The Other Side of the Stick: Pathologizing the Black Bloc
Posted by onehundredflowers on February 11, 2012
The Stockholm Syndrome of Occupy (or yet another comment on Chris Hedges to get it out my chest)
Recently, Chris Hedges wrote a piece in truthdig called “Black Bloc: The Cancer in Occupy” in which he condemns what he refers to as “Black Bloc anarchists.” In the wake of the police attack on Occupy Oakland and the following debates over strategy and tactics in the Occupy movement, Hedges’ arguments have generated much controversy. We are posting one response below because it touches on the key contradictions raised by Hedges’ piece. It was originally written as a note on Facebook.
By SKS
I do not want to repeat what many have said, more eloquently or timely. Any repetition will either be unconcious or inevitable – but I do try to bring some fresh perspectives, or at least accents. So bear with me.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Ever since the Oakland Commune came into national conciousness with their successful strike in November, liberals who initially became infatuated with OWS as a possible liberal Tea Party have been launching increasingly virulent attacks against OWS, and in particular, its most militant element.
Naomi Wolf was perhaps the first notorious salvo of the liberal commentariat, when going all in with her arrest cred called OWS protesters against NBC (a corporation) “fascists”.
While debate is healthy, and diversity of opinions and views is both inevitable and one of the refreshing things of OWS as a movement – the interventions from the liberal camp have been increasingly totalitarian, undemocratic, and full of factual and historical inaccuracies.
They have moved from honest, concerned, disagreement within the movement, to dishonest hit pieces worthy of the worse dirty politics.
And this is something we predicted – we knew that the primary contradiction within this movement would be the need of liberals and the Democratic Party machine to turn this movement into a huge astroturf to counter the successful cooption of the Republicans of the Tea Party – of sheer importance if Obama is to be re-elected.
This has been done with a carrot and stick approach: the carrot has been the apparently open arms of labor unions and non-profit organizations, not to mention several elected officials of the Democratic Party.
The stick has two sides: one is represented by poster child of all-that-is-wrong-with-the-Democrats Jean Quan and her Swine Corps of the brutal and brutalizing OPD – an OPD she ran on an unfulfilled promise to reform and transform.
In fact, it is in Democratic cities were the police repression and police action have been the strongest – Chicago even took the opportunity to institute surveilance and free-speech limitation ordinances worthy of 1984. Of course, aside from a few febble protests from the ACLU, this largely has happened with the silent consent of the liberal commentariat, and when not silence, with ineffective chatter coupled with “critical” support for the elected officials promoting these things.
The other side of the stick is the concerted effort of the liberal commentariat. At first rather benign, starting with the mantra – a sheer lie – that the movement had no goals, and with disingeneous criticism of liberal We foretold this: even at the very earliest most commited OWS activists knew this was coming.
We did not know how, but we had an idea, which is why we refused giving these commentators special status in the movement – we knew instinctively that they would turn on us come 2012 and the presidential election. Now it is upon us. Chronicle of a death foretold. None of this should come as a surprise, but buyer beware: you might think you agree – after all, the black bloc can be insufferably cocky and elitist, but you do not. Your legitimate tactical concern and strategic considerations are quite different from Chris Hedges’.
Pathologizing the Other: what abusers and represive regimes can tell us about Chris Hedges
As a large body of literature demonstrates, repressive regimes throught history have used this very technique to throw political opponents into jails called “mental hospitals”. Abusers – be them bullies or domestic – routinely try to smash the self-esteem of their victims by questioning their mental health. “You are crazy” is a favorite phrase of the abusive spouse or partner, of the abusive boss, of the abusive authority figure. Fear of being labeled “crazy” is in fact one of the most poweful ways of social coercion and social discipline know. Even good parents tell their kids they are being “crazy” when they do things they are not supposed to do.
Chris Hedges, in his hit piece, does several things of this sort: first he patologizes “violence” – using prose worthy of a pulp novel with Fabio on the cover they sell in supermarket lines. Then he claims the black bloc is “hypermasculine” – a ridiculous term pulled out of the same kindergarden infantislism that gives you a whole range of funny, yet unnecesary, superlatives. Without getting into this rather old and extensive debate, many feminist voices have eloquently countered the presumption – gendered and sexist in itself – that violence has a gender, lets just say that this confuses an important discussion on tactics with an ad hominem intended not to discuss, but to rally the liberal troops for an attack. In other words, exactly what he describes as “hypermasculinity”.
Unlike Hedges, I do not have a romantic, nihilist violent self buried inside. My views on violence are rather concious – do not initiate agression, but defend yourself from it. This basic human instinct seems beneath the elevated Hedges, whose superior god-like peace elevates him above us mere mortals.His god-like powers allow him to bury his violent instincts deep in his psyche.
