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Journalist Chris Hedges and CrimethInc's Brian recently debated nonviolence. (Photo: Ari Paul)
The Black Bloc Doth Protest Too Much
September 15, 2012
It finally happened. After months of anarchists howling over journalist Chris Hedges’s controversial article “The Cancer Within Occupy,” the author debated the subject of non-violence and the diversity of tactics in the Occupy Wall Street movement with Brian Traven, representing CrimethInc, an anarchist group sympathetic to the Black Bloc tactics Hedges denounced in the article.
Both sides made good points in the exchange, which took place Sept. 12 in before a packed audience in Manhattan. Hedges reflected upon his years covering wars and revolutions for the New York Times, saying that violence can hinder progress, while Traven brought up relevant questions about how we as a society define what is violent or criminal. But the real star of the show was the Black Bloc supporters themselves, whose main goal, it seemed, was to discredit any and all scrutiny of themselves and smear their detractors with ad hominem attacks. Traven at one point suggested that the police were taking cues from Hedges, who laughed at the idea of security forces being inspired by his railings against corporate capitalism.
For people who raise their middle finger to the man and brag about their fights with the cops, these rabble-rousers are perhaps the most thin-skinned activists I have ever encountered, as they have still yet to recover from the fact that a writer turned a critical lens on them in one article seven months ago. They simply cannot tolerate any dissent against their tactics, and they fight back the only way they know how: by being whiny little brats.
Both presenters had their faults. Traven’s main tactic for ducking criticism was to employ a post-modernist obfuscation of any inconvenient questions. When asked if the Black Bloc had ever succeeded, he questioned what success meant. When asked if the Black Bloc was marred by hyper-masculinity, he dismissed Hedges’s definition of gender. But for the most part, Hedges responded to these things respectfully.
Hedges has a tendency to put people off with his ministerial style. Some people find him condescending with his repeated reminders that he covered the wars in El Salvador and the former Yugoslavia. Regardless, during the debate he was constantly met with childish hisses, laughter and cries of “liar,” not to mention one suggestion that his career as a war correspondent was a cover for his employment with the Central Intelligence Agency.
This whole act was not just disrespectful to the participants and the event’s organizers, but the hordes of people who wanted to listen, who maybe could have been swayed into seeing things Traven’s way (he didn’t seemed bothered by the disturbances). And so I decided to photograph the troublemakers, despite being told that I could only take photos of the panelists and not the audience. As far as I was concerned, this was a public space (City University of New York property, to be exact), and once these people decided to be disruptive they have made themselves a news event.
And so I was escorted outside by an event organizer and a uniformed security guard and urged to delete my photos, as they had received text messages that I had pointed my camera in the direction of the shouters. Despite the delicious irony of anarchists deferring to rules and security, I am always perturbed by anyone who feels they should be shielded from the press if they are, in fact, doing something newsworthy. Out of respect for the organizers I complied and erased the frames, which didn’t matter because they were too blurry to be used anyway.
But this kind of entitlement to be at once disruptive and immune from accountability is emblematic of the kind of dish-it-out-but-can’t-take-it attitude they have displayed in reaction to Hedges’s original article. If they’re still having a tantrum about Hedges’s article, how can we expect them to hold up against the 1 percent shock troops?
This is why I think it is ultimately wrong to classify this particular group as anarchists—that would sully the names of various movements past and present that have used and currently use non-hierarchical structures in anti-capitalist organizing. This particular clique is explicitly and actively against the left, and there’s a reason the CrimethInc book Days of War, Nights of Love reads like the ideological bastard child of Karl Marx and Ayn Rand. It rails against corporate control, but replaces class struggle with libertarian individualism. Capitalism and the state are oppressing you, and their flavor of anarchism is your struggle to liberate yourself from the mediocrity of the bourgeois state. You have to do whatever you can to do to save yourself.
