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The Cancer in Occupy
The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power. They were shut down because they articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines. And they were shut down because they were places mothers and fathers with strollers felt safe.
Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment. They confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution. The real enemies, they argue, are not the corporate capitalists, but their collaborators among the unions, workers’ movements, radical intellectuals, environmental activists and populist movements such as the Zapatistas. Any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, rather than physically destroy, becomes, in the eyes of Black Bloc anarchists, the enemy. Black Bloc anarchists spend most of their fury not on the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or globalism, but on those, such as the Zapatistas, who respond to the problem. It is a grotesque inversion of value systems.
Because Black Bloc anarchists do not believe in organization, indeed oppose all organized movements, they ensure their own powerlessness. They can only be obstructionist. And they are primarily obstructionist to those who resist. John Zerzan, one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement in the United States, defended “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the rambling manifesto by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, although he did not endorse Kaczynski’s bombings. Zerzan is a fierce critic of a long list of supposed sellouts starting with Noam Chomsky. Black Bloc anarchists are an example of what Theodore Roszak in “The Making of a Counter Culture” called the “progressive adolescentization” of the American left.
In Zerzan’s now defunct magazine Green Anarchy (which survives as a website) he published an article by someone named “Venomous Butterfly” that excoriated the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN). The essay declared that “not only are those [the Zapatistas’] aims not anarchist; they are not even revolutionary.” It also denounced the indigenous movement for “nationalist language,” for asserting the right of people to “alter or modify their form of government” and for having the goals of “work, land, housing, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace.” The movement, the article stated, was not worthy of support because it called for “nothing concrete that could not be provided by capitalism.”
“Of course,” the article went on, “the social struggles of exploited and oppressed people cannot be expected to conform to some abstract anarchist ideal. These struggles arise in particular situations, sparked by specific events. The question of revolutionary solidarity in these struggles is, therefore, the question of how to intervene in a way that is fitting with one’s aims, in a way that moves one’s revolutionary anarchist project forward.”
Solidarity becomes the hijacking or destruction of competing movements, which is exactly what the Black Bloc contingents are attempting to do with the Occupy movement.
“The Black Bloc can say they are attacking cops, but what they are really doing is destroying the Occupy movement,” the writer and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me when I reached him by phone in California. “If their real target actually was the cops and not the Occupy movement, the Black Bloc would make their actions completely separate from Occupy, instead of effectively using these others as a human shield. Their attacks on cops are simply a means to an end, which is to destroy a movement that doesn’t fit their ideological standard.”
“I don’t have a problem with escalating tactics to some sort of militant resistance if it is appropriate morally, strategically and tactically,” Jensen continued. “This is true if one is going to pick up a sign, a rock or a gun. But you need to have thought it through. The Black Bloc spends more time attempting to destroy movements than they do attacking those in power. They hate the left more than they hate capitalists.”
“Their thinking is not only nonstrategic, but actively opposed to strategy,” said Jensen, author of several books, including “The Culture of Make Believe.” “They are unwilling to think critically about whether one is acting appropriately in the moment. I have no problem with someone violating boundaries [when] that violation is the smart, appropriate thing to do. I have a huge problem with people violating boundaries for the sake of violating boundaries. It is a lot easier to pick up a rock and throw it through the nearest window than it is to organize, or at least figure out which window you should throw a rock through if you are going to throw a rock. A lot of it is laziness.”
Groups of Black Bloc protesters, for example, smashed the windows of a locally owned coffee shop in November in Oakland and looted it. It was not, as Jensen points out, a strategic, moral or tactical act. It was done for its own sake. Random acts of violence, looting and vandalism are justified, in the jargon of the movement, as components of “feral” or “spontaneous insurrection.” These acts, the movement argues, can never be organized. Organization, in the thinking of the movement, implies hierarchy, which must always be opposed. There can be no restraints on “feral” or “spontaneous” acts of insurrection. Whoever gets hurt gets hurt. Whatever gets destroyed gets destroyed.
There is a word for this—“criminal.”
The Black Bloc movement is infected with a deeply disturbing hypermasculinity. This hypermasculinity, I expect, is its primary appeal. It taps into the lust that lurks within us to destroy, not only things but human beings. It offers the godlike power that comes with mob violence. Marching as a uniformed mass, all dressed in black to become part of an anonymous bloc, faces covered, temporarily overcomes alienation, feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness and loneliness. It imparts to those in the mob a sense of comradeship. It permits an inchoate rage to be unleashed on any target. Pity, compassion and tenderness are banished for the intoxication of power. It is the same sickness that fuels the swarms of police who pepper-spray and beat peaceful demonstrators. It is the sickness of soldiers in war. It turns human beings into beasts.
Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.
“We run on,” Erich Maria Remarque wrote in “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “overwhelmed by this wave that bears us along, that fills us with ferocity, turns us into thugs, into murderers, into God only knows what devils: this wave that multiplies our strength with fear and madness and greed of life, seeking and fighting for nothing but our deliverance.”
The corporate state understands and welcomes the language of force. It can use the Black Bloc’s confrontational tactics and destruction of property to justify draconian forms of control and frighten the wider population away from supporting the Occupy movement. Once the Occupy movement is painted as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob we are finished. If we become isolated we can be crushed. The arrests last weekend in Oakland of more than 400 protesters, some of whom had thrown rocks, carried homemade shields and rolled barricades, are an indication of the scale of escalating repression and a failure to remain a unified, nonviolent opposition. Police pumped tear gas, flash-bang grenades and “less lethal” rounds into the crowds. Once protesters were in jail they were denied crucial medications, kept in overcrowded cells and pushed around. A march in New York called in solidarity with the Oakland protesters saw a few demonstrators imitate the Black Bloc tactics in Oakland, including throwing bottles at police and dumping garbage on the street. They chanted “Fuck the police” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay / NYPD go away.”
This is a struggle to win the hearts and minds of the wider public and those within the structures of power (including the police) who are possessed of a conscience. It is not a war. Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality. The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner “Bull” Connor was a thug who would overreact.
The Black Bloc’s thought-terminating cliché of “diversity of tactics” in the end opens the way for hundreds or thousands of peaceful marchers to be discredited by a handful of hooligans. The state could not be happier. It is a safe bet that among Black Bloc groups in cities such as Oakland are agents provocateurs spurring them on to more mayhem. But with or without police infiltration the Black Bloc is serving the interests of the 1 percent. These anarchists represent no one but themselves. Those in Oakland, although most are white and many are not from the city, arrogantly dismiss Oakland’s African-American leaders, who, along with other local community organizers, should be determining the forms of resistance.
The explosive rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement came when a few women, trapped behind orange mesh netting, were pepper-sprayed by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. The violence and cruelty of the state were exposed. And the Occupy movement, through its steadfast refusal to respond to police provocation, resonated across the country. Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.
The Black Bloc movement bears the rigidity and dogmatism of all absolutism sects. Its adherents alone possess the truth. They alone understand. They alone arrogate the right, because they are enlightened and we are not, to dismiss and ignore competing points of view as infantile and irrelevant. They hear only their own voices. They heed only their own thoughts. They believe only their own clichés. And this makes them not only deeply intolerant but stupid.
“Once you are hostile to organization and strategic thinking the only thing that remains is lifestyle purity,” Jensen said. “ ‘Lifestylism’ has supplanted organization in terms of a lot of mainstream environmental thinking. Instead of opposing the corporate state, [lifestylism maintains] we should use less toilet paper and should compost. This attitude is ineffective. Once you give up on organizing or are hostile to it, all you are left with is this hyperpurity that becomes rigid dogma. You attack people who, for example, use a telephone. This is true with vegans and questions of diet. It is true with anti-car activists toward those who drive cars. It is the same with the anarchists. When I called the police after I received death threats I became to Black Bloc anarchists ‘a pig lover.’ ”
“If you live on Ogoni land and you see that Ken Saro-Wiwa is murdered for acts of nonviolent resistance,” Jensen said, “if you see that the land is still being trashed, then you might think about escalating. I don’t have a problem with that. But we have to go through the process of trying to work with the system and getting screwed. It is only then that we get to move beyond it. We can’t short-circuit the process. There is a maturation process we have to go through, as individuals and as a movement. We can’t say, ‘Hey, I’m going to throw a flowerpot at a cop because it is fun.’ ”
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Show AllThe police encourage and often are the Black Bloc. The entire Black Bloc at the Democratic National Comvention in Denver was made up of the police. I witnessed all 12 of them arrive in police vehicles. They all had the same clothing to hide their faces and their crew cuts. Activists must get wise. The authorities send in people to break windows to discredit our work and provide justification for their clamp down. They have been organizing Black Blocs and other such groups for decades. Yes some people that have fallen for the theory that we will rise up following the vangard of those breaking windows are recruited by the police and are used to give the impression that he violence is done by "real" activists. I am so happy Jenson is speaking out. The police use Jenson's books to promote violence. I have a friend doing 20 years in prison even though he didn't even suggest an act of violence because the Federal Government could use the Black Bloc and Jenson's books to give the jury the impression he was a terrorist. Thanks so much Derrick for your good input. All he had done was volunteer with Food Not Bombs. This is a struggle we have been involved in for over 30 years.
