Cool Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did cool stuff? Your weekly reminder that I have a podcast, You're twice weekly reminder that I have a podcast. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and I have a show, and it's about people who do good things from my perspective, and you should just all agree with my perspective. That's the whole point of the show.
That's why you're here.
One of your best intros.
First, thank you, thank you. And someone who doesn't have to agree with my position, but so far we seem to be on a similar page is my guest Molly.
Conger, Hi, Hey, glad to be back.
And someone who is also on the call and is my friend is my producer, Sophie Hi.
Hi.
Sophie Hi not.
On the call, but listening before you, dear listener, is our audio engineer Eva hi Eva.
Wow, yeah, she gets the first listen. What a treat, I know, I know, that's first for it. Yeah, that's uncut file is full of burps.
Coughs, Yeah, actionable crimes.
I didn't hear anything like that.
I don't know what you're talking about. And our theme music was written for us by unwoman and not listening to her music would be a crime.
That's true. I think it's a federal felony.
Yeah, so be a rebel and don't listen it.
No wait, oh no, I backed us into a corner.
Oh no.
Anyway, This is part two of a two parter about the Black Bloc, a controversial and interesting tactic that has existed since at least the very early eighties that is worth paying attention to and worth understanding. And you know, I actually need the history in order to do that. But I find it neat and you probably do too, or you wouldn't be listening to history podcast.
I'm learning a lot.
Yeah, and if people don't know Mally conger Is, they'd be very confusing, because then you're listening to part two without part one. But Molly has a podcast called Weird Little Guys.
It's the opposite of this show, and it would make me so happy if you would listen to it, or at least download it on multiple apps.
Yeah, there's no reason not to. So the Black block tactic, we talked about how it expressed itself in Germany before there was an ultra globalization movement. The tactic looks different in different places at different times. The Dutch squatters of the nineteen eighties. They were like they we're not fucking my ski masks. That's too much for us. They formed the Black Helmet Brigade and showed up to every March. For a while, Dutch squatters were pretty limited in how
they'd fight cops. They were like pretty like not quite at the German level of intensity or whatever. And then in nineteen eighty five, a squadron named Hans Kock was mysteriously found dead in police custody, and this was widely believed to be police murder and at the very least was neglect. They were like, ah, he was like drunk or drugs or I don't know, he's just dead.
Having absolutely zero information about the situation, I'm comfortable saying that the police murdered him.
The Oukham's raiser here, based on all of the times this happens all over the place, is that they murdered him, or they murdered him through a neglect.
They're responsible for his death. And I'm very comfortable with that. Yeah, with saying that, not with that it happened. To hate that it happened.
Yes, So squatters were like, all right, you killed us. Were mad and they're like, we're not bringing out guns because you don't want to just stand in the street and shoot at each other. That's just like never a good day, you know. But they sure started bringing out molotov cocktails and things got spicier.
Although okay, wait a second, hold on, So you said they didn't want to bring guns, so they brought molotov cocktails. If you were listening to this in the United States of America and did the National Firearms Act, a molotov cocktail is a destructive device that was charged the same as having a gun, So legally, a molotov cocktail is a gun.
Well, it's also worse than a gun because there's no legal way to have one.
Right, So just think about that. Yeah, just know that that it is a federal gun crime.
Well.
See, this is important because the next pairgraph I have is I'm really not trying to paint. This type of escalation is inherently good or situation situationally appropriate in every environment. While the use of molotovs is illegal probably everywhere, I feel like most states probably have a don't throw molotovs at cops rule somewhere on the books.
You know, I imagine there's probably half a dozen different statutes you could charge that under.
Yeah, the level of punishment for the act of throwing a molotov is not the same around the world. When I first went to Amsterdam, I met someone who got out of spending seven months in a low security prison for throwing a molotov at cops.
I mean, if you're doing a cost benefit math, everyone's math is different.
Everyone's math will be different. And if you're in the States, your math is real different.
There's a lot more stuff on one side of that equal sign.
Yeah. Meanwhile, back at home, when I went to the Netherlans for the first time, I met this person, a non white anarchist named Roblos Ricos, which is a very clever name, was spend seven years in prison for throwing a rock at a cop. And so I'm like, yep, because every now and then the European anarchists will be like, oh, you American anarchists don't do anything.
I like, yeah, so, uh, it's different here.
Crime is different here. Yeah. And also like I don't know whatever, I'm not telling anyone what to do, but I suspect that if people through all those that comps, it would.
What I mean, the Marines are already at play, okay, right.
So I'm literally saying nothing about this. I'm just saying the crime is a crime, and there's a.
Different Streen saying this thing from the past was very cool and me saying it would be so cool if you did it now, right, just if the cops are listening.
It's different. It's a serious cost benefit analysis that anyone would need to make, and it might not be the most effective way to try and solve problems. Okay. So that's probably the most caveati section of this. Score a coward, no, no, no. But it's like, okay, just simply be transparent about it. It's it's not just to like I don't want to get in trouble, right, But it's true, I don't want to get in trouble. But it's also like I don't want to get people in trouble. I do not want
to suggest to people what they should do. And that's like almost why I was like, oh, I don't want to talk about it because I don't want to say anything about it, because I don't want to tell people it's cool and good or that it's bad and counterproductive.
You don't want to be the Jodie Foster to somebody's John Hinckley. I get it.
Yeah, makes nice symbolism when you draw it in art. We'll go with that.
I have it on a shirt.
