Color of Anarchism Re: Protest ISO...

[Brian O. Sheppard x349393]

On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Chuck0 wrote:

> Brian is mostly wrong here. There may be situations where a black bloc did
> use a protest as cover for activities, but most of the black blocs I know
> about and have participated in, not only worked with other activists, but
> engaged in activities on our own, away from other activists. This was the
> case with the A16 black bloc, the Inauguration black bloc, and the black bloc
> in Seattle during the WTO.
>
> I'm disappointed that Brian uses the language of the liberals by saying that
> the black bloc engages in unaccountable activities. The people in a black
> bloc have a right to organize themselves and conduct their actions, just like
> any other group at these major demos. You will never hear this charge used
> against DAN, Ruckus, or other factions, because it is simply an
> anti-anarchist smear.

I'm not in the mood to get into another endless black bloc debate with you
here (and actually you weren't even addressing me, but again, were
speaking to your "audience"). But the black bloc'ing tactic isn't 1)
particular  to anarchism, seeing as that it wasn't even invented by anarchists but by
the left-commie autonomen and antifa groups in europe (i.e. the
contention at your black blocs for dummies page that a "black bloc is a
collection of anarchists and anarchist affinity groups
that organize together for a particular protest action" is wrong - Black
blocs may or may not be anarchist; the first black blocs certainly were
not, and not all since the 1980s have been. ), 2) has zero use outside the
protest arena, and the achievements of it within that
one area are so far dubious  at best (the seattle wto was shut down, in part due
to black bloc'ers, but since then black blocs haven't accomplished
anything substantial), and 3) as the Workers Solidarity Movement
of Ireland (an anarchist group) said in an issue of Onward: "What is the
possible gain from a tiny group of people adopting tactics that, by their
nature, exclude the vast majority of people? It's not going to stop any decisions
being made by the G8, because those decisions will be made anyway,"
whether or not any individual G8 meeting is shut down. "No one believes
that stopping the WTO or G8 from having these meetings will actually stop them from
operating. Nothing happens at these meetings that couldn't be
organized in some other way." Workers Solidarity Movement, "What's the
Future for the Globalization Movement?" in Onward, at
  http://www.onwardnewspaper.org/news/0102/glob.html

So - black blocs weren't invented by anarchists, there's nothing about
them that definitely binds them to anarchist principles (black blocs such
as the RACB included Maoists and others), and so far they don't seem to
work well. But boy they make people look harder core than thou, I'll give them that.
It's also tiresome to be called a "liberal"/"Stalinist"/"Leninist" over
and over simply for disagreeing with you.

Brian



-- 

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do
not cease to be insipid." - Friedrich Nietzsche