Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening, there's people who try well, actually, you have a lot of reminders of this right now, but there's people who try to do good things in response to bad things, or even sometimes not in response to bad things, just anyway, they just try and do good things. And I think we should remember that. We should also remember that I'm
your host, murder Kiljoy. You actually can forget that, though, you don't need to remember that. But what you do need to remember is that we have a guest this week, and you need to know that our guest is named Molly Conger. Hi.
Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited.
Yeah, so I've never heard of you before. Do you Do Anything? Molly is the host of one of my favorite podcasts called Weird Little Guys that honestly, if you're listening to the show, you've probably heard. But if you haven't, you don't have to pause this and go listen. But after this is done, you should go listen.
It's sort of the opposite of this show, like tonally, it's about bad people who did bad stuff.
Yeah, and I like that. It's like not at the like the Hitler scale, it's at the like I don't think you've covered anyone I've heard of, and I have spent a lot of time doing anti fascist work.
No, just like weird little freaks trying to be like Junior Hitler.
Yeah, but no, I have no good transition for that. But we have a producer whose name is Sophie Hi Sophie, that's me Hi, And we have an audio engineer named Eva hi Eva hi Eva, Hello Eva. And our theme musical is written forced by unwoman. And Molly has no idea what we're going to talk about today.
It's always so nerve wrecking, like what if it's something I can't be funny about.
What if it's something you hate? I have no idea.
Well, I actually have some news through even when you're trying not to be funny, you're still funny.
So I've been doing this series that people might have or might not been listening to of the previous episodes, where I've been covering neoliberalism and the people fighting against neoliberalism. And I just finished a four parter kind of about this app Batistas and an intention to move into the alter globalization movement. But I thought, let's talk about another player in the alter globalization protests today, Mollie, we're going
to talk about the boogeyman of militant street protests. We're going to talk about a polarizing tactic that is regularly mistaken for a group or an ideology. It's a tactic that has escaped containment to get used by terrible people as well, though usually not under the same name. I don't know whether you can guess yet or not, or I'll just tell you.
Is it the black block?
It is, we're talking about the black block.
When you were talking about fighting globalism, I was worried you were to talk about Alex Jones, But then I.
Remember globalization, very big difference. Okay, sorry, let's actually get that out of the way real quick.
I just got over I just got over COVID.
Oh yeah, your brain's not back yet.
So there's this terribly named movement from the late nineties early oughts. I'm not on script right now. I'm just telling you all things. It was often at the time called the anti globalization movement, but that was a name given to it by the media, and some people within the movement would call themselves anti globalization activists, but very quickly people were like, no, that's actually not the thing at all. We are a global movement that is about
tearing down borders. We are just against the neoliberalism that is only tearing down economic borders of ways to extract money from developing nations to give to rich people.
So they're anti globe emoji, guys.
I don't know whether globe emoji is. So the problem is is that anytime someone says globalism, they're actually just doing an anti Semitic dog whistle.
That's why I was confused. Yeah, I'm on track now.
Yeah, No, it's so hard to talk about alter globalization movements like when right now the problem is fascism and tariffs. Right.
But okay, so we're back to black Block. I'm with it.
You ever heard of the black block? You clearly have you guessed what we were talking about.
I've seen them around.
Yeah, all right, coming into this, what's your conception of the black block?
Well, one time I was getting beaten over the head with a bicycle by a Boston police officer and someone from the block who I will never know, whose face I never saw, pulled me out of there. And helped me wash the pepper spray out of my eyes. So in my heart all they are heroes.
Fuck yeah, I feel like there's the heroic mode of black block, and that's that's what it does, is it helps the people around.
I just kind of like wander around process zones like oblivious, just like I don't know, like Mannic Pixie dream girl at the protest, like nothing back could happened to me because I'm just a little girl, Like I'm so fucking dumb. So I had my ass like yanked back out of the line of fire by a stranger in a mask several times. Cool, So thank you strangers.
The shortest possible version that I could come up with of the black block is that it is a street protest tactic developed by the anti authoritarian left in which everyone wears all black and masks and gathers together in a group, a block, as it were. And if you're listening to this in audio format and didn't look at the title, there's no K in block. This is more like block like the Soviet block. That's the only other block I know of.
A clocks, voting blocks, vote voting blocks, just what they see, Yeah, people doing stuff together.
It's not a word we use very often, but by everyone doing that, not voting together, but by wearing masks and the it creates anonymity which allows individuals to do things that they might not want to be known for doing, like breaking laws. Most famously, the black block is known for smashing corporate property with hammers and bricks, spray painting graffiti onto walls, things like that. It is also known, i think, more by participants for things like what you're describing,
of keeping people safe from police violence. When everyone does this, when everyone dresses all in black, or rather when a significant portion of people do this, it makes it hard to single people out for arrest, and it makes it hard for individuals who are arrested to be convicted because, as the cliche goes, no face, no case, which is not legal advice.
But you know what, it's a none of the sh interpreted as advice or encouragement.
Yeah, there's a lot of me trying to explain that this is not encouragement. Despite if you stick around a part too, I'll tell you how to do historical reenactments of black blocks and how you can make it make your loss choices.
But this is not incitement.
Right, black blocks allow for people who might otherwise be more targeted for arrest for skin color reasons, gender presentation reasons, or some other reason to participate in rowdy actions with a comparable level of safety. Black blocks also regularly de arrest people. They defend peaceful protesters from police violence, and
they can distract police away from more vulnerable targets. It is a contentious tactic, largely because it is usually accompanied by property destruction, which is itself a contentious tactic at protests.
You can't look at a burning waimow and tell me you don't think that's sexy. Those people are liars.