(See what I mean about pulp prose?)
In pathologizing the political, Hedges is re-establishing the patriarchal and racial supremacy of White male hetero-normativity: those who disagree with him are not normal like him, they are crazy, they must be excluded from normal society.
He is calling out his wayward children, like all good patriarchs do. Very hypermasculine.
Interestingly, his pathologizing doesn’t stop at mental health. It gets even worse.
As the title “Cancer of Occupy” explicitly tells us, the crazy children are not just crazy, they are a cancer.
Well, the use of “cancer” – and other body diseases – in political speech has a rather interesting origin that Chris Hedges either overlooked, or conciously deployed: Nazi eugenics and racial hygene. “Jewish bacillus,” “the Bolshevist poison,” “the Jewish plague,” “the Jewish parasites,” and the “Jewish cancer.
These are the ripped from the headlines terms of Hitler and the Nazi propaganda machine. Unlike Naomi Wolf, I only call fascists those who are actually fascist – I do not cheapen the word by using it to attack everyone that irks me – but it is indeed telling about the way Chris Hedges mind works that he chose this term.
What is the cure for cancer? Chemotherapy, radiation, extirpation, all which are extremely violent – and much less successful than what we would like them to be.
So Chris Hedges implies – in contradiction with his argument – that this cancer must be cured. He leaves the question open – but the emotional response in the reader, and this is by choice, is to respond as we all do: kill it with violence. No one loves cancer. No one thinks of the feelings of cancer. You try to kill it, or it kills you.
That is one from the Nazi playbook: its how a whole country was mobilized to destroy the “Jewish cancer”. Hitler did not need to order them what to do. We all know, intuitively, what to do with cancer. Hedges joins a proud tradition.
(Ironically, in the channer culture that gave birth to Anonymous “cancer” is also used to describe newbies to the culture – and if there is a hypermasculine place in the world, it is channer culture – Hedges does have a lot of self-hating to do)
And it is ironic too, that in purporting to be part of this movement, Hedges has no article calling the Democrats cancer. After all, the black blocs have yet to kill someone, but the Democrats have killed millions – often at the push of a button.
So lets pathologize – just to not combo break
That brings me to my title. A little flair of my own pathologization. In my defense, it is the game field Hedges presents.
So why Stockholm Syndrome? Well, as we might know, this syndrome is the apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them*.
A lot of the response to so-called “black bloc violence” smacks precisely of this phenomenon. Chris Hedges is either a victim of this syndrome, or an enabler of its suffering.
He makes a storm in a teapot on so-called “black bloc violence” – justifying the violence of the OPD, of the State, of our captors – of the very State and repressive forces of the dictatorship of the 1%. He is not one of them, yet defends them and justifies and covers their crimes.
A few broken windows are nothing compared to the hundred of extrajudicial killings on the part of police, or dozens of excecutions, not to mention overseas.
Let’s have a sense of proportion. Let’s break out of the Stockholm Syndrome. The violence that matters, the true violence, is that of the State, not the black bloc. We do not need to be uncritical of the black bloc – but to hide behind their actions to call for inaction when much greater crimes are being commited, on a daily basis and using your tax money, is to cower in fear in front of power.
Just like a hostage in front of their captor.
We are hostages to the 1%. Do we justify them or do we fight for freedom?
Violence, non-violence, and disingeniousness
Are we the 99% or are we Democrats?
For liberals of the Naomi Wolf and Chris Hedges brand, revolutions are something that happens elsewhere. Regimes that need changes are overseas – preferably in countries with long histories of “authoritarian regimes”. In their twisted wordview – and one that gets fed to us as somehow radical – what problems exist in the USA can be resolved in the framework of civil liberties provided by the constitution, the institutions being neutral servants of the common good. Such lofty ideals fly in the face of the actual realities of life in the USA, in particular for the 99%. The USA has, for example, one of the highest rates of extra-judicial killing and death penalty in the world.
A significant percentage of this country’s population express support for this appalling situation. So did, for that matter, a significant percentage of Egypt’s population before the Revolution threw the doors open to true dissent, rather than fear. Transformation is about critical masses, not simple majorities.
We cannot be both for regime change and for the Democrats, who are part of the regime.
The Democrat’s main funder is, consistently, Goldman Sachs – one of the worse criminals of the 1%.
In Chris Hedges’ view – Goldman Sachs is an upstanding citizen that makes mistake – a person worthy of our democratic respect. The black bloc is cancer.
He serves his masters well.
