With Antifa being shaped into the leftist bogeyman of our era, with intense focus on “scary” protesters dressed all in black and wearing masks. I think it’s appropriate that the masks have become a sign of caring for the health of our fellow humans, and of working collectively toward a better, healthier world, because in many ways that’s what the development of Black Bloc tactics is all about. Twitter user @Luxinvictus_ put together some infographics that might be useful, either in informing yourself, or in sharing information with folks you know who may be freaked out by GOP propaganda about protesters.
Click image for Seattle BLM protest calendar
Click image for Seattle BLM event calendar
… Black Bloc will not hurt you or you …
The Revolution, it seems, will not be copy-edited.
You or yours, I presume. It’s someone’s first effort at making infographics, and I think they’re worthwhile regardless of typos.
At least nobody can credibly accuse this of being part of a Soros-funded plot 😉
My guess had it that the intended line was
– but maintaining consistent rhetorical parallelism has not, last I heard, made the difference in any revolutionary struggle so far.
I don’t think the Black Bloc would kidnap anyone anyway. There’s no purpose to it, and a lot of complications.
They’re more a protesting tactic that can be expanded into other scenarios at need, when faced with similar risks of being identified and targeted.
I tend to agree, though I suspect the hidden-faces approach leaves too much opportunity for false-flag provocateurs.
But I’m in no shape for street action, and they are, so I won’t try to backseat-drive (beyond proofreaderly pickiness).
It’s a known problem, and one that leftist activism seems to be increasingly designed to combat. The anarchist approach to organizing and carrying out activism means that infiltration is much more difficult that it might initially seem, and the intel provided by any one infiltrator is going to be pretty limited in its usefulness.
I just saw this article about a conservative woman’s experiment in infiltrating groups using Black Bloc tactics, and honestly I think her account of what she saw does a decent job of showing why the tactics are effective, and how it’s harder than you might think for law enforcement or others to muck it up.
I’m also not on the street, so I’m doing what I can to understand what’s going on, and provide support to those efforts that seem to be working in the right direction.
To be clear, I do appreciate the discussion 🙂
Fascinating article, though one that leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
The lootings and burnings at (a minority of) the George Floyd murder protests show that opportunistic thieves and undercover infiltrators can and will provoke enough trouble for reactionary propaganda purposes pretty much at will. The individual interviewed also has a good point about the excitement of conflict bringing out the dark side of many activists (I’d like to ask if she sees the same phenomenon on her side).
Ideal tactics for major social struggle simply do not exist: everything we might do has drawbacks. The best example I know of is the US civil rights movement, with a major arm of high-minded non-violence and a minor arm of confrontational militancy – but I’d like to know more about the European “color revolutions” (compromised as many were) too.
There’s no way to prevent provocateurs from doing their thing, short of keeping an eye out for them, interfering with their activities, and recording them. Black Bloc folks are usually part of that effort, BECAUSE they tend to have some familiarity with each other.
Obviously I think the person interviewed in the article is wrong about some stuff, but it does a good job highlighting how the tactics play out.
And yeah, revolution is messy. One of the points I’ve tried to amplify in my advocacy for voting for Biden as a stop-gap measure, is that if you can’t bring yourself to make that moral compromise, odds are you’re not ready for the moral compromises of war.