Non avete letto male: istigavano al saccheggio. Secondo testimoni oculari che hanno filmato e pubblicato la manifestazione sui social media, i due agenti, fingendo di essere dimostranti, agivano da “istigatori al saccheggio” (Courtney Harrop, “Undercover Cops Outed and Pulled Guns on Crowd,” Storify, 11 dicembre 2013). Alcuni manifestanti li hanno individuati e hanno passato parola agli altri. Uno degli agenti, spaventato, è stato immortalato in una fotografia che ha fatto il giro del web mentre tira fuori la pistola e comincia a minacciare quelli che gli stanno attorno.

Quella dei poliziotti che provocano e istigano al crimine è una vecchia storia. Come disse Judi Bari, organizzatore di Earth First!, “chi offre la dinamite sono sempre gli agenti della Fbi.” Dalle proteste di Seattle a dicembre 1999 in poi, nel movimento anti-globalizzazione circolano voci di poliziotti sotto copertura che incitano i manifestanti a sfasciare le vetrine. E poi: Quasi tutte le “cellule terroristiche” scoperte dall’Fbi dall’undici settembre 2001 sono state messe in piedi passo dopo passo da agenti federali. Questi “terroristi” erano spesso così incompetenti che anche con l’assistenza dell’Fbi non sapevano darsi una mano.

Come Charles Foster Kane inventa la notizia laddove non c’è, così lo stato inventa il crimine che altrimenti non esisterebbe.

Lo fa, in primo luogo, per giustificare l’uso della violenza contro le voci critiche: chi protesta contro la globalizzazione corporativa, il movimento Occupy, chi marcia contro l’ingiustizia razziale. Lo stato cerca sempre di infangare ogni movimento che provi a diffondere il messaggio di “Un Altro Mondo Possibile”, o chiunque metta in dubbio la legittimità dell’attuale sistema di potere. Lo fa tacciandoli come “rossi”, “anarchici” e “agitatori esterni”, come avvenuto, se necessario inventando i crimini, durante la repressione post-Haymarket e durante il terrore rosso seguito alla seconda guerra mondiale.

Lo stato deve tenerci nel terrore, perché è così che accettiamo di cedere il potere. Una società composta da persone che si fidano, e non diffidano, l’uno dell’altro, che hanno fiducia nelle proprie possibilità di ottenere sicurezza tramite la cooperazione pacifica con i propri simili, è terreno sterile per il potere statale. Lo stato ha bisogno del crimine, anche se bisogna inventarlo.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

That’s right, attempting to instigate looting — you didn’t misread. According to eyewitnesses livetweeting from the demonstration, the two officers — posing as demonstrators — were would-be “instigators of looting” (Courtney Harrop, “Undercover Cops Outed and Pulled Guns on Crowd,” Storify, December 11, 2013). Protesters in the group they were attempting to infiltrate spotted them as fakes and outed them to the rest of the crowd. One of the panicked cops, captured in a photograph that immediately went viral, pulled his gun and began threatening the surrounding marchers.

Police provocateurs as instigators of crime is an old narrative. As Earth First! organizer Judi Bari famously said, “the person that offers to get the dynamite is always the FBI agent.” From the December 1999 Seattle protests on, the anti-globalization movement was rife with rumors of undercover cops always being the first to suggest smashing store windows. Nearly every “terror cell” busted by the FBI since 9/11 turned out to have been organized every step of the way by federal agents. Indeed the “terrorists” were usually so incompetent they could barely function even with FBI guidance.

Just as Charles Foster Kane manufactured news where there was none, the state manufactures crime where none would otherwise exist.

It does this, in the first instance, to create a pretext for using violence to suppress its immediate critics — the protesters against corporate globalization, the Occupiers, marchers outraged by racial injustice. The state always attempts to tarnish any movement circulating the message that “Another World is Possible” or casting doubt on the legitimacy of the existing system of power. It has done this by dismissing them as “reds,” “anarchists” and “outside agitators” — as in the post-Haymarket repression and the post-WWI Red Scare — and if necessary by simply fabricating crime.

But beyond that, the state needs us afraid so we’ll be willing to grant it power. A society made up of people who trust rather than fear each other, confident in their own ability to keep themselves safe through peaceful cooperation with their neighbors, is an inhospitable breeding ground for state power. The state needs crime — even if it has to invent it.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Lo Stato Ha Bisogno del Crimine

First, an article in Monthly Review (Lauren Regan, “Electronic Communications Surveillance,” July/August) describes the revolving door of personnel between federal law enforcement and the oil and gas industry’s private goon squads, and how “the U.S. government has colluded with private corporations and extractive industries to ratchet up their COINTELPRO-esque tactics upon climate justice activists.” The fossil fuel industries like to spin off private “security” and “public relations” firms (often staffed by retired federal and state cops) to spy on perfectly legal activist groups, infiltrate and disrupt them, and give intelligence to PR staff — who then cook up scary “fact sheets” to discredit activists to both media and law enforcement. Extractive corporations like TransCanada also give PowerPoint presentations to various levels of law enforcement advocating surveillance and prosecution of activists as “terrorists” — something the cops are all prepared to eat up, what with the proliferation of “Fusion Centers” looking for stuff to panic over.

The other item: According to a study by Katie Keranen of Cornell University, almost all of the 2,500 small earthquakes in Oklahoma in the past five years have been the result of high pressure wastewater injections related to fracking. The change of stress on existing fault lines from the injection of water can trigger them — with water travelling along fault lines and causing earthquakes up to 22 miles away. And other states — Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, Ohio — have also seen sharp rises in small earthquakes corresponding to the introduction of fracking there. Youngstown, Ohio — which hadn’t previously been bothered by earthquakes — was hit by 109 of them in 2011 following the creation of an injection well.

Somehow I’m guessing even the minor structural damage to homes from thousands of earthquakes in five states, breakage of possessions, and the like, would cumulatively amount to a significant sum of money — enough to have a real impact on the bottom line of an industry that has problems with financial sustainability as it is and is highly reliant on a bubble financing Ponzi scheme. And we haven’t even gotten into the poisoning of groundwater from injection of toxic chemicals into geologically unstable areas.

At every step of the way, the state steps in to subsidize the operating costs of the fossil fuel industry, steal land for it to build pipelines on, and indemnify it against liability through regulatory preemption of tort law or even flat out statutory caps on liability for damage. And yet self-proclaimed libertarians like the Koch Brothers and much of the right-wing libertarian think tank and periodicals establishment loudly proclaim their support for fracking and Keystone in the name of the “free market.”

Sorry, folks. Fracking and pipelines have nothing to do with the free market. They’re creations of the state from beginning to end.