Yeah. Yeah. So I've read in one place that the anarchist punk scene of the eighties and nineties in the US made occasional use of the black Block before it broke on the world stage in nineteen ninety nine. I've also read that the first one was nineteen ninety one, so not the eighties. I don't know which it's true, but at first when I can tell you about it's
nineteen ninety one. It was assembled during the anti Desert Storm protests in DC in nineteen ninety one, and they were organized through the Love and Rage Anarchist Federation, which put out a call for affinity groups, which we'll talk more about later, but it's it's you and your friends making your own decisions together, group to come in block.
This was presumably inspired by the Autonomen's attack on neoliberalism, because that block, when they got together to protest Desert Storm, went to the World Bank Building and smashed all its windows.
Had it coming, I mean, what was the building wearing I know, and it's like.
One of these things where you're like, oh, it wasn't even related to the protests, and like no, but they sure are stripping all of the resources out of the developing world.
Which I think actually does have a lot to do with the causes of war.
Yeah, totally. And just to get a taste of how political discourse and terminology has and hasn't shifted, I read a lot of communicats and stuff and discourse from the early nineties about this I was saying, and the early aughts, but I read an internal communicating not like an internal like never published, you can find it online, but like
meant for discussion within people doing this. A communicate from nineteen ninety two about a second block that had been attempted on April fifth, either as it was a women's march, but I don't know if it was an anti war march or not, if it was just a women's march. This block, one comments or felt, had not been as much of a success. One reason behind it was the lack of solidarity from male block organizers. There was also women block organizers, and specifically the male block organizers didn't
have solidarity enough with the women organizers. Women in this case spelled wimyn.
Oh hell yeah, that's so early nineties.
And the best part about it, from my point of view, is that this word is both women and women because it'll say A women came up and said the following women and women are spelled the same es.
They're taking man and men out of it, right, So it's like, but then there's no distinguishing between singular and plural.
Right besides the article that precedes it. And what's also funny. I was like, I was telling this to my friend while I was getting ready for this, and they were like, yeah, why did we hate the O? Like, I get the E in the A, but what's our problem with the O?
Wait?
What are they a place to O with?
I w I M y N.
Why did they do that?
I don't know.
I guess if you're gonna make up a new word, you might as well go all in.
But like, that's true, it looks kind of cool.
Okay, now I need to know.
I know, and someone listening knows right in.
If you're familiar with the etymology of these feminist neologisms from the early nineties.
Because there was another one that I ran across more, which was w I M M I n oh. I used to know more about the etymology of the words like a woman and man and stuff because man used to literally I think there was a different word. Where was the word for man?
Right?
Like where wolf?
Yeah exactly?
Or where geld which is the money you had to pay to someone's family if he murdered them.
Oh shit, anyway, a more civilized time, So.
We'll find out more about this situation.
Yeah, get to the bottom just another time. So this protester was like talking about how it was and wasn't organized effectively.
And honestly the men not pulling their way same as it ever was.
No, I know totally, and I like, I'm not even trying to be like, oh they spelled words funny. I'm like I'm trying to say, like everything's the same, right.
And it's just like such a time capsule of the early nineties, Like if you see women spelled that way, like you know where we are.
Right totally, and like specifically they were like, hey, you know there was a women's caucus that was you know, part of this, and then like the organizing wasn't quite structured enough in a way that it helped make the men actually pay attention to the women's caucus.
Said, oh, the men weren't interested in the consensus based decision making that involved the women. That's crazy, Margaret, that's never happened.
I know, but these are radicals, so I must have been misreading it.
I bet the men participated equally in making sure the logistics like bathrooms and food and water were handled as well.
Well. Those actually just take care of themselves.
That's right, especially if you don't go to the women's caucus where they meet about it. Nothing change diapers when that zine got written and nothing has changed.
Nope, nope. So they talk about the structure in this. It's not just a like complaining about the following. They talk about the structure. Block of any size is built from affinity groups. An affinity group is basically a very small organizing body, one that might easily be understood as you and your few friends who make decisions together. Affinity groups generally operate on consensus rather than voting what to do.
The group does what everyone in the group agrees they want to do together, which makes a lot of sense, like for crime, right, if you're four or five friends.
This sounds like a conspiracy.
Yeah, well, if you're hanging out with your friends, you all have to eat, and you're like, what do you want to do? You want to go to the beach or do you want to go set that building on fire? You can't vote that one, right, everyone has to be down for the crime.
If it's like, you know, four to one, we have a majority, we're going to do the crime. The guy who wanted to go to the beach, each.
Like should probably be able to leave and go back.
You should leave.
Yeah. This is not a democracy, Yeah, exactly, it's a consensus. It's a we all want to agree to do this or not. And so that's like how you build a larger group that is made up of people operating on consensus, but not consensus of the larger group necessarily, but the individuals involved are organized into smaller groups. And also makes it really funny when they're like, who's the leader of this and you're like, you fucking morons. Is this your first day at work?
Do you charge of Antifa?
Yeah? Yeah, So you have three to fifteen people or so who agree to go to a demonstration, to have each other's backs, to go where the others go and to not get broken up. These affinity groups then coordinate with the other affinity groups on the street, and clearly by the fact that they caucuses and stuff. They also sometimes will have like representatives from affinity groups come and talk about what they might want to do, which really
does sound like conspiracy. I actually don't think that that's the way these are organized anymore. Like, really and genuinely I don't think that this is time capsule shit.
I was just saying, this is this is a relic of things past. I mean, I've heard of things like this, but like in my understanding of this level of organization, those group representatives aren't coming together to then form consensus. They're just like letting y'all know, this is our hardline.