Oh yeah, no, I know that's okay. This is one of the things that would come up all the time, right is people would always be like, oh, this alienates people, and I'm like, think so man, A lot of people are like that's pretty cool, Like I hate the cop car and now the cop car's on fire. This seems nice, but you know, teach their own. Okay, wait with the burning weymo. Are either of you all got Speedy Black
Emperor fans, the band from the late nineties early odds. Okay, well, this is important to approximately neither of you and some small portion of our audience. There is a song called the Dead Flag Blues and it starts with this long poem that's very like apocalyptic anarchy stuff. Right. This is a big band at the time, I swear, and the first line is the car is on fire and there's no driver at the wheel.
Oh my god. They predicted it.
They predicted it.
They predicted the burning weymo.
I know, which means the flags are all dead at the top of their polls, and it means the skyline was beautiful on fire, all twisted metal stretching upwards, everything washed in the thin orange haze, the prophecy, and we're going to open up our wallets and be full of blood. So just to give everyone a heads up about what's going.
To happen, I mean, parts of revelation are coming true. So it only makes sense that there would be modern day prophecy.
Yeah, exactly, a bunch of post rock people from Canada. So black block isn't always an appropriate tactic, but it's a sexy one, and sometimes people make use of it in moments when it might not be the best tool available in the toolbox, Partly because when people are drawn to it. They're drawn to it, you know, but it's an important tool that's available for people want to participate
in militant street demonstrations. And I swear I actually did plan this as my topic before the actions of the last week two weeks ago for you all listening Synchronicity Baby, and this week we're going to talk about the history of the Black Bloc from its roots in West Germany before it's spread across the world. And we're talking about the Black Bloc today in the context of talking about the ultra globalization movement, where it was a fairly major
social force. And I have a few different anecdotes I'm going to use to start this story. This is gonna be one of those episodes where Margaret is vaguely like, I've heard of this allegedly from a long time ago. I don't know Statue's limitations are, but it's at least.
That I mean, as long as it's more than five years ago, you're probably good in most states federally for sure, unless it was terrorism.
And also, like, genuinely it would be stolen valor for me to claim that I am much of a frontlines activist these days, but I mus start with some anecdotes. One the video I saw this weekend from ongoing anti ice demonstrations where people seemingly from all walks of life are putting their safety and liberty online to materially stop the functioning of the state and its deportations.
Kidnapping people from their home. Yeah, business is the street.
Children, Yeah, parents, It's a nightmare and it's bad, and it's good that people are trying to store neighbors. Yeah.
Fuck ice.
Fuck Ice. Demonstrations that are happening, at least right now as we record. I don't know, you know, you all in the future, we'll have a different sense of what's happening.
It's probably worse by the time they hear this, Yeah.
Or continuingly exciting.
I mean, I hope better.
Yeah. Demonstrations seem to be aware of the weight of history, of the fact that if we don't stop authoritarianism, there's actually no limit to how bad things might get. Right. Yeah, And there's a video, and I honestly don't know what from what city. I'm literally just guessing Seattle of some riot cops trying to grab someone who's wearing all black
and arrest this person. There are maybe eight cops. In this video, the person being grabbed, a couple of their friends come forward, take a hold of their friend, and under a hail of less lethal munitions escape with their friend pull their friend of freedom. All three of them were dressed more or less identically, and they disappeared into a crowd that presumably you can't talk as of the angle of the shot, but presumably there's a crowd with
many more people dressed identically to them. So it seems quite unlikely that the police would be able to single out the same person or the rescue ever again. And I don't know that there's a single action I can point to that communicates the idea of solidarity and shared risk more than de arresting people. Two people went at it against eight cops and got away and rescued their friend.
It always looks like a miracle.
I know, you look at it and you're like, but there's this kind of thing sometimes we just want it more than them.
Because they're just at work. I mean, some of them have this like horniness for blood, and they really just like they love hurting you. A lot of them like to be honest, but like they're just at work, and like if it becomes too hard. Sometimes they will just give up.
Yeah, and they're like, well, we can just go beat another person soon, or like like literally in this case, they just like fall back and start shooting people with stuff.
I'll just go beat somebody that doesn't fight back.
Totally well, And that actually even gets to what's so useful about these demonstrations is that they're like, oh, people fight back when we do this. That's hard. We don't like when things are hard, you know. And to me, this is the kind of heroism that fantasy books are built on. I feel non hyperbolic when I say this. And what allowed them to do this in this particular context of this particular video was black block attire. Sometimes the black block is not perfect, or it might not
be the right move on any given day. Not everyone who does any given tactic is a good person even or a sint or a hero, but it is a powerful tool and is one of many tools available to people when downtrodden people are fighting against the people doing the trotting. And I like this way of phrasing it because I'm currently obsessed with words that are derived from other words that are no longer used. Trotting. No one trods, but down trodden. We know what that means.
Oh, there's a word for that, for those like when like every form of the word doesn't survive.
Oh.
I was just reading about that the other day.
My favorite is overwhelmed. Do you know what whelmed means? No, it means overwhelmed.
Fuck, it's like flammable and inflammable.
I know, I know. Anyway, language nerds trying to talk about history. Okay, another anecdote. I'll give you some anecdotes. I I'll tell you the history. When I was a baby author, I put out a book about anarchist fiction, and for it I interviewed my hero Bursula Lquin and we did a talk together. But this is literally just like I can shoehorn in that I once got to do a talk with Liquin. That's not actually the purpose of this, but I know right exactly, and it's all
been downhill from then. But doing a talk together was like, honestly one of the highlights of my life. We talked about the role of anarchism in fiction for an hour or so and then took questions. And this was interesting, right because people came out who wouldn't have just come out to see Margaret talk about anarchism and fiction, right, And one man in the audience he raised his hand and he said, and I'm paraphrasing from memory here, why do you anarchists show up at anti war protests and
ruin them? And this is a question I had heard a lot before, because I lived in Portland for a while. I cut my teeth there as a protester during anti war protests of like two thousand and two and three. And I thought about the man's question for a second, and I told him, what you don't realize is that when you have these big anti war protests are honestly
protests about almost anything. The ones that you think that anarchists have ruined were often organized by anarchists in the first place, and maybe not solely anarchists, and not necessarily by people who are then in the black block, right, But people who believe in direct action are everywhere and do an awful lot of the behind the scenes work, way more behind the scenes work than on the groundwork, just because literally in already to get anything done, you
have to do more behind the scenes work, which is why we thank Sophie approximately once a week.
