial.
http://www.counterpunch.org/gelderloos07072010.html
how about diving into the 'accountability' issue?
it seems to me that if there is no accountability for what people do at protests, then some people will try in some twisted way to make people accountable (ie by wanting the police to take them in)
working link: http://www.counterpunch.org/gelderloos07072010.html
Great article, Sue - thanks for the heads up! Some excerpts:
Unfortunately, the policies of the G20, and the tactical question of the protests against it, generally appear as separate issues in the progressive alternative media....
Because this kind of authority always provokes resistance, another fundamental process of authority is not to beat down resistance so much as to discipline it to follow the rules. So, RBC can fund gentrification and oil drilling, British Petroleum can kill their workers and destroy the Gulf of Mexico, border guards can murder immigrants, cops can torture youths, the normal functioning of the Canadian economy can murder over three times as many people through workplace "accidents" as are claimed by homicides, but if protestors smash a bank window or light a cop car on fire, they are denounced as violent.
And above all, this operation is carried out by fellow protestors, who echo the media and Canadian politicians in describing the property destruction that occurred in downtown Toronto as a tragedy. But downtown Toronto already was a tragedy....
Yet curiously, a chorus of liberals are reproducing the tired lie that only agent provocateurs could possibly be audacious enough to attack the system, that the Black Bloc is comprised partially or entirely of infiltrators.
I can assure these liberals that there are thousands of anarchists in North America who would love to trash a police car or a bank. There are millions of other people who would love to do these things as well....
Anarchists are great organizers: some of us participate in the community groups you admire, set up the alternative media you rely on, arrange housing and logistics for the protests you attend, carry out the direct actions that revitalize the campaigns that are important to you. It should be safe to assume that at least sometimes we could manage to commit a little property destruction without the help of police infiltrators.
It might also be safe to suggest that those dissidents who mirror the police and politicians in their sycophantic denunciation of "violence" share some other points in common with the authorities. Namely, they assist in the same project of democratic government, which is to convince people to participate in their own exploitation, whether through elections or profit-sharing or whatever other gimmick, and to insist on the validity of rules that will always be applied more harshly to us than to the elite.
The pragmatic justification is that the violence distracts from the real issues, but it is long past the point where we have to recognize that the media will never talk about the issues, except to allow them to be reframed for the benefit of the economy and the government. This police operation only works if dissidents participate. If we continue to focus on the reasons for fighting back against the system by whatever means, and there will always be an uncontrollable diversity of means in a diverse struggle, then there will be no distraction, except for the distraction of the corporate media, which is ever present. Either the media will pull their hair out about our violence, or they will turn the spotlight on the latest celebrity news, the latest politician's speech. To talk about anything else, anything real, is up to us....
What matters is that when all those workers died, when all those people were evicted, when all that money was taken from us by the banks, when all those bombs fell, when all that air and water were poisoned, no one in power was punished and it didn't matter whether rules were broken or followed. To speak of rules and laws is to perpetuate one of the greatest lies of our society.
What matters is that a great many more banks and cop cars will have to be thrown on the trash fire of history before we can talk about a new world, so we'd better stop getting so upset by such a modest show of resistance.
safety sue: thanks for that link article by gelderloos. I still think there were some infiltrators (police), however I did enjoy the piece and shared it with an activist friend who enjoyed it as well. True, true, true, true.
Quote from Green Groutch: "Why conflate a 'no mask' policy with 'hand em over to the police' approach? I've never heard *anyone* link the two anywhere on Rabble or Babble. The Thursday Indigenous peoples' march had a no mask policy.... so does this make them cop collaborators? Guess it does according to your logic. </quote>
I'm on the organizing committee for the Indigenous Day of Action, you little shit. You weren't there for any of the organizing or you would know what was going on, but no, you just come on here and run your fucking mouth.
And if you knew what the fuck you were talking about re: the 'no masks policy' and how that policy came about, June 24 wasn't a protest it was a Medicine Walk.
