The Black Bloc Anarchists

[Stephen Morgan]

[undead]

vanlose kid,

Why is black bloc effective at all to begin with? What does it accomplish? Because I don't see how the purpose of these kinds of actions is any different than that of the mass protests they piggyback on. Beyond that, what purpose does it serve, other than to provide emotional satisfaction to the black bloc members who (rightly) feel the need to lash out against the system.

What is an effective tactic? A productive outlet for the collective energy of all of these people. The problem is that the personal blockage of various individuals is problematic for the collective, especially when it is reinforced by ideology and actively encouraged by the police. And the active encouragement by the police remains the main point.

[Wombaticus Rex]

on a related note: what is effective?

what, in your view, is a very good tactic?

*

Nice -- that's the meat I actually do care about: the lessons we can synthesize from this latest exercise in stopping the meat grinder face-first.

First off, with zero sarcasm in my heart, some Wyndham Lewis: "The Secret of Success is Secrecy."

My problem with BB is the disconnect between their rhetoric/reasoning and their actions. I'm fine with someone saying "I AM SICK WITH RAGE, AND I WANT TO DESTROY SHIT." Fine. But don't go quoting people and couching it like an intellectual argument, that's uncouth.

Walia's broadside about "holding corporate media responsible" rings pretty hollow. How? With what? If there's no mechanism for doing that, then isn't "Corporate Media," warts and all, just part of the environment, the game board, the battlefield? Most of what she wrote was fundamentally a complaint about why BB isn't as effective as it "should" be. The single point I took the most issue with was this:

Tactics can be effective, they can be ineffective, but inherently they are neither.

I like Korzybski, too, but at the end of the day you've got to make the best decision you can with the available information and move forward. On that operational level, there's a pretty straightforward distinction between effective and ineffective tactics. Stuff like "measurable results" and "track records" come into play and you can very quickly begin to separate between the two.

So, What Works? Well, Gene Sharp has a pretty epic list you're probably already familiar with:
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations103a.html

Of course, that list is essentially a catalog of the "ritual games" that Walia was invoking Ehrenreich to explain. It's important to evolve, shake up preconceptions, and most of all, cheat effectively to win. On that note, I'm not even remotely opposed to violence. I am against stupid, and committing acts of violence in broad daylight seems to #occupy the middle of that particular Venn diagram -- it is both violent and stupid.

This is why you won't see me dismissing Earth Liberation Front. They approach their work with common sense.

Committing violence at protests:
1) disrupts the messaging of the protest itself
2) alienates a majority of the actual mass at the action (hence this endless debate!)
3) increases your chances of being arrested, FFS, because you're in the middle of a heavily monitored environment that is overflowing with a surplus of law enforcement all of whom are poised & primed to make arrests.

That last one is what irks me the most. Let the docile mainstream complain -- they're playing their part in the synthesis, too. But come on: doing this stuff at protests is dumb. I will grant that it's a very romantic and often courageous kind of stupid, but now we're getting into flavors of shit and that is a conversation I won't have.

Hope this approximates an answer -- I am not trying to be dismissive of you.

[American Dream]

The Alliance of Community Trainers has a thoughtful- and strategic- approach to these matters:

http://trainersalliance.org/?p=221

Open Letter to the Occupy Movement: Why We Need Agreements
8 November, 2011

From the Alliance of Community Trainers, ACT

The Occupy movement has had enormous successes in the short time since September when activists took over a square near Wall Street. It has attracted hundreds of thousands of active participants, spawned occupations in cities and towns all over North America, changed the national dialogue and garnered enormous public support. It’s even, on occasion, gotten good press!

Now we are wrestling with the question that arises again and again in movements for social justice—how to struggle. Do we embrace nonviolence, or a ‘diversity of tactics?’ If we are a nonviolent movement, how do we define nonviolence? Is breaking a window violent?