Thank soph You're welcome.
I actually literally, that's what we were talking about before we got on this, talking about like, we are so grateful that all we have to do is spend hours and hours and hours researching things we don't have to then also do administrative back end work because we have producers and editors and amazing teams.
I can't send an email.
Imagine sending an email. No, I also don't.
Like sending an email, but I do it.
Because you're so brave and strong. Yeah.
Total, every time I do it, I'm like, oh, you can do it. If you do that, you can pet a dog. You can pet a dog. Oh it works.
That makes sense. And so when I answered to this man that there's all this behind the scenes work, I don't think it helped him, but it was the best I could do in terms of an answer. I think he kind of came at that. You probably guessed by the way I read that question.
I don't think that was a good faith question.
I'm not convinced it was. But the thing is is that black Block was for years and I don't know if this is still the case or not. I don't know, but it was the most visible component of the anarchist movement. It had black bloc, often have people with black flags, and you know it could be easily recognized. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, and not just
of anarchism, but of militant street demonstrations and things. And if you thought regular protesters have a lot of thoughts, pro and con about the black Block, wait till you hear anarchists discuss it.
Because nobody has more opinions about the tactics of anarchists than anarchists.
I know, I know, I read so much discourse so that you all don't have to. So many scenes were written in two thousand and two about.
This, But like, I'm so tired thinking about how much you had to create.
I can't go back in time and get in that man's face and interrogate this bad faith question that he asked. But my feeling is is a lot of people who think, like, oh, like the block ruined this protest, Like what what do you mean by that? Because to my mind, a lot of people who feel that way they saw that, like the black Block was involved in what the newspaper would call a clash with the police. It's like, well, who started it?
Did that happen?
Because the block was there or was it going to happen regardless, and the person who took that baton hit was wearing a mask and.
Not you Yeah.
Right, Like we had, you know, rounds of this discourse here in Charlottesville where I live. About eight years ago, there was a lot of talk about the block right, and people who had never had this experience before were radicalized by it. In favor of the block, in favor
you know. I think a lot of people are used, like you know, Antifa and the block interchangeably, because those are the people who are visibly anti fascist, visibly anarchists, visibly experienced protesters, and you have like middle aged soccer moms getting up at city council and say, don't you dare speak ill of those people. They saved my life. Yeah, like that protest was going to get ruined either way. The block didn't ruin it. They saved people's lives.
I think that that's actually one of the most important things that comes up, is that discourse about it that's had by people who aren't present. Looks really really different. When I was young, I was wearing all black at a demonstration and had a group of older women come up and be like, we love you all. We have developed a system to help hide you from police if you need sweeties. And like they were like all had costumes with like wings so that they could hold them
open and stuff, you know. And it's like, yeah, like because actual solidarity is built in the streets together, you know, and being brave together. And I'm going to tell one more anecdote about the block, and this one I think you'll have more information about than me, so that's why I put it in. On January twentieth, twenty seventeen, Trump had his first inauguration and there was a man named Richard Spencer. You ever heard of Richard Spencer?
Molly Oh, Richard the name I haven't heard in a long time.
And the reason we haven't heard his name in a long time for anyone who doesn't know, there's this prominent at the time right wing influencers, one of the more important parts of the alt right. And he was giving a speech to some media on the street when someone in all black and a mask punched him in the face and then ran off. That's incredible. The puncher was never caught, remains anonymous to this day. One of the most perfect crimes that's ever happened just.
On camera in Washington, d C. And heavily surveilled cops everywhere on camera. Yeah yeah, I hope we never find out who it was, and I hope that he never pays for a drink.
I know. I like, there's this thing where sometimes you're like, oh, that random, annoying ponk Hou's staying on my couch or whatever, and you're like, you know what.
It could be him.
It could be him because he can't tell anybody. Nope, can't tell anyone. Sucks so bad, I know, And Richard Spencer being decked became a meme. My personal favorite is the Blue Monday remix, And best as I can tell, there's a direct correlation here to his star fading and him becoming a joke instead of a figurehead. Is that a So?
I wish that that narrative felt true to me.
You should fuck up that narrative.
That's fine, because it's so satisfying to me to say that, like, getting punched on camera is what ruined Richard Spencer, but it's unfortunately it's.
Not Oh great, no, no, yeah, because that happened.
In January of twenty seventeen, Unite the Right was in August of twenty seventeen, So this is before Unite the Right was even contemplated, right, Like, yeah, the event had not even been dreamt up at that time, so the planning and implementation of that rally all took place after this moment. I think it certainly hurt his feelings very badly, but ultimately what ruined him was getting sued into oblivion
and also his divorce. Oh okay, but he did deserve it, and it is fun to look at, and I think it still hurts his feelings to this day.
I also suspect it hurt his image among his peers.
Yes, yes, because he looked like a sad little dandy, like he didn't take the punch.
Well, I mean he looked like what he was. I hate to talk shit on dandy, but but you know what I mean, like he didn't.
Take it like the Hilarian figure he imagines himself to be.
Right totally. Do you know what's completely unrelated to any of that?
Is it products and services?
It is I hope they have no relation to any of that unless it's positive, unless it's buy a drink for random people, because they might have punched Richard Spencer that's what this podcast is brought by.
You know, I think just live your life as though every stranger you meet is that hero.
Yeah, it's like that parable Jesus, where like it's every person I mean Jesus. Yeah, exactly. The Bible says you should be nice to everyone because they might have punched Richard Spencer. Here's ads and we're back, Molly. I can't believe you were worried that there would be a topic that you wouldn't be able to find a way to make funny. I know, I was like, well, I don't know.
What if it was like some important historical event that everyone knows about and I just had to pretend I knew about it, because like, what if it was like my secret blind spot and then I felt stupid for an hour. That'd be horrible. That's like my greatest fear.