I'm not surprised to see folks trumpeting Gelderloos here, because I've noticed that those who tend to be most vociferous in these comments threads - as opposed, perhaps to babble - are folks who defend or advocate explicitly or tacitly for violent tactics - notably through 'diversity of tactics' - the umbrella tacit instrument for supporting violent tactics. G's book is entitled 'how nonviolence protects the state', he loathes the state and anything to do with it, professes a self-styled anarchism, and advocates and defends explicitly around violent tactics. None of this is helping to build potentially effective nonviolent social movements that could help advance left/green/indigenous/antiwar issues effectively (because the violent tactics drive an effective wedge between the issues and the broader public, as well as effectively drown out and displace attention from the issues onto their own spectacles), but that's not what violent tactics are about, as I've argued, they're rather a vehicle for catharsis, to vent a justifiable indignance against systemic injustice through pointless violent tactics that lead to violent spectacles...
Krystalline, you have skirted the point by avoiding the issue of support for diversity of tactics, which acts as a tacit justification for violent tactics... why not just come out and defend the violent tactics explicitly, as Gelderloos does? Or is there some reason you don't wish to do this?
p.s. readers, if it happens that you haven't signed it yet, please go to
http://ccla.org/2010/06/30/sign-the-cclas-petition-for-action-on-the-g20/
All I support is debate of different tactics which is the point of Diversity of Tactics. I state that in the article above, even though the article was not about my view on the subject.
All you're really trying to do is ride your one trick pony through every post/article on rabble.ca about how you personally feel about Diversity of Tactics like it's you and your horse's only crusade,
Why would I even want to "debate" with someone who has only one agenda on their mind; to convince the other person that they are wrong and you are right? That's not a debate, that's a one sided yelling match. I would have thought a professor would understand the difference.
You demand that other posters on rabble.ca/babble be more open minded to your views and yet you refuse to be open minded yourself.
adharden: are you referring to police tactics when you refer to violence and those advocating an/or supporting it? I ask tongue in cheek but let us be fair. It WAS the police who acted in a violent manner and this is frar from an isolated incidence although it was a spectacular incident given the numbers involved. One can agree with a piece without agreeing with everything the person has put out. I am certainly not a proponent of violence but I certainly can comprehend how some people are driven to it and I certainly am not referring to the police recently. No-one drove them to it!!
b star, in my view, folks smashing stuff and being aggressive toward police - using violent tactics and/or deliberately provoking police - helped act as a crucial pretext for the completely out-of-hand response on the 26th and 27th, the mass arrests which must be scrutinized. The smashing, destroying (violent) tactics - as well as pushing on police lines, being directly confrontational with police, etc., are all tactics in my view that helped create the whole sorry violent spectacle.
Rather we need some creativity around nonviolent tactics - because the more spectacles we get like these, the further the public is driven away from our attempts to advance left/green/indigenous/antiwar issues....
Krystalline, you seem to refuse to acknowledge that DoT acts as a tacit justification for violent tactics - am I right? How about smashing things/destroying things - property destruction? Or would you not call that 'violent'? (though smashing and destroying are, in fact violent) - what is your view on violent tactics - where do you stand? It is simply not enough to say 'hooray for DoT', when it can be pointed out that DoT is, in fact, a tacit justification for violent tactics (since they are conceived as a part of the 'diversity'... I do not accept, on that point, your and others' assertions that this 'diversity' is preferable because it mimics the 'natural world'. The existence of biodiversity does not legitimate or justify violent tactics... which in my view must be scrutinized for their harmful effect on the attempt to advance critical issues...
