...and if weekend marches of hundreds of thousands don't work (which they likely won't) you will have no choice but to follow the Blocs lead.

So I wouldn't be too quick to condemn Mr. Phelps, especially with a simplistic, generalized and exaggerated puff-piece such as this. I know some people who have participated in Black Bloc protests and they certainly aren't what you presume them to be in the final paragraphs of your article.

Then you have the organized Black Bloc, like at the G20 in Canada last year.

Burning a police car conveniently left unattended, taking away the message of peaceful protesters. Dominating the news!

Something tells me they were incited and well financed well to do their Black-Bloc tactics.

Give us a break - the media is corporate-controlled. If they hadn't had the anarchists to focus on, they would have found something else. You won't ever get meaningful coverage of an anti-corporate point of view. That's why peaceful demonstrations no longer work.

I hate to think we will have "no choice" but go that way because I think it would likely bring on a level of repression beyond what is already happening, but as always I could be wrong. I think it is just barely possible that the public's "hearts and minds" could be won if the best communicators gave it a try. Odds are against anything working but I could be wrong about that too and hope I am.

I'm certainly in no position to determine whether the "black bloc" vandals deplored in this article are: 1) professional or amateur agents provocateur; 2) genuine bona-fide activists who believe that aggressively targeting property and violently resisting state law enforcers is a necessary and appropriate component of political protest and dissent, à la the title character in "V for Vendetta"; 3) hooligans happy for a chance to indulge in a bit of gratuitous non-homicidal ultra-violence; 4) some or all of the above.

I lean towards alternative "4", because it stands to reason that if there were no legitimate, honest violent protestors, the state security services would supply them. It's beyond question that government law enforcement agencies find such tactics irresistible.

So, whether one considers them a "bug" or a "feature" of mass protest, it's a safe bet that they're here to stay. SOMEBODY is always going to be on hand to break a few large plate-glass windows, upend and torch a motor vehicle(s), or throw paint balloons and/or bags of poop at the cops.

The question arises whether entirely predictable clichéd articles like this one are a "bug" or a "feature". Writing as one who is no stranger to gratuitious, self-indulgent commentary, I recognize it when I see it.

Really, what is the point of this routine hand-wringing, deploring, and scolding the perps for Ruining Things for Responsible Protestors apart from its cathartic effect?

At face value, it ostensibly is directed (however indirectly) at the "black bloc" itself: a hybrid scolding and plea to the Unruly Few to recognize and acknowledge the fallacy and counter-productivity of their actions-- and damn it, knock it off!

But is it at all likely that any of the above-listed hypothetical categories would respond favorably to such appeals to moderation and reason? After all, the True Believers have surely thought through the trite objections raised by the author, for better or worse. And the provocateurs, by definition, glory in discrediting dissent and protest.

Paradoxically, on a deeper level it seems wretched and desperately self-flagellating-- as if the author were afterwards sheepishly knocking on the door like a mortified parent at the Halls of Power, or the modest dwellings of appalled Decent Folk, to apologize for the bad behavior, and contritely confessing that it turned a respectable protest into something spoiled and unfit.

As illogical and counter-intuitive as it may seem, if one is unable to find virtue or redeeming qualities to aggressive, violent protest, the better part of valor is to refuse to be sucked into this compulsive condemnation and rejection of the "black bloc" element.

That is, one must avoid the dilemma, the trap, of feeling compelled to explicitly denounce and condemn the "black bloc" lest one is accused of "condoning" it.

I'd respect a critic who turned the apologetics around, and simply asserted that while they didn't agree with, support, or condone these actions, they are obviously inevitable and incapable of being suppressed or controlled. Thus, there is no point in succumbing to the distraction by validating them with even negative attention, and thereby allowing them to undermine legitimate political protest and dissent. Love them or loathe them, they are what they are.

In short, note that for the reasons given above that really ARE beside the point. This approach may go over the heads of simple-minded and unreflective readers, who in any case are likely to go around and around on an intellectual carousel of two-dimensional wooden props. But IMO, it beats the hell out of this kind of reflexive pearl-clutching.

The "Black Bloc" has been thoroughly infiltrated by the police, to the effect that their actions are a deliberate ruse meant to discredit opposition to the ruling order and provide pictures by which corporate media presentation of this opposition will be framed. It is naive to think otherwise, just like it is naive to be upset at the corporate media for not portraying opposition in a positive light.