Oh my god. But now I have this terrible intrusive thought where I want to write a fake event, oh my god, and act like everyone knows it, and then have you on as the guest and tell oh, that's gonna be my villain arc is when I start telling.
You stories, see some fake war that I have to be like, oh yeah, that war was like, that was bad.
I don't want to do that to Mollie. But some man, oh totally.
No. The best is we'll get some man who will be like, oh, yeah, totally and then like also claim and make up facts about the fake war.
Just just yes, and your way into some like obscure seventeenth century European war.
Yeah totally, but that doesn't actually exist, Like you remember, right, Yeah, the papal states were just in disarray.
I remember love that for us.
I feel like I was like caught in a terrible trap earlier today because I was talking to a friend at a coffee shop and they were like, actually, I don't really know much about the Spanish Revolution, like what was the Spanish Civil War? And I was like, am I on camera? What's happening here? Am I?
BEI? PI of my Like you're like, boy, how did you come to the right?
Yeah, you just sweep everything off the table and just put down a banger.
But then halfway through get very self conscious about taking up space and conversation anyway. I know how to socialize off microphone. I'm a socially competent person. Doesn't live alone in the mountains. By and large, the Black Block had its roots in the German squatter scene the seventies and eighties. We haven't talked about this particular culture before on the show, but we've talked about a lot of parallels, like the
anarcho punks of the UK. People want to listen to our episodes about the band Crafts for more information about that, or the squat scene of the Netherlands, which you can listen to an episode about the squat scene of the Netherlands that turns vacant property into housing and vibrant cultural centers. These are related scenes to the German scene that we're going to talk about, but we can go back even further if we'd like, and if you know me, that
means yes, I would like. There is an anarchist group called Black Mask in New York City in the nineteen sixties, which we also tied a bunch of episodes about in the episodes about Up against the Wall Motherfuckers, because that's what they later became. Black Mask was a group of direct action like art pranksters basically who later became the famed and fabled anarchist street gang Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers.
The only podcast episode where we couldn't put the subject in the title, and Black Mask, true to their name, wore black masks to protests. It is hard to say if there's a direct line between those protests and German squads and the next like fifteen years later or so. But I can tell you I've traced Black Mask and Up against the Wall Motherfuckers and like two UK radical journals, and like the conversation was happening, right, this is not an isolated thing. These are large communities.
I mean, we know the fascists have international connections. There's no reason to believe the anarchists wouldn't too, right.
Totally, and while the tactic is widely adopted by and associated with anarchists, although actually, as you point out out now, it's more of like antifa. I'm sure you've talked about this before. What a great semantic trick they pulled when instead of saying like antifa and they turned it into antifa to make it so that it's not we're against phuh, but instead we're just a thing.
And they always write it in all caps to like it's an acronym or something.
Yeah, totally, like what is the FA short for buddy? Yeah? Say it? Yeah, The answer, by the way, if you're curious, is fascism. It's an anti fascist organization.
So when people say they're anti antifa, it's like, well, why don't you say the whole word.
Yeah, Like, I didn't do great in math, but I learned enough math you can.
Cancel a little bad boys that you can reduce that fraction.
Yeah, yeah, and I have I've seen at least one anti anti Antifa sticker, but I think at that point it's a joke.
It has to be.
Yeah. So the group that this grew out of, Black Block were out of, is inspired at least as much by autonomous Marxism or autonomism as it was by anarchism. The late sixties was kind of lit all over the place. One of the places it was lit was Italy. Starting in nineteen sixty nine, you have this new social movement, the autonomists, and these are autonomous Marxists, And what that means is like it's hard to conceive of in the US, where like Marxism is a bad word, right.
Not my house, fair enough, have.
You far enough? Left becomes a bad wordy and not really on it anyway. Whatever, So.
But I got my husband an original English printing of the Little Red Book for Valentine's Day last year. So just to give you a taste of what's going on in our house.
Oh hell yeah. So in Italy and a lot of other places, you have these very institutional communist parties. They're parts of government. They're like, you know, they're not a thing to be radical around, right, and so people who had no interest in communist party bullshit but are interested in Marxism developed autonomous Marxism. And we'll probably talk about
more about them as some other times. But if if you ask me more questions, I would immediately start running out of things that I can claim to know about this.
That thing I was afraid of happening, Like would be talking about theory.
Oh great, No, we're doing the tiniest bit to big questions about it. That's totally fine. In some ways, this is more of a like to like show that there's this diversity of ideological stuff that created as cultural movement.
These are anarchist Marxists. I'm on board.
I have moralized right, I definitely. At one point I met this older anarchist from Japan who was at a squad I was at in the US, and he didn't speak much English and talking to him and he's like, oh, you're anarchists, and I'm like yeah, and he was like me too, and he thinks and he goes autonomist. And I love that that's one of the only English words he knew.
That's beautiful.
Every other conversation we had to sit there with a dictionary.
But I see, like anarchist Marxists, Like, I don't even care that that's a contradiction because like the average person's politics are incoherent and it doesn't matter totally.
Like all of the random words that people have described, it's the thing that comes up constantly where you're like, oh, yeah, the like uh, you know, social libertarians or the you know, like republican, Like are you talking about nineteen thirty Spain, you're talking about nineteen sixteen Ireland, you're talking about the US. Now you're talking about the US thirty years ago, all different, completely different ideologies with the.
Party in other countries. That doesn't mean what I thought it meant.
Yeah, but then the Liberal Party in Mexico isn't metted by Ricardo Flores mcconne the anarchists, So I don't know.
I'm never going to read a book. I don't even care.
It's all meaningless. Labels. Fuck them. Sometimes they're nice, shorthand. I don't want to walk into a cafe and be like, oh, yeah, I'd like that food that doesn't have dairy, or like, oh do you want dairy? Be like no, do you want eggs? You want no? Like do you want meat? No? Oh you're vegan. Be like, oh, I don't like labels, You're like. Shorthand is sometimes useful, but also then people get really hung up on them, and then all the problems in.
