The Stimulator Explains It All For You

I haven't linked to The Stimulator for a good long time, though I check in with him every six months or so. After the election he posted this little number (NSFW language and shit) that really helped explain what happened and what to do about it.



Then most recently, he's reposted a little effort from Global Uprising on the J20 actions in DC that were intended to disrupt the inaugural festivities...



These are some of the deeper currents of revolt in this country. They have not been able to gain more than momentary recognition from the public, and what recognition they get is typically bad. On the other hand, the "intersectional" nature of the growing revolt against Trumpism/Fascist USA has meant that even the most marginalized upriser may have a role to play in whatever is to come.

We shall see...

From The Stimulator

This was last week's episode. It gives you an idea of how the news and images from Ferguson and elsewhere were being seen through the anarchist lens of Frank Lopez (aka The Stimulator) and what plans are being made for the coming year.

Ferguson Redux from the stimulator on Vimeo.

The efforts to bring justice to so many cases of police violence and murder has inspired a huge outpouring of creative energy.

Once again, there's something happening here...

"War on War"

Anarchists and Internationalists in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, and North America are speaking out against the warmongers and the oligarchs that are trying to make a "Good War" in Ukraine. There is no "right side" of the oligarchic class. The oligarchs are not your friends.

Declaration of the Internationalists Against the War in Ukraine

WAR ON WAR!

NOT A SINGLE DROP A BLOOD FOR THE “NATION”!

The power struggle between oligarchic clans in Ukraine threatens to escalate into an international armed conflict. Russian capitalism intends to use redistribution of Ukrainian state power in order to implement their long-standing imperial and expansionist aspirations in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine where it has strong economic, financial and political interests.

On the background of the next round of the impending economic crisis in Russia, the regime is trying to stoking Russian nationalism to divert attention from the growing workers' socio-economic problems: poverty wages and pensions, dismantling of available health care, education and other social services. In the thunder of the nationalist and militant rhetoric it is easier to complete the formation of a corporate, authoritarian state based on reactionary conservative values and repressive policies.

In Ukraine, the acute economic and political crisis has led to increased confrontation between "old" and "new" oligarchic clans, and the first used including ultra-rightist and ultra-nationalist formations for making a state coup in Kiev. The political elite of Crimea and eastern Ukraine does not intend to share their power and property with the next in turn Kiev rulers and trying to rely on help from the Russian government. Both sides resorted to rampant nationalist hysteria: respectively, Ukrainian and Russian. There are armed clashes, bloodshed. The Western powers have their own interests and aspirations, and their intervention in the conflict could lead to World War III.

Warring cliques of bosses force, as usual, force to fight for their interests us, ordinary people: wage workers, unemployed, students, pensioners... Making us drunkards of nationalist drug, they set us against each other, causing us forget about our real needs and interests: we don`t and can`t care about their "nations" where we are now concerned more vital and pressing problems – how to make ends meet in the system which they found to enslave and oppress us.

We will not succumb to nationalist intoxication. To hell with their state and “nations”, their flags and offices! This is not our war, and we should not go on it, paying with our blood their palaces, bank accounts and the pleasure to sit in soft chairs of authorities. And if the bosses in Moscow, Kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Simferopol start this war, our duty is to resist it by all available means!

NO WAR BETWEEN “NATIONS” – NO PEACE BETWEEN CLASSES!

KRAS, Russian section of the International Workers Association
Internationalists of Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Israel, Lithuania, Romania, Poland

Anarchist Federation of Moldova
Fraction of the Revolutionary Socialists (Ukraine)
Workers Solidarity Alliance (North America)

Cannot. Stop. Laughing.

But yum, the soup is good!

One of the Best Yet

The Stimulator

Front End Loader Dreams from the stimulator on Vimeo.

Anarchists! Wobblies! Commie-Pinkos!

Kevin Gosztola over at FDL has been following this matter of "anarchist extremists" for a good long time now, and he is on top of the story with regard to the RNC Convention in Tampa.

I want Chris Hedges to know that this is what he has done. I hope he's proud of himself.

What was likely to happen as a consequence of Hedges' polemic regarding the "cancer" in Occupy was recognized immediately upon its publication, and many observers were horrified at the prospects. Partially as a result of Hedges' over the top excoriation of what he called "Black Bloc anarchists" -- not knowing anything about them -- the FBI and other parts of the National Security State have targeted self-proclaimed anarchists for surveillance, investigation, infiltration and -- from the scant evidence available -- framing and arrest for various nefarious plots against the Establishment, including (now) something to do with "acid filled eggs." This, I guess, has taken the place of "baggies filled with urine and feces" that were once commonly alleged to be stockpiled for use against The Man.

This is probably only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to official actions against "anarchist extremists," and most of it is traceable right back to Hedges' demonization and scapegoating of "Black Bloc anarchists" last February.

The whole point of which is to chill activist dissent, to control and make acceptable those who engage in authorized dissent (as Hedges and many others do) , and to ensure that no effective opposition to the current status quo arises from the left, or more specifically from the People. In other words to stop Teh Revolution in its tracks.

It's not so much about the anarchists extremist or not, Black Bloc or not. My impression is that they can take care of themselves, and for the most part they will take care of one another when need be. The issue is more about what the state is prepared to do to preserve itself against opposition, what it will do to prevent the masses from engaging in widespread and effective opposition, and how it regards the existence of potential opponents.

More importantly, it's how the state sees the unarmed "anarchist" threat as an existential one, whereas the armed militias (as well as the innumerable Lone Gunmen) are not seen as such a threat at all. They are little more than nuisances, indeed they seem to be regarded as useful idiots.

Not the "anarchists" though.

Of course, there is a long history behind the suppression of anarchists in this country, one that long predates the infamous acts of so-called "anarchists" -- such as the assassination of William McKinley in 1898 as well as the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building in 1910. Anarchists became the political demons du jour -- which meant rather extensive and heavy-handed persecution.

So here we are again, with the supposed threat from anarchists now outweighing the "threat" from terrorists, indeed the one being conflated with the other.

The link at the top of the post details what's going on now, and it's appalling. This is your police state in action.

Modeling the Future

Wingnut Anarchist Collective, Richmond, VA.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of similar activist collectives around the country, some connected with Occupy, others independent of it.

The point being that what needs to be done is being done, and this particular collective in Richmond demonstrates one of the ways to do it.

On Violence and Resistance

Theodor de Bry, Ilustración de la Brevísima de De las Casas, c. 1552

The various Spanish entradas into New Mexico were accompanied by so much grotesque violence that it ought to shock the conscience of even the most hardened would-be conquistador. Today, of course, Americans are pretty much inured to the cruelties of Our Valiant Troops as they march in conquest around the globe, slaughtering and dispossessing the gibbering Natives along the way, while teaching them -- of course -- the benefits of Democracy. Not unlike the Franciscans who accompanied the Spanish Conquistadors, teaching the Natives to welcome the benefits of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church and of course to submit to the rule of their distant but always merciful overlord, the King and Emperor Whoever-it-Might-Be in Spain.

The scene above is not specifically from New Mexico, but it might as well have been. The report is that in the winter of 1541, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his multitudinous seekers after Cibola and the remaining Gold of the Indies decided to camp in the Rio Grande Valley, in the province of Tiguex, near modern-day Albuquerque. They demanded supplies of the Natives, which were mostly given though with some grumbling. When the weather turned cold -- and it does get cold in the Albuquerque area to this day -- the Spanish demanded that the Natives closest by vacate their pueblo and turn it over to the Spanish for their comfort and convenience; the Natives could go live with their friends in other pueblos in the region. The Natives vacated as demanded and the Spanish moved in.

The Spanish let their stock and horses graze over the Indians' harvested fields of corn -- thus consuming the fuel (dried corn stalks) that the Natives used for heat and cooking during the wintertime. The Indians captured some 40 of the free-roaming animals, mostly horses and mules, and according to reports, they killed them all. In addition to supplies and shelter and the consumption of winter fuel, the Spanish demanded women, and if they weren't sufficiently forthcoming, the Spanish took what they wanted. This was the proverbial last straw.

Naturally the Spanish proclaimed that the Natives had "declared war." Spanish conquistadors being peaceful and all.

The Spanish assaulted one pueblo after another, driving the residents to assemble in and fortify the one remaining pueblo where the Indians held out for two months against Spanish aggression. Finally, they negotiated a surrender of sorts, with promises from the Spanish of no reprisals, and in fact of "pardons" to the rebels.

What that meant was that two hundred of those who surrendered would be burned at the stake as a "lesson" to other Pueblo peoples. What would happen to the survivors was undetermined until they tried to flee, at which time they were slaughtered in their multitudes.