Thank you, tofu (and Birdbrain Alley) for your interesting thoughts.
Tofu -- Could I ask the name of your friend who is doing 20 years in prison for volunteering for Food Not Bombs?
It is not that I don't believe the U.S. is using the 'terrorism' canard to try to destroy environmental and political activists. In reality, extremely brutal and grotesque sentences are given to people resisting corporate power based on their principles.
Look at the sentence of 23 years handed down to Jeff Luers for setting a couple of SUVs on fire. (If he been trying to commit insurance fraud with the arson, the sentence would have been comparatively miniscule.)
Fortunately, due to the support of human rights activists, organizers, and defense lawyers, Leurs was released after ONLY a decade in prison.
http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/2009/12/jeff-leurs-is-out-of-prison/
U.S. state repression has particularly targeted anyone involved in environmental "terrorism" with surveillance, agent provocateurs, and draconian sentences (the "hammer" as Ashcroft put it.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-rise-fall-of-the-eco-radical-underground-20110621
We can see the abuse of Bradley Manning (and the 'legal' plotting against Julian Assange) for the simple act of revealing the crimes of the U.S. military.
Still 20 years for helping Food Not Bombs sounds a little heavy handed even for Ashcroft & Holder.
In the 60s and 70s when there was a mass movement, the Weather Underground believed they could catalyze a violent revolution in the U.S. Admittedly complex, did they misread the historical tea leaves and undermine the political left? (Below an interesting essay by Ron Jacobs who has written a history of the Weather Underground.)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/07/26/thinking-about-the-weather-underground/
For the people making simple-minded comments on anarchism (e.g. Lanista), some education would be helpful. While some anarchists have employed violence to try to promote their cause ("Propaganda of the deed"), the State ALWAYS uses violence to support its causes.
There are many brilliant and thoughtful anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin (Mutual Aid)-- so it might be worth understanding the history of the movement.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/KropotkinCW.html
Anarchism in general is not opposed to organization; this is a complete misunderstanding of the political philosophy. It is opposed to hierarchical and repressive forms of organization.
Orwell has an insightful description of the anarchists running Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War (he was fighting as part of a Trotskyist contingent) in his book Homage to Catalonia.
Most of Hedges criticisms of Black Bloc seem worth considering. If demonstrators shove police aside to come to the aid of a comrade being beaten, that seems like a perfectly reasonable action. Smashing through police barricades to escape their violence makes perfect sense, too.
However, random acts of violence against cops (throwing bricks, etc. to elicit a violent response) hardly seems helpful. Smashing windows and gutting local businesses are hardly going to bring down Wall Street.
Nothing the corporate elites would rather do than change the subject to the window smashing antics of some 'lawless desperadoes' dressed as crazed ninjas.
There is no mass movement and Black Bloc isn't helping to build one. The cops are going to try to kick your ass no matter how law abiding and pacifist you are, but why give them a cover for their actions?
And since some people seem to believe that Black Bloc is now primarily composed of police 'agent provocateurs', isn't that grounds for condemning their actions such as Hedges is doing?
Why not baby strollers at OWS? Certainly a baby in a stroller provided one of the most emblematic moments of State violence in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. (About 5 minutes into the massacre on the Odessa Steps. Any resemblance between the Czarist troops & Cossacks, and the Oakland PD is purely intentional.)
http://purseandpulse.blogspot.com/2011/02/film-101-odessa-steps.html
One of the reasons Hedges includes a discussion with Derrick Jensen is because Jensen has been very critical of absolute pacifism in his writings and talks. Jensen argues that eventually violence in defense of nature against corporate capitalism is almost inevitable. Ironically, he's been accused of promoting violence by advocates of absolute pacifism, which he considers hopelessly naive.
In this case, however, Jensen believes that Black Bloc actions in destroying property, attacking police, etc. are infantile and counter-productive to creating a mass movement of resistance. Whether they are heavily infiltrated by agent provocateurs or not, seems like Jensen has a case.
Randy G, very well said sir.
Tofu said:
" I have a friend doing 20 years in prison even though he didn't even suggest an act of violence because the Federal Government could use the Black Bloc and Jenson's books to give the jury the impression he was a terrorist."