This is why Hedges and Traven couldn’t come to a consensus. Hedges wanted to know what kind of society Black Bloc anarchists wanted to create, but never got a real answer, and that’s because they’re currently living in it. They’ll roam the city streets, living in squats, riding on freight trains, mocking all the losers in suits and blue uniforms for squandering their days for paychecks and health insurance. They live off the waste of capitalist society (if they don’t already have trust funds), cocooned in their punk rock Neverland. Their utopia isn’t a liberation of oppressed society but their personal secession from it.
This is the kind of anti-social narcissism that Hedges wrote about in the article that kicked off this whole mess. The rage against the police, press and fellow anti-capitalists has everything to do with their inflated sense of self and precious little to do with solidarity.
I’ve encountered it recently. In Chicago, during the NATO protests in May, Black Bloc participants gathered with other activists in Grant Park, wearing masks, waving banners and angrily confronting anyone who took their photo. My response was that if you don’t want your photo taken don’t go to a public protest where you know there are going to be hundreds of journalists. Further, picking a fight with the police only endangers journalists and other activists. While covering the Eurozone crisis in Athens this summer, I was confronted by so-called anarchists for photographing them, and in fact, they routinely assault journalists in demonstrations while later celebrating television news footage of their street fighting. They want to have their dumpster-dived vegan cake and eat it, too.
I don’t fully side with Hedges on his take on the Black Bloc. During the debate, for example, I bristled when Hedges suggested that there was some common ground for both OWS and the police because they are working class (see my articles in the Indypendent and The Guardian on the subject). But it is certainly a win for Hedges when his critics live up to his description of them.
“The Black Bloc movement bears the rigidity and dogmatism of all absolutism sects,” Hedges wrote. “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.”
Comments
I was at the event and disagree with some of the characterizations presented here - (i also agree with much of the article, but we won't dwell on that to keep it interesting :) I won't recreate the argument for or against Black Bloc tactics, which I think has been greatly oversimplified in this article, but I will just address the details of the event.
I was actually quite impressed that the event was mostly cordial with very few outbursts, considering the delicate topic. The 2 outbursts that I can recall actually had nothing to do with the Cancer in Occupy article but were related to a much more recent comment Hedges made about the black panthers and AIM being like parasites on the civil rights movement - so your suggestion that the anarchists in the room were still upset over the Cancer in Occupy article isn't quite true. When "Liar" was shouted out it was because Chris Hedges stated that he "did not remember saying" that the panthers and AIM were parasites on the movement. I think it is easy to assume he was lying, so at least the outburst was true, if childish.
I am glad you were escorted out after photographing fellow attendees.
As we entered the space we were all told that photography would be limited to the people on stage- because of the delicate topic no one would be allowed to photograph the audience. If you had a problem with that, you should have addressed it at that time. There are people in the audience, some Hedges supporters, some Bloc supporters, who could be fired from their jobs if they are photographed at this event. I find it irresponsible that a journalist for the Indypendent which is so important to and so supportive of the labor struggle, would 'out' workers in the press for attending (outburst or not) a radical political panel. Your comments that because they are anarchists they should not set guidelines for an event is a misrepresentation of anarchism. There is no reason why a group of anarchists holding an event cannot get together beforehand and agree to a set of rules for the evening. Now if YOU were an anarchist you would not have handed over your camera. But that is a different story.
You characterize Brian and his supporters as "whining brats" and I didn't hear any whining. I also didn't see Brian being any more resistant to his tactics being questioned than Chris was. They were both respectful and eloquent. When Brian spoke on the allegation of the Bloc being hyper-masculine for example, he addressed the hyper-masculinity in the society at large and the hyper-masculinity in war correspondence, he did not simply question the definition of gender as you suggest.
Is the Bloc rigid in their philosophy? yes. But they aren't alone. It sounds as though you are as well Mr. Paul, and so is Chris Hedges.
My analysis of the event was that both Brian and Chris did a great job of presenting their point of view.
This comment was better than the article.
Seconded. This.
