Ohnoes!!! Broken windows! "Molotov cocktails!" Disruption! Black clad anarchist!!!
This attitude toward disruption, inconvenience and broken glass (black clothing too) is one of the reason why we're in the pickle we're in. The fear of actually doing something that might-could get someone in trouble, change the narrative, prove disruptive, inconvenient, or break a window has been so ingrained in the American subconscious that when it happens -- as at Berkeley, but many times before -- there is a reflexive recoil. "Ohnoes!"
Well, stop.
While I don't find the Black Bloc to be a particularly effective tactic -- never was -- it exists, it happens, it's going to continue, get over it.
Yes, really. Get the fuck over it. I think I said much the same during Occupy, whenever the Pearl Clutchers went into their periodic -- and idiotic -- hysterics over someone breaking something somewhere or burning trash in the street. Come on, it's a tiny thing when compared to the outrages of the ruling class. If it gets attention paid to some of those outrages, great. If not, it's not the end of the world.
Welp, here we are now, and Antifa is a rising thing as people start to recognize that Fascism has evolved and the Trump regime is its New Model avatar. If we really don't want fascists to rule us, we'll have to accept a bit of vanguardism from the Antifa.
Don't worry about it so much.
If you don't want to participate, don't. Is that so hard?
Of course I've heard plenty of reports that there are provocateurs sent by the state in every Black Bloc action we know of. Could be. I did encounter provocateurs during Occupy, but to my knowledge they were not included in any Black Bloc action I had personal knowledge of -- which wasn't all of them, by any means.
Any movement is going to be infiltrated. That's just the way it is, and it's another thing to get over and get used to. Infiltration will happen and authorities will attempt to decapitate any nascent movement -- at least any nascent movement on the Left -- before resorting to naked force. It's Iron Law.
We've seen, however, up at Standing Rock in particular, a remarkable level of resilience and continued resistance, despite the efforts of the authorities not just to decapitate but to violently confront and kneecap defiance.
Defiance, in fact, seems to be what puts the militarized police into an absolute frenzy. Hello. Clue stick. This is how you bring the system of rule to a halt and eventually bring it down.
Surprise: it's not a straight path to victory, and the Resistance makes many strange bedfellows along the way.
A key understanding is so far missing from the Resistance: this is Class War, and it is necessary to place Trump in the Ruling Class category and let it be known that the class he represents is in most ways just like he is.
In order to reach victory the entire 1% must feel the effects the defiance of the masses.
Their rule can be brought to a halt by making it impossible for them to govern.
The Antifa vanguard is already taking the risks, though it doesn't look coordinated -- yet. Interestingly, the RevCom agitators are right out front. Communists and Anarchists ordinarily don't get along -- and I'll leave to another time speculation on just who and what RevCom is -- but perhaps the danger is so great now that tired old animosities must be set to the side.
The Antifa vanguard is active but so far it is uncoordinated. Perhaps that will change with the next ukase from the Winter Palace. We'll see.
But for now, I am surprised -- and impressed -- at the number of Antifa activists at the Disrupt J20 inauguration events.
Meanwhile in Berkeley:
And then there's this from WSWS:
Why is the New York Times promoting the “black bloc”?
By Bill Van Auken
4 February 2017The New York Times, the semi-official voice of the Democratic Party establishment, published an extraordinary article in its Friday edition headlined “Anarchists Vow to Halt Far Right’s Rise, With Violence if Needed.”The piece, which ran across four columns of the newspaper’s front page under a huge photo of a black-masked individual preparing to break an office building window with an iron bar during Wednesday night’s protests at the University of California, Berkeley, amounted to free publicity and promotion of the violent protests organized by elements identifying themselves as the “black bloc,” anti-fascists and anarchists.
So there ya go. Chaos ensues...
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind...
(Note: the Trotsky-ites at WSWS are great at analysis, but they tend not to get involved in anyone else's uprising. They field political candidates though, so there is that...)
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