Log In | Register
The title of this short article is to be read exactly as it is written: the question is whether the black bloc are working as Provocateurs, not whether they are provocateurs. That's the question. In an interview with Chris Hedges, a lot of points came up which I'll comment on and then share with the Newsvine community. CH stands for Chris Hedges, JAM for J.A. Myerson who is doing this interview for Truthout:
The problem is they're not tactics I would engage in. I wouldn't classify them as "violent." I would classify violence as the destruction of property and vandalism, the shouting of insulting messages to the police, physical confrontations with the police. Those are very clear cut acts of violence. The issues that you raise are more nebulous and circumstantial. Throwing a tear-gas canister back that's been fired at you I would not classify as a violent act and yet it was something that probably would not have been done during the civil rights movement under King.
JAM: I think he might have thought of that as violent.
CH: I don't know that he would have thought of it as violent. He wouldn't resist arrest. I know that's an issue. When I've been arrested, I don't resist arrest. Many people do resist arrest. King never did resist arrest. But I prefaced it by saying that it's not something I would do. On the other hand, those are more nebulous issues, which may be part of black bloc activity, but let's be careful. Black bloc activity includes other things that are clearly defined as acts of violence. They don't limit it to those activities is what I'm saying.
In these two paragraphs the BB (for Black Bloc) is obviously willing to do acts that would be considered violent by Martin Luther King AND, though no one mentions this, by Mahatma Gandhi. I am willing to discuss this point in the comment section, but I'm in a very busy period and may not come back to this for several days. The importance of nonviolence is a key point in the interview with CH.
The next point is slightly ironical but, more importantly, exposes the "agent provocateur" aspect of BH operations:
JAM: [You have written:] "The Black Bloc movement bears the rigidity and dogmatism of all absolutism sects. Its adherents alone possess the truth. They alone understand. They alone arrogate the right, because they are enlightened and we are not, to dismiss and ignore competing points of view as infantile and irrelevant. They hear only their own voices. They heed only their own thoughts. They believe only their own clichés. And this makes them not only deeply intolerant but stupid." How did you arrive at the conclusions that they're rigidly dogmatic and dismissive of all other points of view?
CH: From listening to anarchist radio and reading anarchist web sites.
and now to the other main theme from my perspective:
JAM: You write, "The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent." I think I get the point, but I wonder if you'd game that out, because it seems to insinuate that, had camps been violent, they would not have been shut down.
CH: That's a pretty broad leap. They were shut down because they articulated the concerns and anger and frustrations of the mainstream. This is a mainstream movement. Any time you went to Zuccotti Park on a Saturday, it was filled with strollers from mothers and fathers from New Jersey. And the movement spread and resonated. There has been an extremely concerted effort to destroy it, first by physically removing their centers of operation and now attempting to create internal divisions within the movement, using black bloc activity to discredit the movement, attempting to set up front organizations like Van Jones to channel the energy back into the Democratic Party and electoral politics. I think these movements really terrify the power elite and, in particular, the Democrats. One could argue that the greatest enemy of the Occupy movement is Barack Obama. I don't want to see the movement destroyed. We cannot underestimate, in this security and surveillance state, the extent to which there are internal forces within this movement seeking to rip it apart. The black bloc is a gift to their hands.
So here we have the BB, undermining OWS, destroying the very movement that has brought equality and fairness back into political conversation. These BB activities would be seen as extremely successful activities if performed by agent provocateurs working for the government or privately for someone or some group supporting the 1%. What does CH think is the only way out?
JAM: What then is the solution to the problem? What is the prognosis for the cancer?
CH: There has to be a rigid adherence to nonviolence. That does not mean that the black bloc can't exist. We saw a multiplicity of groups in the 1960s - from the Yippies to the Panthers to the Weather Underground - but the movement itself has to continue to operate in a way that it does not alienate the mainstream. If the security and surveillance state is able to alienate the mainstream from OWS, then OWS will be far more vulnerable to being destroyed. That's very similar to the civil rights movement. I'm a huge admirer of Malcolm X. And, yet, the establishment didn't really fear Malcolm X; they feared King. That's true here. They fear OWS. They don't fear the black bloc.
A very interesting perception. No one in the 1% fears the BB. The BB only diminishes the message of the OWS movement, it actually is an excuse for more repressive laws to control the behavior of citizens. The BB, whether intentionally or not, is an effective tool of the 1%. And I'm confident that some in the BB are on payrolls.
It's for this reason--the importance of nonviolence--that I created the group "Nonviolence creates Progress." I would have preferred just "Nonviolence" but that name and a few other group names had been taken and so I had to settle for the longer title. Please join the group if you find such things of import or at least of interest. Please also be my vine friend if you find this article interesting, even if you disagree wholeheartedly.
Finally, please comment AND vote this article up the vine. Thank you.