"As we entered the space we were all told that photography would be limited to the people on stage- because of the delicate topic no one would be allowed to photograph the audience. If you had a problem with that, you should have addressed it at that time."
One could also assume there was an understood rule about no calling out, or interrupting the debate, but it seemed some people choose not to follow those rules. Should they have made their objections known before hand or been escorted out? You seem to get quite literal in your understanding of the 'whining', but couldn't booing and cries of 'liar' be seen as a form of whining?
"Despite the delicious irony of anarchists deferring to rules and security, I am always..."
The only delicious irony here is that you wasted hours of your life going to a farcical debate and writing about anarchism yet your lack of knowledge on the subject is to grand that you actually mockingly suggest that anarchists are against "rules" and "security"; and then equate them- as a whole- with some counterculture losers.
The only delicious irony here is that you wasted hours of your life going to a farcical debate and writing about anarchism yet your lack of knowledge on the subject is to grand that you actually mockingly suggest that anarchists are against "rules" and "security"; and then equate them- as a whole- with some counterculture losers.
The problem that people had with Hedges' article was not that it put a critical lens on "Black Bloc Anarchists," a category that doesn't really exist, it is that he fundamentally and dishonestly misrepresented what the black bloc is and who takes part in it. Tying it to Zerzan was either a deliberate lie or some of the worst journalism I've even seen from Hedges.
And the quote you end with is exactly the problem with Hedges portrayal of what the black bloc is and who is involved. There is no such thing as a black bloc movement, there are people who use the black bloc as a tactic. Often times in the US those people are anarchists, more recently tending towards the insurrectionist stripe. But I've know plenty of non-insurrectionist and non-primitivists that take part in black blocs. And I've taken part in black blocs that didn't break a single window.
That's ultimately the problem here, people want to ascribe some ideology to me and other who have taken part in black blocs when that just isn't the case.
More than that, for him to blame "violence" committed by the black bloc for the dwindling numbers at Occupy actions is absurd. As some one who was there from the first day in NYC and then went back home to Oakland, the reason numbers dwindled is first because of the constant police attacks and second because people really feel like protests don't do much good. The whole idea that black bloc was the reason relies on the assumption that the police were reacting to the black bloc and not the opposite. The police consistently attacked first. While Hedges may love the idea of sitting by and watching the police bust heads he never has to deal with the real consequences of that. He doesn't get broken limbs for peacefully protesting.
"This is why Hedges and Traven couldn’t come to a consensus. Hedges wanted to know what kind of society Black Bloc anarchists wanted to create, but never got a real answer, and that’s because they’re currently living in it. They’ll roam the city streets, living in squats, riding on freight trains, mocking all the losers in suits and blue uniforms for squandering their days for paychecks and health insurance. They live off the waste of capitalist society (if they don’t already have trust funds), cocooned in their punk rock Neverland. Their utopia isn’t a liberation of oppressed society but their personal secession from it."
Sigh. Anarchists have moved past idolizing the old crimethinc books, if only everyone else would too.
First they came for the anarchists, but I was not an anarchist, so when they stood up for themselves against supposed comrades who provided the police a pat narrative justifying their isolation and repression I accused them of being whiny brats.
This seems like like a gross over-simplification of black bloc tactics, which should be discussed for their own merit by practitioners and theorists alike. The most brilliant people I've ever known are advocates of BB tactics - WHEN THEY SERVE THE AIMS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT, i.e., the class struggle (in whichever guise - Marxist, post-Marxist, etc.)
Hedges is just a pompous idealogue who thinks his war reporting entitles him to the role of political theorist/economist. No, he's a pundit who occasionally stumbles onto an obvious and correct point - and nothing more.
The person who wrote this article comes off as kind of an a**hole. A lot of Hedges information about insurrectionary anarchists and the black bloc seems to have been based on inaccurate information. Perhaps the black bloc is rigid in the philosophy in the moment of engaging in black bloc actions, but that doesn't take into account what those people do when they aren't masked up. And they are certainly no more dogmatic than Hedges (and, I would argue, less. They certainly would never try to forcibly stop someone from behaving "non-violently" while I have seen many "non-violent" activists do that to black bloc participants).