We write as a trainers’ collective with decades of experience, from the anti-Vietnam protests of the sixties through the strictly nonviolent antinuclear blockades of the seventies, in feminist, environmental and anti-intervention movements and the global justice mobilizations of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. We embrace many labels, including feminist, anti-racist, eco-feminist and anarchist. We have many times stood shoulder to shoulder with black blocs in the face of the riot cops, and we’ve been tear-gassed, stun-gunned, pepper sprayed, clubbed, and arrested,

While we’ve participated in many actions organized with a diversity of tactics, we do not believe that framework is workable for the Occupy Movement. Setting aside questions of morality or definitions of ‘violence’ and ‘nonviolence’ – for no two people define ‘violence’ in the same way – we ask the question:


What framework can we organize in that will build on our strengths, allow us to grow, embrace a wide diversity of participants, and make a powerful impact on the world?


‘Diversity of tactics’ becomes an easy way to avoid wrestling with questions of strategy and accountability. It lets us off the hook from doing the hard work of debating our positions and coming to agreements about how we want to act together. It becomes a code for ‘anything goes,’ and makes it impossible for our movements to hold anyone accountable for their actions.

The Occupy movement includes people from a broad diversity of backgrounds, life experiences and political philosophies. Some of us want to reform the system and some of us want to tear it down and replace it with something better. Our one great point of agreement is our call for transparency and accountability. We stand against the corrupt institutions that broker power behind closed doors. We call to account the financial manipulators that have bilked billions out of the poor and the middle classes.

Just as we call for accountability and transparency, we ourselves must be accountable and transparent. Some tactics are incompatible with those goals, even if in other situations they might be useful, honorable or appropriate. We can’t be transparent behind masks. We can’t be accountable for actions we run away from. We can’t maintain the security culture necessary for planning and carrying out attacks on property and also maintain the openness that can continue to invite in a true diversity of new people. We can’t make alliances with groups from impacted communities, such as immigrants, if we can’t make agreements about what tactics we will employ in any given action.

The framework that might best serve the Occupy movement is one of strategic nonviolent direct action. Within that framework, Occupy groups would make clear agreements about which tactics to use for a given action. This frame is strategic—it makes no moral judgments about whether or not violence is ever appropriate, it does not demand we commit ourselves to a lifetime of Gandhian pacifism, but it says, ‘This is how we agree to act together at this time.’ It is active, not passive. It seeks to create a dilemma for the opposition, and to dramatize the difference between our values and theirs.

Strategic nonviolent direct action has powerful advantages:

We make agreements about what types of action we will take, and hold one another accountable for keeping them. Making agreements is empowering. If I know what to expect in an action, I can make a choice about whether or not to participate. While we can never know nor control how the police will react, we can make choices about what types of action we stand behind personally and are willing to answer for. We don’t place unwilling people in the position of being held responsible for acts they did not commit and do not support.

In the process of coming to agreements, we listen to each other’s differing viewpoints. We don’t avoid disagreements within our group, but learn to debate freely, passionately, and respectfully.

We organize openly, without fear, because we stand behind our actions. We may break laws in service to the higher laws of conscience. We don’t seek punishment nor admit the right of the system to punish us, but we face the potential consequences for our actions with courage and pride.

Because we organize openly, we can invite new people into our movement and it can continue to grow. As soon as we institute a security culture in the midst of a mass movement, the movement begins to close in upon itself and to shrink.

Holding to a framework of nonviolent direct action does not make us ‘safe.’ We can’t control what the police do and they need no direct provocation to attack us. But it does let us make clear decisions about what kinds of actions we put ourselves at risk for.

Nonviolent direct action creates dilemmas for the opposition, and clearly dramatizes the difference between the corrupt values of the system and the values we stand for. Their institutions enshrine greed while we give away food, offer shelter, treat each person with generosity. They silence dissent while we value every voice. They employ violence to maintain their system while we counter it with the sheer courage of our presence.

Lack of agreements privileges the young over the old, the loud voices over the soft, the fast over the slow, the able-bodied over those with disabilities, the citizen over the immigrant, white folks over people of color, those who can do damage and flee the scene over those who are left to face the consequences.