Yeah, totally, this is like kind of direction we're thinking about taking things. Where's everyone else feeling? Yeah, And one demonstration with a black bloc, the nineteen ninety nine Carnival against Capital in London, nine thousand masks were distributed ahead
of time. That's some infrastructure and that had a theme, and the masks had printed inside each one a message, and that message quote those in authority fear the mask for their power partly resides in identifying, stamping, and cataloging, in knowing who you are. Our masks are not to conceal our identity, but to reveal it. Today we shall
give this resistance a face. For by putting on our masks, we reveal our unity, and by raising our voices in the streets together we speak our anger at the facelessness of power.
That's a long message to be on the inside of the masks.
There's also multiple ellipses, and the version I found I suspect it was longer.
How was this like a piece of paper tucked inside? Was it like sewn in? I need the logistics here, Like what was the manufacturing process for nine thousand masks with a whole paragraphic.
The way it was described it was like printed inside. I'm like, was it like are they printing with like a therma print where you can print.
On a tag?
Well, I was thinking like almost equivalent silkscreen, you know, like a way to print onto fabric. It could have been as.
Somebody would have to be like manually turning these inside out to get the message, like this is a process. Yes, I've never met an anarchist who could have pulled this off. I'm so sorry.
Late nineties built different into weird projects.
Magpie just SAIDU them kids, No, at least a dozen people had to have the same idea that they remained committed to without disagreeing for like several weeks.
That's true. I will say one. I've been to a demonstration where people took their school's resources to make thermoplastic clear riot shields, to make hundreds of them by using like industrial manufacturing processes. And there's also just the fact that like on some level, like some people are actually just like working class at work at factories and shit, you.
Know that's true. But like usually when you work at a factory, you don't have access to just like using the factory.
That's true.
I'm necessarily enjoying all the side comments.
I need to see a picture of this. Is there a.
Picture I not that I have found?
There might be one, please, if you are a sixty year old punk show it to me, please.
I also think the Okham's raiser here is even though it says printed on the inside, it might be that there is a piece of paper inside.
Right, there was like a little hand bill that was handed to everyone as well.
That's that is the most likely situation.
That's still very impressive that they were able to do this. I'm still very impressed, but I have questions.
Yeah, fair enough, and also to walk back my kids these days, the way that we're built different now is substantially more confrontational and interesting to me. The twenty twenty uprising was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
I don't want the anarchist to think I'm making fun of them. I am making you can make fun of Them's fine, We're having a good time, though it is out of love. Like I said, Yeah, oh.
No, I'm just afraid of being like the old grouchy person. You were better in the anti globalization eraic we were.
It's different. Things are just different now.
Yeah, And do you know what, I don't have a transition for it ads.
I hope that this ad is for some kind of home screen printing setup where I could make nine thousand masks with a weird poem inside.
Hell, yeah, what poem did you picked?
Well?
I don't know. That had a sort of a poem energy to it that like the message, the little sort of beef vendetas sort of situation.
It does have a very vief for Vendeva, although before the movie came out, I would do with the and or speech of soger Era being like, we are the thing that explodes when there's too much friction in the air.
It's beautiful. Yeah, I hope it's an advertisment for something I can use to make nine thousand masks.
Yeah, and here's that ad and rebec. I'm actually particularly excited about the way that you can use someone gambling to print onto masks.
Mine would be from this pub that I just googled that is called.
I Like Dogs.
I like dogs, big dogs, little dogs, old dogs, puppy dogs, a dog that is barking over the hill, a dog that is dreaming very still, a dog that is running whenever he will.
I like dogs.
And it's by a person called Margaret wise Brown, who I have no idea who they are and if they're good or not.
Who Margaret wise Brown is?
No am I supposed to so be am. I supposed to like good?
Naight, move.
That makes sense, you know, I do know how much person is. You're right, I'm not good at remembering names unless it's basketball players.
I don't know if she hooped.
Yeah, but the poem about it would be pretty cool.
I liked that her name was Margaret and the poem was about dogs.
Yeah.
Also, anybody who has a dog that dreams still not mine?
Oh my dog dream my dog.
Dreams not still. I'm sorry. It's big red bar not little Red Bar. What am I fucking thinking?
Yeah, Jesus, fake fan, Yeah I know I got fully shamed. You're out here not knowing your facts.
Okay.
Yeah.
When I was five, me and my sister we got cats for Christmas with the shelter, and so I got to name my own cat. I'm five years old, Like, what am gonna name this cat? And I decided to name her after my favorite page from my favorite book from when I was little. You know, I was. I was five years old. I was a big girl. I didn't love good Night Mood. I was too big for that, but it was my favorite book when I was little. So I named my cat good Night Kittens, like the
entire phrase good night kittens. That's pretty good from good Night Moon, because good night kittens, good night mittens, you know, good night bull of mush et cetera. So for fifteen years, we just had a full grown cat whose name was kittens plural. So much. What do we where? Where the World Trade Organization?
Yeah, we're talking about next yeah oh hell yeah yeah. Well then we're not going to do the deep dive on it, because that's a future series of episodes.
Were going to Seattle, Baby.
This person is like a good person. Will somebody message me and let me know, because I've seen fabulous pictures of her with a dog, and I would like to know if this is a person.
I should like?
Is this the poet?
Yes? I would like to know if this is a person I should like or if this is a problematic person which I should hate. And I refuse to do my own research because I'm really, really, really tired.