All of the Tiguex pueblos in the Albuquerque area were abandoned and some were destroyed altogether during the winter of 1541, but Coronado and his murderous band of thieves, er "Conquistadors", withdrew from New Mexico in 1542 after failing to find the fabled remaining Cities of Gold (but he did see the Grand Canyon and buffalo herds). He was a broken man, so they say, and never fully recovered from his failure. So we are supposed to feel sympathy for him. He did his best in a Glorious Cause, and only killed those Natives because he was provoked. You see. He took their supplies, their houses and their women because he needed them. Simple.

What actually happened during the winter of 1541 is still subject to considerable dispute in New Mexico, in part because the Tiguex pueblos were all reported to be occupied and prospering when the Spanish came back to reconnoiter in the 1580's and they were still apparently doing fine when Juan de Oñate came a-Conquering again in 1598, and they were still going strong until the 1620's when Spanish diseases started decimating the Natives, ultimately reducing their populations to only a handful compared to previously. The Tiguex pueblos would finally be abandoned during the Pueblo Revolt of the 1680's, though two -- Sandia and Isleta -- would be restored after the de Vargas Reconquista of 1692, and Indian refugees would be invited to return from their scattered locations around the territory.

After all, the Spanish needed laborers.

To this day, Coronado, Oñate, and de Vargas, so celebrated among the Spanish in New Mexico, are regarded with contempt bordering on fury by the Pueblo peoples for their cruelty and duplicity. While it is not completely clear what really happened during the Coronado sojourn in the Rio Grande Valley -- thanks to the fact that the Spanish had a tendency to wildly exaggerate their exploits (including their murderous rampages) and the Indians were reluctant to talk about it afterwards -- it's obvious from some of the remains that still litter the ground around the former pueblos that something terrible happened that winter and that likely many people suffered. The only problem the story as it was told in Mexico after Coronado's return is that burning two hundred people at the stake is no easy task, the Spanish were notoriously lazy when it came to performing "work", and the Indians were decidedly resistant to taking orders from their New (but at the time temporary) Overlords.

The point is that this first Spanish entrada, and all the subsequent ones were accomplished with almost inconceivable levels of violence by the invaders and any sign of even peaceful resistance by the Natives was brutally and murderously crushed. In other words, no matter what the Indians did -- including submission, or the appearance of submission -- the Spanish would treat them violence. The question for the Pueblo peoples then and now is how do you survive under the circumstances? Apparently they found some kind of answer, because they have not only survived but in some respects they have flourished; today the Pueblo peoples form the base and the backbone of New Mexico's unique culture and society.

This is no small accomplishment.

The Pueblo Revolt turned the tables on the Spanish in 1680, leading to the deaths of many Spanish and the expulsion of the remainder (actions that were patterned on the behavior of the Spanish toward the Indians). And it seems that "doing unto the Spanish" what the Spanish had done to the Indians, even if ultimately the Spanish were allowed to return, was sufficient to change the relationship between the Indians and the Spanish enough to develop a kind of mutual if grudging respect for one another and one another's presence and culture that endures (tentatively) to this day.

Anglos tend to be outside this whole cultural and social dynamic, and I make no pretense of understanding it more than superficially -- if that.

Humility about things we don't really understand is not generally something Anglos display with confidence, yet those of us who have so much to learn would do well to listen more than speak about such matters as the relationships between the Spanish and the Indians in New Mexico. It's certainly not what we may think it is, and it probably isn't anything like what it looks like to us.

So it's with something of dismay that I present the following video of Chris Hedges and Kevin Zeese pontificating at a gathering in Washington, DC, on the question of nonviolence particularly as it relates to the behavior of "Black Bloc Anarchists," which clearly they know nothing of.



Or if they do know something of that which they speak, they are deliberately obfuscating for the purpose of propaganda, demonization, and scapegoating. In other words, they appear to be on a mission to civilize and control the "natives" -- as it were -- and to expel (or otherwise deal with) those who refuse to submit to their authority.

Not unlike the Spanish priests and conquistadors back in the day.

And note, please, that the largely older and very Anglo (ie: white) crowd -- this event, remember, is taking place in Washington, DC -- cheers and applauds the assertions of Authority and the pontificiations of the Missionaries from the pulpit (in a manner of speaking).

They are certainly hearing what they want about the nature of "revolution" and the priority of "nonviolence."

Which, by the way, the speakers are only interested in to the extent they can control and direct the actions of others -- or eliminate them.

The obsession with Black Bloc that seems to animate these speakers and this crowd is in many ways the same sort of obsessive need to control The Other that was so prominent in the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the subsequent British and American fascination with doing likewise. Taking territory and treasure is certainly part of the process of conquest, but often as important, if not more important, is the control of the behavior of others, of the Natives as it were, and failing that (or sometimes as a consequence of the ability to control them) their extermination.

The Anarchists, Black Bloc or not, have been demonized by Hedges and Zeese and their ilk as The Other, to be feared, denounced, expelled and eliminated from the Occupy Movement, and I would suggest the reason is simple: they've been successful.

The success of genuine Revolution is not at all what Hedges and Zeese and their followers want, at least not the success of a genuinely populist and largely anarchist Revolution. There is almost nothing more fearsome to them. What they want, if I can carry the analogy to the Spanish Conquistadors and their religious advocates a little farther, is to be able to order and control the lives of others even more thoroughly than present governments do, and to become those governments.

This is a form of Revolution, to be sure, but it is Revolution by imposition from the top down.

The notion that Anarchism and/or the Occupy Movement as a whole is somehow or can somehow become a violent insurrection because somebody somewhere sometime ago threw a bottle or broke a window is absurd on its face. Yet Hedges and Zeese and their followers at this event (as well as a whole cohort of "nonviolence" advocates) continue to insist that a broken window or a thrown bottle is the most serious offense possible if it occurs in connection with Occupy. The violence of the state or the implicit violence of their demonizing and eliminationist rhetoric is nothing compared to the overt "violence" of a thrown bottle or a broken window. After a while, this sort of ridiculousness becomes tiresome. But they are preaching to a choir of believers, and that's the most important -- and potentially dangerous -- thing.

One of the points often made by the Anarchists who are and have always been at the core of the Occupy Movement (unlike Hedges and Zeese) is that prefiguration, anticipation, and modeling what kind of future we want to see is an important, indeed fundamental, aspect of the Occupy Movement. It's the central element of the Revolutionary nature of Occupy, and it is the most threatening to the Powers That Be. That's why there had to be such a coordinated and brutal suppression of the Occupy encampments, for they are the "models" -- or at least the beginnings of the models -- of what can be and ought to be in the future.

We find with Hedges and Zeese and their followers, however, that the kind of future they are modeling is more like that of a Medieval Inquisition. Hedges, especially, is becoming more and more like a Savonarola. As you see in the video, He and Zeese sit in judgement of their nemesis, the Black Bloc, and declare from their pulpits anathema upon them, just as the Spanish priests railed against Native observances, always leading to more or less brutal suppression -- until the Natives fought back using Spanish terror, demonization, and expulsion tactics against them.

That changed the dynamic.

In the modern situation, there is no necessity to fight back against Hedges and Zeese and their followers because they have little or no power over the Movement -- regardless of their desires and demands. It is their powerlessness over the Movement that seems to be driving them to ever greater levels of rhetorical excess.

The question is whether the Movement in its collective wisdom will find ways to change the dynamic between the ruling corporatocracy and the People such that the corporatocracy must "respect" the People rather than continuing on the course of mindless destruction and exploitation.

The Pueblo People found a way to change the dynamic between themselves and their Spanish overlords by assaulting them with their own tactics: they learned and used the bloody and violent means of the Spaniards against them and drove them out of the region. The consequence was that they found themselves becoming too much like the Spaniards, however, and in the end, they decided it was better to preserve what they could of their traditional way of life and to go forward on a new path with the Spanish rather than in constant conflict and opposition to them -- or in intentional or unintentional emulation of them.

The Pueblo Peoples of New Mexico are the descendants of the legendary Anasazi who built the proud ruins in the Four Corners region of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. Despite extreme natural and human pressures over many centuries, they are extraordinary survivors, and we'd all do well to consider their example.

On De-Legitimizing and Building Within the Hollow Shell

[NOTE: Yesterday's post was intended to be about the continuing propaganda regarding the saga and struggle of the soldier in custody for the latest Afghanistan Massacre. But the events in New York took precedence. I spent most of the day going through written reports and videos of what was going on. As for yesterday's intended post, a digest:

The soldier in custody is being tried and acquitted in the media based on a continual feed of "information" about him and the difficulties he's faced -- basically building a defense case in public -- that is almost all coming directly from the Pentagon. Fascinating, isn't it? Though he is being held for murder most foul, those holding him are at pains to defend him because of his multiple deployments and his wounds and in yesterday's propaganda, because he and his family have been facing severe financial difficulties as well. In other words, the facts that might lead to justice are of no interest at all; the dead and wounded aren't even mentionable any more. This situation oddly mirrors -- or maybe not so oddly, come to think about it -- the lack of any concept of rational justice when it comes to matters involving the financial and economic destruction wrought by our Overclass. To the extent their victims exist at all (we're all their victims in one way or another) it is only as objects and foils to their depredations; the idea of "justice" under the circumstances is a cruel joke.]