I'm glad that you brought this up for a very apt reason. We have a number of posters today using all sorts of macho rhetoric to up the ante on the CD public's acceptance of violent push-back. When posters go on record who do not hold the immunity of those in uniform, and state that they support the use of violence, that material stays ON the record. And now that NDAA has stripped away some of the most fundamental rights of citizenry, as Bush's press secretary put it, "You'd best be careful of what you say."
I don't want to feel that Free Speech is entirely lost. Yet it's another matter entirely if trained personnel are monitoring this site, and specifically using messaging that's designed to get people to go on record in support of violence.
This is not the l960s. Important laws have been gutted since.
Love you, Chris!
For me any act of civil disobedience should be non-violent. Any participant, by definition needs to fully accept the legal consequences of the act if it is to have any moral authority. A covert act, is im my view, cowardly.
What is the alternative to non-violence? Proponents of violent tactics usually use examples of pure self defense, like escaping from a concentration camp during WWII. Even if this is a moral act- it has nothing to do with a social movement seeking to empower, raise consciousness and radically transform a system-without destroying it. As for those wishing to destroy it- I have observed the following- no democratic participation, little vision for the future and a remarkable capacity to enjoy the benefits of the current system- while calling for its downfall.
There is a dialectic- it is true that corporations and government are corrupt, amoral, dangerous, etc. It is true that We the People is being replaced by We the Corporations. But it is also true that the choices over hundreds of years that have led to this- were made by individuals.
Inner, spiritual transformation is as important as changes in power structures- otherwise. new power structures will arise as abusive as the ones they replaced. Acts of violence are antithetical to any spiritual transformation. The mind is the ultimate prison. Violence is a short cut that destroys those who use it- the byproduct of a fearful, distorted mind.
Violence IS the issue.
Sorry, but the breaking of inaminate glass, particularly that of a big bank or other malevolant corproation, is not violence. Period.
Sorry, violence or not, breaking glass or anything else is STUPID and counter-productive as a tactic. And to do it while hiding behind a mask and running from the scene is COWARDLY. Period.
JulieP, fight a security agent one on one and then contemplate if you feel cowardly. Destroying implements of repression takes courage, do a test case and see how you feel. Though as a Pacifist I object to harming sentient beings.
This right here is why the left in this country gets stomped to oblivion.
Holding up signs while waiting for the police to torture you is not much of a protest let alone a movement that worries the establishment.
We should be doing actions that debilitate harmful institutions. Even if if it's "just a protest" (i.e. signs and chanting or theater), do the flash mob thing and get your butt home safely. Do the action and get out, live to fight another day. There's no point in becoming a martyr, giving a sadistic cop his jollies and being either ignored or mocked by the media for your trouble.
Americans like a perceived winner, and those who do and get away with it are perceived winners. This is a culture which has ZERO appreciation for being beaten and dragged away nonviolently. This smears LOSER stink all over the left.
As the 25 year old album from Conflict (an anarchist band - uh-oh!) was titled - "From Protest to Resistance!"
Anonymous has the right idea. Those people aren't cowards, they're genius superheroes.
Julian Assange had a lot of the same ideas in his tract (which I read). One of the first thoughts that occured to me was that his ideas were really good.
A further thought that occured to me was that neither Anonymous, or Assange, really came out of the tradition of nonviolent mass pacifist protest/universal personal spiritual transformation or nothing-and the reason why is because these traditions are just that: traditions. They're stale, mostly ineffective, and not surprisingly, fiercely defended by people like Parson Hedges who most of the time sounded more like a defeatist than an anarchist (although they're not exactly mutually exclusive).
LJG100 and Chris Hedges are correct in my humble opinion.
The power of OWS has been/is the fact that it's a non-violent movement. Non violence was one of the conditions set forth at the founding of OWS and that condition must be adhered to if the movement is to retain its force/integrity.
The verbal and physical assaults on the cops are all counterproductive at every level. The movement as a whole becomes tarnished and discredited. Cops become even more emboldened/motivated to escalate and to indiscriminately punish the innocent. And cops who have a proclivity toward smashing heads and causing paint/terror/injury are given an open invitation/opportunity to indulge their own corrupt impulses when they can point to a violent act on the part of OWS......even if it's some "anarchist" who's throwing an object from 60 feet away from the police line. Even an empty plastic juice bottle becomes a threat to them as they don't know what might be in the liquid residue that lands in their eye or on thier skin.
Violence provokes fear and anger and rage and retaliation...and in the case of the cops, that retaliation can be massively disproportionate and lethal.
Whatever power and credibility and moral authority has been accrued by OWS has been paid for with the blood and pain and suffering of innocents who have been subjected to unjust violence at the hands of the police so long as the incidents were recorded and broadcast to the world at large.