Also, I find the comment "They live off the waste of capitalist society (if they don’t already have trust funds), cocooned in their punk rock Neverland" completely classist, ignorant, and incorrect. You don't know those people. You don't know there background or why they've made the choices they've made. In the Bay Area of California, we heard the same bs spouted during the uprisings in response to the murder of Oscar Grant, and it simply was not true. People choose to participate in black bloc tactics for a wide variety of reasons; one important one being that nothing else has worked either. Let's not forget that.
Furthermore, I am unclear why you seem to think that your right to photograph people trumps everyone else's opinion about being photographed. Are you somehow completely unaware that the police use public photos to id people, label them for their beliefs, and then go after them later? Because that really happens. I'm not sure why photographing people who are not engaged in illegal activity without their permission is so important to you. But I find you to be untrustworthy.
"They certainly would never try to forcibly stop someone from behaving "non-violently"
A single non-violent person cannot--simply by being non-violent in the middle of a bunch of political car-burners, tranform the car-burning action into a non-violent one. The non-violent person cannot, by his or her individual non-violence in that moment, deprive everyone else in the group of very the possibility of expressing their values and trying to advance their goals through their chosen means.
Conversely, a single blackblocker who throws a single molotov from the middle of a by-consensus-nonviolent action instantly transforms everyone involved from being a participant in a non-violent action to being a participant in a violent action. Unwillingly.
This assymetry is the entire problem as far as I'm concerned. Blackblockers need to concront this reality IF they are considering bringing their tactics to OWS or other by-consensus-nonviolent actions.
Elsewhere that that my comments here include no criticism of blackblock tactics.
Please consider this analogy.
Let's say you and your pals want to dress in black hoodies and handkerchiefs and go out and break some glass and light garbage fires *but try your damndest not to hurt any people nor even initiate any direct violence against cops on this day.*
Let's say I and a few pal decide to dress in black hoodies and handkerchiefs *and tiny purple bracelets*, come among you, and from among you throw fragmentation grenades at cops and bystanders.
Let's call this "diverse tactic" PURPELBLOCKING.
The blackblock rationale for infiltrating and escalating non-violent actions to property violence suffice perfectly to rationalize PURPELBLOCKERS escalating your garbage burning display to one of fragging cops, journalists, bystanders, and anyone else within range.
Now I don't believe that I or anyone else has the right to infiltrate your property-violence-only action and start shooting people or blowing them up. PURPELBLOCKING is wrong precisely insofar as it crushes your right to blackblock.
By the same token, you as a blackblocker have no standing to escalate any non-violent action to either property OR personal violence.
It has nothing to do with whether non-violence is morally or pragmatically superior to violence, as such. It has everything to do with extinguishing the rights of fellow human beings. Which is what violent blackblock tactics *at OWS actions* do. They violently extinguish the right of non-violent protest for all present.
Go blackblock your ass off. I don't care. Just go somewhere else. But if you do your violent stuff in the middle, or even on the fringe, of a non-violent action in which I am taking part, you are perpetrating your violence against me and everyone else who has comitted to take the particular risks of non-violent action that day.
You are--with absolute precision to the third decimal place---violently crushing my rights just well as the cops behind *their* black uniforms are doing.
If you are depriving me of my right to take part in a non-violent action you are oppressing me no less than Obama's Homeland Security goons have done. You are my enemy.
If you are bringing violence to any non-violent political action I'm taking part in you are violently depriving me and my chosen associates of a basic human right. And you are for that, my enemy. I will be very pleased indeed to un-mask you, photograph you, and otherwise out you any chance I get. And more. Not for blackblocking, but for depriving me of my rights.
If you want to blackblock across town it is none of my business, as long as you do not falsly fly the colors of OWS or any other by-consensus-nonviolent group.