I'll just do an episode on it. So November nineteen ninety nine, the Black Block hit the mainstream in a way that it never had in the US and probably hadn't anywhere in the world, even though as substantially smaller Black Blocks than the ones in Europe, because it participated in dramatic rioting against the World Trade Organization in Seattle,
the famed Battle of Seattle. And We're going to talk about the actual alter globalization protests soon, So I'm not going to give a blow by blow of the Battle Seattle. But the core of why the Seattle protests against the
World Trade Organization, another one of these neoliberal organizations. The reason these protests were so effective they successfully shut down the meeting of the World Trade Organization was not because a few hundred people wearing all black broke a bunch of Starbucks windows, but that a coalition of environmentalists and labor progressive and radical like used from the bottom and the left tactics and organization to borrow a phrase from the Bapatistas, this idea from the bottom and the left,
it means like the bottom a little bit class wise, but it means like organizing from the bottom up instead of from the top down. They coordinated mass direct action to shut down downtown Seattle and shut down these protests. It was a movement of movements, and it brought together all sorts of different people to fight alongside one another. And if you're thinking, Molly, I know Sophie's thinking this.
That feels like when the free peoples of Middle Earth banded together at the end of the Third Age in the Battle of the Ring to defeat Saron.
That's exactly what I was like.
Oh, I was just thinking that like, to be honest, one of the only things I know about the nineteen ninety nine Seattle World Trade Organization protests. So what I'm writing about a we're little guy. I write like a full timeline of his life, like every djil I can find about, just like I don't even use ninety percent of it, but I make this like full robust timeline
of a person's life. So the only thing I know about the ninety ninety nine Yettle World Trade Organization protest is that a guy who was convicted of a federal crime for lying on his background check form when he joined the military. His parents met there because his mom was making soup. She was like a food not bombs girl.
Oh that's so heartbreaking, I know.
And his parents met there and then he was conceived shortly thereafter, and he is a Nazi. Oh my god, we're not our parents, you know.
No apple was caught by the wind and taken to the Nazi grove, fell far from the tree. That's so sad, I know. I mean. Also, people who's George Orwalls's great piece on nationalism where he, like everyone, redefines words whenever he feels like it, and he talks about it as like an allegiance to the idea of being very about something, and he uses it to talk about how many leftists became Nazis, because so many leftists became Nazis.
You know, sometimes you see a guy and you think, oh, one of these days we're going to be on opposite sides of the line, aren't we.
Yeah. Anyway, during these protests, before they fucked and made Nazis, some of the anarchists, not all the anarchists, got together to form a black bloc to attack symbols of neoliberalism and capitalism, like the aforementioned Starbucks windows sort of the most famous part of this, but.
I forgot Starbucks was that old Starbucks?
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh breaking Starbucks windows was like that was like the thing. There's a against me song about throwing bricks through Starbucks windows that's about Seattle.
Because it started in Seattle. Yeah, which you can't go into Seattle without somebody telling you that.
Yeaeah. Totally. And these protests. The destructive part of the protests, which is a smaller portion of it but got a lot of the media attention. It directly and materially contributed to the escalation of the conflict, which was likely necessary for the tactical victory of shutting down the protests, is my argument. If things hadn't gotten spicy, they probably would not have caused enough chaos to stop the meeting from
being able to happen. It was also pretty much the reason why the press was unable to downplay the demonstrations like they've been doing to every demonstration they could find for so long, and the reason that these protests got so much press us, almost all of which was negative. All press is good press, maybe hard to say. And it also sparked a debate that goes on in radical movements to this day about the appropriateness of black block
and the appropriateness of property destruction of demonstrations. The black block makes for a powerful media image, one that is regularly villainized by both the press and by some advocates for strict nonviolence policies. This powerful image is a double edged sword. Protests that would have scarcely made the news at all get a ton more attention when things are on fire or broken. Militant action is always polarizing, and maybe it always will be, but there are people who
are turned off by this. It is worth remembering that in twenty twenty, when someone burned down the third Police Precinct in Minneapolis in response to the police murder of George Floyd, a Monmouth University survey revealed that fifty four percent of a Americans supported the arson of the police station, which means burn the fucking cop shops down. Hold higher than either presidential candidate at that time.
And don't let Atlantic magazine tell you fucking otherwise, I.
Know because this one the source for that in this is Newsweek. That's like, that's a conservative publication. Yeah, direct action, including militant direct action, is actually apparently less polarizing than electoral candidates are. That's my spiciest take of the day.
You know, you may not, I don't know, you may not like the look of a broken window, but do you like it more or less than you like looking at a four year old child crying as she's being snatched from the arms of her mother.
Right, And you could say to yourself, why are they related? And then you have to say, well, even if they aren't, is one person against that and another person doing it? You know, is one person trying to stop that by a means that they consider appropriate In which case, your problem is not ethical, it's strategic, and people get really hung up on that difference and think that strategy is ethics and it's not. Got wild eyed and glad there's an audio medium. But you're right, Thank you, thank you.
You know, I personally, I'm not going to break a window, but I'm not going to take a picture of it when someone else does.
Yeah, the same people who are doing that are often the same people who will physically stop the police from beating people and grabbing people who are trying to do things.
I'm not going to tell you to break the window. I'm not going to tell you to not break the window. But if you break the window and you get arrested, I will wait in the parking lot for you to get out.
That's a good way to put it. Yeah, totally, Because.
When we do jail support, it doesn't matter what you did. We're just waiting here in the parking lot for you to get out. So this is not an endorsement of the window breaking. I'm just saying we'll be out here with snacks.
Yeah, there was people waiting outside with snacks after I got out of jail. When the night you got arrested, wearing all black.
Yeah, yeah, we do.
Yeah.
The WTO protests got negative press attention, but this didn't stop any activists, partly because I think this is an
interesting tangent about media. The argument during the altra globalization era was that mainstream media is structurally part of the state apparatus of control, that, to paraphrase Nom Chomsky, the state isn't powerful enough to control everyone with an iron fist, like we're seeing this now right, like we're actually literally more of us than there are of them, because the run of the mil conservative voter is not willing to get out on the streets to protect ice.
