On Legitimate and Illegitimate Protest

Sean, I've reopened this thread and have addressed the offensive words.

My apologies for not responding earlier.

A 2010 G10 Protest Song.  ,,,,  

Thanks for that analysis F55.  I can't click on all the links.

Sweet! Someone just channeled Sarah Palin because I used the word "retarded". Now that's the kind of PC crap that I've come to expect and find hilarious from those who promote AnarchyTM who try to shut down any perspective other than their own that doesn't please them or to try to censor others. This is yet again another area where the insane ideological Left and insanely ideological AnarchistsTM converge with right wing fascism...politics is like a circle where those on the extreme edges are more alike than they are different. Religious fundamentalists from the right wing are no different that new age fundies from the left (and both promote unreality based thinking and are anti-science or pro-pseudoscience), same goes for the political left and right that meet at fascism at their extreme (while both claiming to be freedom fighters, of course, they just don't want freedom for anyone but themselves and view anyone not falling in line as sheeple/less than human/etc).

So, I'll say that it's probably unfair to compare your child who has a mental disability and is intellectually handicapped to one of the idiots being used by police to create the spectacle of violence for public consumption and diverting attention from what happened to peaceful protesters.

I in no way condone the arrests of anyone - particularly organizers that were arrested before they did anything (which is who are still being held, it's not actually any anarchist organizers or community oriented people who were setting police cars alight because they were already being held by the police). The riot kiddies/cops dressed as AnarchistsTM did these people a disservice too since it's the organizers that will be ultimately be held responsible - at least in the public eye. Let's be clear here - it WASN'T any anarchist organizers or people involved with  community organizing that set things on fire or broke windows because they has already all been detained. So who are you actually defending when you defend the AnarchistsTM that did this shit on the streets? Not any of the anarchists that are involved in constructive actions all year round, they'd all been taken off the streets already (and they weren't organizing violence anyway - or so I've heard through friends of those still being detained).

The other thing that no one here has considered is what this police exercise was meant to do strategically (or how idiotic it is to propose going to war and not even  understanding strategy!). The exercise was meant to scare the general population into submission and avoidance of even peaceful protest - to get us all used to this kind of militaristic presence and to self censor or to be reactive (instead of active) so any resistence is easy to see and quash. The other object was to train the police force to treat people in this way. Sure some cops are total power tripping nutbags, so are some activists - we live in a society that promotes narcissism and the idea that it's quite acceptable to feel entitled to use any means necessary to attain one's personal objectives and to use others as objects to fulfill one's personal desires (rather than fellow humans). Empathy is the antidote to narcissism, not more narcissism. Like it or not, cops are also human beings and, like soldiers, they need to be trained to see all citizens as the Other so that they can do horrible things to them (it's also why they give them anonymity via riot gear and no badge numbers, or by going undercover). It's also why we dehumanize cops (not that they don't do a good job themselves already) so we can justify doing or advocating violence against them. As long as you're doing the same thing as the people you hate, you are being the people you hate. Freedom isn't being in reaction to others, it's choosing action instead of being defined by others actions (or the cycles of reaction that violent conflict almost always is).

And I'm not trying to dehumanize the riot kiddies and other people who broke stuff (though they obviously took steps to dehumanize themselves in the same way the police force does - by being anonymous and hiding their faces, a strategy that's very useful when fighting Scientologists and in some other instances when one is being subversive but which is counterproductive when you're trying to get people to understand the human cost and empathize with the other victims of our current political system, or to see themselves in the protesters and understand that the repressive tactics could equally be used against them because the protesters are "just people like them"). Quite the opposite, I think it's important to put faces and names to people - including those who use anonymity or "the group" to justify doing shitty things to other people, be they cops or those who claim to be activists - because this is what humanizes us to each other. Sure it's much easier to shut down cognitive dissonance if you engage in binary and black/white (or good/evil for those who see things via the lens of religion) rather than actually allowing for the complexity of reality and being human. However, then you're trapped by the same kind of mental prison as those you hate are. Your very thoughts aren't free anymore, they're trapped in a binary prison that purely about reaction and never about conscious action. And this makes it very, very easy to predict what you will do and to manipulate you because, despite the claims to Direct Action, you're simply reacting and your actions are being determined by others (as well as your feelings and thoughts being manipulated too). Small "a" anarchists know this, they can think rhizomatically and can see third options rather than being trapped in binary reaction. And that's why the truly dangerous anarchists who do actually act were scooped up before the protests and only the AnarchistsTM who were either plants or known to be reactionary were left to play their pre-arranged role in this spectacle created to justify amping up police and military spending in Canada (because it's really about the money at the end of the day and creating a market for Halliburton and Blackwater here).