OWS has achieved much! It has been greatly responsible for advancing public consciousness and the public conscience vis a vis the reality of massive income inequality and economic injustice.
If someone is going to engage in civil disobedience, one must first and foremost, be civl.
We do not live in a situation like Nazi Germany where it would certainly be appropriate to resist by any means necessary.
Hedges is correct to condemn those who would try to co-opt the OWS movement from the hard ideological extremist left who's agendas are deadly toxic to a non-violent movement.
Inner transformation on a massive scale is required...believing in it's being "Spiritual" is totally optional......ultimately real (r)evolution is a struggle for the hearts and minds of the people. Aggressive violence is inherently maleficent and pathological. IT may be cathartic for some...for a while, but it produces nothing of lasting value.
Hedges' metaphor of cancer is appropriate, violence is a cancer that feeds off of human society in general and of OWS in particular.
It is a brilliant article and it lays out what is going to happen to the Occupy movement. There is a basic misunderstanding among progressives that they are going to win based on *right* and facts no matter what they do. That is not going to happen ever. Not here, not anyplace on the planet. That is not how battles are won and Occupy, thanks in part to the black block are losing it.
Want to see a struggle that overcame? Look at Ghandi in India or MLK here. Non-violence always wins in the end if you don't move to violence.
Gahndi 'won' in India because he successfully threatened to destabilize British economic control and interests in the area. If that isn't violence, I don't know what metric you are using...
I don't see any mental or physical violence with what Gandhi did. Gandhi wanted peace and freedom from oppression. By leaving India alone, England could no longer screw the Indian people on any violence.
Threatening to cripple the economic stranglehold that England had on India is, in itself, an act of force, to wit, violence.
To quote Frank Herbert's 'Dune': "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing."
Ghandi, via strikes, work stoppages and boycotts of the British controlled rail transport monopoly and salt trade, threatened (that is, issued a notice of 'violence') to negatively impact British profit taking from India. Ghandi made a threat that HAD to be answered by the British capitulating to his demands: HE THREATENED THEIR PROFITS.
All they could do was imprison or kill him. By his threatened actions, he would have ruined them financially.
Ah, I see what you mean. Thanks.
And by interrupting their profit making, Gandhi was violent in exactly the same way breaking the windows, thereby costing a big bank some money, is violence. And why are the pacifist's ploughshares actions - hammering on expensive aircraft or nuclear bomb re-entry cones, doing many thousands of dolalrs of damage, never regarded as "violence"?
Gandhi probably would not have succeeded nonviolently if it weren't for WWII
Speaking of Gandhi and WWII, it was Gandhi's opinion that Jews should have protested the Holocaust by committing mass suicide, which he considered a "perfect act."
I'm more of the opinion that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising had the right idea.
So Occupy was "winning" until the anarchist kids showed up? Is that the narrative..?
"Non-violence always wins in the end if you don't move to violence."
What planet do you live on?
Violent empire is never ruled by just laws only murderous guns as did Britain.
John Shade:
I agree with you regarding no automatic win for the now
non-consenting governed. But regarding what you then
said: "Non-violence always wins in the end ... ," I must
say that end may be long delayed. Please read what I
quoted from Frederick Douglass in a post above in this
thread: Injustices "... will continue till they are resisted
with either words or blows, or both." In re-reading some
of Douglass' writings, it came to me that he was a "trail
blazer" of the path followed by MLK, even though his
winning in the end was delayed by about 100 years. In
the present fast-paced society, I don't think we shall have
the "luxury" of waiting 100 years for righting the presently
apparent wrongs.
Both Ghandi and MLK were non-violent representatives of large movements that had credible threats of physical violence within them. Right? It has been written (and said) that neither would've succeeded at all without the reality of violent elements within their respective movements.
As I know it, MLK's success found its limitation when he declared opposition to LBJ's war and the system in general. Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Stokely Carmichael, and Fred Hampton found that limitation earlier in their efforts, which were more radical to begin with. MLK was much easier to deal with. Declaring a national holiday in his name and renaming a lot of streets after him doesn't accomplish much towards achieving the goals of political and economic equality, but maybe it paved the way for an African-American puppet in the White House.
I know even less about the Indian situation, but I've read that their movement for independence from England contained experienced military personnel with a well known reputation of fierce competence. I've also read that parliament had been bombed and the English were well aware of the potential violence that the non-violent leader was restraining.
Redistributing power and wealth doesn't come easy or cheap. Violence is never entirely out of the story, but it should be used very sparingly and then only with great strategic planning and care - not the ways that it's used against us.