I refrain from violence against the 1% for strategic, not moral reasons. Nothing in that strategy will deter me in the least from dealing with my blackblock oppressors in any way I see fit to, whether in the event or subsequently.
I encourage all OWSers and sympathizers to take all available action against only those blackblockers who deprive non-violent protestors of their rights to non-violent protest.
im completely confused by what you mean by your right to a nonviolent protest...Are you referring to a god given "right" ? A constitutional right? Just an ability you wish existed but doesn't? This whole narrative is laughable. You don't have a right to nonviolently protest anymore than i have a right "to black bloc" (as if that was a verb....) This discourse is impoverished.
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Ive been involved in many, many black blocs. Ive never been in one that knowingly and intentionally initiated violence in a demo that was explicitly advertised by all present as nonviolent. This is partly due to respect, and partly just because it would serve no purpose.
Ive been in plenty of situations where at a protest, that had many different kinds of participants, pacifist and non, radical and reformist, statist and anarchist, after being attacked or obstructed by police, the black bloc (as well as others in the crowd) defended themselves or others. Typically, this is the situation the author above is actually referencing - commonly blaming the confrontation on the monster-anarchists present rather than on the cops. Pretty typical shit.
In that situation, which is predominant in occupy contexts, where there is a large diverse crowd without an agreed upon practice or philosophy towards self defense or attack, no one person's "right" to avoid conflict trumps someone else's right to defend themselves. This is a moot point, really, anyway, as it only takes one side to make a fight. If the cops attack a crowd, your protest just became violent. Sorry...take it up with the pigs. The problem with this commenter's narrative is that they re presuming a protest is "nonviolent" until WE fight (back) - its reaffirming an age old double standard a statist culture has towards violence and the State: we dont see violence going down the hierarchy, we only see it when it goes back up.
In summary, first id say if you dont ever want to go to a protest with violence or risk, dont live in the 21st century USA. Or dont be poor, or a person of color, or a political radical, or whatever.
If you have a marty complex and are strictly interested in playing the victim as a "strategy" to "speak truth to power," hey, go ahead for all i care. i think youre totally fucking nuts, but if you want the cops to beat you into submission, then you need TO BE EXPLICIT that your protest is being framed that way. Even then, recognize that whatever the "issue" or cause you re protesting around, YOU DON'T OWN IT. Its not your private struggle, and you don't have a private say over how mass movements or large protests full of diverse groups get to act around that issue. There might be no bloc at all there - it might be that a bunch of peaceful people, after seeing how the cops are treating people, fight back spontaneously. I cant tell you how many times ive seen this happen, even as people like yourself blame it on outside agitators or the evil bloc. Personally, it thrills me to no end when i stand up for themselves, especially when that exposes the marty complex of professional activists and wannabe politicians like yourself.
You might argue that we dont own the bloc tactics or movement as a whole any more than you do. This is absolutely true, but we admit it freely and act accordingly: we acknowledge that we dont "own" the tactic of anonmyous social force - in fact, precisely the opposite, we WANT our tactic to spread beyond our ownership and control. Just as we learn from and have participated in riots and uprisings from athens to tottinghan, uk to oakland's oscar grant riots, we spread our ideas about attack and streetfighting and occupation and expropriation elsewhere. And look around the globe: it is spreading. It cannot stay in your control. Have a whiskey and coke and deal with it.
BTW id suggest before you start making impish threats in an anonymous forum like this towards a bunch of masked hooligans who have learned how to fight together ("Nothing in that strategy will deter me in the least from dealing with my blackblock oppressors in any way I see fit to") you at least learn how to spell correctly. It's black "bloc," genius.
The conflation of all those who use black bloc tactics with the likes crimethinc is asinine. As is, by the way, the editorialist's inability to discern tactics from politics. All three of you make me sick.
Really awful article, and even worse to hear that you were taking pictures of people at the event without their consent.
