From: "Paul Bowman" <paul.bowman-AT-totalise.net>
Subject: AUT: Bad Faith - was Black Blocks
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:00:05 +0100


oops, sent this to owner-aut... rather than aut..

---
In reading the discourse of condemnation from the likes of Franco and
others, I am reminded of Foucault's wonderful phrase in "Dialogue with
Maoists" where he speaks of those who seek the alienated pleasure of
appropriating a portion of the power to condemn from the state. To recap on
some of the grimmer rhetorical ploys of this bad faith:

***** Collective responsability
"the black bloc has been
left undisturbed by the police while wandering and lootingt through the
city"

elsewhere:
"the BB
showed up and whacked a Cobas leader over the
head with a stick or a club"

What? All of them? - How did they all manage to hold the stick at the same
time? Must have been a sight to see! This is pure mindless laziness - you
can see the iniquity of this form of de-individualisation if you go through
these pieces and replace the term "Black Block" with "Blacks" or "Jews". It
is a characteristic of prejudice that all members of the demonised group are
seen as simple extensions of one entity - as the US rapper Ice-T once said -
"They don't see as as people, as individuals - to the system we're all just
one big nigger"

***** Objectively Fascist
"I consider the word 'Fascist' appropriate for such a behaviour
(in the same way I would describe Fascists that act similarly in many
occasions, protected by the strength of the police and with no risk for
them, for example)."

also:
"The fact that they are 'produced by the contradictions of capitalism' (and,
BTW, how many anti-global capitalism from the far right are produced in the
same way as well? Do we 'understand' them also?) is quite little to justify
their presence in contexts where they fuck up actions, collude with the
police, jeopardise the lives of comrades on the ground."

Again this is a common refrain from the authoritarian "left". The logic is
simple - the aim of fascist activity is to destroy what the left attempt to
build - therefore any activity which is judged by the would-be generals to
be "destructive to the movement" or that they simply cannot cope with (or
are scared by) is objectively fascist. It helps that this also puts you on
the side of the liberals and the state in a popular front against the
demonised anarchist = violent = fascist bogeyman.

***** Shifting the blame from the police
"The question is not so
much whether these guys are infiltrated or not (which in my view is
possible), it's rather that their pathetic display of a demential
protagonism of a Fascist nature has been a decisive weapon in triggering the
brutal repression by the police."

This is the most insidious part of bad faith - frightened by the level of
police violence, the "recusants" turn and confront an enemy they have more
confidence in fighting - and so the blame the police violence is shifted
away from the police themselves and their political masters - and onto a
more "manageable" scapegoat - the so-called black block. Once again, in
panic, the recusants seek shelter in the bourgeois media consensus,
colluding in diverting the responsibility for destruction and murder from
its true source - the police.

It is no surprise that this discourse slips so easily from the lips from
some of the generation of the 70s - after all they were themselves the
target of the same illogics, denials and excommunications. Whereas once upon
a time this rhetoric of bad faith was in defence of the historic compromise,
now it serves the same purpose for the post-modern "post-historic
compromise" of the Milanese charter groups. Plus ca change...

But enough, or indeed, possibly too much. As Keir pointed out, in the
immediate aftermath of such events - and the media hysteria that follows,
many is the ill-judged comment made in moments of faltering confidence. What
matters is whether people recover their political senses, or definitively
retreat into the liberal consensus once and for all, rationalising a
momentary failure of nerve, into a permanent political retreat. Time will
tell.

Further points on the "Black Block" - as pointed out many times before,
there is nothing new about masking up on demonstrations, and many of the
dress, approach and attitudes are familiar from the Autonomen mileu of
Germany and Northern Europe. But now, this syndrome has been promoted (in
the USA, naturallly) to the level of a brand - "Black Block (TM) - Just Burn
It!", with an image, a whole lifestyle aspiration, etc, etc. - the Nike of
the new youth movement - now with added radicality. As such it now stands as
a symbol that some feel a need to identify with and defend and others,
equally strongly, feel a need to attack.

Again a complicating factor is the role of the media in their attempt to
create a chain of implied identification Violence => Black Block =>
Anarchist. In fact, of course, to adopt the tactics of the black block one
needs not be an anarchist - most German Autonomen are not anarchists - and
many, if not most, anarchists do not adopt the tactic of the black block -
see for e.g. the Italian FdCA report on Genoa on AInfos at
http://www.ainfos.ca/ainfos05179.html . Further the distinction between what
is a "black blocker" as opposed to what is an enraged protestor fighting the
police (and therefore masked up if they have any sense) is not at all
clear - certainly the media coverage shows a fairly diverse mix of people,
from black hooded types, through casuals, punks, tute bianchi, and union
types doing most of the fighting.

The questions are more fundamental. In any situation of public confrontation
between the police and protestors such as those at these summit does, the
balance of forces is always going to be such that the police are massively
outnumbered. Given that, it doesn't matter whether the protestors sign a
"non-violence" pledge or not - the police certainly won't. They know that if
the protestors try to intervene effectively (i.e. do something the powers
that be do not want us to do - illegal activity by definition), they only
means they have of stopping us, given the balance of numbers, is through
using their weaponry. The only way to have a non-violent confrontation is
not to confront the cops at all - only in this way can we guarantee they
will not have to use violence to defend their masters. But if we aim to be
effective that is not an option.

Within the space of 3 years we have moved from a situation of the summit as
a spectacle of hegemonic power, unquestioned and unopposed. To blockeaded
cities. Now to armed citadels - next year, a remote mountain eyrie. Perhaps
it is time to shift the effort of our activities from stopping the delegates
getting in to stopping them getting out?



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