Alcuin in comments links to a 2004 essay by David Graeber called "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology" that I cannot recommend highly enough. It's almost 10 years old now, but it is in nearly every way apropos to right now -- on top of which, it is an utter delight to read. Sometimes academics -- and Graeber himself -- come off a ponderous blow-hards (I should talk!) but in this case, Graeber explores his topic with a light and vigorous approach that really makes it almost magical.

In the broadest sense, "Fragments" is Anarchist apologetics which some people will reject out of hand. I tend not to be a political dogmatist, nor am I all that wedded to a particular political ideology (though my leftist bent is clear enough, but that comes from something deeper, not strictly speaking politics.)

Until the Occupy Movement got under way, I had never given much thought to anarchism or anarchist theory. Like most Americans, indeed like most people around the world, I had been conditioned to disregard anarchists and anarchism as a serious political philosophy because anarchists blew up the Los Angeles Times building in 1910, an anarchist shot William McKinley in 1900 and so forth. Furthermore, like most Americans and others around the world, I had been conditioned to believe certain "facts" about anarchism, such as the "fact" that it was a theory of political chaos, the "fact" that without a state, there could be no civilization, and the "fact" that anarchism could ultimately be reduced to Social Darwinism run amok. So. Like most everyone else, I dismissed anarchism and those who professed to be anarchists as essentially irrelevant to serious political consideration. When it came to notions of "Revolution," anarchists were simply out of the picture altogether. They might trigger destruction, but they had no capability of construction, let alone re-construction after destruction.

Occupy has changed my thinking, maybe not as much as some would like, but it's a substantial change from my previous perspective. I have not got any piercings or tattoos, nor is my attire all black; I'm not much into primitivism, though I have long had a strong regard for individualism and some forms of tribalism, and throughout my life, I have tried to live lightly on the land. I don't much care for the hair-trigger temper that seems to infuse some anarchists as they go about their daily lives (though I admit to having something of a temper myself '-D ). And I'm not particularly fond of endless -- circular -- debates over inconsequentials that somehow seem to loom as insurmountable during practically every discussion that involves anarchists.

For years, though, I've had an kind of arm-length association with anarchists in real life and online, and I've often suggested that if they wanted to form a New Society of Voluntary Association -- or what have you -- go ahead and do it; there is plenty of opportunity to do so in this country. In fact, these efforts at building New Societies are fundamental aspects of the American experience; they're built in to the national consciousness -- so go, do, prosper!

The point being The Demonstration. Show us how it works. Well? Where's The Demonstration? We're waiting. Show us! Nothing happens... Back to the circular argument that seems to require the destruction of the present system before any New Society can emerge.

Well, Graeber seems to reject that notion in "Fragments." In fact, he seems to be saying, based to a great extent on his field experience in Madagascar, that the (anarchist) New Society can emerge spontaneously within the rotting shell of the old, and that it can persist side-by-side with more rigid and structured political frameworks without necessarily causing more than a minor disturbance. In other words, accommodation and replacement are both possible outcomes; the proof is all around us. He saw it in operation in Madagascar when he was doing anthropological field research. Obviously, what he saw made a profound impression on him and continues to inform his thinking and writing to this day.

When "Teh Revolution" comes, it doesn't have to be -- probably won't be -- anything like we expect a Revolution to be, and it certainly doesn't require a violent framework to take place or to succeed. Successful Revolution -- of which there have been a few - is more a matter of social affinities, alignments and timing, not necessarily force of arms or even uprisings. It just... IS.

Well. What a concept.

And here we are, in the midst of what is arguably the first Global People's Revolution, one that has been spontaneously generated at the root level -- if not actually at the soil level in which the roots reside (but I won't expand on that thought too much here). The spontaneity of Occupy is one of its iconic features; it just arrives and "is," it isn't directed or emplaced, it just... "is." Without an obvious structure or even necessarily a declared purpose, let alone stated goals and objectives, it just... "is".

Graeber wrote "Fragments" long before the appearance of Occupy, of course, but not before some of its precursors, such as the anti-globalization movement, the Zapatistas, the Situationists and the Insurrectionists, and so forth. Occupy did not come out of nothing after all; this ground has been prepped, plowed and planted for quite some time. Direct precursors are the North African uprisings, the European uprisings that interconnected with them, and in the United States, the uprising in Wisconsin.

Two strategic factors of Occupy help to clarify what's happening, what the Revolution This Time looks like: 1) de-legitimizing present authority; 2) demonstrating how a Better Future can, does, and will work.

This is not taking place on a theoretical plane, it is going on day by day in somewhat fanciful but ultimately practical ways in the real world -- in sequence, alternately and simultaneously.

These entwined strategic factors seem to be taken directly from Gene Sharp's manuals for revolution, manuals which actually propose something very different is necessary for a successful revolution than what Occupy has been doing for the last few months.

A problem I have had with Sharp's theories and recipes for Revolution is that they don't work anymore. We've seen the results of following Sharp's revolutionary models in the catastrophic and blood-soaked situations in Libya and Syria, Bahrain and the Yemen, among many other places where rebels have studied Sharp and adopted his program. A deeper criticism of Sharp is that the Revolution he proposes is not a People's Revolution at all, it's a marketing campaign on behalf of Neo-Liberalism and all that goes with it.

In other words, what you get from a Sharp-style Revolution may not be anything like what you signed up for, and it could well turn out to be worse for the People than what you were rebelling against.

I've often said that no one should engage in Revolution mindlessly or take a Revolutionary path without considering the consequences as fully as possible. But human nature often doesn't provide for that kind of in depth consideration of actions especially under the circumstances we face today.

What happens instead is that most people hold back from a Revolutionary course by force of conditioning and habit, while the few who can do so take the risk to see what can be accomplished, if anything, on a rebel path. Most often, they are simply crushed like a bug. But if the situation is ripe for change, or if alternatives and change are somehow integral to the current social framework and situation, something else, something unexpected, may take place.

I think that's where we are in this country. The concepts of change and alternatives to established institutions and power centers are built in to our conception of a national identity. Questioning/challenging authority while developing and demonstrating alternative models of social, political, and economic organization has been going on in America since before there was an "America."

The simultaneous de-legitimizing of present authority while demonstrating alternatives to it are the key factors of Occupy, and Graeber's "Fragments" helps to show how this approach to Revolution is both more radical and perhaps more natural than we may think.

This interview with Graeber expands somewhat on his thoughts on the nature of things....

Strategery

As for Occupy affairs...

I've been involved in something called "Occupy Strategy National Dialogue" through InterOccupy for over a month now -- practically a whole era in Occupy Time -- that started as a national Occupy dialogue on the issue of "nonviolence vs diversity of tactics" that was triggered by Chris Hedges infamous polemic: "Black Bloc: The Cancer on Occupy."

I'm not going to rehash all that, partly because it is deeply hurtful to many people who have dedicated much more than I have to the Movement/Revolution, but also because it's an irresolvable and basically false issue. Nonviolence IS part of the diversity of tactics that are used throughout Occupy, so the notion that there is any "versus" at all is stupid. The question, to the extent there is one, is whether a nonviolent strategy a la Gandhi and King (or my man, Cesar Chavez) is the right one for Occupy. That question is still open. Many Occupy activists are certain that it is not just the right one, it is the only one that has a chance of success. I -- and many others -- are not so sure. In fact, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the Gandhi/King nonviolent strategy is bound to fail, and those who advocate it as the "only way" forward are wittingly or unwittingly trying to ensure that failure is the only option.

I categorize most of them as the same people or the same sorts of people who from the outset have been trying to corral Occupy into a standard format of some kind, preferably a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a 501(c)(4) political wing. This is what people are used to and comfortable with; I'm used to it and comfortable with it, having worked in that environment on one side of it or the other all my adult life. It is the means by which and through which "the people" in groups -- that is to say the organizational boards and staffs -- interact with government agencies and officials.

It's an OK model if the system is working, but the system isn't working in our country at this time, nor has the system functioned on behalf of the People more than haltingly and occasionally for many years. I argue that we are well past the point where we can replicate the efforts of the past and expect reasonably similar results. It's not going to work. Our Rulers are way, way ahead of us on that plane.