Lack of agreements and lack of accountability leaves us wide open to provocateurs and agents. Not everyone who wears a mask or breaks a window is a provocateur. Many people clearly believe that property damage is a strong way to challenge the system. And masks have an honorable history from the anti-fascist movement in Germany and the Zapatista movement in Mexico, who said “We wear our masks to be seen.”

But a mask and a lack of clear expectations create a perfect opening for those who do not have the best interests of the movement at heart, for agents and provocateurs who can never be held to account. As well, the fear of provocateurs itself sows suspicion and undercuts our ability to openly organize and grow.

A framework of strategic nonviolent direct action makes it easy to reject provocation. We know what we’ve agreed to—and anyone urging other courses of action can be reminded of those agreements or rejected.

We hold one another accountable not by force or control, ours or the systems, but by the power of our united opinion and our willingness to stand behind, speak for, and act to defend our agreements.

A framework of strategic nonviolent direct action agreements allows us to continue to invite in new people, and to let them make clear choices about what kinds of tactics and actions they are asked to support.

There’s plenty of room in this struggle for a diversity of movements and a diversity of organizing and actions. Some may choose strict Gandhian nonviolence, others may choose fight-back resistance. But for the Occupy movement, strategic nonviolent direct action is a framework that will allow us to grow in diversity and power.

From the Alliance of Community Trainers, ACT

Starhawk
Lisa Fithian
Lauren Ross (or Juniper)

[JackRiddler]

This is important because those involved in black bloc are also those most likely to have encountered state violence in its purest form. Whether a bailiff kicking through a squat door, a police baton to the body; or the inchoate despair of unaddressed destitution. The bloc arises as a sort of collective counterpoint to this violent emasculation – a visual manifestation of social negation. So whilst its aims are primarily tactical, its aesthetics are nonetheless politically inscribed. Dick Hebdige notes in his book Subculture how style can constitute a form of everyday resistance: black bloc takes this further, its style at use in both practicable and metaphorical dissent.

It's the "practicable" I find highly dubious. In fact, Moses provides a contradictory acknowledgement of the gestures' utter uselessness below (at "immaterial").

A word on violence. By which we seem to mean, as far as I can discern, not violence but vandalism. And not arbitrary vandalism either. The targets accumulatively read like a sort of summarial revenge against the worst excesses foisted upon us by capitalist society: the banking sector (financial nihilism), Ann Summers (commodified sexuality), the Ritz and a Porsche dealership (egregious wealth).

They "read like," but in what way are they? In what way does the vandalism enact real "revenge" or advance the day when this revenge actually happens? The next sentence makes for a hellacious counterpoint:

All of them strong enough, rich enough, to render property damage immaterial.

Wait a minute, what argument is he making? Sort of the opposite point, no?

Rather than a single high profile occupation like Fortnum and Masons, their action was the sum of its parts; a revolution targeted not at the government, at a singular major corporation, but where we feel it most: everyday life. So perhaps its political point – of the stolen everyday – was best articulated that evening as Trafalgar square was violently cleansed: by morning, even our riots will vanish from this earth.

Contrary to Milibandian revisionism, these forms of direct action have a long history. The Suffragettes broke more windows on Oxford Street than black bloc would have dared. They ripped up paintings in the national gallery. They planted a bomb at Lloyd George’s Surrey villa. The Civil Rights movement, another example of Ed’s “peaceful but powerful protest” has been mysteriously excised of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.

This list can't just be invoked without a look at the history in detail. It can still be the case that the Suffragettes were right to commit such actions while the BB may still be wrong in doing so today. The author may simply be wrong in claiming that the two actions are really the same.

It occurs to me the TUC dates back to the 19th century, or am I wrong? When the Suffragettes went to break windows on Oxford Street, did they use a TUC demonstration as a cover? To my knowledge the Suffragettes did not use a mass of other pro-Suffrage protesters as the unwilling camouflage for initiating window-breaking actions, but please correct me if they did.