Film them and identify them publicly by name

I am an anarchist.And I have nothing to do with the black bloc. BUT ALSO I will never ever align with academic elites against black bloc vandalism. I don't do it. I don't think it is productive. But pansy ass lining uip with signs and yelling 'shame' at the ruling class sure don't get the goods either. This british and american no matter what happens alignment with complete non direct action is gross and irresponsible when our gov'ts killed hundreds of thousands of people.
I just gotta say, you liberals are lucky us radicals are not more violent. Cuz you should be the target as much as the bushes and clintons. Especially the academics preaching to us proles 'how to act'.
My god, I'm in the richest country in the world, and all city and state govts are throwing people on the street, then having police throw them in prison, while we bomb innocent people every day.
This liberal 'agast' about some property destroying small amount of radicals is the most tired fucking song I've been hearing for twenty years. YOUR govt is bombing innocent women and children every day. KILLING people.
you are lucky we don't do worse.....and come for you liberals and conseravtives in your homes.....I mean really. WE are restraining ourselves.
Considering we are in a state that is committing war crimes daily.

It is clear from the behavior and politics of the "black block" here on the west coast that they have been thoroughly penetrated by the police and their politics favor the Zionists in general. "Anti-fascist" now equates to Zionist, their current goal, stop the people who would stop the New World Order Agenda, Stop those who would raise the banner "Boycott Israel"

Thankfully some posters already called 'bullshit' on this horrid little piece. I wanted to add one thing, and that is to also call this PoS writer out on abusing the IWW's cartoon in the service of his urbane liberalism, a perversion of the Wobblie's own history, which is replete with things breaking in the name of struggle.
Cosmopolitan assholes like Phelps are easily as big an obstacle towards justice as anything the Right can muster.
If you add up the record of these big, beautiful marches, I believe the success rate in the last thirty years--both in the UK and in the US--is approximately zero.
But I guess for guys like Phelps, it's the form that counts, not the results. After all, I imagine he's not especially uncomfortable in the neoliberal economy.

This is an old story. Disruption and stealing of headlines by provocatuers went on all the time during the Vietnam War protests, and have a long history before then.

there is no reason to show contempt or wet your pants name-calling people who hold signs or do black block or whatever. tommys1961 has the same attitude as the author and the same credibility. this article is crap, and holding signs is important...masses voicing an opinion is important...all kinds of things are important. putting signs out in public that do anything better than advertise product is important.

all this is important, and all this is absolutely necessary. other people's sacrifices, attitudes and willingness to work or miss work to advocate for sanity may not comply with our needs and attitudes, but that doesn't make our attitudes/efforts credible, honest or better than their activities.

They were MI5. Here is an instructive video of a Canadian trade-unionist outing RCMP agents provocateurs at a demonstration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow

Just what I'd expect from The Nation.

"Be good little boys & girls now or the media won't pay attention to you."

Blah, blah, blah.

This article is pure hyperbole:
Writing: "They have at least enough money and privilege to risk a night or two in jail and to pay the fines"
...Is as ignorant as if the writer had said: "They are too poor and underprivileged for it to matter that they are in jail for a night or two".

Assumption based upon what?
The writer's extensive research?
Maybe he should try writing about the media's bias in under-reporting the number of people at demonstrations no matter what happens.

Sorry, but good old fashioned protesting just isn't as sexy as someone getting an ass kicking. Hang in there. Keep marching. Pretty soon those who have scammed you in the media will have finally shot themselves in the foot enough and have to hobble along side your protests. They'll not be sorry, remorseful, or humble, but they'll get their own ass kicking at some point. YOU MUST out voice them, publish your own stuff, go door to door with petitions...whatever.

In order to have undermined a movement, the black block tactics would have to have been less effective than those of the rest of the protest. Advocates of non-violence have always spoken of the efficacy of their methods in achieving social change without pointing to a lot of empirical proof. Gandhi is often cited as an example of the efficacy of non-violent social change.