If they can easily thwart and subvert the NPO/advocacy group model -- and they can and do -- they can easily do the same to the nonviolent resistance strategies of Gandhi and King (and Chavez), which they have been doing for many a long year, though it doesn't dawn on many people that the reason why their NPOs and advocacy groups don't seem to be getting any where but have bogged down in permanent wheel spinning mode is because the Overclass has been strategizing the thwartage and subversion of these efforts for decades. They know how to do it.

Gandhian/King-like nonviolent efforts don't work any more. I realize that I've been flogging the UC Berkeley/Davis issue for quite a while, and if it's become boring, oh well! But the thing is that UC and other students have been using the Gandhi/King nonviolent resistance tactics for decades, and here we are. Those tactics have not "worked" for positive change at the University since about 1969, and the People's Park imbroglio. Nevertheless, they keep getting done, as was the case at Cal on November 9, and at Davis on November 18 last year.

And in both cases, the students and their faculty allies wound up on the losing end of the stick -- at Berkeley, the literal end of the nightstick, at Davis, the figurative "stick" of pepper spray, though they won the moral high ground.

But there's more to it than that. The students and their faculty allies at both Cal and Davis (and elsewhere in the system, these are the two closest UC campuses to me, but there have been tiny revolutions throughout the entire higher education system in California for years and years) gave up their moral advantage almost as soon as they had won the high ground. I witnessed this happening at Davis especially and my jaw dropped to the ground.

Almost immediately after the Chancellor's Walk of Shame at Davis, she called a "town hall" with students and administrators to discuss the matter. There was a subsequent one between her administration and the Davis faculty. At both of them, the moral victors in the struggle gave up their advantage almost too willingly, and wound up expressing their gratitude toward and trust in the administrators who had been fucking them over and fucking them up for years. Initially, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was a brilliant move on the part of the oppressors. I'm not sure the oppressed understand what happened to this day -- as we await release of the sanitized and long-delayed report on the pepper spray incident.

This is not how you do nonviolent resistance, people! Not if you want to... win. But then it occurred to me, maybe that's not what they want... I'll get to that anon.

The way these things used to be done, once you gain a moral victory, you consolidate it immediately and press your demands/interests even harder; you do not back down. But that's what happened at the UC get-togethers. [Added thought: The victors backed away from their victory.] And I've seen it happen in other Occupy contexts as well.

The more I talked to people about it and paid attention to what was going, the more I realized that many people actually do think that's how a nonviolent resistance campaign is supposed to go. If you "win" in a confrontation such as that at Cal and at Davis, you're supposed to "yield," or at least re-evaluate, and not press your advantage -- because apparently they believe that's what King and Gandhi would have done so as to show good will toward the oppressors. But good will is a separate issue. Ideally, it's something you are showing all the time -- while simultaneously pressing your advantage. But they didn't do that. They gave up.

That was an example (to me at any rate) of how very easy it is for the Overclass to subvert and thwart old-fashioned kinds of nonviolent resistance; they have been strategizing how to do this for decades, and they've go it down. The People are almost powerless against it.

Now in the strategy sessions I've been attending through InterOccupy, the Gene Sharp strategy of nonviolent revolutionary "change" is being heavily promoted as the right one for Occupy to adopt, and I question it.

The Gene Sharp strategy is found in "From Dictatorship to Democracy" which is an exploration of how to do a nonviolent revolution such as we saw in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, China, and parts of Latin America in the 80's and 90's. That model has been adapted and adopted in Arab states and Iran, with varying -- in many cases, tragic -- results.

Having had some time to evaluate the results of the Arab Spring and the ongoing revolts against various entrenched powers in the Arab world and Iran, we'd do well to understand the Gene Sharp model doesn't work any more, either.

The Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions -- which were patterned on Gene Sharp's revolutionary model -- were so exciting, but the let down after "victory" has been severe; the result is nothing like what the People had in mind, and in Egypt, especially, there is a feeling that they may have to do it all over again.

The results in Bahrain, the Yemen, Libya and Syria are simply appalling. Gawd Awful horrors that just don't stop. In Iran, the Green Revolution was rather quickly subverted and shut down -- with relatively little bloodshed but with much repression. Gene Sharp's model was adopted in those places as well, and the result was monstrous destruction and bloodshed, civil war, and/or worse repression. Wait. That's not how this model is supposed to work. Only that's how it works now because the Arab and Iranian Overclasses have learned how to thwart the masses when they rise. It's messy but they manage somehow to do it.

Meanwhile, in the United States the nonviolent course that Sharp lays out has never been tried, but the idea that it would work here or in Europe or in any more-or-less "civil democracy" society (no matter how managed the "democracy" might be) has no evidence to support it. It doesn't mean that it can't, it means there's no evidence to show that it does -- primarily, I would say, because in a "civil democracy," it is always theoretically possible to achieve significant social and political change through legal channels and elections. It may not be practically possible, but in theory it is.

So using the Sharp template in "civil democracies" doesn't strike me as particularly useful, and the horrifying results in parts of the Arab world and Iran should be a caution. The fact that it isn't being used as a template in Europe or much of anywhere else should be recognized as well.

Occupy provides its own strategic template, as balky and faulty as it is, an from my way of looking at it, this is the one the Movement needs to stick with. It's not going to be easy, in part because there are so many efforts to undermine and subvert it from every direction, internally and externally.

Occupations are themselves (sometimes) strategic. The actions of Occupy have a surprisingly strategic resonance -- they are mostly intended to shake the foundations of a rotting "civil democracy" system. As I've put it in other posts, the overall strategy is to accomplish fundamental systemic change by de-legitimizing the authority of current establishments, and by demonstrating alternatives to current establishments and institutions and showing how they can and do work.

Some of those involved with Occupy are getting into a long-term frame of mind, on the premise that this struggle will have to go on for many years, and once again they are pressing to institutionalize Occupy and standardize and regularize it.

Back in October of last year, Malcolm Harris had some tactical/strategic advice for Occupy Wall Street, some of which might have been heard in the interim, I don't know. But he was looking at the encampment at Liberty/Zuccotti Park from the perspective of effectiveness, and he, I think, got that part wrong. No, the encampment wasn't accomplishing what he thought it should, but then what does? It's hard to say. These were his parting thoughts, though, and we're still hearing echoes...

- The GA/consensus model doesn’t exactly encourage creativity and is particularly susceptible to police co-optation. In one of the most heavily policed places in the world, where the NYPD is bragging about its ability to shoot down planes, we should assume they have a Che t-shirt and a Chrome messenger bag in a prop room somewhere. If anyone can lead the group, that means anyone can lead the group. A switch to a model based on smaller bands of people (5-10) who know and trust each other and have found common ground and operate in (naturally) overlapping ways would have the dual benefits of enabling creative rather than agreeable actions and reducing the risk of police infiltration, without forfeiting the benefits of a large group. The technical term for these crews is “affinity groups,” but I prefer “friends.”

- If the population of the park can grow past its boundaries and start threatening the normal functioning of Wall Street, then it could open up space for smaller groups to operate without too much police attention and change the balance of power in the park. I heard unconfirmed reports that Radiohead is planning a concert at the occupation this week, which if true could make it uncontrollable and attract more folks to a relatively uninhabited part of the city. I’m disinclined to believe the rumors, but you never know, and it’s not like they can’t afford to bail themselves out of jail. Maybe they could be cajoled over Twitter to show up and play a few acoustic songs. Either way, it doesn’t make sense to me to try and protect the occupation from this kind of influx of people, even if that would make it untenable in its current form.

- This is a marathon, not a sprint or a hamster wheel. The next year is going to be explosive: the two Parties will spend a billion each reminding Americans how terrible everything is, and hoping they can get away with blaming each other for a permanent unemployment crisis. The social ills that brought people out aren’t getting better any time soon. Occupy Wall Street is part of a sequence, not the sequence itself, and we should be thinking about its role in a revolutionary campaign of a longer but bound duration.

- If corporations are people, what would it mean to wrap our hands around one’s neck and choke it to death?

These are admittedly preliminary thoughts, and I want to discuss what to do with other folks, but I don’t want to address an assembly, and not just for security reasons. When I’ve found people and groups of people at the occupation who are ready to move beyond its current bounds, it’s on the edges of the large circles. Maybe it’s time the whole thing got edgier. That is, sharper.

--------------------------

FURTHERMORE: (I see I inadvertently truncated the post because I was futilely trying to multitask.)

The problem with trying to overthink and overstrategize the Occupy Movement, or with trying to apply a pre-existing template to it at this point, is that Occupy is itself its own strategy and provides its own template. Activists instinctively respond to or recoil from it. Those who want it to be something different, more like Gene Sharp's recipe for nonviolent revolution, for example, actually want a different movement than this one. The way I look at it, that's OK, but Occupy isn't the vehicle for that kind of movement. Occupy is doing something else, pioneering in many ways, and if it's not your preferred form of activism, then Occupy is probably not where you should be.