SOO, but no, two anarchists have the same definition of anarchism. So cares.
Yeah, it's great. So you have all these youth and they're like doing a big social movement in Italy in the nineteen sixties. But then the state starts This is a cycle that we've seen a million times. The state starts fucking with them real bad, and they start breaking up their connection of mass movements and they're like, oh, if we do anything above ground, we're going to get caught and go to prison for the rest of our lives. And so they go where many social movements go to die.
They went to Clendestinity, They went to smaller and smaller, more isolated clicks of people doing more and more militant action. They started involving guns in their things, and you know, like, that's just a thing that sometimes happens, especially the late sixties movements.
To be fair to these Italian anarchists in the sixties and seventies, they needed those guns.
That's also true. Shit was dark. Yeah, I know, I was saying that, and I was like, I'm very grateful for the people who hold rifles in front of Drag Story Hour right now.
Italian black shirts were just beating communist organizers to death in the streets.
Yeah, yeah, it's true. So it's a completely understandable thing that they moved into more isolated groups. The problem is that when you get more isolated, you get more echo chambery, you stop being able to bring in new recruits, and you just become less and less of an impactful social force. And anyway, I'm not even trying to put a moral
judgment on any of this. They started doing some terrorism, these autonomous Marxists, and you had all these urban guerrillas, and then this big growing scene instead became increasingly isolated, paranoid and militant to that is the best I've.
Again, they weren't the only ones doing terrorism in Italy.
It's true. I'm just gonna be very fair to them. It's true. And before they did any of that, they inspired some folks. They inspired folks in West Germany by the nineteen eighties who had also taken inspiration from the Dutch squatter scene and I believe anarchist punk rock. Basically, the German youth were ready for this. Suburbanization had gutted
German cities. So it's all these empty buildings, like basically like not white flight out of the cities, but like flight out of the cities, German flight out of the German cities. I don't know, and all these buildings, and people are like, yeah, we'll move into those, and we'll fight for activist causes like stopping nuclear proliferation and fighting for the legalization of abortion. These are the two biggest causes that they were fighting for that I'm aware of.
And so people are like, yeah, fuck yeah. Autonomy and squatting this is what it's about. They started squatting empty buildings for housing and social centers that has housed bookstores and coffee houses. This is one of those words. I have literally no idea, Like, here's thing, it's called infoshops.
We have one here it is you've been there.
Yeah, that's a very nice infoshop. Infoshop is like a blurry word for a place with like zines and books and shit you can go to and learn about radical causes and things. This word very likely has its origins etymologically in these German info loden infoshop.
Oh that does feel very German. Now these I just never questioned the term. It makes it knows, but like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. It feels German.
I'm a because I can be trusted with my use of time. I'm part of a large signal loop of anarchist history nerds, and we had a recent discussion about the history of the word infoshop, and I was fully expecting it to be like one hundred years old. And the oldest that anyone that I've seen has currently attracted back to is nineteen ninety two in English in the United States.
Oh, I love that.
But in nineteen ninety two there was like a conference of all of the info shops, so clearly it goes back before then. And that's besides the point. But I like words, so they started building all of this infrastructure. The German West German punks. The reason I say West German for folks who there was a Cold War and there was East Germany and West Germany and there were
different countries. So they started building all this infrastructure in these abandoned buildings before the fall of the Berlin Wall, before the reunification of Germany. This was a massive counterculture and one that really pulled people out of regular German ways of life. All of these young folks had very few social prospects because of this massive economic downturn, and so they started just being like, fuck it, let's just do some shit. Let's well to quote an article by
Daniel Dylan Young quote. Similar initiatives for alternative living as resistance were percolating in the nineteen eighties and in some places much earlier and Holland, Denmark and elsewhere throughout Northern Europe. Eventually, all of these Northern Europeans living in decentralized social groups dedicated to creating non coercive, non hierarchical society, they became collectively labeled as autonomen.
I wonder how much of this is influenced too, So this is just like what the seventies early eighties we're talking about. How much of this is influenced that, Like these people in their twenties and thirties are born in the immediate aftermath of World War Two, so like they're being raised by parents who are shattered in a landscape that is just bleak.
I think there's a lot of that, and I think that also specifically, one of the things that I've read has said that like one of the cultural impacts here is that they didn't get to see the late sixties early sets these radical stuff, so instead they're in this like really banal time of just like one type of like super pacivism isn't always banal, but like one particular model of this is the way that non violence needs to be done, and it's a very non confrontational version
of non violence. And you know, like this is kind of a like bored and poor generation because you have this massive recession and they're like everything from before us is boring and shitty. Let's become punk rockers and you know, do weird shit. Just honestly, that's probably a lot of fun. So they're doing all of these protests and shit, they're taking over nuclear power plants.
Oh hell yeah, Okay.
Yeah, no, it's so funny too, right because the things that are like important issues change generationally a lot, right, Like anti nuclear power plants isn't like a major issue for a lot of people right now, you know.
I'm not interested in that at all, but yeah, time period it felt urgent.
Right exactly, And it's just so interesting to me though, like EBB and Low of these things that, like, like the alter globalization movement was trying to combat free trade agreements, right and right now our problem with tariffs. You know, bad people will do bad things with like any hand you give them, you know.
Right, It's not that they were wrong to have had that opinion, then, it's just that like the thing that is bad changes.
Right totally. In the winter of nineteen eighty, West Germany was like, man, we can't handle these fucking altonomen We got to fucking do something about this. Fuck it, We're going to evict all the squads fuck them. And this seems like a very run of the mill thing to do in the US because you're like not allowed to live in other people's houses, right, But in the US you're can evict someone if they don't pay rent in Germany. This is pretty serious and offensive to the German idea
of justice. Is that there was an empty house and someone was living in it because they need somewhere to live, and how you're going to make them be homeless.
Yeah, it sounds like they had the right idea.
