File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0107, message 420


From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: AUT: Re: Black Bloc etc
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:40:29 +0200




The "black box" is of course not a very precise label (including
people who define themselves as marxist-leninists, autonomist -
in particular of the specific German tradition, as anarchists of this or
that persuasion, or whatever. It differs from place to place) But
all this talk of the multitude is also a way to avoid any political
responsibility for the consequences of ones actions and tactics;
actions and tacticts that increasingly seem to loose any political
content, but which none the less do have political consequences,
as well as becoming a question of life and death for some. The
celebration of the multitude easily becomes the celebration of
stupidity.

Personally I see summit sieges mostly as a less than bright idea, as
the very opposite of direct action, and with its own all too predictable
logic after being repeated some times. I think that this largely also
applies to the Ya Basta tactics, even if more intelligent than those of
the "black box" (to stick to a somewhat simplified picture), something
that frankly does not take very much.
    The 15 year old from Rostock at the UE-summit in Gothenburg
trashing a busshelter with an add for some transnational that had 
done some bad things in his hometown, glued to it, seems a picture
as well as any of the impotence of these "sieges". They remain on
an almost complete symbolic level, whatever the degree of "militancy". More
and more they also turn into perfect traps, and in Sweden, at least,
inspired the return of a fascistoid populist sentiment. 

I actually had a faint hope that Genova would turn into something
else, could signal a turn away from abstract protests against
world capital and the banging ones heads at some "walls" (police batons)
towards some degree of direct action.  But that mosy likely would
have meant that the most "miltant" protesters removing themselves
from the centre of the stage: becoming able to listen to other voices,
frustations, dreams and hopes than their own.

What I discern evolving is more and more an underlying maoist
(certainly not anarchistic) agenda that somehow unites the liberals
and "miltants": Serve the people! Act and decide on behalf of "the
people," in the best interest of the people" of course. What the
"black block" tactic, or summit sieges as such, has to do with an
anarchistic, or social revolutionary perspective,
certainly escapes me.

Harald












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