Rioting in Toronto involving anarchists resisting the G-20 Summit has been condemned by many. The real problem is that there aren’t currently enough anarchists to run the G-20 out of business for good.
Some have said that the actions taken by black bloc protestors — donning masks and black clothing to smash windows and burn police vehicles — will be used by the state to justify the massive security apparatus surrounding the summit. But the state will always find a reason to act as they do — whether it is assaulting peaceful protesters or filling streets with poison gas to deter those who fight back. Whenever a non-resistant individual is attacked with a mobile torture device called a Taser, whenever a paramilitary raid on someone suspected of selling drugs results in death, whenever a city block is destroyed by government bombs, there will be people saying it was the right thing to do.
To move forward, those who value freedom shouldn’t encourage state-apologism.
Still, action should be strategically calculated. The message sent by destruction needs to be kept in mind, and by message I don’t mean a communiqué imitating poorly-translated foreign works. Deeds will always be contextualized by words, so if anarchists do well at both, that will reduce the effectiveness of authoritarians’ efforts to categorize actions as evil.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the image of masked, black-clad figures smashing things scares and angers people who do not believe in the reasons behind the destruction. To encourage a productive response to anarchist action, anarchist ideas need to be made familiar. Broken glass (even if some belongs to people who didn’t deserve it) and burning symbols of authority should not be scarier than fighter jets and assemblies of the most successful criminal gangs in the world. It is the latter that destroys countless irreplaceable individual lives to further the interests of the powerful.
In Toronto, representatives of the world’s most powerful governments met to discuss how they would dominate world economic affairs, and political dominance always means deprivation and death for those who get in the way. Increasing the costs of such bloody business with some broken glass and burning police cars is simply a response to the crimes of politics.
[...] Excerpt from: The State Will Always Self-Justify [...]
A piece at Global Research makes a case that the Black Bloc were police provocateurs.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va…
There may have been provocateurs, but grainy pictures of combat boots, claiming that cops are stronger than anarchists, or claiming that nobody could get away with trashing police cars doesn't make a strong case for police involvement. It just feeds the narrative that we are currently helpless against state control.
“It just feeds the narrative that we are currently helpless against state control.”
Darian,
We may just agree to disagree but I don’t concur with the above observation. But for the record I do agree your concern should be considered and as a strategic move it’s not beyond the State to try and manipulate that outlook for it’s own ends so your point is correctly and duly noted. That said….
The fact that the State itself must resort to breaking in effect it’s own laws, doing itself what it’s suppose to prevent others from doing just proves more and more how desperate the State is. I happen to believe that much of State action and events are more of this type (manipulation) that just natural events happening at the moment. Don’t see this as defeatism but rather understanding the State’s MO and the need to think and then turn the tables on them. The best way of avoiding a trap is to know of it’s existence and then reset it to trap the hunter.
Going forward those who correctly protest such events as a G20 summit should plan, strategize and position witnesses and cameras to better catch the provocatuers coming, acting and going, You Tube has more and more vids from street level of events and one vid showed a Block Bloc dressed individual being let through police lines and protected with other plain clothes police operatives. There is more and more independent media out there who only want to tell the facts, not paint a narrative like the Statist media does. Protest organizers should embrace independent media and welcome them inside to see and tell their story but also help position them throughout in order to act a more eyes for provocatuers. Does the State not use it’s media against us in this same type maner?
Kevin Carson’s thoughts of individualists regulating the heirarchy and elite is just one good example here and as the envelope gets torn open to expose the truth, someone like Wikileaks just might get some hard data from a whistle blower that then blows the entire thing wide open. As momentum from this type exposure grows, so will loyality to the State wane and the cascading effect will take on it’s on perpetual motion to individualism, localism/mutualism and voluntaryism.
Helpless? No Way! IMO this is gift to wake even more people up and give creditiblity to those opposing statist globalism and nationalism. If the state will break windows and burn it’s own police cars to achive a political outcome and people can see and understand that, it’s then easier to understand why they would create so-called enemies and destroy other peoples cultures and communities in order to also achieve a political outcome.
