Anyone who, as I have, has been following the Occupy Wall Street protest was, I'm sure, disheartened by reports from Occupy Oakland of the vandalism and destruction of private property there during their Nov 2nd General Strike. In typical fashion, the Anarchist Black Bloc came to "create trouble," "disturb the peace," and all that. I'm going to take a stance that my liberal friends might not like to hear, but one, I think, that respects the complexity of the situation. I do not condemn the Black Bloc or their actions, and I believe it's time that the political Left own up to their part in empowering and creating groups like these. Not in any direct way, of course -- no "mainstream" liberal personally armed or motivated the Black Bloc contingent in any direct way. But, the ineffectual nature of the Left, the consistent loss of ground over at least the last 40 years has, in fact, played no small roll in perpetuating the idea that real political change comes from outside of the legal framework here.
That's not surprising. Looking at the victories of the Labor movements of the past -- the ones that brought us the five day work week, vacation time, and a slue of other rights-- and, then, looking at the Civil Rights movement, a history of extralegal political action leading directly to systemic reform emerges. I'm walking a fine line here, because I don't know that I consider myself a plain reformist, but I can't consider myself an insurrectionary revolutionist, either. I'm not sure what direction future action should take. The point I want most to illustrate is that after those movements, after the watershed sixties and it's various successes and failures, the political Left was in, if not a full denouement, at least, retreat. The Right Wing reframed every political issue, condemned so-called "Identity Politics ," (even today, the railing against being "Too PC," or what most people unabashedly call "the pussification of the US" stand as monuments to the failure of intellectuals to motivate people to recognize the contiguous nature of theory and people's lives -- more on this in one second), and shifted what communications theorists and rhetoricians call "the Narrative" continuously to the Right.
My contention is that this shift led to the development of two opposed wings of the same ideological position. It can be summed up in the traditional phrase "Might equals right." I think it's true today to say something like "the might of the Right equal right." The two wings are, of course, the militant fronts of the ideological struggles like the ones we see playing out in Oakland. While the General Strike was on, I was not participating, so don't let's assume I know what I'm talking about based on empirical, experienced knowledge, OK? Instead, I was (and now my friends who position themselves to the "left of the Left," far into Anarchist territory will have the ammunition to unmask me as an uncommitted lifestylist) listening to Salon's Glenn Greenwald give a talk about his new book, which posits that there are two separate justice systems -- one for wealthy elites, and one for we unwashed commoners. While the discussion went on, Greenwald was asked by an audience member about his recent abandonment of the US for points south -- He moved to Brazil, with his male partner, a guy named David. His response was (reinforcing my sense that the Left --allegedly the position from which attempts to stifle individual freedom emerge, but usually, actually, the stalwart defenders of that freedom -- had lost the upper hand in the rhetorical battle to define a specifically "American" tradition of freedom, secularism, etc) that he had seen where theory and practice met: Brazil would recognize his union with his partner, and therefore grant him a long term visa, whereas the US would not.
Back, though, to Oakland. Police repression and violence there rose to, by some accounts, illegal levels. Pepper spray, gas grenades, liberal use of batons and anti-protestor violence was rife. But this violence, the ideological extension of the idea that the Might of authority/power is legitimate, is not viewed, in most quarters, as the same as the violence of the Black Bloc contingent among the protestors. Contrast this with the coverage of police violence, that, as usual, focuses on a few bad apples, a couple of "bad guys" going to far, who obviously don't represent systemic problems among the police generally. Meanwhile, as Greenwald noted last night (and, of course, I didn't record it, I only paraphrase, and hope I don't misrepresent his intentions) answers to the political and economic problems of the US are not likely to come from our political class, and that extra-systemic activism is needed to correct our path, to set our ship aright. Everyone on the Left has acknowledged this for years, but the only wing of the left to take this idea seriously has been the insurrectionary anarchists -- those who have freed animals, ruined logging equipment, and broken windows in the name of a, sometimes, ill-defined "liberation." So, to my mind, the Black Bloc are our allies, unpalatable as their tactics might seem to people afraid of "delegitimization" of our common causes.
My personal sense is that Anarchists are more conservative than they give themselves credit for, since their position relies as much on a sense of the monadic individual as any of the staunchly Capitalist libertarians most recently empowered by the political activation of Tea Party-style conservatives. That is, you know, that the individual is the most basic social unit, our rights as individuals extend beyond the collective rights of the society, so, say, my right to run a fraking business is more important than your right to clean water, as long as I hold the deed on the property where the fraking happens,etc. Leaving that aside, I think one must understand that some involved in Anarchist vandalism don't believe that violence against property is a violence-type. Only violence against other individuals counts as violence, proper. That violence against people should be more reprehensible than so-called violence against property should, I think, be given. But that's not how it plays out in our media narratives. And, in fact, that's not how it plays out in our consciousness. What this means for us as humans is a puzzle. One reading would be that we've so fully imbibed the foundational underpinnings of Capitalism (in it's more opaque cultural sense) that we've created, in ourselves, hierarchies that place some institutions above some people. Witness the outpouring of grief after Steve Jobs died, and the frenzy of adoration in the subsequent days. It's doubtful that anyone would mourn in the same way if, say, one of the underpaid factory workers that made Jobs' vision material were to die, even if it were at their position on the line. Whatever the reason, since they represent the institutions of wealth and of government, the police aren't de-legitamized by violence against individuals -- in fact, it's almost expected. But, violence against those social institutions that represent both our captors and our livelihoods strikes fear into the hearts of much of the American population.
This was quite the rambling report, and I'm sure is incoherent and run through with all sorts of contradictions. The short story is this: for better or worse, we should own up to our part in creating the radicalized, anti-civilizational Anarchists who, against the will of every Occupy General Assembly in the US, vandalized some corporate buildings and a few banks. The ineffectual, diminutive Left has failed to create a Left consensus powerful enough to get the voices of average people heard. The Black Bloc might ultimately be less reprehensible than the Blue Bloc -- the entrenched, militarized police forces able to intimidate, antagonize and injure almost without repercussion. That being the case, Occupy Oakland and all of the contingent Occupying organizations must remain vocally critical of the Blue Bloc, and chastise the Black Bloc -- reach out to them, but make them recognize the necessity for consensus and uniformity of approach to remain legitimate in the public imagination: those, after all, the Black Bloc claims to desire only liberty for. We should not fear the violence of the Black Bloc, but we should actively contrast the response to it with responses to violence by the police. Who gets the benefit of the doubt? I can never agree with the Anarchist position, because they desire an overly idealized, extremely abstract "liberty," whereas my concern remains with the immediate material circumstances of those people in the US I know are suffering from poverty, poor work conditions, and little hope for the future.
Edit -- I've read at least one source that thinks that the "Black Bloc" might have been police agents intentionally creating disruption. This would be coincide with our national tactics that include creating terrorist plots to disrupt them, and has something of Slavoj Zizek's ideas about the necessity of national lies to perpetuate national unity in them. If this is the case, I think it actually solidifies my point, that these are two ideological apparati whose function is identical, no matter the "intentions" of either group.
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