The question now is very much about when and where BBs do their thing, and whether or not they respect others in the same movement who don't want to participate in their tactics.

By contrast, the action of black bloc was decidedly non-violent. Yet we refuse to accord economic rights the same legitimacy as the right not to be discriminated by race and gender, we deny that struggle the same right to resist.

The bolded is non-sequitur and tastes to me like red herring. Critique of BB tactics is not "a refusal to accord economic rights etc. etc."

Whilst the Labour movement floundered in the 1980s, this historical myopia also conveniently forgets the alter-globalisation movement which sprung up later that decade, when black bloc first came to media prominence. [b]With links that spread all the way from the Zapatistas of the Chiapas to the streets of Prague, London, Genoa, Seattle and Berlin; “anarchists” and their methods were at the forefront of the struggle against neoliberalism.

With as many tactics within as many contexts as cities mentioned. Can't just claim all of that on behalf of a given BB today.

Nobody will denounce the Suffragettes today, or the civil rights movement. Not Ed Miliband and the Labour Party. Not Brendan Barber and the TUC. Let us not fall into the same trap of condemning those who fight in the present because it is ‘respectable’. We may just find ourselves changing to stay unchanged, whilst History changes spirit, finding redemption in posterity.

Highly questionable that Moses's attempt to "own" the Suffragettes and civil rights movement (or Malcolm X) as the parallels to the BB of today is any more valid than Milliband's attempt to posthumously recruit them as examples supporting his way of thinking.

I can easily imagine Malcolm X would have supported measures of self-defense, in fact it's guaranteed:Hhe was then and would have been today leading the way in organizing them. And yet it's just as easy to imagine he would have, if not condemned then certainly eschewed initiation of actions like window-breaking in the absence of a direct provocation from the police, as something that just isn't tactically very smart in growing a movement. Is everything done by "that which is called BB" supposed to be taken or rejected as a single package?

.

[bks]

Jack wrote:
In your answer, please do not leave out the role of police and provocateurs: Why do they choose to piggy-back on the BB? Why do they have such a hard-on for it?

I'll take this last bit first. Your taking what might be called a "pragmatic" position, which asks: given the fact of police infiltration and violent provocation, and the further fact of an unsympathetic media system, how does OWS best go about managing perceptions of OWS [within the media and without] so as to not alienate its natural [but as-of-yet not signed-on] political allies among the poor and working classes?

I share the assumptions about the police and provocateuring. But we differ about the significance of the BB tactics [I think they're insignificant, neither much good or much bad, except for the uses they are put to]; I want to problematize media's role in all of this. First off, no one even knows about a few broken windows [since they are of little significance in and of themselves] unless it is reported by media. Why is it reported by media? Because it's a chance to focus on something decidedly insignificant but visually engaging and emotionally potent and [falsely] associate through use of TV conventions with the broader legitimate aims of OWS. The point is: if those windows hadn't been broken by BB, then at some point police-sponsored provocateurs would have broken some others, if it was determined that OWS was gaining too much social momentum. That's the fatal point against the pragmatic, perception-management position. The media perception game can't be won in the long term. The corporate media cannot be used effectively in a Gramscian "war of position" against, among other institutions, the corporate media itself. Instead, the media have to be critiqued - rigorously, ubiquitously, and ruthlessly, - and then, from a strategic/outreach perspective, mostly ignored.

Jack, look again at what you wrote here:

Leaving aside the media and all other elements and all the coulds and shoulds, please focus on the subject at hand: What is the function of what the Black Block does at demonstrations? What are its consequences? Why is this desirable?

If we "leave aside the media", then the tiny little BB is invisible! It has no consequences! You see, don't you? These are almost entirely made-for-TV events. broken windows have a life of their own because of mediacoverage of them - no other reason! Chris Hedges wrote that article because of what he saw and read reported in media, not because of any actual research he did or any experiences he had in Oakland, etc.