Yes, that is the way to understand that. It also meant that the West German government mobilized police at levels that you hadn't seen in Germany since Germany did the one thing it's kind of famous for having done that at one hundred percent should not have done.
Rounding up a bunch of people with a large scale mobilization of it probably looked pretty pretty bad to a lot of Germans.
Yeah, people weren't into it fucking middle of the winter. So West Germany started trying to evict the squats, and so squatters started defending themselves and defending their squats. Also, people did this through massive nonviolence sit ins and things like that, but they also got rowdy, and every building that was evicted meant several more squatted for years. Mass
arrests were met with nationwide protests. One protest saw fifteen thousand Germans destroying an entire wealthy shopping district because of repression of the autonomen God and return. I know, well, there's this way in which it's like culturally normalized in a way that you know, I was gonna say it's hard to understand the US, but I actually think as time comes on, I actually think that these sorts of tactics make more sense to more Americans.
I mean, that's what I'm seeing anecdotally, just like in the comment sections on things.
Yeah, so there's all this repression against the autonomen in Germany, and so they invent the black block. If they all go in matching clothes, they could do what they felt needed to be done to defend themselves against police attack without being singled out for arrest. Their uniform the first black blocks was a black motorcycle helmet and or black ski masks and all black clothing. I think black leather jackets, but I actually am not one hundred percent.
And if they had motorcycle helmets, they probably had cool leather jackets, but.
It might have been bomber jackets, That's what I don't know. They would have looked cool either way. Yeah, don't get me wrong. Many of them wore steel toed boots, people brought shields and batons to fight the police off. And for better or worse, being dressed this way and the anonymity of the crowd brings out a certain magic. I don't know how else to describe this as a crowd magic. It's a dangerous and powerful and beautiful magic what people
can do in crowds. And it's not like what people claim. It's not this herd mentality, it's not this it's like a leader full thing in a really interesting way. Anyway, it makes people feel powerful. And so the Black Block started doing what it eventually became famous for. It would smash up banks and bougie stores and shit like the you know, fifteen thousand people who trashed a boogie shopping
district to quote Daniel Dylan Young again quote. In this way, the black Block is a form of militants that mitigates the problematic dichotomy between popularly executed nonviolent civil disobedience and elite secret of guerrilla terrorism and sabotage. So you have this problem right in Italy where you're like, oh, we have these big peaceful movements or even like we have this kind of routy movements and the beating us all up right, So we're all going to go underground, and
that has its other problems. So the Black Block was developed kind of organically grew out of needing to find a solution to that, needing to be able to do mass demonstrations that are actually direct action in a way that is harder to repress, and you get clandestinity without the really high stakes that are escalated through gorilla groups.
That makes sense. They bridge the gap.
Yeah, I had never thought about it that way until I was reading that particular analysis of the block, and I'm like, oh, that's actually that's pretty cool.
Yeah, it's just another one of those things that you're just so used to seeing that you don't really think too hard about where this came from or what it means.
Yeah, you're like always people always did this.
You see the way that it functions, But like, yeah, that's yeah interesting.
And tactics are tactics. They are not imbued with moral weight. They just you know what it's like, it's like ads, hmmm. I think that people should make their own decisions about which ads or any that they you like supporting or listening to. But now you have that choice. I have given you choice and tim much like when you walk into the grocery store and there's a million types of oreos. That's the freedom that you all have. Here's here's ads Andrew back. Do you a favorite Oreo?
I have sea like disease, so they only Yeah, there's just the one kind for me and I love it.
Are they like.
Oreo makes one and they're good?
Oh cool?
Do you like original Gooden fra Ario or do you like the yellow ones?
Regular?
It's like when you go to Wendy's and you see what a frosty and they say chocolate or vanilla, and it's like, I Am going to set this place on fire, Like, what are you talking about? Chocolate? I said a frosty? I don't know what vanilla? Soft serve the Trader.
Joe's Gluten free, JoJo's aka oreos are really good.
It's good.
It's just the one, just the one.
Well, let's see.
I think we were at diversity of tactics.
Yeah, ieah, And so people were embracing this tactic. The tactic to quote Liz Hileyman who said, quote coming out of the stultifying political climate of the Reagan and Bush years, many young activists had gotten sick of protest as usual, mostly in their teens. Throughout through thirties, few Black blockers remembered the glorified nineteen sixties. They grew up on a diet of well choreographed rallies, permitted marches, and planned mass arrests,
and there's like not having it. So the autonomen regularly started winning considerations from the government. They would get this or that squat legalized if the state just found it not worth evicting it. Although actually the legalization and recognition of squats in Europe is actually part of a divide and conqueror strategy from the state too, so it's kind of a little of a It's complicated, and the Black
block held a lot of symbolic importance. By dressing identically, you become leaderless and therefore much harder for the state to disrupt, both in the moment and later. Anyone who pays attention to American history knows that they sure like killing protest leaders. I think that that's probably happening these days, and it's just not then a lot of the people involved in like the Ferguson uprising just kind of die.
Yeah, like some suspicious suicides, some obvious unsolved murders.
Yeah, yeah, just like whistleblowers. So anyway, I would say there's no flag bears to the black block except actually marching bands with flag communication. There's definitely a guy with a flag. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like ways of doing semaphore and stuff that people use to communicate, like hey, police that way, or like we think we may want to go this way. It's fun. People developed this, and there's a symbolic dropping of who you are in your
regular life. There's this conception of the black blocker. It's one that's encouraged by the media that every black blocker is a white, middle class, troubled young man with nothing better to do. And to me, what this ties into is how people are marginalized in others by society in general.
If a person is unmarked by society, you know, if they're an unmarked person, truly normal within our society, then they assume to be white, middle class, able bodied straight men, because anything else is different, even though god, what tiny percentage of the world is white, middle class, able bodied straight men. Right?
The default is actually not too common, is it.
