[lbo-talk] Occupy's Use of Patriotic Propaganda

Nicholas Roberts nicholas at themediasociety.org
Tue Jan 31 08:19:48 PST 2012


one of the greatest internal contradictions to Occupy Oakland is its use of patriotic symbols as propaganda

Scott Olsen, the former Marine who got hurt in one of the first clashes became a kind of movement martyr (while still alive), a shrine appeared in the plaza and it just became creepy how much media and movement agit-prop was generated from this guy... I admit I got drawn into it too and did my bit pre-Travellers implosion

then the early evening of the demo, down by the port, a US flag was burned ...

then later that night, the failed building occupation and riot porn around the Travellers Society building brought the cops into play and they did what they have been trained and equipped to do

as a side-project they beat a non-Travellers local resident/activist, a black small-businessman, and former Army Ranger (two tours, Iraq and Afghanistan), potentially a more worthy victim from a propaganda perspective... but guess what, almost no agit-prop, no propaganda, and the reason is, he was a form of collateral damage, he just wanted to go home and didn't want to get caught up in the Travellers action...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VHr5mmvHoY https://www.google.com/search?q=army+ranger+occupy+oakland

his name is Kayvan Sabehgi .. its harder to spell then Scott Olsen .. and according to Rueters he was involved in the demo day and didn't get involved in the Travellers action and the riot porn

but, unfortunately, as the peaceful protestors at Genoa G8 and nearly all anti-globalization and outher counter summits since discover, you might not be interested in riot porn, but riot porn is interested in you

so, Kayvan Sabehgi is a lot like Mark Covell of UK's Indymedia, my friend, who was nearly killed by cops, and he was caught in Berlusconi's Mousetrap http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2008/jul/17/covell.g8genoa https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=mark+covell+genoa

and now, the burning of flags found in city hall, amongst all sorts of other property damage

supposedly anarchism is about challenging and de-legitimizing the state, but it seems to be doing more than anything else to do the opposite.. anarchism is reinforcing and amplifying the state

notice the nationalist project, with flags proudly displayed that is the Arab Spring..

and yes, I know, Occupy is leaderless, but it doesn't mean its not identified as a single movement in the mainstream.. another contradiction is that whenever it suits Occupy is a movement, whenever something like this happens, Occupy is a fragmented and leaderless phenomena

everyday people in Oakland, the ones that used to be in the 40000 strong Occupy Oakland Community Coalition (TM) seem to be sick and tired of all of this nonsense and will be sadly turning back to the status quo to protect them from OO

-- Nicholas Roberts



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