So by all means, let's leave the media aside! But that means ignoring it when it spews propaganda, and only effecting to counter it when we see potential allies of ours uncritically accepting a false framing. All other times, leave it alone, mostly.

Now: Might breaking a few windows or setting a fire to a car during a march scare off some bourgeois liberals? Yes. But if it does, should we blame the BB for that? If a little property damage [and I think it was a little, and also IIRC no one was hurt at all in any of the BB incidents referenced] is enough to for BLs to break solidarity with the others in OWS, then I have to ask whether those bourgeois liberals have the stomach for the fight that's coming if OWS gains real social traction. OWS can't let bourgeois liberal sensibilities determine [or even significantly influence] the direction OWS takes, or else they should just quit now and become a chapter of UFPJ. I'm not saying those sensibilities should be ignored, but Hedges seems to think his sensibilities are universal and self-evident. He's just way off base, frankly.

And not only that: it's like Hedges hasn't read his own essays over the last five years [which is saying something, since a new one seemed to come out every few days or so.]. For all his trenchant criticism of the "liberal class", he seems to have internalized some of the most constricting aspects of its worldview judging from this last essay. The line "Once the Occupy movement is painted as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob we are finished" tells the tale. Why on earth would someone who spend the last decade arguing that our dominant cultural institutions are hopelessly corrupted be concerned about how corporate media "paints" OWS? Where would he get the idea that an opponent's framing would be the determinant of OWS's success? If he really thinks that, then I have to wonder why he had enthusiasm for OWS in the first place. Hopefully he'll come to see that he's still got some ties left to sever with his "liberal class" past [as I certainly do as well, btw]

Jack wrote:
We're talking about the utility of a minority group within the protests using the bourgeois liberals (here as ironic term) they say they dislike as a protective mass within which to hide, and sallying forth to break a couple of windows and provoke the cops. Never mind the press, what good does this do in gaining purchase in the urban neighborhoods, or keeping the "bourgeois liberals" in the fold, or doing anything constructive? What's the point?

It doesn't do any good. I'm mostly wanting to point out that it doesn't do much of anything, good or bad. It gets spun as "very bad", and I'm just really against the uncritical acceptance of that framing. And I''m not going to blame BB for that uncritical acceptance. Perhaps this is my own projection, but to me it's crucially important that OWS be understood [in significant part] as an assault on the idea that corporate media agenda-setting is [or ever can be] a neutral aspect of social life. OWS has to challenge that idea in every way it can and from every angle avaiulable, and this is a very good place to challenge it, particularly since someone sympathetic to OWS [hedges] is so evidently falling prey to it.

As far as I'm concerned, BB could burn cars and blow up empty buildings and I'd be saying the same thing. That kind of symbolic violence is, after all, still symbolic. Before we even accede to a dissection of its strategic merits or costs, we should first insist that anyone undertaking such an analysis acknowledge - in vivid detail and appropriate context - the sheer enormity of the all-too-actual systems of violence that are impetus for OWS in the first place. If we were bent on being proportionate about it, we'd never even get to a discussion of the BB symbolic violence, since many lifetimes would be taken up in detailing the imperialist violence of just the last 10 years [let alone the previous 50].

I know you know all of this, but we do have a tactical disagreement here that probably mirrors similar disagreements among people supportive of OWS, including lots of people who read this board. It very much mirrors the 9/11 discussion of what a "movement" is and who is "in" it. So I hope others will contribute to the discussion, and of course, mon frere, I know you'll point out the weaknesses of what I've just said

[JackRiddler]

.

Hey WRex, bravo for this and I'm requoting it whole for speaking my own mind on this:

on a related note: what is effective?

what, in your view, is a very good tactic?

*

Nice -- that's the meat I actually do care about: the lessons we can synthesize from this latest exercise in stopping the meat grinder face-first.

First off, with zero sarcasm in my heart, some Wyndham Lewis: "The Secret of Success is Secrecy."