No, especially since a lot of those things are absolutely temporary. Everyone is only able bodied temporarily, and you know, many people are only straight men until they meet. So people assume that if you remove identity, you put everyone in masks. They're like, ah, that's just a white man, right.
And it's also a way of like undercutting their commitment to any kind of social justice cause like, oh, they couldn't possibly sincerely care about the rights of black people or Hispanic people or immigrants, or this is just because they have a fetish for violence, right.
Like, so they go out and risk prison time on a regular basis and get PTSD because it's fun.
None of these lies hold up, right, Like, oh, paid protester, how much would you have to pay me?
Yeah?
What is the number of zeros on the check? Where you risk death in permanent imprisonment?
Yeah, god damn it.
It doesn't make sense.
Yeah, Like even the fascists probably aren't paid protesters, you know, Like.
I have found a vanishingly small number of instances where that does appear to have happened. Like, it's not that it's impossible, is that it's not likely and it's not practical.
I will say I've been a paid picketer for a union, but that's different.
That's a job, I know.
So these early black blocks, they were in marches with like to use one example from nineteen eighty six, ten thousand people marching, of whom a solid fifteen hundred were in block. These are bigger than we see in the United States. Yeah, and they would drive back to the police. This was the same year as Chernobyl, and so the anti nuclear movement was like, see we told you so, and anti that's fair, Yeah, totally nearby and bad. When Ronald Reagan came to Berlin, he's a big, famous neoliberal.
Fifty thousand people, that's what he's only famous for. Uh, fifty thousand people marched against him, with three thousand of them in block. And in its way, this is interesting to me because in the last series of episodes I did about Zapatistas, I'm largely saying that the anti neoliberal movement, the alter globalization movement, started with Zapatistas, and I think that you can say about a lot of the groundwork
does come from the Zapatistas. But these actually do predate the uprising in Chiapas of nineteen ninety four, although doesn't predate the apatist is getting ready for that uprising. But whatever for folks who haven't listened to the explainer I've done on neoliberalism. Well, earlier we talking about how words are meaningless when they're in political contexts. Neoliberalism sometimes people think that just means like a liberal, it's liberalism, that's new. Yeah,
it's more or less unrelated. They have the same etymological route. But if you start with one, you're not getting to the other. I mean, like many people are both, but it's just a fucking unrelated think of them separately. And Neoliberalism is a set of policies and ideas that prioritize creating a global free market with which to extract value from developing nations to make specific groups of rich people and developed nations much richer. Basically is a way to
steal money from the global self. Sounds bad, It is bad. It means destroying unions and environmental protections in order to maximize profit. And maybe the first people who really felt its effects were the British working class under Margaret Thatcher, who systematically gutted workers protections and organizing. Then the model
soon exported all over the world. Roald Reagan did a whole lot of it here and then therefore a whole lot of it throughout the American Empire, and everything bad happened. And one of the means by which it destroyed places is predatory lending through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. That are two groups that are really annoying to disinvaguate. So I'm not going to. I did a little bit of it in some other episodes. They're like,
all right, your country's in trouble, we'll bail you out. Now. You just need to accept these structural adjustment programs. It's the fucking mafia. Is what a shark? Yeah, it is loan sharks on a global scale with armies involved. You need to accept these structural adjustment programs to restructure your entire economy to pain back not the loan, but the interest on the loan of what you owe to us, and it removes country's abilities to develop stable economies and
decent standards of living all at once. Trying to build a stable economy after being forced into structural adjustment programs is like trying to heat a house where a wall is missing.
Yeah, because the cool aidue man keeps smashing through it to demand more structural adjustments.
Stop unionizing your bricklayers. Boom.
Oh, yeah, that's what he says, right, I think, so why does he say that?
Because he has kool aid neoliberalism. I'm not a big fan of it. It was spreading unchecked for quite some time into a worldwide network of activists from Mexican peasants to German squatters to Indian farmers banded together and stopped it spread, which is a pretty fucking cool thing that happened.
And that's the ultra globalization movement, generally seen as having kicked off formally in Seattle in nineteen ninety nine, but the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico were building that worldwide network that became it starting at least nineteen ninety four and in nineteen ninety eight. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, those two groups that are hard to disambiguate and are generally bad. They like both loan money and are friends with each other, but they like loan money
in slightly different ways. It's really annoying. They had their meetings in Berlin. Eighty thousand protesters showed up from at least Europe in the US and fought the cops tooth and nail I don't believe that they stopped these meetings, not one hundred percent certain, but the groundwork was laid.
If you want to have secret meetings of all the behind the scenes world leaders, which is another thing that always made about conspiracy theories, like some of it's real well, and it's also it's behind the scenes, but it's not hidden like these people are like, oh yeah, I'm like the world leader does all this stuff. They just don't.
You don't need to make stuff up about these organizations, like the bad stuff they're doing, like you can see it.
Yeah, like like all secret pedophiles, Yeah, we know about them. We don't need to invent new ones. Like you're on the right track, but like focus on the stuff that's real. Yeah. Yeah, eighty one thousand people did, and they went to Berlin, you know, and they're like, all right, if you try to have these kinds of meetings, you're gonna have a
nightmare of a riot that people will not forget. And to make sure that most cities want to have nothing to do with this kind of summit, and in this big protest, there's an awful lot of black block I don't have the number of it blocks in these protests. Another thing that they would do is that they would take perimeter positions at the front, back, and or sides of these big marches and basically exists as a shield that protects the rest of the march from snatch squads
and police harassment. They would build reinforced banners, which are like more literal shields, but several people long, and sometimes you just have like a giant flag or banner that's like eight feet tall and it's just literally to block view of you know. The alto nomen of Germany were largely gone by the late nineteen nineties. Most of the squads were eventually evicted, although if you became legalized and legalizing, some of them pulled pressure off. Was like a pressure
release valve thing. Legalized squatters were sometimes, but not always, afraid to work in solidarity with non legalized squatters because they're like afraid of losing their styles.
Yeah, so it's like it's good that you won that concession, but like was that given to you because you won or because they knew it would break you?