Much getting up off your gouge to protect the police.
I know.
Because the police aren't powerful enough to control everything with an iron fist, they use media apparatus to manufacture the consent of the governed. This is the argument, and it's I'm going to explore that tangent more depth one day.
But the anarchist Noam Chomsky saying this about the manufacturing of consent in nineteen eighty nine was part of what led the alter globalization movement to develop its own media infrastructure, much of which was built around a brand new idea, a decentralized way for people to post news, indie media, which more or less invented citizen journalism in the Internet era, and as a direct precursor to Twitter, which is of course not specifically a leftist project, but it was at
least interesting until that was captured by fascism and rebranded as x which is to say, capitalism could fucking recuperate anything, and it's a nightmare. But I find that through line very interesting that radicals critical of the coverage of these sorts of things invented a worldwide infrastructure of direct communication.
Sometimes. You know, in my research into sort of fascist movements of this era of the you know, the seventies, eighties, and nineties, come across old primary source leftist and anarchist media, right, so like old Marxist newspapers, old anarchist zines and sort of capturing these moments in time. And it is striking how different the coverage is, because I mean some of them are fairly professionalized. These like little newspapers that came out quarterly or this or that or the other. It's
real journalism, it's a real newspaper. But it's so different. You can read coverage of the same protests from an old New York Times archive and then from the anarchist newspaper, and it is it's a different story.
It's a different reality that people are creating, and both are biased.
And these histories get buried and lost.
Yeah, and that's yeah, I mean that's like literally what keeps me going with doing the show constantly. That and my desire to feed my dog on a regular basis.
See those histories alive. And yeah, sure of course they're all both biased. The Anarchist newspaper and the New York Times are both if you read both, and that's a lot of what I do, right as you sort of read these primary sources that were written by nazis, right, So you can't take them at face value. You're not reading, yeah, for truth, but you can piece together what the truth probably is. Yeah, And I have found that the leftist and anarchist newspapers are closer to it.
I have largely found that to be the case. It's also it's more transparent when they go into their like now I'm soap boxing mode, which any listener of this show is fully aware of. I try to get all the facts right, and I digress and my opinions are very clear, you know. But there's an interesting thing. I think the idea that mainstream media is inherently pro status quo is an out moded idea. And maybe I say this because I produce a podcast for iHeartMedia.
I try not to think about it, like.
I was, like, huh, sounds sur reilier.
To be fair, I've never even met anyone who works for iHeartMedia except for Sophie, and I don't clam them.
Well, that's the thing is I am a freelance contractor and they put ads into the content that I make, and they don't control that content, and so I say what I believe, and they can make money from me doing.
That, and I bank on the fact that they just don't listen to my show.
Yeah, it's pretty much what to count on.
Yeah, all the time.
I'm like the less people that know we exist but keep signing our checks like the.
Better Yeah, yeah, listening to our shows now.
But I think that a thing that has happened, and I'm using us and a lot of my friends who work in media as an example, and also like shows like and Or where there's a generation of people that are genuinely anti capitalists largely anti authoritarian that has become media professionals. The fact that some of the best labor reporting consistently is from teen Vogue, right, and often they're doing it actually with more nuanced than some of old papers,
like old leftist papers and stuff. Anyway, this is like a thing that I think about a lot, is the way that our relationship to media has shifted dramatically over the decades.
And I think it's something really importantly going back to what you're talking abot with the manufacturing consent, it is important to interrogate the viewpoint of the author of the publication totally, because, like you said, burning the precinct pulled higher than the president, and that's not what the newspaper tells me.
Yeah, totally, because you're like, oh, we want to show both sides, so you like, well, they don't show the pro burning side usually anyway, Oh no, it's ads.
Oh god, and we're back.
So media presented a certain image of the black block and it was not a sympathetic one. Black blockers only care about destruction and have nothing to offer the movement. It's just purely negative and they are the ones responsible for the violence of the police. Which is always an amazing thing. Like the headlines are like the violence started after someone throw a water bottle.
And you're like, seems like an unnecessary escalation.
Yes, the violence was when people started hurting people, which was the police hurting or like the violence started when people yelled at the police. You're like, no, it was again, it was when they hit people with sticks. And yeah, somehow police hospitalizing people's responsibility of an angry kid wearing all black. I think The Onion nailed this the other day with the headline protesters urge not to give Trump administration pretext for what it already doing a.
Right because like, oh, don't give them any excuse. They don't need an excuse. Plus, it's already happening. It's already happening.
That's great, well done, the Onion.
I would never be able to write Onion headlines because I don't grammatically understand why headlines will say things like for what it already doing instead of for what it is already doing. I don't understand it. I think it's a way that headlines are written.
It is a way that headlines are written.
And I think that the Onion is always satirizing headlines so they're going to like play into sort of an old timing journalisty.
Journalism school.
No, I mean, I'm totally professional. Oh wait, I'm not even pretending to be a professional tru I do pop history.
So now I've been pepper sprayed by enough cops in enough situations to know it was always their fault.
Yeah, totally. Yeah, even when cops get pepper sprayed, it's their fault because it's them doing it to them.
They love doing it to themselves.
I know.
Within the movement of movements, opinions about block were a lot more nuanced, and you saw a rise of what I might call the heroic black block, where black blockers work in solidarity with people with other tactics and outfits. And actually, you mean that's kind of how it started, right, It's like as a spiky exterior to a larger march.