Paulsprawl, very good my first guru before he found yoga was accused of blowing up a British police station. I believe spirituality and WWII both played a role in Ghandi's success. The British were more vicious than Assad, when they wanted to expand territory in Borneo they systematically killed every tribal member they found in the valley the British coveted. British and USA compare with any of the other violent past empires. USA has caused the deaths of at least 10 to 15 million people in the last sixty years.
Let's not forget that Nelson Mandela - who for reasons beyond my understanding is generally presented as a pacifist - was involved with the ANC and their ARMED WING, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Cuba, Venezuela, the southern African resistance armed by Cuba, most honest Haitian relief efforts... all were made possible by armed resistance and the willingness to break a few eggs.
The Civil Rights movement (not to mention the Cuban revolution) got a little aid from a comrade with the initials LHO. The real conspiracy as far as I'm concerned is that people are taught not to believe that one committed fellow could make a difference...
Black Bloc = Blackwater = paid to kill and disrupt
"The corporate state understands and welcomes the language of force. It can use the Black Bloc’s confrontational tactics and destruction of property to justify draconian forms of control and frighten the wider population away from supporting the Occupy movement. Once the Occupy movement is painted as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob we are finished."
This tactic is as old as revolution itself. The elite dispatches hyperviolent agents provocateur to pose as revolutionaries in order to justify their crackdown on everyone. The Reichstag fire was a classic of such tactics ...
YES. The black block anarchists are a CANCER EVERYWHERE.
Protesters really need to clean up their act. This entails presenting oneself in a professional manner. How about wearing nice clothes, bathing, taking care of your hair.
Prepare your conversations about the issues with other people. Be articulate. Have solutions to offer.
Please don't stand on our streets in raggedy clothes and unkempt hair yelling at anyone and everyone, criticizing anyone who doesn't think exactly like you. That is not radical, progressive or revolutionary. It is useless. It is embarrassing to our movement.
Thank you for conforming.
Many anarchists in 'raggedy hair and unkempt clothing' do so partly out of personal choice, but mostly because they are trying to live outside the profit driven Corporate system, and have to either scavenge or buy their clothes from second-hand charity stores.
They demonstrate their non-conformism by freely expressing their emotions and genuine rage at a corrupt and destructive pseudo-culture, instead of moving with the rest of the sheeple herd.
Maybe you could learn something from th... wait, I forgot I was talking to a conformist.
And don't EVER be seen riding the bus - always drive your car to the protests...
Wait, I have to whiten my teeth before I continue posting.
be sure to bring your i-crap with you and remember to stop by the gap as well. but don't bring that swiss army utility knife w/ you, you wouldn't want to be packing a dangerous weapon. it could end up in a police video w/ a pair of scissors and a piece of corrugated metal.
...peace...
Why, as the oracle of the teevee has proclaimed since its inception, if there's anything Amerikan culture stands for, it's personal freshness above all.
It's simply a must!
The Black Bloc just reminds me of the guys that would come to "Rage Against the Machine" shows and mosh. They could care less what the music was, or what it was saying, or even the beat. They didn't care if they stomped or hurt anyone in fact they got off on it. They just wanted to throw violence around and smash people up. Really dysfunctional.
At protests, I just assume the Black Bloc are cops looking to undermine the movement with adolescent idiot violence. Either way I'm right, they will.
"The Black Bloc just reminds me of the guys that would come to "Rage Against the Machine" shows and mosh. They could care less what the music was, or what it was saying, or even the beat. They didn't care if they stomped or hurt anyone in fact they got off on it. They just wanted to throw violence around and smash people up."
...and now just a few years later, we hear Sarah Palin referencing "Rage Against the Machine" (in a positive way!) as she throws her support behind... Newt Gingrich!
[laughing out loud, gagging and retching]
From Day One when very average looking, mainstream looking people were at the first Occupy site only in NY, every mainstream news outlet story had an overwhleming majority of comments from other average Americans encouraging the police to "kick ass" and beat and maim and even kill.
Even from Day One when Occupy was overwhlemingly freshly showered middle class people who hadn't spent one night in a tent yet, every mainstream news outlet story had an overwhleming majority of comments from other average Americans stating that the protestors were all "dirty hippies" who needed to "get a job."
What country do you think you're living in that Occupy had broad public support right up until Black Bloc conflicted with the Oakland Police?
Every movement for a better tomorrow will always get off on a rocky start with a few intolerant comments, most likely paid from ptbs, but that didn't stop OCCUPY from trying and growing its support over time. We'll see how it succeeds by the end of this year.