The fact that there is no Gene Sharp style revolutionary movement (not even Occupy) in the United States is telling us something. The fact that Occupy is doing as well as it is, despite more and more violent repression, is also telling us something.

Harris's criticisms came very early, and we're still hearing the same ones as well as many others that were voiced even before there was an Occupy Wall Street. From a serious strategic and tactical standpoint, Occupy shouldn't be working at all. But strangely it does. Its very looseness and ad hoc-ness, its seemingly incomprehensible (or in some cases, nonexistent!) strategic planning, even its stark failures and its odd obsessions with process, as well as the constant carping and complaining about it(!), all seem to have some sort of value to the Movement.

I have no idea how this works -- except that it is organic and evolutionary and it is working.

Let it be.

Kropotkin's "The Coming Revolution" as Visualized by Magazin

In German with English subtitles:

Kropotkin - The Coming Revolution - english from Magazin on Vimeo.

Now I wish my German was better because the visuals -- compiled mostly from movie clips -- are compelling though not quite apropos of the text. Or maybe they are. It's hard to read and watch at the same time.

To some extent, I believe that what Kropotkin describes as the Coming Revolution is actually taking place through and in alignment with the Occupy Movement and all the parallel revolts under way. It's not at all like the Revolutions we're accustomed to from the literature (not that most Americans have any direct experience with actual Revolution of any kind...) Rather than trying to take over or replace existing governments, for example, the primary effort under way is to develop new models of society, law and economies. In that context, the battles with authority are minor distractions. The actual work of Revolution is going on well behind the battle lines, not at all in secret because it is practically everywhere, but it's rarely noticed for what it is. And that may be just as well.

Kropotkin was quite the visionary. But the society he envisions is extremely vulnerable to predatory interests; the voluntary association method only works on a small scale, and associations of associations tend to reach maximum levels very quickly so that the kind of "mesh" of associations he envisions is not very likely to occur spontaneously with the necessary variety and on the scale for an "advanced" civilization -- although the "mesh" of associations throughout the Occupy firmament actually resembles Kropotkin's ideal, and it has been largely spontaneously generated. Once there were some linkages they were developed further and further, and to this point, they are stronger than ever. But Occupy is in no way capable of serving all the needs and interests of a whole society... or is it?

An end to property and the state? How does one do that? Or is it even necessary? This is where the discoveries being made today may significantly modify Kropotkin's vision. Too soon to tell.

At any rate, last year Mark Ames over at the Exiled Online peered into the FBI's files on the Yippies and such like. It's quite a cautionary tale. One that it is well to remember. (Warning, there is a link in the story to a pdf file of the FBI documents; it's about 6,500 pages. Might want to skip it...!)

The Fall-Out From the Occupy "Nonviolence Debate"

Nathan Schneider has posted a heart-breaking interview with two of the people Chris Hedges smeared in his outrageous polemic against the "cancer" in Occupy (he has since revised his characterization of those who favor diversity of tactics from "cancer" to "parasites." He keeps digging this hole and I don't know why.)

I took the picture above at the first "public" event for the local Occupy. At the time, I was only vaguely conscious of the anarchist roots of the Occupy Movement, and it was all still very much an abstraction to me.

But when I met this woman and talked to her briefly and took her picture, it occurred to me that I was conditioned to believe certain things about anarchists and anarchism that simply weren't true. I had pretty much the same images of Black Bloc violence in my mind when I heard the word "anarchist" that many people do. I knew some anarchists from my work in the theater, and never saw them as particularly violent people, but who knew what they might do in another context??? Not I. Some, I decided, were simply unpleasant people, regardless of any affiliation or ideology they might espouse.

I was brought up short when I met the young lady above (sorry, I don't remember her name!) and several other anarchists associated with the local Occupy. They were some of the kindest, most open and dedicated people I think I have ever met or worked with. Even when things got very tense, as they did from time to time, I was struck by how sincere and deeply committed practically all of the self-identified anarchists were, and by how much they really cared about the well-being of others.

I've been writing rather enthusiastically about anarchists and anarchism, and I've been fiercely defending them, ever since.

Now, possibly too late to repair the damage done by Chris Hedges and others in their zeal to purge the Movement of the anarchist taint, Nathan Schneider posts an interview he conducted with two of the diversity of tactics advocates at Occupy Wall Street, women who have been with OWS since virtually the beginning, but who are now being harassed and told to get out of "someone else's" movement -- which they are said to be ruining.

The real pain and the anger they feel comes through loud and clear in the interview. As does their frustration at the continuing focus on incidental acts that barely register on the "violence" scale.

From the interview:

Suzahn: You know what I’d like to see that would be constructive? Some actual internal anti-oppression work, rather than this false conversation about violence within the movement. Because, when you think about it, we have never had an action that was more militant than taking the streets.

Sparrow: No.

Suzahn: Anything that people perceive as violent has been an individual’s actions, and we don’t all have to take responsibility for anything individuals do, ever. It has been so rare. On the other hand, I spent the first three months of the occupation talking to other female-assigned people who have been so hurt and have left the movement because of patriarchy and—and racism, I might add, and national privilege. All of those three things, especially in combination. People have left the movement because of that, and their voices are not being heard, and that is violence. For me, it would be constructive if we actually talked about the violence that does exist, and is happening and has happened and has actually hurt people and disenfranchised people, and hurt the movement because we lose those voices. That might be a constructive thing to start doing. I’d be willing to have that debate.

A cri de coeur to say the least. There are so many layers and levels of real systemic violence in our society that the continuing focus on the incidental acts of individuals who have thrown things or broken windows strikes me as absurd, and I've said so more than once -- not that it's changed any minds.

The good thing is that not everyone is so rigid in their thinking. Minds have been changed through the kinds of personal experiences I've had, and new forms of solidarity are being cobbled together.

Because of that, I remain an eternal optimist.

The fall out remains, however, and it is troubling...

Susie Cagle Explains It All For You

Her Citizen Radio essay on Occupy Oakland is outstanding.

Check it out:

http://susie-c.tumblr.com/post/18505418387/my-new-occupy-oakland-field-piece-for-citizen

She also has some of her illustrations up at Truthout:

http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-oakland-2/1329429672

"The Riot" -- or How Propaganda is Done

You may have heard that there was a "riot" in Sacramento on Monday as Occupy Oakland "attacked" other demonstrators and police at the California State Capitol, "injuring" at least two officers and resulting in the arrest of at least three "black clad and bandana wearing anarchists from Oakland."

You may or may not have heard that the other demonstrators were a white supremacist group from Oakland who had a permitted event to publicize what they claimed was the "genocide" of white people in South Africa and that the Occupy Oakland group had come to Sacramento specifically to oppose their demonstration.

You more than likely heard nothing of the fact that the opposition to this white supremacist demonstration at the Capitol was composed of a number of autonomous affinity groups, and that the "riot" actually consisted of hurling mutual anathemas and epithets at one another, and that the officers who were injured apparently injured themselves -- one tackling an unidentified protestor, and one by other means unknown (you have probably heard the claim that he was maced or pepper sprayed, but if so, it wasn't by anyone in the crowd.)

You may have heard that objects such as cans, bottles, rocks and "paint filled eggs" were thrown at the police, but you probably have not heard that perhaps nothing except one paint-filled plastic baggie was actually thrown at the police, and that as a means of marking the officer as one who committed assault on demonstrators. (This tactic was also used in Oakland during some of the confrontations with police on October 25 -- after the violent eviction from Ogawa/Grant Plaza but before the wounding of Scott Olsen.)

You may or may not know that most or all of the reports about what happened that have appeared in the press and mainstream media to date were filed by people who were not there and have no first-hand knowledge. Their second and third-hand knowledge comes from interviews and statements almost exclusively from Sacramento police, California State Highway Patrol, and a very limited number of witnesses.

You also may or may not know that almost all the stories that have been filed to date about the "#F27" events at the California State Capitol have been massaged to fit a "riot" narrative heavily featuring the (scary) Occupy Oakland contingent of "black bloc anarchists" in order to frighten the bejeebers out of the old people and the horses.

This is how propaganda is done. It can be highly effective.

Note: I wasn't there, didn't even know there was going to be a "riot" to attend. I found out about it through police channels well after the events of the day. The police were calling it a "riot Downtown" and advising people to stay out of the area from very early on in the confrontation according to the reports I heard (second-hand t0 be sure.) These reports were -- so far as I was able to discern -- at least half in jest. Much was made by the police of the presence of a contingent from Occupy Oakland. The entire protest was alleged to be an "Occupy Oakland" protest, but it was not.