But people realized, if you're aware of how your presence attracts police attention, and if you ever want police attention out of protest where black block, the police will pay attention to you. And you're good at staying mobile in this situation, right, And so rather than smashing bank windows near people doing nonviolent civil disobedience in the middle of an intersection, like people like locking the lock boxes in the middle of intersection. You don't run up and break
the window right near them and then leave. That's a move.
You just go somewhere else.
Right, And then you're actually helping because the police are now drawn away from your allies, and you're much better equipped to fight back and to get away then other people might be. And because of that, and because of interpersonal relationships and years of intense organizing, and we talked about this as the opening bonds of solidarity arose between the block and other groups. And during the entire ultra globalization movement, the Black Bloc continued, and so did the discourse.
The discourse was actually fairly nuanced. It wasn't like is everyone doing this tactic evil or good? Right? It was like, hey, in what context is this appropriate? How much are we simply acting out our pre assigned role within the same story over and over again? Right? You kind of like fetishize a tactic and then you're like, we're just going to do it, and you're like, is it the right one? Do the cops know you're going to do it? Because if you if the cops know you're going to do it.
It's not what we should do like overall, you know.
Well, and the president said that all those people have to go to prison.
Oh yeah wow. An anonymous zone from the time from two thousand and two, I think had a really good title, if you ask me, the black Block a disposable tactic. I like that, and that piece describes the state's way of responding to anarchists and the block during the ultra globalization movement and talks at length about how the state's strategy is to criminalize all the militant protesters as terrorists.
It's the same shit, right like Trump is different. But Bush did this too, right, and especially in the wake of nine to eleven. Everyone's a terrorist now and specifically, the state strategy at the time, at least according to this analysis and I fully agree with it, was to try to convince the rest of the movement to distance themselves from the block Banko and people started moving away from black block tactics were rather diversifying into different types
of blocks within radical mass mobilizations. We'll talk more about this one seeing because I really like it, and so I have to throw it in. Have you ever heard of the padded block. No, no, it comes from these like Italian tute Blanche White Overall's movement, I think is how you say it, I'm cute.
Yeah.
Well they start off being like, we're gonna wear white overalls to protests and if I get this history wrong, sorry,
later they will be the subjects of a thing. But then they started wearing padding, and specifically they turned a block style formation into a purely defensive thing where you would be silly as hell covered in like pillows and pool floaties and like helmets, and you would just be like the Michelin man, like lumbering up to the cops, and you'd have hundreds of people doing this and you would literally just push the police out of the way.
I need to see this with my eyes.
This there is video of there's so much good riot porn from this has mostly happened in Europe in like ninety nine, well I guess mostly two thousand, two thousand and one.
Looking this up immediately after we're done.
Yeah, no, the padded block is fucking amazing. They'll hit cops of pool noodles and shit.
An American cop would just shoot you if you hit them with anything.
I know, it's like one of those things where was like, there's that footage of some protesters recently, and I think California where the cops are trying to evict I think a Palestine occupation at a campus and someone is just like bonks the cop with an empty five gallon water drum and you can hear the bonk noise.
Oh god, yeah that was all. There was a music video then somebody made a song.
I hope that person is free, is all I feel.
But yeah, I just feel like I don't know, maybe the European cop has a sense of humor but the American cop does not.
I will say there's a moment of some European cops being real and cool about some stuff.
I mean there's still cops.
Yeah.
Uh.
And the padded block is a great media image and it can be just as radical, especially when your goal is storm the hotel of world leaders. It's a fairly effective way to move through a police line. It's not good for causing havoc and rich shopping districts, but that's that's not always the goal, right And to quote author Mark Levine about this quote, simply put routinized violence against
property costs. The anti corporate globalization movement significant support in the US and Europe, precisely because the vast majority of people in these countries were not suffering enough under the existing system to support the level of chaos and disruptions
such violence was intended to generate. And it's a mouthful, but it's basically it's like, look, people's lives aren't hard enough that like, most people aren't necessarily going to look at a smashup shopping district and be like, hooray, tack capitalism.
Because they have the crumbs and they went.
Home, right, And I don't think that's a universally applicable thing. I'm not just meaning as a condemnation of property destruction in all contexts, but it was a way in which people saw that that was happening within the movement and started shifting.
What it's interesting to think about in the present moment, right like, have things shifted enough where there is enough visible suffering the balance has changed. I agree that people are not going to look at that property damage the same way they would have ten years ago.
Right Like, if you read anti capitalist stuff from the late nineties, like Adbusters magazine, the problem that they present that their reader might have is that they're bored, Like Fight Club is a movie about being bored by capitalism and problems dealing with homosexuality and pent up Maile Anger. But people's problems isn't that they're bored anymore.
You know, the cost of food is getting out of control, like there's going to be a breaking point.
Yeah, And not that everyone was having a good time in the nineties, but it was a substantially more up and coming time, and when you look at the larger picture of the economy, it's just a very different time. Well, an intense thing that happened in July two thousand and one the Group of Eight, which is a neoliberal decision making body of the leaders of the eight richest countries. I think it's the eight richest countries plus Russia. I
don't remember off the top of my head. It was like Russia, you have nukes, so you're like in, even though you're not like next, you know, I think that's it. I might be wrong whatever, I'm never going to find out. I used to know all of this. I used to write zines about it, like talk to people at demonstrations about it. I just like don't remember all the Shelffs
on my head. In two thousand and one, the Group of Eight, the G eight, was meeting in Genoa, Italy, and the police shot and killed a twenty three year old anarchist named Carlo Giuliani. Carlo at the time was armed with a fire extinguisher when cops fired live rounds at him and then ran him over. And his death has been filmed and it was very impactful on the movement. A few months later, planes hit the World Trade Center. I don't know if you knew that this happened.
Oh, tell me more about that.