Curiously, the way that he speaks of violence vs non-violence echoes the same way that the current Regime in Egypt speaks of the Revolution – and we see this world-wide: the “good” protester versus the “bad” protester. Even in Syria, there is the opposition that meets with the Regime, and there is the Free Syrian Army. It is not a new argument.
Now, I also have a sense of proportion – we are far from living in a situation where we need a Free America Army. But the black bloc is not that. Its worse violence is a few broken windows – if that.
To begin with, there is much conflation here: the black bloc is not responsible for all the so-called vandalism or violence. The poster child for the liberals, the Whole Foods vandalization in Oakland, was by all accounts the work of a few individuals against which even black bloc members intervened.
The black bloc however, has been responsible for successful evasion, even de-arrest, of activists – of protective, defensive, non-violent tactics, such as the use of shields, the lighting of bonfires (which clears tear gas quickly), and providing first aid and med evac. They have intervened against sexual and criminal predators in occupations, serving as stalwarts of discipline in a chaotic environment. This is the reality of those of us who actually are the boots in the ground. Yes, there is much to be critical of them – but lets leave that for another time: much better commentary is floating around in this respect. They are not cancer – they are part of the body that is maturing, and causes growing pains.
So why the fuzz?
There seems to be a problem of definition in which non-violence is equated with non-resistance. This flies in the face even of Ghandi’s and Dr. King’s tactics: non-violent resistance is still resistance. It is non-compliance with orders from the powers that be. “We shall not be moved”. All those water cannon that Dr. King endured were a result of his movement’s steadfast refusal to obey orders from above – to force change.
We can agree that throwing a rock is violent. But is throwing a paint bomb (which obscures police visors) violent? Are shields and grenade nets violent? I do not think so. They are forms of non-violent resistance, practiced by the black bloc – that protect the movement from the inevitable onslaught of the police.
This is not trivial: I understand the need to be non-violent as a tactic, but when non-violence gets reduced to picketing in circles in a “free speech zone” there is no resistance – we are not following Gandhi or Dr. King, we are following the instructions of the regime. No regime has fallen when people obey it. They only fall when people cease to obey it.
Hedges and co-commentators miss this point. Entirely. They equate any resistance with violence.
And without resistance, how can we Occupy? Its says it right there in the name.
Diversity of Tactics and Unity of Strategies
What will kill OWS is not violence, but the people who want to have meetings and voting drives instead of actions of resistance, occupations, and protests. Do not get me wrong, we need meetings – but with a purpose. As for voting, I voted for Obama and all I got was a lousy t-shirt, which I had to pay for.
With protests and occupations, with masses of people out in the street, will come repression. And on the edges, so will want to fight back by means we might not agree with.
Its worth the price, no matter what the anti-resistance commentariat tells us. That is the lesson of Tahrir Square.
Its time we stop lying to ourselves, and realize that his regime – regardless of what party is in power – is repressive regime, based on war profeetiring, a racist prision industrial complex, extrajudicial violence, and destroying the ability of people to achieve their dreams by concentrating wealth and power on the 1%. Dictatorships do not fall on their own.
We live in the dictatorship of the 1%. The time for regime change is long overdue.
That is the stark reality that faces us. If for you a few broken windows are too much to oppose the regime, then it means that for you, windows are more important than the millions who have their lives destroyed and extinguished by this regime – in the ghettos, in the prision industrial complex, overseas, and in the soul-killing petty dictatorship of the workplace.
We need to have real solidarity – the more militant of us need to consider that not everyone is willing or able to, emotionally and physically, to deal with the outcomes of militancy. Those who advocate non-violence out of true principle, need to understand that the deep emotional commitment this requires – while noble – is not for all.
Honest diversity of tactics is a strenght, not a weakness.
But we need to be united on the strategic goal of regime change – of transforming the dictatorship of the 1%. And there are those, Chris Hedges and his ilk, who hide behind the language of non-violence to bambozzle and split the movement: he is pretty happy supporting a government that breeds war – while he can speak against it and sue it in court- supporting real violence perpetrated by this regime. He remains silent as police murders people extrajudicially – the very real violence of the State.
What is worse, as argued, he uses the age old tactic of abusers and repressive regimes throught history: he pathologizes those he disagrees with, calling into question their mental health and treating them as a public health issue that needs a hygenic response – in the tone of the Nazi racial hygene. Chris Hedges and his ilk, defend the regime in deeds and words- they are at best a loyal opposition content with commenting rather than transforming. Do not join them.
Join the resistance: the path is long, the path is painful, but the path is righteous.
Refuse and resist!
