To my fellow Anarchists
To my fellow Anarchists: First off, this statement does not apply to most of you, Anarchist Participation in #OWS nationally has been mostly very positive and well received. At many of the camps I’ve visited people who openly and unequivocally identify as Anarchists have been core organizers since the very beginning and at many more they’re playing a constructive and well-received role. That’s as it should be, our experience and ideas about how to organize mass movements horizontally so everyone can play a leadership role is very valuable to the larger movement. This post isn’t written for you. It’s written for the minority of people who claim to identify with Anarchism but are currently taking actions which hurt and endanger all of us. To be clear, I want to smash capitalism and the state as much as any of you – anyone who knows me know or is familiar with my work knows that – but breaking windows from within a larger (and explicitly nonviolent) protest does nothing to advance that goal. *Please* stop taking actions that will allow our enemies to paint anarchists as hooligans and #occupy as violent.
This is NOT a refutation of the Black Bloc per se, I remember in 2001 there was a Black Bloc at an anti-IMF protest I attended that decided in advance that they would not engage in any property destruction and instead would directly defend nonviolent protestors who were being violently attacked by police. They acted as a flying column during that protest and chased the police all over Washington DC (literally) all day long. It was beautiful and they won the admiration and praise of just about everyone who participated for their courage and willingness to put themselves on the line to protect others. It made me proud to call myself an Anarchist and gave me tremendous hope for the potential of our movement. But that’s not the route that most Black Bloc’s in north america have taken in recent years.
Friends, If you want to smash windows at a bank please knock yourselves out, I won’t cry for the poor insurance companies who get to buy new windows for your targets. But do it in actions of your own planning at times and locations of your own choosing instead of at protests you didn’t organize. And if you want to fight the cops then go for it! There are gun shops and shooting ranges in every city and town in America and you’d be much better off learning how to use a real weapon then throwing empty plastic water bottles (the most common projectile I’ve seen thrown at protests over the years) and bragging to your friends about how you’re fighting the power. But don’t show up at an explicitly nonviolent event and give the pigs an excuse. If this turns into a violent revolution we MUST make sure that that change is a deliberate and strategic one. For now, nonviolence is #OWS’s best weapon and one the cops and the media are trying to take away.
The plain fact is that using tactics like property destruction in the middle of a giant protest full of people that have explicitly rejected property destruction or direct confrontation as tactics is disrespectful and the exact opposite of Solidarity. It places other protestors at increased risk without their consent which directly conflicts with our vision of a world where everyone has a say in the decisions that impact them. There is NOTHING Anarchist about such action. Further, it doesn’t win us any friends or do anything to advance our cause or the larger cause of OWS. All it does is alienate people who should be our allies and justify the repression that will be levied against us by our enemies.
I realize I’m probably coming off like an old man. And maybe I am a bit of an old man, I know folks who’ve been involved a lot longer then me but the plain fact is I’ve been around longer then most of the self-identified Anarchists I meet these days. It’s a sad fact that the Anarchist “scene” in north america is heavily dominated by people, mostly young men, in their late teens and early 20′s who wear black and smash things for a couple of years before going to college or getting jobs, dropping out, and going straight. That’s not a fun thing to say but I’ve watched it happen more times then I could count. Some of the most ardent “burn it all down!” primitivists I knew in my early 20′s now vote republican and a couple joined the military and are now being deployed around the world to do the empire’s bidding. That’s not to say that folks don’t have reasons to be angry. I was angry when I was 16 and first started calling myself an Anarchist and I’m still angry now that I’m 31, married, and working a straight job. But I’m still engaged, still focused, still active, and still doing what I can to support the movement because I’m motivated by more then just anger. I truly believe that Anarchism is the single best hope humanity has for a future worth building. And I’m very sorry to say that some of you are inadvertently jeopardizing our chances of winning that future.