No you are the fool here.
The oligarchy will not budge from its systemized and murderous larceny until the very fabric of American society is threatened. That's what happened in the sixties.
The flag burning, vandalism, ROTC office burnings, race riots and many other "violent" acts convinced the elite that the needed to make concessions or risk losing their powerful positions in society.
Polite protests appealling to the middle class will accomplish very little.
If widespread rioting and other direct forms of socila disaffection occur, then there will be change.
I don't think we need to make Occupy look attractive to Americans. That's just disrespectful marketing. What we need is to be authentically engaged. Chris Hedges' isn't criticizing anarchy or anarchists. He's calling out a particular group that identifies as anarchist. Not the same thing. Chris Hedges has spoken and written of the moral disengagement of our citizenry. Sometimes you've got to burn a flag to be real. So be it. If you're around others who don't want to be associated with that action, then do it so they won't. Cross the street, or whatever is required to distance yourself from the group.
One weakness in the Occupy strategy seems to be the unwillingness to take a specific stand on any issue, but base their future success on the misunderstanding that their efforts are going to eventually result in a change of heart among the ruling elite, who supposedly are going to change their stripes and work for universal rights and freedom. Hedges himself is largely responsible for this meme that seems to pervade the movement. He says it's not the job of average citizens to replace those in power with others who might truly represent them rather than the ruling elite. That theory seems to me to be a crutial mistake and I don't see how it can be defended logically or operationally. How can you have a government of, by and for the People if the representatives of the People do not in their hearts and minds sympathize with, and believe in, the values and goals of the People. It makes no sense to me, but the whole movement seems to have adopted this theory. It leaves a power vacuum and now some fringe elements are trying to fill that vacuum. What values should the movement be able to offer? One might begin by reviewing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.gpln.com/udhr.html What the Occupy movement is experiencing now is the universe giving us feedback and you can see where it's going. It's time for a course correction.
Occupy is about democratic PROCESS, not issues, issues are counterproductive to all inclusiveness. Though specific actions such as preventing foreclosures are commendable and necessary.
You have completely missed the fact that the ideological foundations of the OWS movement is anarchist. It is based in anarchist theory and practice, and based in organizing principles that are designed to build a mass movement. David Graeber explains this clearly. Graeber, a former Yale professor in anthropology, and an anarchist, articulates this below.
Hedges is right about criticizing the Black Block, but severely misses the point in his critique, which i think is reckless. The BB has been infiltrated so many times in the past by cops and fascists (Genoa, Miami, Quebec, Denver), i have to assume that most are now cops. But honestly, who does Hedges think he is to pronounce from on high about the politics in Oakland? He wasn't even there, nor was I. But it has been my experience that police always start the violence, without exception. I can't really blame people for not wanting to take a baton to the head, or get brain damage from one of their "non-lethal" projectiles.
Occupy Wall Street's anarchist roots
The 'Occupy' movement is one of several in American history to be based on anarchist principles.
By David Graeber
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112872835904508.html
Excerpts:
The easiest way to explain anarchism is to say that it is a political movement that aims to bring about a genuinely free society - that is, one where humans only enter those kinds of relations with one another that would not have to be enforced by the constant threat of violence. History has shown that vast inequalities of wealth, institutions like slavery, debt peonage or wage labour, can only exist if backed up by armies, prisons, and police. Anarchists wish to see human relations that would not have to be backed up by armies, prisons and police. Anarchism envisions a society based on equality and solidarity, which could exist solely on the free consent of participants....
How, then, did OWS embody anarchist principles? It might be helpful to go over this point by point:
1) The refusal to recognise the legitimacy of existing political institutions.
One reason for the much-discussed refusal to issue demands is because issuing demands means recognising the legitimacy - or at least, the power - of those of whom the demands are made. Anarchists often note that this is the difference between protest and direct action: Protest, however militant, is an appeal to the authorities to behave differently; direct action... is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.
2) The refusal to accept the legitimacy of the existing legal order.
The second principle, obviously, follows from the first. From the very beginning, when we first started holding planning meetings in Tompkins Square Park in New York, organisers knowingly ignored local ordinances that insisted that any gathering of more than 12 people in a public park is illegal without police permission - simply on the grounds that such laws should not exist.... We began with a commitment to answer only to a moral order, not a legal one.
3) The refusal to create an internal hierarchy, but instead to create a form of consensus-based direct democracy.
From the very beginning, too, organisers made the audacious decision to operate not only by direct democracy, without leaders, but by consensus. The first decision ensured that there would be no formal leadership structure that could be co-opted or coerced; the second, that no majority could bend a minority to its will...
