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From The Cancer in Occupy
The Black Bloc’s thought-terminating cliché of “diversity of tactics” in the end opens the way for hundreds or thousands of peaceful marchers to be discredited by a handful of hooligans. The state could not be happier. It is a safe bet that among Black Bloc groups in cities such as Oakland are agents provocateurs spurring them on to more mayhem. But with or without police infiltration the Black Bloc is serving the interests of the 1 percent. These anarchists represent no one but themselves. Those in Oakland, although most are white and many are not from the city, arrogantly dismiss Oakland’s African-American leaders, who, along with other local community organizers, should be determining the forms of resistance.
The explosive rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement came when a few women, trapped behind orange mesh netting, were pepper-sprayed by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. The violence and cruelty of the state were exposed. And the Occupy movement, through its steadfast refusal to respond to police provocation, resonated across the country. Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.
Hedges also reports that when he reported death threats to the police, he became “to Black Bloc anarchists ‘a pig lover.’”
When OccupyX (or some offshoot of it) becomes better organized, and funded, IMO they should hire off duty cops to arrest people destroying property, attacking cops (e.g., by shoving a barricade at them), etc. I don’t know about the legalities involved, but if it’s a “go”, legally, I’d even recruit unpaid 20-30 year old males to do citizens’ arrests of Black Bloc type idiotic trouble makers.
Letting Blac Bloc types do their thing, while cowardly embedding themselves in Occupy groups that mostly reject their crazy tactics, is inviting situations like police firing rubber bullets into crowds where mothers are holding their babies. From what little I know about the Blac Block, I have no respect for them or their methods. Nor do I respect fuzzy-headed occupiers who may not approve of their methods (which I agree could sink Occupy!), but tolerate them, anyway.
7 Comments
The 1% couldn’t be happier with what went down in Oakland.
From what I understood…running into City hall & committing vandalism was not something that was discussed or planned at the general assembly…and so those who committed that act might have been from people wanting to see the movement destroyed on behalf of the Corporate creeps.
After all,who in their right mind from “Occupy” would want to destroy a Children art exhibit ?……agent provocateurs ?
Alex Jones has a video of an agent provocateur, in Canada, running from the protesters into a group of cops. One of the cops patted an agent provocateur on the back, as he went by.
If activists had their acts more together, they’d take a still from the video, print it out, and then pass it out. You know that MSM is not going to educate the public on the doings of the hidden police state.
http://my.firedoglake.com/wendydavis/2012/02/06/non-violence-or-diversity-of-tactics-confronting-the-myth-of-the-rational-insurgent/
Not that i agree with all your assertions.
Figure 3 in your diary if fascinating, if it represents what I think it does. It basically implies that, if you can get enough of the public on your side, then you can overcome even the most repressive government.
BTW, I wouldn’t find the Blac Bloc so contemptible if they did their Blac Bloc thing, on their own. You know, them against the police. They essentially hide behind more peaceful demonstrators, putting them in jeopardy that they wouldn’t be in, otherwise.
I do agree with metamars’ assertions. There are bigger fish to fry than to get bogged down in confrontations with police.
It may interest you to know that there has been precisely one (1) Black Bloc associated with Occupy Oakland. It happened on November 2, 2011, during the Oakland General Strike.
There has not been another Black Bloc in Oakland or anywhere else in the Occupy Movement since then.
Hedges conflates and falsifies facts about Occupy Oakland and Black Bloc.
Hedges was interviewed on KPFA radio this morning along with Kristof Lopaur from Occupy Oakland. During the conversation, we hear him claim that he “wasn’t writing about Occupy Oakland” — although the bulk of his examples of “Black Bloc anarchism” refer to incidents in Oakland during January 28 demonstrations — when there was no Black Bloc — and that he respects the fact that the conditions in Oakland are probably different than in New York, and that all he was trying to do was write about the need to keep Black Bloc separate from “OWS” which he sees as a very mainstream operation that shouldn’t be involved in confrontations with police. He wasn’t writing about Occupy Oakland, just Black Bloc and OWS.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/77663
It was the same way in the 60′s –
There is core group – certainly not all are black but in the 60′s we did see some black American’s chose violence – that just wants to enter any peaceful protest and turn it violent.
But to complain is of course not politically correct, and in the end the judgments and needed actions do not change because of the “Black Block” existence or because of others not acknowledging, or acknowledging, the fact of their existence. A bit like Israel/Palestine where a group wants to pretend that Jews left the area leaving it to Arabs, returning only recently, despite evidence to the contrary. It changes nothing as to the actions needed to solve the current problem – namely a fair split of the land into two states with a Jewish state recognized by all as one of those states – but it is curious to see others pretend history is different from the truth.
As I know the above will be challenged by someone who choses to not read about the increased immigration of the Arab population in the 30′s and 40′s into what was a land of a still low Arab population, below are a few comments made by travelers of times before the 1930′s to the Holy Land:
From Mark Twain in “The Innocents Abroad”(1867): “There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent (valley of Jezreel, Galilea); not for thirty miles in either direction… One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee… Nazareth is forlorn… Jericho lies a moldering ruin… Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation… unattended by any living creature.”
From B. W. Johnson, in “Young Folks in Bible Lands”: Chapter IV (1892) “There are many proofs, such as ancient ruins, broken aqueducts, and remains of old roads, which show that it has not always been so desolate as it seems now. In the portion of the plain between Mount Carmel and Jaffa one sees but rarely a village or other sights of human life. There some rude mills here which are turned by the stream. A ride of half an hour more brought us to the ruins ..”
From British archaeologist Thomas Shaw (mid-1700s”: “The land in Palestine is lacking in people to till its fertile soil”.
From Count Constantine François Volney, XVIII century French author and historian: “Palestine is a ruined and desolate land”.-
From James Finn, British Consul in 1857: “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population”.
From an 1844 William Thackeray piece about the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem: “Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride.”
From a 1866 by W.M. Thomson: “How melancholy is this utter desolation. Not a house, not a trace of inhabitants, not even shepherds, to relieve the dull monotony … Much of the country through which we have been rambling for a week appears never to have been inhabited, or even cultivated; and there are other parts, you say, still more barren.”
In 1874, Reverend Samuel Manning wrote: “But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude…. Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter — “the land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants.” (Jeremiah, ch.44 v.22)
From the report of the British Royal Commission, 1913: “The area was under populated and remained economically stagnant until the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers in the 1880′s, who came to rebuild the Jewish land. The country had remained “The Holy Land” in the religious and historic consciousness of mankind, which associated it with the Bible and the history of the Jewish people. Jewish development of the country also attracted large numbers of other immigrants – both Jewish and Arab.”
From “Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata” – a detailed geographical survey of Palestine in 1696 written in Latin by Adriaan Reland published by Willem Broedelet, Utrecht, in 1714: “Residents of the REGION mainly concentrated in cities: Jerusalem, Acre, Safed, Jaffa, Tiberias and Gaza. In most cities, the majority of residents are Christians, Jews and others, very few Muslims who generally are Bedouin, seasonal workers who came to serve as Seasonalworkers in agriculture or building. Nablus: 120 Muslims, 70 Samaritans; Nazareth: 700 people – all Christians; Umm al-Fahm: 50 people-10 families, ALL Christian; Gaza: 550 people- 300 Jews,250 Christian(Jews engaged in agriculture ,Christians deal with the trading and transporting the products); Tiberias: 300 residents, all Jews; Safed: about 200 inhabitants, all Jews; Jerusalem :5000 people, most of them (3,500) Jews, the rest – Christian (1000) Muslim (500).”