I've always felt uncomfortable about the use of the Gandhian example to demonstrate the superiority of nonviolence to violence. Moral considerations aside, the Gandhian nonviolent experiment does not conclusively prove that nonviolent social protest resulted in the departure of the British Empire from India. The Gandhian movement certainly did some good, but is not necessarily the ultimate reason why the British left India. Why the British chose to depart in 1947 may have to do more with movements that advocated violence than with the Gandhian nonviolent struggle. During the war years, the Quit India movement went from being one of pure nonviolence to bombing of railway stations and other forms of property destruction against the British Empire. Also the Indian National Army, a national liberation army fighting with Japan against Britain, drawn mainly from British-Indian POWs played an important role. While the INA was not militarily successful, politically they were very successful. The British government tried 3 of the ringleaders of the INA at the end of the war. The trials generated massive public sympathy and strikes and riots broke out all over the country. Indian Navy sailors, considered to be more loyal to the Empire than the army, mutinied and commandeered several warships and briefly engaged their British pursuers. At this point the British realized the game was up, figuring that maintaining neo-colonial economic relations while ceding political control to a somewhat friendly Indian government dominated by the Congress would be a better result than being thrown out by force of arms by mutineers or an armed movement like the INA. Unfortunately, the INA trials and the Bombay Mutiny did not end up being part of the official history of Indian independence, and the version of history favored by the Indian National Congress has prevailed. If you look into this history you'll find though that the most conclusive proof offered of the efficacy of non-violent struggle, the Gandhian struggle for Indian independence, does not conclusively prove that non-violent social movements are more successful than ones than favor property destruction or outright violence.

Thus the question could be asked whether the Black block undermined the march or whether the march's deliberate choice of the tactics it chooses to pursue undermined the Black Bloc by not using tactics that would provoke rapid and systemic change.

"They fail to value the far more important outpouring of humanity".

Pretty condescending and misguided anylysis there, by Phelps.

If Phelps' numbers are right, his "revolutionary anarchists" amount to one in thousand - 1/1000 = 1 permille - of the demonstrators. With the (western) world being as it is, it'd be hard to find a demonstration with a smaller part of frustrated, misgruntled, undisciplined "youth" - who probably have suffered long from police injustices, unheard legitimate complaints, lack of free expression, etc.

In addition, there's the media's bent to focus on anything dramatic, exceptional, picturesque, and - yes - negative. Plus dominantly eager to find any distraction from the criticism the demonstration carried. That's probably more to blame for the distractions that "stole the headlines from the 500,000 other protesters", than the perceived unity of a really unorganized and disgruntled part of people amounting to the falsely perceived "black block".

The smug condescension of Phelps is unbelievable. As if the fight is lost or won in the media's descriptions only, he won't allow even one in a thousand to deviate from his iron line of "labour union strength".

As the global class war hardens, Phelps won't allow anyone to "confuse vandalism with radicalism". As if there's no "vandalism" from the "capitalist extremes" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere.

No - it seems any fight against "capitalist extremes" must happen on their terms: nicely, calmly, politely, orderly - and ineffectually. Meanwhile Mr. Phelps can "nicely, calmly, politely, orderly" - and effectually - collect income from his professorial tenure. And rail against anyone less fortunate and informed.

A soft-bellied liberal never feeling the desperation in the world himself.

In stead of trying to command the waves to stop, Lecturer Phelps should lecture the powers in place that their policies create the disorderliness and frustration that always pretty reasonably show up in demonstrations. It's about the only possible outlet for the pressure of the less privileged and less reflected.

The American Natives were always pretty reasonable in their negotiations with the "Powers in place". Much because of that, they were slaughtered wholesale. Still they're reviled in history as "the savage indian". The victors write the history. But sometimes the crushers of demonstrations at any pretext don't come out so good: Nazi Germany being a case in point, where demonstrations all through the 1930'ies were denounced for being led by "communists" and "jews".

The media-constituted "black block" isn't unified enough for any epithet apart from being clad in black. So that'll have to serve, for now, it seems. Blame them also of "anarchism", which is a direction of political thinking sufficiently undoctrinal and unspecified to serve any attack, without an organized answer back.

"Black block anarchists" indeed... These are mostly individual people, doing what some couragous people always do: express themselves by any means available.

Oh, and remember the bloc was likely a manufactured piece of work by the people being protested.
Afterall, if the US cheesy governnment slime can blow up their own buildings in order to start a war...someone can certainly pay a few deadbeats or prisoners to dress in black and break a few windows.
Do yourselves a big favor and do NOT blame anarchists or true revolutionaries for this. They may save the world one day. Find out who those pricks are and nail down their price.