Footnote:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
carldavidson said
You’ve got Hedges down pat, nailed. When everyone loved his radical rants on the death of the liberal political class, a few warned he was still a liberal himself, and to beware!
But you’re not nearly as good on Black Blocism. Because of it and its self-defeatism, much of progressive Oakland is voting with its feet–and not the way we’d like. You can defend ‘smashy smashy’ on shop window glass as a transformative agent of revolutionary consciousness raising if you like, putting it in all sorts of diminishing framing–but has it really come to that? I think it rather pitiful that the old WUO lessons have to be learned anew by a new generation.
I hope OO finds a way and a leadership to recover, but it doesn’t look very good. Maybe we’ll have more sense in the next round, a few months or years down the pike.
anewworldispossible said
I’ll read this article again more carefully – but from what I’ve seen it is very nuanced and critical and appreciate its analysis. The first manifestation of OWS Oakland was very peaceful and remarkably cooperative. It was a small communal town in essence where capitalist socialist relations were actively being broken with in many ways – and there was almost non existent “crime” – except for the claim of trespassing in the civic center park. The defenders of capitalist property relations in Blue gave 5 minutes to vacate and swarmed in violently with chemical weapons, violently tearing down this embryo of new society injuring and arresting many thus sharpening the contridictions between the state and the people – exposing how the emporer has no clothes in the process. The people are not allowed to light a candle while the state razes villages.
arel said
@Carl wrote:
Having been around many of the Northern California Occupies, I have to say the majority of progressive (not to mention revolutionary minded) people have walked away from most of them exactly because of the namby pamby, do-nothing-to-rile-anyone politics of most of those so-called “Occupations.” Yeah, we could probably get a few more “numbers” if we only asked for signatures on petitions, or votes for a council seat, or walked around in circles with the pigs permission (and I don’t rule out those tactics,) but are those really the “progressives” that will bring about real change in this system (except in the minds of those doing the work of the Oppressors?)
Bravo, SKS for this piece. Thank you.
carldavidson said
Wow, ‘namby pamby’ yet….well, SKS, if you wondered where Hedges got ‘hypermasculine’ from, now you know!
old commie said
I was disgusted when I read Chris Hedges article calling the Black Bloc a cancer on the Occupy movement. But this is what you have to expect from a liberal with a religious background who abhors violence. He is not a revolutionary, and we should not exoect him to behave or talk like one! He can be one of our “useful idiots” who helps us in our criticism of capitalism, however. Right now, he is not the enemy, although in the future he will not be part of our revolution. So I think this ultraleft rant by SKS generates a lot more heat than light, and ignores the fact that we are going to have to work with a lot of people who do not agree with us, even on important issues. Criticize them, yes, but don’t think everybody who criticizes you is an implacable enemy. We’ve seen enough of that in the purges and show trials that helped to destroy socialism in the 20th century..
SKS said
@Carl
If you bother to read this piece, you will see I am not particularly supportive of the Black Bloc as it exists. I am attacking the premises and methods used by Hedges, and that you repeat to an extent.
You try to turn any position that doesn’t condemn anarchist politics and black bloc tactics into uncritical support. That is a strawman.
The reality is that for you, and for many like Hedges, OWS failure lies in it not becoming the long-awaited liberal Tea Party, that is, a way to get a “grassroots” influx of progressives into positions of power in the Democrats, but rathe rhad become – whenever it has deepened and politicized – into something much more radical. And hence it must be slandered and butchered to the ground, unless the cancer is to spread further.
You hide behind the shield of “smashy smashy” to not put up the bankruptcy of your strategic line, practiced for decades by the left of the Democrats, to scrutiny.
If my “side” has as its villains the black bloc, yours has as its villain Jean Quan and her OPD. I like my company better. The children might be immature, but they are not stormtroopers of the bourgeoise State, like yours.
And to compare the black bloc to the WUO is ridiculous, ahistorical, and dishonest coming from someone that was there. WUO has absolutely nothing to do with the black bloc, politically or tactically. Where the WUO called upon the illuminated few to carry on a sacred struggle accessible only to the hip, the black bloc calls on everyone to join their fun.
Again: we can disagree and even debate the black bloc, but lets do this from an honest position. Yours isn’t. And Hedges is so dishonest, it uses arguments ripped from the Nazi playbook, as I have shown.
At one time you were (unjustly, but rather hilariously) called the Creature from the White Privilege Lagoon. Now we can call you the Executive Director of Progressives for Strawmen, because that is all your arguments seem to be….
FleeYourHomes said
Sks, Great article. Will write more later, but this put a lot of what many were thinking into words.