My problem with BB is the disconnect between their rhetoric/reasoning and their actions. I'm fine with someone saying "I AM SICK WITH RAGE, AND I WANT TO DESTROY SHIT." Fine. But don't go quoting people and couching it like an intellectual argument, that's uncouth.

Walia's broadside about "holding corporate media responsible" rings pretty hollow. How? With what? If there's no mechanism for doing that, then isn't "Corporate Media," warts and all, just part of the environment, the game board, the battlefield? Most of what she wrote was fundamentally a complaint about why BB isn't as effective as it "should" be. The single point I took the most issue with was this:

Tactics can be effective, they can be ineffective, but inherently they are neither.

I like Korzybski, too, but at the end of the day you've got to make the best decision you can with the available information and move forward. On that operational level, there's a pretty straightforward distinction between effective and ineffective tactics. Stuff like "measurable results" and "track records" come into play and you can very quickly begin to separate between the two.

So, What Works? Well, Gene Sharp has a pretty epic list you're probably already familiar with:
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations103a.html

Of course, that list is essentially a catalog of the "ritual games" that Walia was invoking Ehrenreich to explain. It's important to evolve, shake up preconceptions, and most of all, cheat effectively to win. On that note, I'm not even remotely opposed to violence. I am against stupid, and committing acts of violence in broad daylight seems to #occupy the middle of that particular Venn diagram -- it is both violent and stupid.

This is why you won't see me dismissing Earth Liberation Front. They approach their work with common sense.

Committing violence at protests:
1) disrupts the messaging of the protest itself
2) alienates a majority of the actual mass at the action (hence this endless debate!)
3) increases your chances of being arrested, FFS, because you're in the middle of a heavily monitored environment that is overflowing with a surplus of law enforcement all of whom are poised & primed to make arrests.

That last one is what irks me the most. Let the docile mainstream complain -- they're playing their part in the synthesis, too. But come on: doing this stuff at protests is dumb. I will grant that it's a very romantic and often courageous kind of stupid, but now we're getting into flavors of shit and that is a conversation I won't have.

Hope this approximates an answer -- I am not trying to be dismissive of you.

Here's my own list:

A) The significance of BB (not meaning self-defense or reaction to police attacks, but the mostly-lame proactive tactics lumped under BB, like initiating the breaking of windows) is subject to absurd and hysterical exaggerations not just by the enemies of OWS in the media, but among many of its potential allies among the people. So if you're going to do it, it had best have a goddamn credible rationale.

B) No one seems to have an answer for why coppers so often dress up like BB and do the same things. Among those apologizing for BB in quoted matter above, I don't see anyone addressing this.

C) No one among those apologizing for BB can explain what these tactics actually accomplish. Especially when using the cover of other demonstrators. Claims that these tactics somehow dismantle racism and patriarchy or take vengeance against consumer culture are incredible, to say the least: in fact, at least as hysterically overblown as the way our opponents characterize vandalism as "violence" and trivialize violence into "maintaining order."

.

ON EDIT: Cross-posted with bks's long response to me. Gonna have to field that later, because bks always deserves a serious response.

.

[bks]

JR wrote:

B) No one seems to have an answer for why coppers so often dress up like BB and do the same things. Among those apologizing for BB in quoted matter above, I don't see anyone addressing this.

in case I didn't address this above in the sense you seem to mean it: the reason is obvious to me. Cops do it because BB tactics are now an established element of antiglobalization protests, which means cops can now reliably appropriate those tactics for the cops' purposes. This appropriation renders the authenticity of BB tactics virtually moot [to me, at least, and I believe to lots of others as well], which is the part I'm not sure you agree with.

[operator kos]

a few observations from someone who was actually there during the events in question:

It has always been the police not the protesters (black bloc or otherwise) who have been the primary purveyors and instigators of chaos and violence. The night Scott Olsen was shot, the police initiated the violence when they stormed the encampment where people had had the audacity to provide free food, shelter, books, classes, Internet access, and medical care for the community. On J28, the police also initiated the violence when they fired smoke grenades followed by tear gas into a march which had up until that point been peaceful. On the General Strike day, there was some property destruction done by black bloc folks which they themselves initiated. I don't find such acts to be particularly constructive or good for PR, but to be fair they did target banks and big corporate chains, not local businesses (as had been the unfortunate case during the initial Oscar Grant riots).

