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 --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005