Anarchists or agents provocateurs?

[Charles Brown]

All of this is true. We have been analyzing the Detroit '67 rebellion along these lines , well, for 32 years. I must say that smashing things ( stores, buildings) not people is not "violence", especially if it is not where someone lives. There is a fundamental difference between trashing buildings and attacking people , and the same word should not be used for both. And as a symbol, a form of social discourse, the rowdies here are expressing themselves as much as the peaceful many are. How palpable this makes it that the purpose of the police is to protect private property.

However, let me say that monopoly media , arch enemy of the truth that it is, did not completely coverup the facts here. Here in Detroit, people who are not leftists were telling me how the television coveage they saw made it clear that the vast majority of the demonstrators were peaceful, that the Seattle police wrongfully attacked peaceful protestors (!), etc. in the same vein. 

And I am about the most skeptical watcher of the monopoly media I know of. For example, I don't think the Wall Street Journal has good stories outside of its editorial page.

CB


>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 12/02/99 12:00PM >>>

Steve Perry wrote:


> does it strike anyone else as ridiculous that the handful of
> spray-painters and window-breakers
> are being blamed for the state of
> martial law in downtown seattle? as

Yes, of course it is ridiculous and despicable -- but it is also
of course to be expected. That is one of the reasons that it
is no use wringing one's hands over those elements in the
movement (Sparts, Weathermen, etc.) who "give the movement
a bad name." In the first place they will always exist: they are
simply one of the products of bourgeois culture. And in the
second place, even when they don't exist the enemy will
invent them for us: either through provocateurs or through
big lies in the media.

One still has to resist such elements, but not invest too much
energy, diverted from other tasks, in that resistance.

And of course distinctions need to be made among those
who call themselves "anarchists," let alone among those
who are simply labelled that in the bourgeois media.

Carrol