I was also at the event and know you were asked to delete photos of people in the audience. Reading this article, I only now believe you were a writer for The Indypendent. At the time, I thought there was no way someone from your publication would be photographing people at an event, especially one like this, without their consent. Sadly, I was wrong. I hope you realize though that the person who escorted you out was being very respectable by looking out for the people in attendance since he could not vouch for who you claimed to me. Your behaviors didn't do much to back up your claim either.
I'm more or less convinced that crimethinc is put out by the government in an attempt to turn moderate people and would-be activists who don't want to participate in actions that directly jeopardize their freedom away from the movement.
There are many people who worked very hard to get to where they are in life, and many of them have other people who depend on them. They recognize that the system is broken and want to change things for the better, but not everyone is willing or able to risk their lives and freedom for some ineffectual property destruction.
I'm more or less convinced that you lack the ability to tolerate opinions and approaches that differ from yours. People who participate in direct action a perfectly comfortable with those who don't, all they ask if that you don't aid the state in apprehending them. If only liberals could do the same. But then, they wouldn't just be bumper sticker warriors would they?
I am a writer and former journalist. I watched the debate online and really thought that Traven held his own and defended the Black Bloc well. I have participated in actions and meetings with Occupy New Haven and Occupy Shoreline Ct. To me, the debate sheds light on class rifts within Occupy, and it was very intriguing to watch. A sort of paternal, daddy knows best attitude is easy for journalists and intellectuals to assume. Meanwhile, they reap the benefits of a push toward a more ideological free plain that the anarchists are going for. I have never called myself an anarchist, yet more and more they are the only ones within Occupy I find actually identifying and addressing root, systemic causes and pushing for meaningful change. I used to work with a few anarchists, and I hated their attitude. At the time, I was pretty sheltered, a smalltown girl from Texas. I thought they were pretentious. But I find the tone of this article equally offensive and obnoxious and derogatory, particularly toward Traven. Also, Traven is not off in his assessment that law enforcement can take nods from the press. I used to be a police reporter. In early 2009, I covered a major conference by NACAA, a neighborhood assistance non-profit that specializes in getting people better deals on mortgages, particularly if they are under water or facing eviction. NACAA has clout and organization because they are not afraid to bloody the water when it comes to dealing with major banks. They will blackmail and smear campaign a CEO into doing business with them. They are also not averse to manipulating the press, either. They led an action on a hedge fund manager's lawn in Greenwich, Ct, William Frey. Three people told me that a Greenwich cop opened the gate to the gated community in which Frey lived. I recognized it as a plant. A story people were told to tell the reporter. I did not appreciate being lied to. But my point is that law enforcement agencies are strategic, and Traven is not wrong to recognize collusion even if it is unconscious or unexplicit. Ultimately the biggest persuader of public opinion and the biggest factor in spurring people to political action is suffering and change that is perceived as degrading to a particular way of life. I think people are too harsh on Black Bloc as they are mostly righteous people who have taken it upon themselves to live by an ethos of unregulated personal freedom and responsibility. I admire and respect that now, but don't want Occupy to succumb to exactly the kind of name-calling and infighting that right-wing critics accuse us of. From a livestream distance, the debate was fruitful and intellectually stimulating. Thank you.
another comment which is better than the article. makes sense that you're a *former* journalist, based on your open-mindedness and honesty. i think folks like yourself are the reason this debate had potential to be fruitful. people who already hated chris hedges just hate him more now. people who are dogmatic pacifists still are. but folks who came into it with an open mind and were on the fence about things, if watching the debate objectively, i think would come to many of the same conclusions that you did. b did a much better job of acting respectfully, answering the questions posed to him honestly (as opposed to hedges, who mostly ignored the questions posed to him) and making a coherent argument for his position.