Otto said
I really like this article SKS. You’re right. I get sick and tired of hearing liberals claim such tactics are a “cancer” when they have accomplished nothing over the last 20 years. If anything the left liberal tactics have lost us ground. What is lost when people defend themselves against blatant police brutality. Are those who vote against us really going to care if the police get any resistance when they shoot at and tear up leftist actions.
The Teaparty members brag about all the guns they have and act violently towards those who mess up their rallies. How many times does a an activist have to adopt the “namby pamby, do-nothing-to-rile-anyone politics” before some of us say we had enough. In an old Frank Zappa song he mentions a hippie who will “love everybody, even the police as they kick the shit out of me.”
There are some of us who don’t care to just sit around and love the police as they kick the shit out of us. I’m one of them.
Otto said
I guess this looks like the opposite of what I said about the last article. But there where people who were not so passive in the civil rights movement and it did not hurt the civil rights movement that Malcom X and the Black Panthers didn’t want to be door mats. Maybe the point is to look at all possibilities and not call someone’s actions a “cancer” when we know it’s not going to hurt us.
Carl Davidson said
@sks
I mainly praised your piece, especially your deconstruction of Hedges–nicely done! But you were weak on the BB. They do have a connection with the WUO, in their contempt for wider public opinion, in all its diversity. That needs to be drawn out. This is at least a three-sided debate–and my side is neither with the BB or Hedges.
I have no desire nor have ever claimed that OWS should become a ‘left’s Tea Party.’ I’d like to see PDA and its close allies in that role, and there is a huge political space open for it. They are far better suited for it than OWS. I have noted, however, that OWS has indirectly energized the progressive voting base, especially in the recent turnout in Ohio. That’s just a political fact. No one had to advocate it.
For now, I view OWS mainly as a critical force, both in its own right and as serving to energize and strengthen the more progressive elements of trade union and community groups, drawing them into activity, militancy (of the good kind, not ‘smashy smashy’) and pulling them leftward. Viewed the other way, I see these mass democratic allies of OWS as OWs’ bridges to the main force, the broad mass of workers and minority communities not yet mainly active politically, but who we want to become so in they and we are to make history, replacing the old order with a new one..
At some point, OWS and all it’s allies may indeed see the need for an electoral arms as a political instrument, but I think we’re some distance from that at this point. We can experiment with helping PDA candidates or forming a ‘Left Front’ to run socialists for congress or statewide offices, but I wouldn’t put such a proposal to an OWS GA operating on 90 percent+ consensus. It would be a big waste of time and energy, and splittist. Better to just do the projects independently, and engage anyone interested.
louisproyect said
And there are those, Chris Hedges and his ilk, who hide behind the language of non-violence to bambozzle and split the movement: he is pretty happy supporting a government that breeds war – while he can speak against it and sue it in court- supporting real violence perpetrated by this regime. He remains silent as police murders people extrajudicially – the very real violence of the State.
—
Yes, everybody knows that spray-painting a Whole Foods window is a crucial and necessary first step in the line of march toward a proletarian dictatorship. Anybody who disagrees with this is a lackey of the CIA deserving the people’s wrath. They should be lined up against the wall and terminated by a revolutionary militia’s firing squad.
Otto said
Where’s my spray paint can?
louisproyect said
A spray paint can is not sufficient. You have to be fully armed in order to agitate the slumbering masses. You need a spray paint can in one hand in order to raise the consciousness of Whole Food shoppers and a cigarette lighter in the other in order to burn an American flag. Just be careful to try not to ignite the spray paint in the process, otherwise you might get a third degree burn.
Marq Dyeth said
Louis, against my better judgement I’m going to try one more time. Since you seem to like things that happened in the distant past more than the last couple of years, and in other countries more than in the US.
I want you to ask yourselves how many Chartists were ridden down by cavalry in 1848 or beaten to death by London metropolitan police. While how many Irish were starving to death under colonial occupation. And what the papers said about them. And which commentators tut-tutted that some had thrown rocks or tried to rescue their comrades from the police.
How many Wobblies were lynched in 1919, and how many shot to death by the police or vigilantes? And what did the papers say about them? And who said that they were Bolsheviks who wanted to bring red terror. And this was in a time when there was real terrorist violence on the part of anarchists in the US. Assassinations, bombings, not to mention the beatings of those who crossed a picket line.
Was the task of the IWW at this time to disavow violence and convince the cops and bosses and soldiers and death squads and judges that they were the ‘good’ radicals who would never do anything so scary as to defend themselves from physical attack or destroy or expropriate some property?
And these are just the stories of white worker and settler organizations. The case of the struggles of colonized peoples and the Black struggle and Indian struggle in the US has always been a hundred times sharper and the repression a hundred times more murderous.