4) The embrace of prefigurative politics.
As a result, Zuccotti Park, and all subsequent encampments, became spaces of experiment with creating the institutions of a new society - not only democratic General Assemblies but kitchens, libraries, clinics, media centres and a host of other institutions, all operating on anarchist principles of mutual aid and self-organisation - a genuine attempt to create the institutions of a new society in the shell of the old.
This post needs to be at the top of the list.
Well, I was going to respond to iowablackbird but it appears the site editors have deleted his post. So I will respond here.
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"It is a safe bet that among Black Bloc groups in cities such as Oakland are agents provocateurs spurring them on to more mayhem."
iowablackbird wrote:
- assertion, also if their are plants, i believe they are monitoring activities as much as they are egging on violent acts. they (the police) want to know who is willing to go beyond non violent tactics, b/c those people are the real threat. besides hedges offers no proof - anywhere in this essay.
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Do you seriously doubt that police provocateurs have entered Occupy demos and egged on violent acts? You say it's an "assertion" which of course it is, but how would one prove it? Having seen many interviews with demonstrators, and knowing the history of nonviolent social movements in the US, I don't need to be convinced of this assertion. And I think most people who regularly go to Occupy demos, in Oakland, e.g., are hip to this. Police are among them just to "monitor"? Gimme a break! I find this part of your comment obtuse and puzzling.
When I went to Occupy Vancouver I personally overheard two VPD officers complaining that the site was clean, the protestors polite and non-confrontational, and that they had nothing to do.
Memory_Hole,
i believe it's much more complicated than just assuming that the police instigated the violence or that the police are the ones who are solely responsible for infiltrating the demos and then instigating violence w/ fellow police officers.
i believe that all the occupy movements have been infiltrated to some degree by the police and they are aware of tactics. this is probably true of most organized political demonstrations in the united states for the past 45 years (at least). the suggestion that the police are responsible discredits the tactic outright amongst equally co-opted pacifists. i know for a fact that the FBI was present at nonviolent demos i attended in the 90's - there always there.
as to the canadians and the footage from toronto, i've watched the videos asserting that the police instigated violence. those assertions (videotaped) were made by a labor organizer who was a proponent of non-violent tactics. he never wanted to see property destruction - yet he's the one pointing at the '3 cops' posing as BB. interesting, the same conspiratorial thinking can be applied here (that is being employed by those calling out good demonstrators from bad demonstrators). by conveniently outing police informants (and recieving media attention) he effectively alienated anyone who may have been considering such tactics. it was an effective deterrent to future demonstrators.
they (the police) already are detaining non violent demonstrators (the 700 in NYC). they already have busted up most of the occupations around america. and like the labor organizer in toronto, hedges is discouraging rioting. it's illegal in this country to actively incite a riot or to advocate overthrow of the govt. hedges is covering his ass, period, especially in light of the recent NDAA
any intellectuals affiliated w/ this movt, which for legitimate reasons could snowball into insurrection this spring - as we march to war in iran and as the economy continues to tank - must disassociate themselves from the potential uprising.
the demonstrators in the street in oakland were attempting to occupy an abandoned building. did anyone imagine that the city was just going to give them the building w/out resistence (that is naive); that was a prize the elites in oakland were unwilling to concede. some understood this and came prepared (w/ shields). i wasn't there (perhaps you were) but from examining the video - it seems the police fired directly into the crowd. they were asked to disperse - they didn't (in your estimation should they have dispersed ?). the shields were not weapons (police claim) - watch the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaY3ekh_oR8
there is no such thing as a non violent revolution.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” - Fredrick Douglas
...peace...
iowablackbird, your points are well taken. I'm not an absolutist about nonviolence. I favor it as a general starting point, however, and think OWS should strive to adhere to it strictly. Of course it wouldn't have worked in Nicaragua in 1978 or in Nazi Germany or many other instances. Perhaps it won't work here in Police State Amerika either--who knows?
As to the protesters in Oakland carrying shields, that is just plain good sense, like wearing a gas mask. Nothing violent about either.
I didn't mean to assert that ALL the violence & property destruction at OWS actions has been done by police and police provocateurs. But I think it is extremely disingenous not to see that it has happened, not only in this movement but in others--there is a pattern there. And the corporate media can be counted on to zero RIGHT in on the window breakers, those who destroy property. They don't care how many people get skull fractures, broken bones and concussions from police rioting, though.
I think we should all--whatever "side" you are on in this debate regarding tactics, let's try to remember that it is about taking our country back from the corporate criminals who now control it.