There are numerous ways to discredit the state/corp. alliance and whether you or I choose those avenues in our efforts doesn’t mean we should not welcome those efforts in the greater cause. If the effort doesn’t use force of fraud for the most part that I can see, I welcome the/any efforts. Also thanks to Stefan Molyneux to also bringing up the idea that the so-called “Black Bloc” may not be what they pretend to be and the history of such state instigated provocatuers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZJIzWbOzdw&feature=youtube_gdata
real anarchists know that the black block is real(ie. not pigs in disguise): people actually want to smash the state and fuck the police.
http://www.infoshop.org/page/Blackbloc-Faq
http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/to…
http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/blocs.php
http://crimethinc.com/tools/downloads/pdfs/direct…
This speculation is generally made from a distance, without concrete evidence. To
allege that direct action must be the work of police agent provocateurs is disempowering:
it rules out the possibility that activists could do such things themselves, overestimating
the powers of police intelligence and reinforcing the illusion that the State is
omnipotent. Likewise, it preemptively dismisses the value of a diversity of tactics, and
the reality that people are applying them. When people feel entitled to make unfounded
claims that every tactic of which they disapprove is a police provocation, this obstructs
the very possibility of constructive dialogue about which tactics are most effective.
Debunking veteran activist Judy Rebick's G20 Toronto police car conspiracy theory:
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=201006…
“Anarchists are beginning to pay serious attention to the party of passive resistance, whose basic principle is that the individual must allow himself and others to be persecuted and despised rather than harm the aggressor…
“A man may, if he is… very good…, suffer every kind of provocation without defending himself with every weapon at his disposal, and still remain a moral man. But would he not, in practice, even unconsciously, be a supreme egoist were he to allow others to be persecuted without making any effort to defend them? If, for instance, he were to prefer that a class should be reduced to abject misery, that a people should be downtrodden by an invader, that man's life or liberty should be abused, rather than bruise the flesh of the oppressor?
“…[M]ore often than not, to profess passive resistance only serves to reassure the oppressors against their fears of rebellion, and thus it betrays the cause of the oppressed.
“For myself, I would violate every principle in the world in order to save a man…”
-Errico Malatesta
more good stuff debunking black bloc conspiracies:
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=201007…
The Black Bloc people are cowards – cowards living in a make-believe world in which they are big tough heroes. In their dreams! The truth is they only go on their scripted window-breaking sprees when they have a big demonstration they can hide in.
If they are so brave and breaking windows is so radical, how come they never do it on their own? There are 365 days in the year. Why do these chickenshit “heroes” only do it on the one day of the year when they can use other people as cover? They’re like the kid who hides behind mommy’s skirt, dashes out and yells at somebody, and then quickly hides behind mommy’s skirt again.
The truth is it doesn’t take any courage to participate in these fake-radical window-busting runs, because the cops NEVER go after the Black Bloc. At every summit, including Toronto, it’s been the same story: the cops pull all their people out of the way when the Black Bloc does their thing. All the cops vanish until the Black Bloc has finished. Then they go after the peaceful demonstrators. In Toronto, the people who showed real courage were all those who stood up to the cops at the detention centre, in Parkdale, on College Street, etc., while the Black Bloc were back in their bedrooms writing statements praising themselves.
And why do the cops never go after the Black Bloc? Because they love the Black Bloc, who provide with them with the pretext they need for more repression. That’s why the cops have infiltrated the Black Bloc with agents provocateurs. They have an easy job of it, because while they calls themselves “anarchists” they are actually more like a cult, with a few leaders and a bunch of sheep-like followers who don’t have the guts to every challenge their leaders, no matter how idiotic they are. Anarchists? No way! Pathetic losers, is more like it.
p.s. what does your tough-as-opposed-to-not-tough-black-blockers-ass do 365 days a year?
so are they police agents or sheep-like followers?
so i guess people shouldn’t smash the state. let’s hold signs that no one gives a fuck about and sing “give peace a chance” and be good little legitimate (legit to who?) “peaceful protesters”
or maybe they should take off the masks and smash windows and burn police cars in broad daylight and let the police film them so they end up in jail.
http://www.amazon.com/Nonviolence-Protects-State-Peter-Gelderloos/dp/0896087727/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278304450&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Pacifism-Pathology-Reflections-Struggle-America/dp/1904859186/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278304490&sr=1-1
RE: Anonymous direct action is ‘cowardly.’
This accusation is almost always made by people who have the privilege of speaking
and acting in public without fearing repercussions: that is to say, those who have
power in this society, and those who obediently accept their power. Should the heroes
of the French Resistance have demonstrated their courage and accountability by acting
against the Nazi occupation in the full light of day, thus dooming themselves to defeat?
For that matter, in a nation increasingly terrorized by police and federal surveillance
of just about everyone, is it any wonder that those who express dissent might want to
protect their privacy while doing so?
RE: Direct action is practiced only by privileged young people/uncivilized
poor people/adventurist lunatics/etc.
In fact, direct action is and long has been practiced in a variety of forms by people
of all walks of life. The only possible exception to this would be members of the
wealthiest and most powerful classes, who have no need to practice any kind of illegal
or controversial action because, as if by coincidence, the established political channels
are perfectly suited to their needs.