You support debate on different tactics - that is precisely what I am attempting to engage in. I view violent tactics - and tacit/explicit support for them - as detrimental to attempts to build nonviolent mass movements that could advance crucial issues. I believe you disagree with this, but you seem to be eminently unwilling to come out and explicitly say it, despite the fact that DoT in fact encompasses this justification. I know there are others commenting here - who defend and advocate for violent tactics - who would be interested in your clarification of this as well - in contrast to my position, which as everyone knows, criticizes violent tactics as pointless, destructive, cathartic etc. and prefers nonviolence and mass movement building....
adharden - I get your point and I agree with what you say partially. However, I do not feel that grabbing people and violently hauling them into a van and allegly sexually abusing women as was apparently done in some cells is "non-violent"! Some folks were not even part of the protests who were hauled away for heaven sake. Some of them were journalists! Cut us some slack here. It is clear in the videos - numerous video fottage - that the police were violent. We don't even know for certain who the Black Bloc are as they were wearing masks! Most people were very peaceful and trying to get important messages across which must be addressed. It must have been more than intimidating to witness these Black Cops coming at the crowd looking so surreral and ominous. The police contingent looked very menacing and people have a right to protest without being grabbed at random and thrown unto the pavement. THIS IS WHAT WAS VIOLENT. So a few people may have shouted to police officers. Was that good enough reason to randomly select people who were sitting on the grass, walking with others singing? What about Queen's Park and the man with the prosthetic and his daughter? What about the arrested people who were not even a part of the protest being selected as "Detainees"? Let's call a spade a spade and not become apologists for thugs. What happened in Toronto is being discussed worlwide and many are calling it like it is: Police brutality. Period. There is plenty of evidence to attest to the police violence. It was a breach of Civil Rights.
Maybe adharden would like to provide us with some links to video of protesters attacking police. That would be something new for me. We can certainly provide him with many videos of police attacking law-abiding, unarmed protesters. Harden would say the police were "provoked" into attacking, as if it were some kind of macho barroom brawl, where they had to defend their honour against verbal insults, or some such nonsense.
He would say the protesters didn't show enough "respect" for the police, and this excuses their wholesale attacks on demonstrators. Showing respect would mean allowing police to illegally search your person on demand; agreeing not to walk on certain streets because the police decide they don't want you to go there; running towards a burning police car because the cops tell you to go that way; clearing out of a designated free speech zone because the cops suddenly decided your right to free speech and assembly was terminated; not demanding to know why the cops were acting violently; and going peacefully to the Eastern Avenue gulag to be abused, robbed, sexually harrassed, and processed by the cops' "justice" system.
Funny, Harden never criticizes the police violence as pointless, destructive, or cathartic. Rather, he pretends it was all justified by the petty property damage done by a relative handful of demonstrators and god knows who else.
Some of us are old enough to remember the "Rodney King race riot" of 1992 in Toronto. Between 200 and 1000 people roamed up and down Yonge Street smashing hundreds of windows and looting electronics and jewellery stores. Property damage was in the millions of dollars. 37 police officers and 3 police horses were injured.
Guess how many people were arrested? 30! How many of those were charged with an actual offence? 9! Video
And Harden would have us believe that the unprecedented police violence and mass arrests of June 26-27 were just a natural reaction to the relatively small amount of property damage done by protesters.
While the rest of us are mobilizing defence committees and calling for a public inquiry into police misconduct, Harden is off on his own little quest to blame the whole thing on demonstrators and their lack of respect for the police and the state! And he shares this quest with some pretty disreputable thugs and apologists in the cops, the legislatures, and the corporate media.
Spector, I don't argue the police violence was justified.... I say it is part of a violent spectacle created by violent tactics - in this case, mostly against property, though deliberately provoking police lines is also part of the picture here.... and of course I agree - and have signed on to - the call for a g20 inquiry - this is critically necessary given what happened and the stories from the detention centre etc. But this doesn't lessen my respect for the police in the function they play in our communities in protecting us from harm. When writers come out and say 'let's strike police officers' (as they have), well, that's provocative. Folks like this likely know they will get police attention, and indeed likely want the spectacle. Tell me how any of this is advancing struggles for global justice....