A point can and should be made that the police in California -- and the 1% they serve -- are terrified of the militancy of Occupy Oakland; not their "violence, " for they are not violent in any rational sense. They stand their ground in other words, and by doing so, they are examples for other Occupys. Standing ground is one of the most effective means of delegitimizing Authority.

In addition to police sources (at least second hand), I also found first hand sources on the ground, whose reports, though not perfect, at least came from within the events themselves in real time. Something that "the Media" seems incapable of doing any more, whether by intention or neglect, we'll leave it to the reader to decide.

These reports paint a very different picture of what happened -- and more to the point, why they happened.

There was a small (permitted) demonstration at the Capitol on Monday sponsored by an outfit calling itself "The South Africa Project" -- which is apparently a rather notorious white supremacist affinity group (widely scattered throughout the country) which focuses on the "genocide" of whites by blacks in South Africa. These sorts of claims of whites being mindlessly slaughtered by gibbering blacks and other Natives of course has a long and miserable history in this country and throughout the Euro centers of the Universe. There are always gibbering Natives slaughtering Peaceful and Civilized White Folk somewhere; it's just the way things are. It's a wonder there are any White Folk left. /snark

There was an unpermitted demonstration against "The South Africa Project" at the Capitol that involved at least 100 and perhaps more protestors including contingents from Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area as well as locations in the Central Valley. (California geography lesson: Oakland is about 80 miles west of Sacramento; Sacramento is near the center of California's Central Valley which extends approximately 400 miles north to south and is between 50 and 100 miles wide. The Central Valley is flat land, mostly orchard, farm, and ranch land, though heavily suburbanized during the run up to the Crash of 2007-8, that is often referred to as "The Other California" as it is quite a different sort of place than California's coastal and mountain enclaves. Many of those who live in the coastal areas have only the vaguest notions about the Central Valley, mostly contemptuous, but that's another essay for another time.)

In other words, the counter-demonstration against The South Africa Project's demonstration was by no means an "Occupy Oakland" event. It was an Anti-Fascist event that included people from many parts of California, including Oakland.

Some of them wore black and carried black flags. Eek. Anarchists! Black Bloc! Run for your lives children, we're all going to dieeeeee! Demonization of the Other is one of the primary tactics of propagandists, no matter what interests they serve, and in this particularly instance the propaganda of demonization was heavy on all sides.

Demonization, dehumanization and scapegoating go on so often, many people don't notice when it's happening. In this case, the "Nazis" -- and the police who were protecting them -- were being demonized by the crowd of protesters who had come from the Bay Area and the Central Valley (interestingly, Occupy Sacramento was not involved in this Direct Action) to protest them. The kaffir Natives of South Africa were being demonized by the "Nazis" for killing whites. The media was demonizing "Occupy Oakland" and the "black-clad anarchists" for "causing a riot." And so on.

In addition, there was an excess of process during the day's events. The "Nazis" were allowed onto the Capitol grounds on Monday because they had a permit. The demonstrators who came from the Bay Area and the Central Valley to protest them were not allowed on the Capitol grounds because they did not have a permit, and they were held at bay by a heavy state and local police presence, some of it on horseback. Certain members of the independent media were not allowed on the Capitol grounds while others were, depending -- it seemed -- on skin color and (shall we say) how "polite they were." Later, only media with big honking cameras were allowed to record close ups of those who were arrested after the rallies broke up.

The police were solicitous and very protective of the "Nazis," escorting them from the Capitol grounds when their rally was done, and protecting them from the objects thrown from the crowd of protestors. Who actually threw the objects and what they actually were is not entirely clear. The videos I posted above do not show the objects themselves; one of them doesn't even show the "riot" itself. The one that does show the incident that has been called a "riot" also shows that it lasted approximately 5 seconds. It shows police chasing and running down demonstrators who supposedly threw things at the "Nazis" but there is some question of whether they were actually the ones who did so. One mounted officer is heard to exclaim that his target for arrest has just committed a felony. The man runs and is tackled by a rather portly officer who is then hauled away in an ambulance because he seems to have bloodied his chin in the tackle.

It's all supposedly being done "by the book," though it does seem the police actions are somewhat laid back -- as they often tend to be in Sacramento in connection with Occupy. Certain rituals have been adopted that maintain a rather formal and polite, sometimes even humorous, relationship between Occupy Sacramento and the local gendarmerie. The "black-clad anarchists" from the Bay Area and the Central Valley are another kettle of fish altogether. They were far louder and far ruder toward the police than the police are used to in Sacramento, and it was obviously disconcerting to them. Nevertheless, I'm sure that they had been warned of what to expect from the Occupy Oakland people -- who inspire such fear all across the nation.

Whether any of them actually threw anything at anyone (apart from insults and a baggie filled with paint) is a matter of dispute. As we know, infiltrators are legion in the ranks of Occupy -- why every other Black Bloc is all police infiltrators, aren't they? Or maybe not. It's so difficult to say anymore. The question of who is actually throwing things at any given time, and what their affiliation is, never really gets explored, and it should be. I think there might be some surprises.

There was no riot in Sacramento on Monday; this is the third or fourth time I have seen reports of "riots" in connection with Occupy that were no such thing. You would think that people would be able to discern the fact that something like loud voices and one or two thrown objects and a handful of arrests do not a "riot" make. But propaganda is powerful. And if the propaganda media says it's a "riot," many will uncritically believe it to be so.

It's literally taken me this long -- since Monday evening -- to pore through the "news" and the other material available to piece together something like a factual understanding of what happened based on evidence as opposed to hearsay and hysteria. Propagandists know that most people can't do that, and they aren't inclined to do so anyway. So propagandists can often get away with saying whatever they want. On the other hand, they can't get away with it forever.

How long will it take for average Americans to understand they are being lied to? Something tells me they already know it.

David Graeber Explains It All To The Shade of Chris Hedges

David Graeber, of course, is one of the founding anarchists of Occupy Wall Street, and he's been involved in Movements of various flavors for many years.

I was glad he took on the responsibility of responding to Hedges' sad little meltdown over the Black Bloc "cancer" in Occupy. I was glad he pointed out how dangerous that kind of rhetoric is; it's the rhetoric of eliminationists, and no matter what you may think of Black Bloc and anarchists, no matter how negative you may be about them, eliminationism is a serious -- and deadly -- social malignancy; it's an attitude toward the dehumanized Other that leads to disastrous consequences, and not solely for the dehumanized Other. As I've said before, Hedges did something shameful by scapegoating and demonizing "Black Bloc anarchists." Being a writer, he knows the power of language to inspire fear and loathing and providing excuses for deadly action against the Other. He was in Bosnia. He KNOWS. Therefore, I do not cut him any slack on that account, unlike Graeber who tirelessly appeals to Hedges' better angels.

As Graeber puts it somewhat more powerfully than I do, let's go to the quote:

I am appealing to you because I really do believe the kind of statement you made is profoundly dangerous.

The reason I say this is because, whatever your intentions, it is very hard to read your statement as anything but an appeal to violence. After all, what are you basically saying about what you call “Black Bloc anarchists”?

1) they are not part of us

2) they are consciously malevolent in their intentions

3) they are violent

4) they cannot be reasoned with

5) they are all the same

6) they wish to destroy us

7) they are a cancer that must be excised

Surely you must recognize, when it’s laid out in this fashion, that this is precisely the sort of language and argument that, historically, has been invoked by those encouraging one group of people to physically attack, ethnically cleanse, or exterminate another—in fact, the sort of language and argument that is almost never invoked in any other circumstance. After all, if a group is made up exclusively of violent fanatics who cannot be reasoned with, intent on our destruction, what else can we really do? This is the language of violence in its purest form. Far more than “fuck the police.” To see this kind of language employed by someone who claims to be speaking in the name of non-violence is genuinely extraordinary. I recognize that you’ve managed to find certain peculiar fringe elements in anarchism saying some pretty extreme things, it’s not hard to do, especially since such people are much easier to find on the internet than in real life, but it would be difficult to come up with any “Black Bloc anarchist” making a statement as extreme as this.

There have been many more responses to Hedges. He is not getting away with his smears, but he may have his King of OWS crown repossessed.

-----------------------------

Meant to post a link to this response to the Hedges Smear, but forgot I guess. It's from a Socialist perspective and it's quite good compared to a couple of others I ran across; the comments are good, too:

Against Hedges on the Black Bloc

"We Can Chaa-aaange The World"

Editorial comment about the video above:

I witnessed some of the events documented in the video on television as they happened in 1968, and I've seen many retrospectives that focus on the Chicago Police Riot since then, but I have never seen anything that puts together the footage from the streets and the parks near the Democratic Convention site so comprehensively and comprehensibly. It's quite moving to see it in that fashion. It is extraordinarily evocative given what's been happening to suppress the Occupy Movement. It's not the same thing at all. Motivations are very different now, as are, I believe, the intentions of both the authorities and the demonstrators. It's a different world, people are not fighting the same battles for the same things, and I sincerely doubt that the outcome will be the same.