For more information on how things happen on Earth, wikipedia has many fine articles on the subject. Please see the articles on The Tulsa Outrage, The Tulsa Race Riot, The Haymarket Riot, The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, and The Homestead Strike.
Shit is complicated. And the world changes around us all the time and not under circumstances. We need to make sure that we are not standing still and being overtaken by history as it happens.
Do I like the blac bloc? Meh. Not really. Do I think we can street fight our way to liberation? Certainly not. Same with acts of terroristic violence. Not going to do it.
But do I think that any peoples movement that questions the right of property and the domination of the market will be slandered, framed, false-flagged, beaten, jailed, bombed, and executed? Well, if history is any teacher I would say we should count on it. Let’s not do their work for us.
Scardanelli said
Of course the systemic violence needed for the daily maintenance of capitalism makes violent resistance completely justified, but this is a question of tactics – what type of violence gets us where we want to go? Clearly Hedges ill-informed screed, by framing the issue as violence vs. pacifism, has been a distraction from this necessary discussion. But I don’t find this article helpful.
“In pathologizing the political, Hedges is re-establishing the patriarchal and racial supremacy of White male hetero-normativity: those who disagree with him are not normal like him, they are crazy, they must be excluded from normal society.”
Ridiculous. He wants to exclude the b.b. from the occupy movement, not “normal society”. And there is nothing “hetero-normative” or “patriarchal” about opposition to b.b. tactics. Many of the anarchist responses to Hedges have a displayed an hysterically exaggerated sense of victimization.
“In Chris Hedges’ view – Goldman Sachs is an upstanding citizen that makes mistake – a person worthy of our democratic respect.”
Any support for this whatsoever? Or your fantasy of Hedges as Counterrevolutionary Boogeyman?
“A few broken windows are nothing compared to the hundred of extrajudicial killings on the part of police, or dozens of excecutions, not to mention overseas.”
Of course, but this is beside the point. The question is whether acts of vandalism help or hurt the attempt at creating a movement to overthrow this rotten system. Hedges believes they hurt. He nowhere equates b.b. “violence” with the murderous state. Neither do any other b.b. critics.
“The poster child for the liberals, the Whole Foods vandalization in Oakland, was by all accounts the work of a few individuals against which even black bloc members intervened.”
There is video of this on youtube which shows b.b. members unleashing their righteous indignation on a white picket fence, while plain clothed activists try to thwart them. Self styled “militants” have made much of the ‘liberal’ defenders of whole foods, as if opposition to its defacement were motivated by respect for its services. But this is about defending the movement from destructive adventurism and petulant acting out, not whole foods. If this incident has become a common reference point in this debate, it is bc video exists, and it serves as an example that illustrates the larger issue.
Any serious challenge to capitalism will be met with vicious repression. The smart and disciplined use of violent resistance is essential. Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, whom b.b. defenders keep invoking, understood the difference between revolutionary violence and juvenile hi jinx.
louisproyect said
I want you to ask yourselves how many Chartists were ridden down by cavalry in 1848 or beaten to death by London metropolitan police.
—
Why thank you for reminding me that the capitalist system uses violence against the working class. Here I was, 67 years old and someone who stared down the barrel of M-16′s wielded by KKK members in Houston in 1974, forgetting all about this. Early Alzheimer’s, I guess.
louisproyect said
Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, whom b.b. defenders keep invoking, understood the difference between revolutionary violence and juvenile hi jinx.
—
But you must understand that this is not actual juvenile hi jinx. All revolutions are sparked by young boys going “smashy, smashy”. That’s how Mao got started after all, by giving a British tourist a hot foot.
Marq Dyeth said
You can have it your way, Mr. Proyect. I apologize for offending you.
Carl Davidson said
Well, one way to judge is by results. In many parts of the country, OWS enjoys wide support. In others, most are indifferent, but good support among progressives. OO seems to be headed the opposite direction, with its support narrowing and the Mayor and others further right winning over public opinion.
Of course, for some, concern for public opinion, or various clusters of it, matters. For others, it’s just ‘namby-pamby’ rightism.
So I’m clearly with the namby-pamby faction, and I guess I’m even there with Proyect on this one. I wouldn’t mind countering a police attack by rolling over a few of their vehicles But I don’t have a single clue as to how breaking windows on stores, chain outlets and even bank branches does a damn thing to organize us better, raise consciousness, or win over the many to defeat the few. This is indeed a new level of theory for me. Perhaps an advocate can spell it out for us. Does the sound of breaking glass alter thought patterns in some way? Have some special appeal to those not yet involved? If it is indeed a new level of theory, is it upwards or downward?