Anarchy is Order, not chaos. It is the spontaneous self-organization of the working class and a movement aimed at fundamentally restructuring our political and economic relationships at every level of society. It is not going to be achieved by smashing things. If it’s going to be achieved it’s going to happen as the result of a massive horizontally organized movement. the #Occupy protests and camps are by no means perfect but they’re the best and most exciting thing I’ve seen in my lifetime and probably the best shot that Anarchism has had to spread to a mass base since the 1890′s. Last time around a tiny minority in the movement acted offensively using Propaganda by the Deed before the mass movement had the capacity to defend itself. Their actions called down massive State repression that directly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of comrades, the mass deportations of thousands more, and the functional end of Anarchism as a mass movement in north america for over a century. Our planet and our species cannot afford for us to make that mistake again.
We need to build a movement capable of winning the class war and to the extent that property destruction and violence at this stage impair that goal using these tactics actively hurt our movement. It’s selfish, shortsighted, and stupid. I’m not going to threaten anyone with violence, take their picture, or cooperate with the police the way some of the hypocritical liberal “pacifists” do. That would be dumb. But I am asking you as friends and comrades to please stop and consider your actions and the real impacts that they are having.
This is not about one protest or one broken window, it’s about Grand Strategy. Read the Art of War. Read the history of the Red Scare. Read about the century of mass murder and violence at the hands of Fascists, Marxists, and Capitalists alike that resulted because our movement failed to overthrow the bastards. If the revolution is ever going to happen it’s going to have to happen in our lifetimes, probably within the next 10-20 years, because after that point the ecological damage caused by capitalism will have completely undermined the integrity of the biosphere. I am not exaggerating when I say that the future of all life on earth rides on our ability to build and win a revolution. We cannot afford to lose. There is far to much riding on this moment, this movement, to jeopardize it for the sake of a quick adrenalin rush.
** Addendum: It’s an open question how much of the property destruction was even done by Anarchists since the media assumes that anyone who breaks things is automatically one of us. Wearing black does not make someone an Anarchist. Smashing things does not make someone an anarchist. Wearing black and smashing things does not make someone an anarchist. In fact, I can guarantee that the vast majority of Anarchists involved in #OO yesterday and in general were not wearing all black and weren’t smashing things. Let’s get it straight.
** Addendum 2: To the “Pacifists” out there, you need to re-examine your history. american revolution? violent. Irish revolution against english rule? violent (they tried nonviolence and were massacred). Indian independence movement? incredibly violent, gandhi & his disciples notwithstanding. Vietnamese war of independence (against the french and then americans)? violent. Civil right movement in america? violent, nonviolent, and everything in between. But Martin would never have succeeded without Malcolm and both of them knew it.
Pick a revolution, any revolution, and you will find violence. Period.
That said, nonviolence as a *tactic* makes sense sometimes and now is one of those times. Property destruction also makes sense as a *tactic* sometimes, but in the middle of a massive nonviolent march is NOT one of those times.
tactics are tools, if people could quite treating them like religions we’d all be better off, and that goes for the window-smashing punk kids and the pacifists both.
** Addendum 3 – it seems I’m not the only one who feels this way:
- An Open Letter to the Black Bloc and Others Concerning Wednesday’s Tactics in Oakland: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/11/04/18697383.php?
- The Black Block, a hopefully more interesting critique: http://anarchistnews.org/node/16910
- The Occupy Mass Movement may not be for you: http://anarchistnews.org/node/16781/li>
- What happened in Oakland, November 2nd? http://www.a-against.com/?p=8
It’s also important to point out that seeing small businesses – and particularly small businesses that had supported the strike – being attacked has many people in Oakland comparing the Black Bloc to the Klan and Neo-Nazi’s. One comment left by an elderly black woman in a facebook group talking about the issue cuts right to the heart of the issue. It was just one word, “kristallnacht.” The situation could hardly be worse. If as some people are suggesting the attacks on small businesses were the work of paid provocateurs they earned their pay.
We need to squash this and we need to make sure it does not happen again. If it was people within the Anarchist community who were responsible for the attacks on local businesses here in Oakland then we need to make amends and fix the damage that was done in order to restore our movement’s credibility. If it was not people in the Anarchist community who were responsible we need a statement from the Anarchists who WERE in the Black Bloc saying that they did not do this and they condemn the attacks on local Oakland Business and especially on people who supported the strike.
Posted: November 3rd, 2011 under culture war, politrix.
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via emceelynx.com
A reasonable anarchist point of view:)
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