The problem with the black bloc is that it is easily infiltrated due to its tactics, not unlike the more extreme ultra-left factions that were in fact fronts for fascism in Europe in the 1970s. The police indeed have been shown since Genoa in 2001 to easily use the black bloc cover for provocations of their own. And even when genuine, the parasitic relationship between certain elements and larger social protests that are organized democratically is a constant worry.

Unfortunately, the tactical issue has been very difficult to pull away from the general sectarian disease infecting the hard left, where "Lefter than thou" attitudes makes it difficult to have an honest debate. On the other hand, it seems only the English-speaking world has this fear of getting down and dirty in the streets, due to the hostile media climate. In Libya, the protesters were armed and in Syria, the protesters are actually violent, setting fire to buildings and attacking shops. But if the Murdochian press is against you, then even one instance of violence will be played up regardless.

I would not blame the black blocks, but the media for focusing upon the idiotic violence of the few.

Of course, the MSM has an agenda which is in sync with its rick masters.

The police don't kettle these black block protesters? Have you heard of agents provocateurs? Surely the police use these people so that the rest of the demonstration need not be taken seriously. In Canada and the U.S. we know that such activities are actually done by members of the police departments.

What grates on me is Phelps' appropriation of the IWW and Ernest Riebe's marvelously subversive "Mr. Block" comic strips. Those guys _were_ the closest thing to the Black Blocs of their day -- treated as so many troublemakers by all the forces of respectability, including the mainstream trade-union leadership. They advocated and practiced sabotage (socially responsible sabotage, which caused property destruction -- this is generally the ethic of the Black Blocs -- rather than irresponsible sabotage, defined as actions that could injure or kill fellow workers). They knew from hard experience that it doesn't matter how orderly and polite you are -- the press will more or less always see things from the perspective of the bosses. Mr. Block's folly is always to see things from the perspective of the press.
I'm not a fan of the Black Bloc as a tactic, but this kind of critique is stale enough to begin with -- Phelps' tacking on a perversely Block-headed history lesson makes it just ridiculous.

Phelps = another gatekeeper pushing the boss-approved narrative as cover for the fascist infiltrators.

What is the day rate for a Blak Bloc protest buster. The Kops, the Korporations, and the Korrupt MSM have a dogeared playbook on suppressing the expression of any sentiments that don't conform to the approved storyline.

Smarter's Youtube link reveals so much about the fakery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow

Every authoritarian knows the drill, all the way back to the Pinkerton's in US history.

"And he wonders why capitalist extremes continue uninterrupted...."

Yes, it must be the fault of the black block militants at the rally. Not the unionists who haven't figured out that there is a global war against labor being fought by capital.

How did they overthrow Mubarak in Egypt? The anti government demonstrators swarmed Mubarak's police goons by the millions, beat the shit out of them, burned their vehicles and stations and routed them from the streets of Egypt. That's how you win your rights. Egyptians would still be getting tortured by Mubarak's police goons if they went about protesting his regime the way naive Western liberals would.

All this article does is gloss over the screaming question:

WHY AREN'T SUCH PROTESTS ORGANIZED ENOUGH TO POLICE THEMSELVES!!

Why are "black-bloc" types CONSTANTLY treated as a disease which protest organizers can do nothing about?

Proper organization would ensure that any persons going so far off the program of the day would be stopped in their tracks before they had a chance to work their destructive magic and become a matter for the police.

If this man and others don't want such folks going wild during their protests, they should take the time to bother to equip their organization with the means to hinder them -BEFORE the protest!

Organized volunteers of "peace-keepers" can -and have in the past- handle the rowdies and (shock) CALL THE COPS ON THEM FIRST if they cannot be controlled by the organizers.

Since this "black-bloc" phenomenon has been widely known to be a problem since at least Seattle '99, surely any protest today should be ready to deal with them and disassociate from loudly in the media BEFORE they cause their inevitable pointless ruckus!?!

This is what happens when protests are the exclusive domain of people responding to "issues" and government action instead of a unified organization pursuing a real political agenda.

When your leaders have proven too weak, the possibility that YOU should be the leader must be faced.

-matti.