The real question is what must change, what to replace it with, and how. Protest is one thing, by whatever means but innovation by example is quite another. We are up against architectures of power, not just attitudes or assets. The loss of human scale is the thing. America intimidates because everything is so exaggerated and over-sized, that everyone is always desperately compensating in one way or another and needs to make some dramatic gesture just to make a simple point. Lets find some common ground, literally. For example, food. Who grows it, who prepares it and who gets to consume it ~ at what cost? Does the captain of Monsanto's ship of fools ever grow anything himself? I doubt it. Does he even comprehend the concept of a garden? What a joke! If he does, does he garnish its produce with glyphosate and wash it down with some other toxic sludge that looks just great in a garish package covered in indecipherable gibberish? Next time you dine with a Goldman-Sachs big-wig, offer them a Round-up-ready cocktail for starters...then watch 'em choke and offer them a proprietary cure, plus a huge invoice.
I was there and there were several people in the audience who were acting like whiny brats as I was trying to listen to the debate. That is true. The author's lack of understanding of what anarchism is is also true and imo this author was lucky to not have his camera and face smashed when he decided to turn his camera on the audience. Kudos to the "security" team that peacefully removed him and had his pics deleted.
You mean "anarchist" cops, right?
So we can't hold a park for more than a few months and you're talking about insurrection? Both the sectarian left and militant anarchists took advantage of a populist Occupy movement that enjoyed popular support to insert their own agendas instead of figuring out where popular support was and hammering home on big ticket consensus issues. As is the entire sectarian left, there are currents within the militant anarchist movement that are vanguard in nature, who resist politics "ad populem," because they know what is best. To my mind, vanguard politics is largely incompatible with anarchist values and this is the primary division between anarchy and the left.
Activists have been ineffective at organizing. Occupy sprang up almost organically. One thing that weakened Occupy was activists from failed campaigns of the past grafting their deadly DNA onto the new organism.
Occupy cannot be an anti-capitalist movement at this time. Efforts to make it so only weaken Occupy because the public support that gave Occupy strength is not anti-capitalist.
Likewise, there is no popular support for black bloc tactics. That alienates the public and diminishes public support for and consequently the power of Occupy.
This is all about putting our own needs and desires aside for what is best for building the most political power to make the most political change as fast as possible, of playing the hand we've been dealt as best we can for now.
the comments here are much more intelligent and accurate than the article. I too was resistant to being forced to agree to not LiveStream the audience outbursts and actually refused to commit to that rule regardless of the situation. I refused because I'm an anarchist, a journalist and I don't like committing to absolutes. I did however understand the reasons for keeping the focus on the debaters and I'm certain we have a more educational archive of the event for doing so. I spotted you "lunging" for close ups of those calling out from the back row. It seemed aggressive, inappropriate and made me question your motives. So I Snitched On You. Based on the tenor of your article I can only guess how you would have used those photos. Thanks for deleting them.
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/chris-hedges-and-b-traven-d...
What the Black Blocc practitioners always fail to understand is that their tactics make it unsafe for those with families and especially anyone with a felony on their record to be present, thus alienating the majority of the proletariat.
As we all know, the police have NEVER attacked a peaceful protest before, right??
actually, it's the police that make it unsafe for the folks your describing to be there. not only that, but this tired argument is repeatedly proven wrong in practice. hate to break it to you, but "the majority of the proletariat" are living breathing people capable of making their own decisions and don't need you (o wise one) to tell them when they are or aren't safe. this isn't to mention all the times that it's the people that condescending folks like yourself deem "too vulnerable" who take the initiative in creating conflict with the state and capitalism.
I'm a working class mom and I have participated in and will continue to support Black Blocs. If you honestly think that Blocs are comprised of only people without families and with a clean police record (lol) I think you're deceiving yourself. We all have the autonomy to choose what tactics fit our goals, and some working people, parents, undocumented folks, and felons actually want to destroy this social order.
you are assuming those in the black bloc are not potentially parents, or people with felony records (in fact, i think their willingness to commit crimes of vandalism shows that it is likely they have criminal records).
the safest place to be is on a couch watching a football game when you are not at work. but if you want a revolution, you might not be able to make it happen from that "safe place".
totally, thats why the oscar grant riots and the tottinghan riots and the athens riots and spanish general strike on m.29 and the egyptian rev all alienated the proletariat.....idiot.