Also, I'd like to say that while I'm not a huge fan of offensive black bloc tactics (property destruction), as a street medic I am a very big fan of defensive black bloc tactics. As shown in the video below (from J28), if black bloc hadn't been there with a line of shields, people in the march would have been taking projectiles directly to the head or body. You'd think after Scott Olsen the OPD would start to actual observe policy and NOT fire tear gas canisters directly into a crowd, but this video proves otherwise.

[JackRiddler]

a few observations from someone who was actually there during the events in question:

It has always been the police not the protesters (black bloc or otherwise) who have been the primary purveyors and instigators of chaos and violence. The night Scott Olsen was shot, the police initiated the violence when they stormed the encampment where people had had the audacity to provide free food, shelter, books, classes, Internet access, and medical care for the community. On J28, the police also initiated the violence when they fired smoke grenades followed by tear gas into a march which had up until that point been peaceful. On the General Strike day, there was some property destruction done by black bloc folks which they themselves initiated. I don't find such acts to be particularly constructive or good for PR, but to be fair they did target banks and big corporate chains, not local businesses (as had been the unfortunate case during the initial Oscar Grant riots).

Also, I'd like to say that while I'm not a huge fan of offensive black bloc tactics (property destruction), as a street medic I am a very big fan of defensive black bloc tactics. As shown in the video below (from J28), if black bloc hadn't been there with a line of shields, people in the march would have been taking projectiles directly to the head or body. You'd think after Scott Olsen the OPD would start to actual observe policy and NOT fire tear gas canisters directly into a crowd, but this video proves otherwise.

This is all reasonable and fits in with my observations at many, many other demonstrations in the last 30 years. I don't think it's wrong to carry a shield, or for that matter a stick. I don't think it's wrong to engage in physical self defense.

But the offensive tactics, even though they are mostly mere vandalism, are plainly not constructive and, in the context of public protests that include coalitions of different actors, extremely divisive. Is it really asking too much of those who have just got to break a window to do it in an action that is clearly and identifiably theirs, and not in the middle of a larger protest?

.

[operator kos]

But the offensive tactics, even though they are mostly mere vandalism, are plainly not constructive and, in the context of public protests that include coalitions of different actors, extremely divisive. Is it really asking too much of those who have just got to break a window to do it in an action that is clearly and identifiably theirs, and not in the middle of a larger protest?

You'll hear no arguments from me.

[vanlose kid]

on a related note: what is effective?

what, in your view, is a very good tactic?

*

Nice -- that's the meat I actually do care about: the lessons we can synthesize from this latest exercise in stopping the meat grinder face-first.

First off, with zero sarcasm in my heart, some Wyndham Lewis: "The Secret of Success is Secrecy."

...

i'll get back to get BB debate in a mo, but first i want to address your quote of McLuhan quoting Wyndham Lewis.

first of all there's the context in which McLuhan (if it was him) cited Wyndham Lewis (as it relates to this thread, if it does) and then there's McLuhan and Lewis themselves. but first things first:

...

Do you think privacy and anonymity are being eroded in the digital age?

Don't be fooled by "anonymity." There is no such thing, since every node in a communication system must have an ID. Concerns about privacy and anonymity are outdated. Cypherpunks think they are rebels with a cause, but they are really sentimentalists.

In the '50s, men were crying about the "mass" man and spilling tears over too much anonymity. And they were right, or more right than the cypherpunks. Factories and corporations gave men roles, not souls. Industrial society was anonymous. Cities, factories, secret ballots with mechanical polling booths - that's anonymity. The Big Brother bogeyman of the machine age used technology to enforce anonymity and prevent anybody from doing his own thing.