What is that?
I can't remember. I lived in New York City at the time. I will absolutely remember it a scarred on my brain.
Never forget all of us traumatized.
Yes, yeah, totally, except Garrison, who wasn't born.
Fuck so real.
The US mobilized for war, and it started rounding up Muslim and without due process, and suddenly everyone was a terrorist. Supposedly, at this point, the ultra globalization movement fell apart. That's always the version of the story, including within the movement. I joined the movement months later in February two thousand and two at protests in Manhattan, and I did not feel like I was joining a failing movement. I felt
more alive than I ever have in my life. By that point, the movement did indeed still exist, and I came up in the middle of the movement awash in Zine's self critique about everything we did wrong. You know, we were like, oh, our movement fell apart? Why And it just turned into this like discourse. Hell, And what I think we did wrong was assumed that winning is a static thing. We accomplished an amazing amount of things.
We thought that smash neoliberalism was a like static thing, like done, you beat the boss, The little cheering music happens, and then it's never over. Yeah, it's never over, and that's beautiful. The alter globalization movement ended eventually, and in the US the anti war movement began, which imported tactics, if not activists, directly from the previous movement. By two thousand and eight, a lot of the discourse around the Black Bloc and diverse tactics within protest movements felt settled.
Because it didn't stay settled, but it should have been. And everyone, this is my opinion. I'm now in a soapbox because in two thousand and eight, when people agreed to disrupt the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. They got together all these different movements. How are we going to do this? We all have different ideas, abouw we should do this? And it came up with a four point program called the Saint Paul Principles. You heard these?
Oh we still use those?
Cool. The Saint Paul Principles are One, our solidarity will be based on a respect for diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups. Two, the actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain in a separation of time or space. Three, Any debates or criticism will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists or events. Four. We oppose any state
repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption, and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.
Good rules, yeah, rules to live by.
Yeah. People are going to do the shit in different ways. No one way is right. Make sure we don't step on each other's toes directly, it's never going to be perfect. And try to keep a united front against the enemy. And the press alike, especially once we step on each other's toes, which we will.
Like, whatever disagreements you have within the movement, it's not worth getting the cops involved. Is not worth letting the cops in.
Yeah, because your problem is with other people who share your goals and not your tactics, and so talk about that amongst each other, not with people who have completely different goals that are counter to yours.
Really, the state is not a mediator here. They just want you both to die.
Yeah, totally.
I do love that. You know, it's Saint Paul because of like Saint Paul Minnesota. But it makes it sound so religious. It gives it like a biblical haft. Oh, yeah, this is the Bible.
Yeah. I was reading this like I hate the Saint Paul's Principle piece the other day and it was like, Saint Paul, what is this Catholicism telling us what we have to do? And I love they use anti authoritarianism to justify authoritarianism, you know, because they're.
Like many such cases with an anarchists.
Yeah, well, this person wasn't an anarchist. Oh I think this person was. I'm rudely assuming that this person was a Marxist Leninist.
Okay, that's fair too. I'm just saying that there are more authoritarians and a room full of anarchists.
It's true than you would want them to be.
Yeah, yeah, than you would ever suspect.
Yeah.
Consensus based decision making means we're going to sit here until you all agree with me.
Oh god, I am kind of glad that we learned that not everything needs to be consensus decision making.
I'm talking a lot of shit for somebody who doesn't leave her house, don't listen to me.
Oh that's the other thing that every now and then people are like, come give talks about organizing. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to take a time machine back to what I knew what was happening. I read history and talk about pop history.
For my safety and the safety of others. I'm not in those rooms. I haven't been in years.
Yeah yeah, oh real.
So right.
All Then, during a series of global uprisings started in twenty eleven with Arab Spring, the Black Bloc found a new and maybe more fertile ground, places where people had been suffering enough with the existing system to be down with a more destructive method of confronting that system and you get a really major black bloc movement in Egypt. And again, it was a way to have these huge, spicy protests without turning to actual armed urban gorilla clandestinity.
The protests around Tarrear Square and Egypt made extensive use of black block tactics, largely introduced through soccer hooliganism.
I mean they're already organized, you know, they have matching outfits.
Yeah, and they like fighting, they love fighting. Yeah.
God, we were just those horrible videos coming out of La of the police horses trampling people, right, Yeah, we're looking at those, and my husband was reminding me of the Interior Square. There was that moment where you can see the idea occur to a man that you can if you walk up from behind or the side, like when the cavalry is in a dense crowd, you can just pull him backwards off the horse and there's nothing you can fucking do about it.
I just want to point out that Anderson fucking hated those police cop horse things.
Like cavalry is frightening when it's facing you. Yeah, but you can pull him down.
Yeah.
They used to just like prance around in the Hollywood, near where the old ieart office was, and when Anderson was out doing her concrete shit, which is what I used to call it. Sanderson's like I'll drop heat anywhere Los Angeles, and so we'd be doing the concrete shit dance. Sorry, Anderson, I'm really like outing your life, really putting her own blasts, really put No, I'm proud of that. Okay, my dog could ship on concrete, thank you very much.
My dog can not sh on concrete.
My other dog absolutely not. She's she loves having her little on sweet bathroom at my house. Anyway, we would see those exact horse cops and Anderson would let them know, like you we include you an.
A cab horsey horse behind this look. As a former horse girl, I'm looking at their form. They're not stable on those horses. They are at risks. Also a former horse girl, I have questions.
This is great.
The deep lore. So yeah, I love this.
We did upset Anderson.
She did leave the room when we started. Oh yeah, there's some incredible, incredible videos from Treer Square. Yeah, oh yeah, I know. You're just like interested in what you should do if there was mount to Cavalry.