Right, Which is actually a really important way to understand reform as any political movement, is that there's this quote from Malatesta my favorite man who's ever hidden in a creative sewing machines to escape Italy to radicalize the bakers of Argentina.
Not a competition there, I know, but he's.
The best one. Malatus as a quote when he's talking about reformism where he's like, we must take all possible reforms as an army marching forward, taking ground, like we need to see this as like we won this, not oh, they gave this to us, like and so it's not how do we appease them to be get given more crumbs? We say, great, you've given us crumbs. Now we want the whole fucking cake. And it's still the same act, Like we want gay marriage, we got it. We hope
we keep it, you know, but don't go home. Yeah, exactly. So when the Berlin Wall fell, the German left moved from this sort of squadron activism into anti fascism because of a large neo Nazi scene that developed in East Berlin. And it's been a long time since I've been in Berlin, but there was very clear delineations. I would state these anarchist squads and they'd be like, hey, this is an anarchist neighborhood. Don't go into that neighborhood at night alone.
Maybe just don't even go into that neighborhood period. Anyone from one factor and another is caught and the others would likely get beaten or hospitalized.
Oh like gang turf.
Yeah, that sometimes the problem when you're like, oh Antifah and regular Fu just sometimes if they stay in stasis with each other, create history is messy.
It's complicated.
Yeah. While I was there talking to people about this, this is the first time that I heard people talking at length about one major problem of the black block tactic. Tactics can be used by anybody. Anybody can slip in, well, anyone can slip into a black block. But that actually doesn't happen much that I'm aware of, right, because there's always the like, oh, the police instigators are going to get in there, and I'm like, a person through the
brick was an instigator? No, it wasn't. And the reason I can tell you this is that enough people get caught throwing bricks and then they go to prison and I know them, yeah, like I am friends with them, and they were not cops. They were just there and like they might not even have thrown the brick. They just you know, you could disagree with what they're doing, but.
That doesn't mean they were a part of it.
Yeah, but the German neo Nazis would just have black blocks. They should have to wear a different color.
Just what.
It's not confusing you would think that, but think about well, one American fascist group does do the all white but I mean, like, what is the modern cop uniform but fucking black block. Yeah, I'm Patriot Front.
They all dress alike. I mean, it's a stupid outfit. It's not as cool as black block, but they all dress identically. That's very intentional. Yeah, they invented like Uncle Sam block because they're wearing like khakis in blue.
Like, yeah, it's so Jesus, imagine taking yourself seriously. It's like not they are we the Batti's sketch? Which everyone loves the are we the battiest sketch? But I don't because I also wear all black all of the time and like not afraid to put skulls on stuff. But if you're like, are we the dorks, you.
Know, make sure you get the right matching windbreaker.
Yeah, Paul, that's not the right windbreaker. Yeah, grow up. Yeah, God, the fucking boat shoes kill me. Oh. So that's the origin of the black block, How it's been used elsewhere over the decades, and how anyone at home who would like to just do some costuming for fun to go to anime conventions. How to put those together we'll talk about in part two.
Are we going to get into what kind of dye you should be using to make sure your blacks match. I think that's a huge point of contention.
I see you hung out with goths. My strongly held opinion about black and how it changes color. This is really as a goth and not as an anarchist. Black looks better and it fades in the sun, then in the wash.
Okay, that's good advice.
It fades to brown in the sun, and it fades to blue in the wash.
I hate a green faded black.
Yeah, And so if you pair the two it fades nicely too. You can still wash your clothes, Margaret says, you can wash your clothes, but looks good if it fades in the sun. No, it's not actually going to be a very like. This is not gonna be a how two episode, and people are gonna have to do their own research and or talk with folks. Actually, it's funny. I was gonna say, go to someone and block and just ask him how to do it. But that's actually
literally how I got into radical politics. I went up to someone out of demonstration and was like, what's this about, and explained anarchism, I know, explained anarchism very succinctly, and I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. I was like, do you have an extra mask? And he was like, I do, and he gave me a mask.
Oh that's really cute and not usually how it would go.
No, probably not, but I was like, I don't know, already wearing all black, but that's just again goth. But Molly got an thinking of all my plug.
Yeah, listen to my podcast We're Little Guys anywhere you get your podcasts. It's like this show but opposite, and it will make you sad.
Yay, I it doesn't make me sad. I like laughing at these people. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, the subjects of your episodes are jokes.
Plenty of hahaha.
Yeah. People should listen to that. I listen to it while doing the yard work and building things in my garage. This sounds sketchy woodworking. I do it while the woodworking, so people should listen to it also people should Okay. My other plug is that the way to not let movements get divided is to not let people divide them, not to try and stop people from doing divisive things, because people are going to do what they feel drawn
to do. But nothing scares the state more than when not only are people taking militant action to stop people being kidnapped in their homes, but when people who aren't doing that militant action vocally support or materially support, although
not in a criminal way. The people taking those actions, the people who are bringing lunch and sunscreen to people who are out there risking themselves, or the people who just to say no, matter what I would think of the tactic, I care a lot more about my neighbors than I do about whether or not someone threw something at an ice agent.
And you know what, when people say, oh, that just gives the police an excuse to they were going to do it anyway. If they had to invent an interviews, if they had to fake an excuse, if they had to recreate one out of their ass later on, out of thin air. They're going to do it anyway. I've been at protests where I got beat by a cop after somebody broke a window. The cop didn't beat me because somebody broke a window. I'm not mad at the
guy that broke a window. That cop wanted to hit me. Yeah, yeah, live your life, don't try to control other people.
Yeah, and don't support people. If you're listening to this in your ice, quit your job.
They don't even make that much money. I looked at us. If they're doing this.
For they're doing it for the love of the game. I thought they make cop money, which is ridiculous, not that good.
Honestly, you joined the SS for fifty k, grow up?
Yeah, fuck that, You get a nonprofit job making that money anyway. See Old Wednesday.
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