The era of politics based on private identities, anonymous individuals, and independent citizens began with the French Revolution and Napoleon's armies (a product of the popular press) and ended with Hitler (the product of radio). The cypherpunks are still marching to the same martial music. You think private individuals and mass industrial society are opposites? They are part of the industrial configuration. Instantaneous electronic society gives everybody an identity - which we all want, and which we all also want to lose - while putting almost intolerable pressure on our sense of privacy.

Privacy disappears in the simultaneous stimulation of our patterns of thought.

Then why do you send these messages via an anonymous remailer?

I am not anonymous, but have simply changed my ID. Think of it as a brand. An old brand goes stale, or ends up controlled by a competitor, so you think up a new one. Wyndham Lewis taught me that the secret of success is secrecy, and I used to think he was joking. But now I realize and am trying to demonstrate that these anonymous remailers are among the great publicity devices of all time. They provide a unique ID that is very glamorous and easy to distinguish from a common name. You change it at will, and it even incorporates the sacrificial element of naming and renders tabloid-type identity exposes unnecessary.

What's your take on media juggernauts like Microsoft? Should it be allowed to stranglehold electronic media?

We fear that the owners of the monopoly will crush us, but this never happens. In a flash, the monopolist's products appear out of date, and competition in that particular industry becomes irrelevant because the whole basis of moneymaking has shifted to a new area. As the pace of technological change speeds up, shifts in economic power increasingly seem like magical flipflops produced by luck. The old logic of monopoly - centralized stranglehold - no longer works. The attention of consumers can shift instantly and make the most profound investments obsolete in just a few years, soon to be sped up even further. We will see economic empires crash within hours, and new ones arise just as quickly. The task of the economic manager now is to try to hold monopolies in place just long enough for economic transactions to occur. The capitalist understands that to improve competition, he must encourage monopolies.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.01 ... ng_pr.html

trying to makes sense of what "he's" saying is a bit difficult. there's a lot of equivocation, especially with the use of the term anonymity. you can probably figure that out for yourself so i won't dwell on it, other than to say that it sounds really hip and smart but ... ultimately nonsensical, if you ask me.

re Wyndham Lewis, taking his biography into account i think "McLuhan's" first impression was the correct one. especially if you know how Wyndham Lewis died. it seems clear to me that "The secret of success is secrecy" is a barbed comment aimed by Lewis at himself.

and McLuhan? well...that last paragraph? does it fit the facts? does it even make sense?

*

[Wombaticus Rex]

Well, it's not McLuhan at all, obviously. It's Bob Dean, Canadian Media Theorist/liar/prankster/weirdo who has also claimed to be the "real" Bob Dobbs, much to the consternation (and private amusement) of Ivan Stang. Usually when I invoke that quote, I start with "As Wyndham Lewis never said..."

Still, the fictitious attribution only lends more weight to the quote.

[vanlose kid]

Well, it's not McLuhan at all, obviously. It's Bob Dean, Canadian Media Theorist/liar/prankster/weirdo who has also claimed to be the "real" Bob Dobbs, much to the consternation (and private amusement) of Ivan Stang. Usually when I invoke that quote, I start with "As Wyndham Lewis never said..."

Still, the fictitious attribution only lends more weight to the quote.

yeah. it could have been real, but still, the rest of what Bob Dean says, come on, WRex?

*

[Wombaticus Rex]

Damn, I really need to account for that single sentence, huh? My bad.

The Wired interview is a poor representation, a pale xerox of the full bloom that is Android Meme Xenochrony. The Wired piece is a probe and a parody, a pointed mockery of the Silicon Valley hype machine and the breathless hype of the Global Business Network.

Bob Dean taught me a great deal, and I will not disavow him. Just keeping track of his references was a college course.

His work is an innoculation against the dead language of critical theory. That said, I don't exactly recommend it, just like I don't recommend the Incunabula rabbit hole. It was very educational but there's simpler paths to those mountains.

So: as for "the rest of what Bob Dean says," I suggest reading it.