In brighter news, this pony's race is up for now. I need to 'retire' from rabble/babble for a bit to work out more systematically my opposition to violent tactics and the mindset they spring from - what I'd like to playfully call 'anarcho-narcissism' (I didn't come up with that, but it fits). I believe the spectacle becomes and end unto itself for this type of mentality.... and 'diversity of tactics' perpetuates the thinking, as 'anything goes'.... including violent tactics...
So I will imagine the quiet jeers and cheers from those of you who advocate for, and defend for violent tactics along with DoT promoters from near and far - and leave the bickering and comments-tennis up here to others... It's evident to me by now that many cling to a stubborn preference for violence as a protest tactic, as pointless and cathartic as it is. Perhaps a lack of love - for things, for building movements - springs out of the revulsion for the state and the readiness to commit violence... or they're mutually reinforcing (lack of love and readiness for violence). In any case, though I would protect myself or my family from imminent danger, accepting violence as an ostensible tool for advancing social causes is insanity - political and moral...
-but that's just me - and likely many others who aren't as brazen writers as me, but cheer from the sidelines....
in peace,
-a
Not even going to leave us with a single video link of protesters attacking police?
Just some vague unattributed quote ('let's strike police officers') to prove that the police were provoked? Nothing to back up your theory that "police violence....is part of a violent spectacle created by violent tactics - in this case, mostly against property"?
Repetition of the same bumper-sticker slogans over and over again hardly amounts to reasoned argument. Saying over and over again, for example, that violence against property is merely "catharsis" doesn't prove it to be so.
Maybe while you're off working out more "systematically" what the hell you are talking about you could devote some attention to actually developing arguments, and marshalling evidence in support of them.
You might also want to apply some of your dime-store psychoanalysis to the cops as well as to the activist community.
M Spectre: Tsk Tsk - you asked for proof and the dude couldn't provide it! And......off he goes full of self-righteousness and it is all our fault, we closed-minded people on rabble. He, of course, is brilliant, open-minded and off to more astute people who kiss his feet. Sorry, we made a mistake M. Spectre and called him on his 'stuff'. Where else could he go but out unless he wanted true debate with the intent of learning and understanding. But of course there is NO video with people beating up cops. So some protesters, a small few, said "shuffle, shuffle" when the ominous black creatures walked toward them in unison!!
Adharden,
Your constant insistance that people in social justice movements fess-up to where they stand on the subject of violence is truely counter productive. Infact, it is very reminisant of experiences i have had with agent provocateurs who go out of their way to ensure protest movements remain as submissive as Santa Claus parades. It's a very successful disruptive police tactic in and of itself.
Nobody is suggesting that violent protest or property damage is the be all and end all, or that everyone should participate or even condone violent protest. Not even those who are critical of nonviolent protest can be guilty of this. Infact, I will be the first to state that both nonviolent and violent protest are needed to have successful social movements. But when fellow radicals start demanding of each other whether or not they condone or condemn violence, they stiffle the effectiveness of our movements.
If you are someone who feels compelled to condemn violence, please direct your condemnation where it counts. Towards those who control all the power and wealth in the world.
Besides, while some mainstream lefty groups feel they need to condemn the activities of the anarchist Black Bloc for obvious PR reasons, the truth is they need them. Canada's so-called legitimate protest movements need the threat of civil unrest to back them up. Groups like the anarchist Black Bloc provide this backbone. It's a kind of insurance policy that works like this. "If you don't listen to us nice folk, you'll have to contend with those not so nice folk instead". Even Gandhi and Martin Luther King operated under just such pretenses.
All the faux-liberals who ranted about exposing the black bloc protesters and denouncing them to the police will be delighted with the current police campaign to "hunt them down like rabbits".
No doubt they are busily assembling their photograph collections and emailing them off to the cops, like the good little rats and snitches they are.
snitches get stiches?