SKS said
@Carl
From what ass you pulled that impression from?
This might be what people are smugly telling each other in the liberal blogosphere and in the cranky mailing lists of the soft-left (ie the SDS virtual retirement homes).
The reality is that OWS is alive and strong in Oakland, and Jean Quan has a crisis of support. Her recent appeal to divided the movement has the opposite effect: it has made people like me, who were previously quite concentrated on raising critiques of the “leaderless” leadership and of the BB tactics, to rise up in the defense against the real enemy.
And again strawmen:
No one has advocates, in this thread, to smash windows. Or that it is a positive thing.
What we have argued is that while not a positive, it is not the negative that it is made to be, and furthermore, that it is irresponsible and counterproductive for leftists to pay attention to it, and not to the murder of unarmed people by the State.
If you want to talk about the bay area and violence, why not talk about Oscar Grant?
He was killed. By the police. That is the real conversation we should be having.
To a certain breed of so-called leftist, it is much more important to defend and memorialize the windows of a bank than the life of a human being. And that is fucked up.
Carl Davidson said
@sks
I got it from any number of Oakland OWS bloggers, including pro-anarchist ones, covering the scene, as well as from some of our own folks. You’re behind the times. Jean Qwan hasn’t recovered yet, but the latest vandalizing of City Hall and flag-burning moved her up a few notches. But OO is losing allies and participants in droves. The proof will be in the pudding
And as far as I’m concerned ‘smashy smashy’ vandalism has little to do with revolutionary violence and armed self-defense. Do you really want to try to make that case? Go for it…but by posing human life vs. bank windows, you’re the one creating the ‘straw man’.
CamelToe said
I think b.b’s actions are based on the phase-wave vibrational frequency theory of quantum mechanics. The sound of broken glass and the sound of capitalist thoughts cannot occupy the same neuronal space. Therefore if a sound can be made that dislodges capitalist thoughts from occupying the synapses between the axon and dendrites, it could then provide an opportunity for questioning capitalist relations in between the firings of the neurons. This could be possible if the right sound frequency could be found. What I think b.b. are doing is testing different types of store windows for the right sound frequency at which glass breaks. They no doubt seem to believe that bank and chain store windows offer the closest appoximations to this sought after frequency.
Carl Davidson said
Gotta love CamelToe here! Send it to the Onion!
SKS said
@Carl
Please re-read what I said. You are bordering on the slanderous in claiming that I argue for “smashy smashy” violence.
I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup, and shit a better argument than that.
http://markc1.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451bb2969e2013485520d4b970c-pi
SKS said
Oh, and what Marq Dyeth said.
Carl Davidson said
@SKS
I didn’t say you argued for it. I said you could have done a better job arguing against it–or at least that was my intention. My apologies for any unclarity, if any, on my part.
Scardanelli said
“it is irresponsible and counterproductive for leftists to pay attention to it, and not to the murder of unarmed people by the State.”
why are you so certain that comrades can’t pay attention to two things at once? This is really just a shameless and cynical way of stifling debate.
SKS said
Scardanelli:
Finally some action. A real critique!
“Ridiculous. He wants to exclude the b.b. from the occupy movement, not “normal society”. And there is nothing “hetero-normative” or “patriarchal” about opposition to b.b. tactics.”
While it is true that there is nothing – in the abstract – ““hetero-normative” or “patriarchal” about opposition to b.b. tactics” – that is not my point. Lets not build strawmen:
I was not making a general critique of all critiques of the b.b. tactics.
I was making a specific critique of what Hedges wrote.
There are many valid, useful, and necessary critiques of the b.b. out there. Hedges isn’t one of those, and those who are adhering to his critique simply because it is a critique of the b.b. without critically examining what he is actually arguing are precisely those I am targeting. Hedges is either taking you to a ride, or you agree with him. If the former, please re-examine what he actually is saying, if the former, you are worse than the black bloc.
This dualistic bullshit, in which all critique is divided into camps – no matter how dishonest, ill-advised, or otherwise counter productive – is much more of a problem than the black bloc has ever been. One can be both critical and understand nuances. Hedges wants us to throw nuance out the window and excise a cancer: and one born from the innards of Nazism. As I said: good company.
And yes, he is speaking about “normal” society, even if speaking to occupy movement people. In his essay he says, directly:
“Once the Occupy movement is painted as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob we are finished. If we become isolated we can be crushed.”
Painted to whom? Isolated from whom? To those deeply involved in the movement? To those who seek out alternatives to this rotten world? No, to normal society. To the silent majority.