"Rearaaa-aange the World."

-- Chicago (We Can Change the World), 1971

After stumbling around for several days in total WTF? mode, I seem to be gaining some kind of clarity regarding intense assault on "the anarchists" (Black Bloc or no) that has been taking place throughout the Occupy firmament and in many of the corners of the intertubes as well.

It's about Chicago. Well, "Chicago" and "Tampa" and "Charlotte" as well. This year's three big National Special Security Events where the American and global rulership will be gathering for pageants, schmooze, and decisions about the Future Pain the rest of us will be enduring.

And it is about preserving something of the Occupy spirit in the aftermath.

After the J28 events in Oakland, I saw the pressure to expel "the anarchists" increase exponentially. People weren't just saying this, they were deeply passionate about it, fierce, angry, scared. "The anarchists" had to be tamed or be gone, no two ways about it.

And as I explored the issue of Nonviolence with people online and in some of the trenches, I found more and more rigidity of thought about it, to the point where even confrontation with or defiance of authority was being lumped into the "anarchist-bad, no-can-do" category. Cooperation with authority and an absolute commitment to total nonviolence, that went even beyond the Gandhian Principles, seemed to be required.

From my perspective, this was getting completely insane. WTF? No "movement" is possible with those kinds of absolutist requirements, pledges, vows, declarations, expulsions, purges and so on. It struck me as a national, coordinated effort to "kill the Occupy" by remaking it into just another NPO or lobbying front and be done with it once and for all.

And the kill switch was being flipped mostly from the inside. The pressure from the outside, of course, is always there, a fact of life, background noise that sometimes gets way in your face, and much worse, but the Occupy Movement in all its moving parts has been coping with that pretty well. The Occupy doesn't fit America's standard pattern of political advocacy/social service, and there has always been a strenuous effort from the outside to make it fit, whether through police aktions or, shall we say, civic "persuasion," or infiltration and take over by the more established political activist communities. That effort still goes on, the point being to neuter the Occupy as a change agent and make it into a version of every other ineffective NPO -- and possibly giving it A Seat at the Table. Yadda, yadda.

The neutering effort, in my view, has been relatively successful; in many cities Occupy has more or less been integrated into the fabric of city living, there is very little or no conflict with the Established Interests, and a good deal of productive -- primarily social service -- action is taking place. These Occupys are not hotbeds of change, they're hotbeds of service and innovation, at least that's my impression of them from a distance (Santa Fe and the Erie Canal cities of Upstate New York are the primary examples I'm speaking of, but there are plenty many more). They've either been transformed into or they always were community based volunteer service organizations, often run by people I call "Club Women" (though it's meant to be a gender neutral term) whose lives revolve around service to others. The Occupy provides them with a unique organizational and operational structure that eliminates a lot of the overhead of traditional service organizations and provides a means to engage in direct democracy at the same time. What's to object to, what could be better?

There were Occupys that formed temporarily then dissolved, either in dissension or -- hate to say it -- boredom; it just wasn't what people wanted or needed to do. The intensity of the Occupy framework for action isn't for everyone, and if it isn't clear what the action is for or targeting is vague or its off kilter then the whole thing can seem like a complete waste of time. If you don't feel like you're doing something productive and Occupy can't or won't function toward productive ends, that's -- to me -- a perfect reason not to do it.

There is no Requirement To Occupy.

I saw the Winter Hibernation period as a reassessment and shake out period -- hopefully leading to metamorphosis and re-emergence into something different than its initial period last year and even more "beautiful."

Well.

After what I have recently experienced, I am taken aback by what's taken place. It's not at all what I -- or perhaps anyone -- expected.

Occupy Oakland has been up and running all along, it never ceased or went into hibernation, though it did slow its public actions over the winter. Occupy Oakland became the Energy Center for the Movement as a whole after the now-legendary police assaults of October 25 that culminated with the severe wounding of Scott Olsen from police fire into the crowd.

Oakland's energy is not necessarily a good fit everywhere, nor are the methods and tactics employed in Oakland adaptable to every situation. Oakland is Oakland. The Oakland Model is vital, but I doubt it is the right one for widespread adoption. I don't see how it could work without the strength and history and commitment to overcome adversity of Oakland's people.

What happens in Oakland is an inspiration to others. The persistence, the militancy, the stunning bravery when under assault, the innovative tactics, all of these things about Occupy Oakland help to give courage to everyone fighting the good fighting the good fight against entrenched and sclerotic power. And it works.

That's the thing "they" don't want you to know.

And it's fascinating to me to piece together who constitutes "they" in the current effort to flip the kill switch on Occupy.

Nearly all of them are either inside the Movement or just outside it yammering away like Chris Hedges. Their antagonism toward "the anarchists" has taken on a distinctly nasty and threatening tone, dehumanizing and scapegoating, and violent rhetoric toward "the anarchists" has become the standard way of addressing the issue of Nonviolence as it relates to Occupy.

At one time there was a relatively rational debate about tactics going on. There was a general commitment to Nonviolence throughout the Occupy firmament, but with the proviso that Occupys were autonomous as were their working and affinity groups.

There was no Politburo, so there were no directives from the Politburo.

Each Occupy formulated its rules for itself.

So far as I know, there's never even been a suggestion of veering from the broadly defined Nonviolent path. If anybody has made such a suggestion, I'm sure they were shouted down and isolated or... expelled.

Occupy is by definition a Nonviolent Resistance Campaign. It does not engage in, advocate or endorse armed struggle of any kind. It's simply always been out of the question. For good reason too, though this somewhat rambling installment is not about those reasons.

When I point out the inherent, indeed definitional, Nonviolent character of all of Occupy, including its more militant outposts like Oakland, and yes, including "the anarchists," and yes even including Black Bloc, I am often met with a barrage of what I think of as nonsensical rejoinders about a rock thrown here, a bottle thrown there, and a few broken windows in November, "What about those, ya crumb? That isn't VIOLENCE???"

Cue the Sturm und Drang and the rending of garments.

Yes, whatofit? In the overall picture, the minor vandalism and mischief that's taken place is nothing. So?

Let the screaming fits begin. As they have. Ohmigod. I've never experienced these levels of extreme ignorance combined with such extreme rigidity of thought and such extreme rhetorical violence before, and I didn't think I'd led a particularly sheltered life. I have certainly never experienced it within a so-called Nonviolence context, and not at all among people who profess to follow Nonviolent Ethics. It just doesn't happen. Vigorous disagreement and disapproval, certainly, but never in a disrespectful or overtly hostile manner.

Well, the masks have come off, although I will say that there never was a "mask" among Nonviolence believers and practitioners in the faith community. They are what they are, they have never deviated from the Path, nor have ever felt the need or had the desire to act in the manner that so of those DEMANDING strictest adherence to Nonviolence OR ELSE are doing.

Instead, they do what they have always done: they listen, they respect divergent points of view, and they use persuasion -- very effectively. Most understand the Big Picture, too: a broken window is not the End of the World. Really and truly, it isn't. Taking up a gun and instigating an armed insurrection could be, though.

That's the essence of my point of view. Not always my practicve, but we do what we can... Unfortunately proportion and perspective have been lost among the Nonviolence Purists who now appear to be in a titanic struggle with the Phantoms of their Fear: "the anarchists". Black Bloc, eeeeeee! Somebody threw a bottle, OMG, we're melting!!!!! Black Bloc! Anarchists! REDS!"

Because of the consistent violence of their rhetoric and their assaultive behavior toward any question or challenge to or deviation from their absolutist demands, I disbelieve their purported devotion to Nonviolence. If you sincerely believe in Nonviolence, you do not demand or stamp your foot or hold your breath until you turn blue, and you do not threaten others with calamity if you are not obeyed. That's the behavior of children and tyrants.

Have events conspired to infantilize key segments of the Movement?

Maybe.

"Chicago" looms large this year; the NATO/G8 summits take place there in May; the potential for evil is high. And then there's Tampa in August (RNC Convention) and Charlotte in September (DNC Convention). This is a very fraughtful year for tumult in the streets.

All three of these Confabs of the Rulership are National Special Security Events. We've had some experience with them in the not-so-distant past, in such cities as Pittsburgh, Denver, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Boiled down to the essence, what happens outside these events matters just as much as what happens inside if not more so. The Constitution and legal protections therein are effectively suspended in preparation for and for the duration of the Festivities and Events.

Bluntly put, during a National Special Security Event, you have no rights the authorities are bound to respect; you may or may not have "permissions" which can be arbitrarily revoked without notice. In fact, the random and arbitrary imposition of State Authority, often in an outrageous and brutal fashion, is one of the chief characteristics of these events.