Yeah yeah, continue Magpipe please.
Yeah, yeah, no, And and one of the things I really like, because I really like when everything is connected globally. And a lot of the Black Block activists in Egypt, or presumably their supporters as well, would change their Facebook pages to list their university background as u NAM, which is the National Autonomous University of Mexico. It's a way of saying we're related with the Zapatistas, and I think that's cool.
That is cool.
Black Block was also contentiously part of Occupy Wall Street and the broader occupy movements. Once again people presenting and almost amusing ignorance on the part of some of the critics, where they're like, where do these anarchists come? Ruin everything
at Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street was built by alter globalization veterans, including the late anarchist author David Graber and many other people, not just anarchists, but very heavily, and soon those ideas generalize across the country and people would get involved without knowing.
The orgas can you shull up late to the party, mad that the host is there?
Yeah, exactly exactly. Movements come and go, but discourses forever, which is why I want to remember always the litany against discourse, which is me rewriting the Litany against fear, which is a piece by Frank Herbert. It's a way to remind yourself not to discourse. I must not discourse. Discourse is the mind killer. Discourse is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face the discourse. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the discourse has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
That's beautiful, Margaret.
Yeah, thanks, Yeah, you just replaced the word fear, and that's the actual thing.
I just mind my business. Yeah, I see someone I don't like it, a protest, I mind my business.
Yep, that's not about me. Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about this today because I don't want people to get caught while they're trying to stop fascism. And the black block is one way to avoid getting caught or things like it. And it is not just for people
who want to commit crimes. It is very good for people who want to make sure that people who do commit crimes, rather that people who do physically interfere with the state apparatus, for example, don't get caught because you are part of a crowd that they can disappear into.
You know, even if crime is just totally off the table, Like that level of anonymity is useful to you for a variety of reasons, state surveillance, arrest after the fact, just for having been there, being docks by right wing groups, Like, there's a lot of reasons why. Maybe you just want to be a little anonymous, Yeah, totally. And if somebody wants to break the window, it's not your fucking business.
Yeah, that's not you.
Oh and if you were the massed anarchist who grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back because I was looking down at my phone while walking and tweeting into a riot line, thank you.
And So if you want to go to an anime convention dressed in the following style ways to do it, just real quick. This is not your actual guide, but I promised you some some fashions.
It's just like a costplay.
Yeah, yeah, you want a costplay in groups affinity groups. We discussed them earlier. You put on normal clothes that don't attract police attention, and then you put black block clothes on over that. As much as there's different ways of doing it, this is one way to do it, and you want that as uniform of your group at the anime convention. So avoid logos, patches or anything else identifiable unless everyone has the sailor moon. Don't put sailor moon on it. And be willing to get rid of
this clothing, especially if something happens while you're out. And some people like raincoats because they're thin and light and easy to take on and off. You might want to put another layer on on top of this, which is your get there layer. A bandana mask is not adequate in the modern era. Do not look at old black blocks and think that is how to do it because
they had different threat model around surveillance. A ski mask or a T shirt is a much better way at the anime convention to make sure that no one knows what you know that you're secretly. It's the way I go to avoid getting mobbed by crowds.
And anime because you're so famous, yeah with.
The anime fans. Tie a T shirt mask. The way that you do that is you hold the neck hole over your eyes and then you tie the sleeves around the back and people like to cover tattoos. Be friendly as hell with the other people at the convention who aren't in block. Your goal is to make their lives better and have a more enjoyable convention experience, and be brave. Courage is instead not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act despite it. And before you leave the convention,
you d block where others can't see. This can be accomplished by bringing together a large group of people, especially with umbrellas to hide from overhead cameras. But also if you're able to scout the convention area ahead of time, you can figure out alleys and camera blind spots and such inside the convention center and ideally talk to people who have experience and go with experienced people. But if
that's not possible, read about it. Crimeting dot com has a lot of different guides on this matter other places due to I'm sure and always remember this is not the best or only way to be militant or radical or whatever. This is one that I find the history
fascinating of and wanted to present. It's just one way that you can help yourself and other people stay safe doing what you might want to do when you're getting those signatures, you know, you can go into line as many times as you want if you're in block, because they're going to be like I've never seen you before, and you're like, that's right, please sign a lot of better things for me, and then you can sell signed copies of the books. That's what I got. That's the history of the Black Blog.
Make your own choices, mind your own business, and be brave.
Those are some good maxims. Yeah, the Molly maxims. Well, if people can, well, you can do your own plug. I don't have to do your plug.
Oh gosh, yeah. Listen to my podcast We're Little Guys. It's about the opposite of this show, things that are bummers, bad people who did bad things. You can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts. As a matter of fact, loads several podcasting applications on your phone and download it on all of them.
What could go wrong? Literally, nothing, nothing will go wrong.
If you do that, no more downloads, and Sophie will be proud of me.
Always right, it's not downloads based downloads help.
And if you like ad transitions but not ads, you can and you have an iPhone, you can subscribe to Cooler Zone Media and just give us money to do this directly instead of it going through ads instead. That's the thing you can do. You can also take care of your friends. Shit's hard.
Yes, I would like to plug the idea of having solidarity with your friends and neighbors.
Yeah, and remember that community and neighbors doesn't mean the people you like, like sometimes it's just literally the people who are there. Whether or not you like your neighbors, they should not be disappeared. And well, actually I have no problem with any neighbors who would be in that kind of throat, but like whatever, Like, it's not about like just your friends. It is about the people around you and the people who aren't around you what could
be around you. It's just take care of each other, all right. Hi, roond bye.
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website Goolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.