So the writer of this article complains about people shouting ad hominems by writing ad hominems? Also, what is a Bloc Bloc Anarchist?
I have no problem if someone can't see the logic behind black bloc -- i can rationalize their stance based on the power of cultural hegemony. I'll accept the argument that black bloc won't bring a change in our material realities over night. But find it ludicrous those arguing this think protests are the solution to anything but minor reform -- 100 years later and we still live in a complete dump (yes your progress is progress but it's relative and imo we're still living in hell). Y'all who think simply holding up picket signs is going to change anything are dillusional, and those of you who think there's faith in unions are ignorant to the current economic and political system.
was this written by some kind of cliched black bloc stereotype text generator? it doesn't read as though it was written by an actual human being capable of critical thought. is days of war nights of love the only crimethinc text the author has read? was the author actually paying attention to the debate, or more concerned with getting photographs of people who felt like yelling during it (the horror!)? fyi, for the majority of people who saw the debate, which was via livestream, we couldn't hear anything the hecklers were saying. sounds like you were the only one for whom the experience was ruined. funny that to you the "stars of the show" were folks that no one outside of that room (ie the high majority of people taking in the debate) really knew existed.
hate to break it to you dude, but folks weren't pissed about the cancer article because it turned a critical lens on them, it was because it was full of things that simply weren't true and helped to build a narrative that the state could use to demonize and repress people (and they did, btw. b didn't just "suggest" that the police were taking cues from that article, he mentioned quotes by police commanders from places where anarchists have faced repression which mimicked word for word language used by hedges)
the main issue with this seems to be the utter lack of understanding of why certain anarchists do things the way they do, with seemingly no interest in finding out. "you do things in public but don't want your pictures taken? that's absurd! who wouldn't want their picture taken? what's better than recognition and celebrity?"
that coupled with the pathetic stereotyping, which has been disproved over and over and over, plus the author's apparent inability to actually hear anything happening in the debate (i guess he was too focused on the "stars of the show" rather than what was being said by the debaters)
"Traven at one point suggested that the police were taking cues from Hedges"
Apparently, Ari Paul is oblivious to that fact there's plenty of precedent for authority to use public relations for this very thing. That's what propaganda is all about. Do they still teach agit-prop in journalism class, Ari?
"They simply cannot tolerate any dissent against their tactics, and they fight back the only way they know how: by being whiny little brats."
Total projection. "The only way they know how"? How sanctimoniously presumptuous! Or should I say, Paul is a "whiny brat"?
"For people…[who] brag about their fights with the cops, these rabble-rousers are perhaps the most thin-skinned activists I have ever encountered"
Really?! So the "rabble-rousers" you're accustomed to are stoic and don't let things get under their skin? Gee…that makes sense. Cuz' you know, rabble-rousers don't have legitimate concerns so it seems strange to me...
"they have still yet to recover from the fact that a writer turned a critical lens on them in one article seven months ago"
"Recover"? Yes, they should just "recover" and not express any dissatisfaction or outrage at being called criminals and their tactics disparaged and delegitimized. What do they think Occupy is, a PEOPLE'S movement?! Recovery? RePaul's solution to an infested plutocracy and the destruction of our biosphere is a 12-step program so we can have thick skin and practice zen stoicism in order to chant away the melanoma's on our faces while we grub in the dirt for beetles to eat after the ozone layer is completely ripped away. Ohhmmmmm……
You tried to take their pictures?!?! Are you serious? You got a real keen instinct there, Ari. Your intrepidness is a model and should be in all college text books. Seriously. Your professionalism shows in the objective nature of your article.
"They want to have their dumpster-dived vegan cake and eat it, too."
Lordy. Like I said, your objectivity is amazing Mr. Paul. Who said todays journalists are vapid?
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