People taking to the streets are bound to get hurt; mass arrests are all but guaranteed; intense surveillance is routine. Tactics employed by the authorities against protesters are intentionally disruptive and disabling.

People who are thinking ahead expect things to get really, really nasty. Potentially what no one alive has ever seen in this country. Occupy is expected to be in the center of it all. Occupy has become The People's Voice. The People are expected to speak up loud and clear through Occupy at Chicago, Tampa and Charlotte. And it is expected that there will be violence from the authorities.

Making clear that "Black Bloc anarchists" are not part of Occupy is likely seen as essential to mitigating the harm that the almost inevitable official violence will cause. Black Bloc cannot be prevented altogether; but clearly separating Black Bloc tactics from the Occupy Movement actions may be seen as helping to mitigate the effects of official violence.

That's my charitable read of the situation, putting as positive a face on it as I can. There's another way to look at it.

It goes back to Oakland's J28 festivities (yes, it was billed as a festival). What really took place was a series of skirmishs in The Revolution. This is really going on; this is not play acting or sport; it's the real goddamn thing, and Oakland is the center of it.

Much of it was very dramatic, such as The Battle of Oak Street and the Escape from the Park. I've written many times about Storming the Winter Palace as a metaphor, but this was the real thing. In the course of the events of J28, the legitimacy and authority of the civic government dissolved as did that of OPD. None of the stated objectives of the day's events were achieved, but something else was. Delegitimizing the Tsar's authority is an essential step in a Real Revolution.

OK. Now what? And did anyone really know that's what was up and that's what was going to happen? Did they really believe it was about taking possession of the Oakland Auditorium?

It was obvious to me as soon as the confrontation on Oak Street was in place that the building seizure was window dressing. Confronting illegitimate authority was the point, and that was astonishingly successful. Taking the building can wait until after the Revolution is consolidated.

Delegitimizing authority has to come first, and that took place in a manner we haven't seen in this country for many years.

Here's another video of the aftermath -- the Seizure of the Sound System:



This is a police force -- and a city government -- with no real legitimacy at all. Their "authority" is a sham.

This was the outcome, but it was not the intention of the anti-Revolutionists among Oakland's activists. Not everybody wants a Revolution; realistically, hardly anybody does most of the time. Most people don't want to delegitimize authority, either. What happened in Oakland was a victory for The Revolution but it was a betrayal of people of good will who have no intention of participating in Revolution.

That's the source of much of the internal struggle going on over Nonviolence and "the anarchists" and it is the source of much of the vehemence on the part of Nonviolence advocates as well. They never wanted a Revolution. They were never told this was a Revolution. They did not set out to confront, delegitimize and overthrow authority. "That isn't what Occupy is about!!"

Except that it always has been about that -- at least in part and to many of its most ardent participants.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Revolution!"

But that's what we've got, at least in some key cities, and Oakland is at the center of it all.

So I think it is fair to say that the anger and hostility toward "the anarchists" in the Occupy Movement is based on two factors:

1) fears that "the Black Bloc anarchists" will "ruin the brand" at the Global Rulership conferences by acting up and causing everyone else to suffer needlessly;

2) fears that The Revolution is really under way and it is succeeding -- at least in Oakland, where the model for more widespread Revolution is being worked out as we speak.

What of those who didn't sign up for a Revolution? Hmm?

In the comments to my post at dKos yesterday denouncing Hedges' bullshit denunciation of "the Black Bloc anarchists" a number of people commented that if there a Revolution going on, and it succeeds, what of basic infrastructure like water and sewers and trash collection?

This is for the Clean Up Working Group and the Water, Sewer, and Trash cadres organized into Affinity Groups to handle and present reports about at their Operational SpokesCouncils which will then send their Spokes to GA to make Proposals to be agendized, considered thoroughly and consensed on.

Obviously.

"The Power of Nightmares" -- Scapegoating Edition

The Power of Nightmares, Part 1, 2004

Part 2

Part 3

[Interestingly, "The Power of Nightmares" is apparently no longer available in full on the internet, though other BBC/Adam Curtis material still is. Here's a link to a 22 minute excerpt, a link to the final episode, and here is a link to a transcript.] 



[Further Update: As if by magic, "The Power of Nightmares" has re-appeared at Archive.org, so get it while it is hot... The other two episodes are at the link...]

Well, this has been an interesting morning. Not a pleasant one, but interesting.

Went to bed last night thinking about how really sickened I was by Chris Hedges' polemic, specifically at how harmful his dehumanization and scapegoating is. I understand it's "his way." At times, I can even appreciate it, but this one really stuck in my craw because it was a frontal assault on Occupy Oakland.

I think it's pretty clear that though I am not a direct participant in Occupy Oakland affairs, I do support them somewhat more strongly than other Occupies I also support, and I defend anarchists, especially those who have been given the rawest deal by ignorant people who have no idea what anarchism is or what anarchists believe. I'm still learning, but I wouldn't have had more than casual and very peripheral contact with anarchist thought and anarchists in person were it not for Occupy. I'm an old man, and it's kind of a thrill to have a whole new way of looking at things be opened to me at this late age.

In the course of my Occupy activities, I have dealt with people who wanted to engage in unspecified but clearly Black Bloc type Diversity of Tactics. They were very sincere, dedicated, not at all wild-eyed radicals intent on assassinations and bombings -- which is basically all most Americans have ever heard about or think they know about "anarchists."

I've dealt with them, and I am not at all afraid of them. They have no interest in harming me or any other human being. They want, sincerely, to help make things better, and they believe, sincerely, that Diversity of Tactics can hasten that better world we all claim as possible.

Thus when I see something like Hedges' egregious attack on what is really a phantom, a ghost of Black Bloc at all, my skin crawls. He uses the weapons of dehumanization and scapegoating against his target, which isn't really "the Black Bloc anarchists," it's Occupy Oakland, where these phantoms, these black-clad ghosts, loom so very large in his reveries.

His weapons of dehumanization and scapegoating are right out of "The Power of Nightmares," Adam Curtis's extraordinary 2004 documentary about how peoples can be driven by the politics of fear.

We fear what we don't understand or what we are told to fear, and we are prevented from understanding by the political need to instill fear in order to manage and control... you and me.

I don't fear anarchists or Black Bloc because I know them well enough to respect them, even if I don't agree with their positions or tactics. Hedges is counting on the fact that Americans by and large don't know anything about anarchists or Black Bloc -- except to fear them. And he ratchets fear of them up to the point of stark hysteria.

Scapegoating and demonization are extremely dangerous weapons in such a highly charged situation as we face now within the Occupy Movement. The external pressure from the authorities is only going to get worse as this election year and its numerous National Special Security events take place.

The anti-Occupy repression and propaganda campaigns haven't even begun compared to what's coming, and the notion that somehow by purging "the anarchists" -- Black Bloc or not -- now, the Movement will assure its safety and preservation is, in my view, whack. Purges can wait. The police are going to attack violently anyway.

I posted a version of my Chris Hedges' Meltdown piece over at dKos, and the response was fascinating. Not only was there an enormous amount outright hostility expressed toward my rejection of Hedges' thesis, there was an extraordinary amount of sheer ignorance on display; ignorance especially about anarchists and anarchism, Black Bloc, Oakland, what is and is not "violence," and so on. People don't know, and they are not meant to know. (Power of Nightmares again) Makes it surprisingly easy to inspire fear and dread, even hatred toward "the Other" by the Powers That Be, and in this case, it's Chris Hedges who is doing it.

I think it is shameful.

So, apparently, do some others, but I didn't see any shame at all in the comments to my essay; instead, I saw nodding approval of Hedges -- and frequent, full throated denunciation of "the anarchists" and their so-called violence.

I've encountered this phenomenon over and over and over again the past few weeks, so many times and in so many places with so many different kinds of people who almost all say the same thing: "Anarchists bad, they violent, smash them!" that I'm truly gobsmacked. How can people be so easily misled?

Well, we know, don't we?

Some counterpoint to the stupid:

OLA Anti-Social Media, an online Black Bloc site for Occupy Los Angeles, takes Hedges to the woodshed and smothers him with... some of his own medicine. And love. Oh yes. Don't forget the love!

Truth Addict's take:
A Reply to Chris Hedges' 'The Cancer in Occupy': Stop Scapegoating Black Bloc, Look Within

And then there was this, posted at dKos shortly after my post that really, really ought to cause Hedges and all of his drooling adherents a LOT of heartburn, because Diane goes right to the point of why this kind of shit is so damned wrong.

We haven't seen the end of it by any means; the effort to purge "the anarchists" will continue until the Overclass embraces the Occupy!

Solidarity Some Day! Yaaaaay!