Cops vs Blocs  

Posted by Big Gav

Bob Morris is doing a good job of following the RNC protests, today featuring John Robb and FutureJacked - Protest is dead. Long live global guerillas.

What we are seeing now on the streets outside the RNC is the open source / disruption model -decentralized, fast-moving, linked by technology. In Left terms, it’s a mostly leaderless bottom-up anarchist political model rather than the top-down Marxist model with the cadre in control.

Robb is right, protest in the sense of thousands marching in the streets probably is dead. It’s become ineffective and pointless.

FutureJacked (who is no Leftie)
Wow. The Powers That Be have become so insecure that big protests are now considered dangerous and a threat. In the past, huge protests and civil disobedience were a way to vent frustration and send messages - great ways to do that, in fact, that usually kept the property damage at a minimum.

For some reason, the elites seem terrified of any sort of dissent these days. It’s amazing and unnecessary. By crushing these protest groups through pre-emptive strikes, you are are making the same mistake the Forest Service made back in the 20th century [by not allowing controlled burns], you are priming the political landscape with the tinder for a huge firestorm in the future.

Indeed. what are the elites so afraid of? At the police press conference yesterday they actually said police officers were frightened by masked criminals. I am not making this up. A phalanx of cops in riot gear is scared of a few unarmed kids wearing black bandanas over their faces?

2 comments

I'm from Minnesota, and from what I've heard - these are definitely not your typical, peaceful protesters. These are anarchists doing everything in their power to create chaos. While they may be targeting the RNC - remember, they're anarchists - they truly the believe government should not exist.

They are truly getting their message out in a horrible way - they are endangering the lives of others (throwing benches into the street, nails on the freeways) all to create chaos. In a sense this is a form of terrorism.

I would be scared if I was a police officer too - who knows what these people will throw at them next.

Errr - do you remember Grover Norquist's famous quote about shrinking government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" ?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Grover_Norquist

Not much point criticising the anarchists (who are basically powerless) for being against government when key people behind your ruling party also want to destroy it.

That said, I think the "black bloc" folk (a small minority amongst the anarchists) are idiots and should cur out causing damage.

However - I'm very cynical about claims that anarchist protestors are performing acts of violence - time and again it has turned out to be the work of police provocateurs, as the Canadian experience lats year demonstrated so well:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/08/23/police-montebello.html

The other points to keep in mind are:

1. The heavy handed crackdown on peaceful groups - before the convention even started - part of the ongoing and rapid erosion of liberty in the US

2. The million dead Iraqis the Republicans have killed as part of their campaign to control middle eastern oil

You should be out there protesting (peacefully) too.

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