Unlike anarchists, or ultra-leftists, I do not take the position we should ignore these people – I do think that we overate the power of tailing to their prejudices – but this is indeed a valid debate to have.
But you make a false claim:
“Many of the anarchist responses to Hedges have a displayed an hysterically exaggerated sense of victimization.”
Which ones? From dominant voices? I am no anarchist, and have deep differences with David Graeber, but his response was honest, historically accurate, and what is most important – it called upon a measured critique and even self-critique of the Black Bloc tactics. And if anarchism has a leader in the USA, its him.
Not an ounce of victimhood.
However, I must point out your use of the word “hysterically” as “hypermasculinist” (to use the term of the moment) and oppressive: it a completely sexist term, in origin (the “hyster” is the uterus), original uses (it referred to the proposition that women are “emotional” and dominated by the “hyster”) and passe. And yet it is unsurprising, in spite of the feminist sheep clothing, Hedges (And one would expect his uncritical cheerleaders) are sexists wolves using patriarchal structures of social control to “bro shame” the black bloc under control. As I pointed out, this is a major contradiction in Hedges’ argument: he claims to be against sexism, yet uses a uniquely patriarchal analogy (pathologization) to launch his attack. The contradiction only hold because his sexism goes unquestioned by the liberal precepts (of the Susan Sontag school) of the gendered nature of violence. Those of us that take a more materialist view on violence understand that violence has no gender. It does have purpose – and sometimes this purpose is to defend patriarchy, and hence gendered in a circumstantial way – but not gendered in the general and the abstract.
“In Chris Hedges’ view – Goldman Sachs is an upstanding citizen that makes mistake – a person worthy of our democratic respect.”
“Any support for this whatsoever? Or your fantasy of Hedges as Counterrevolutionary Boogeyman?”
Good point. It was rhetorical flair. My contention is that in protecting and upholding the sanctity of the private property of corporations, he is siding – objectively – with these corporations. This is debatable – I admit as much – but no different than the many unsubstantiated claims that Hedges makes, some even factually incorrect (for example, primitivists have next to zero involvement in the black blocs around occupy).
However, he is not counter-revolutionary, he is anti-revolutionary. These are not the same thing. We don’t have a revolution to counter- we are trying to build one and Hedges opposes this. He believes that the USA, as it stands, can develop a non-revolutionary alternative to the present regime, only if it behaves enough. I dispute that.
And the only boogeyman around is the mythical black bloc of Chris Hedges’ and others imagination. The black bloc has been made by these people into much more than it actually is. And that is the real problem with boogeyman here.
“Of course, but this is beside the point. The question is whether acts of vandalism help or hurt the attempt at creating a movement to overthrow this rotten system. Hedges believes they hurt.”
No, he doesn’t *simply* believe this. He believes they are a cancer that should be excised. There is quite a difference here.
I have read – and this website has published some – excellent critiques of the b.b. Some of them I am in full agreement with.
But Hedges wrote a hit piece, a dirty exercise is dirty politics, worthy of Fox News. A dishonest account with an analogy at its center with a direct origin in the Nazis.
Lets be critical of the real b.b. as it really exists, lets discuss and debate tactics and strategy, but lets do it honestly. And lets do it without having to recourse to the murderous intellectual legacy of fascism and pathologization. Hedges is the high school bully picking on the weird kids that wear black and listen to obscure music.
See what I mean with strawmen and not having a sense of proportion?
“He nowhere equates b.b. “violence” with the murderous state. Neither do any other b.b. critics.”
Have you read his essay? He directly does this:
“Marching as a uniformed mass, all dressed in black to become part of an anonymous bloc, faces covered, temporarily overcomes alienation, feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness and loneliness. It imparts to those in the mob a sense of comradeship. It permits an inchoate rage to be unleashed on any target. Pity, compassion and tenderness are banished for the intoxication of power. It is the same sickness that fuels the swarms of police who pepper-spray and beat peaceful demonstrators. It is the sickness of soldiers in war. It turns human beings into beasts.”
Here we have someone who has witnessed (or so he claims) the real brutality of war, to the body strewn hell hole of Iraq, were he has seen death rained upon unarmed populations. And he compares – directly – this horrendous genocidal war machine to the broken windows of an Oakland cafe. No sense of proportion.
However that is not the point here. The point is you say he doesn’t do this comparison. Yet he does. Not only does he do it, but its central to his argument – the moral and political equivalence of the police and the military and the black bloc is the foundation of his assertions and his call to exorcise the demonic cancer.
See what I mean with lying through your teeth to attack the b.b at all costs? He did exactly what you claim he didn’t. One cannot have a reasonable debate when people are willing to lie so nakedly, to misrepresent what is being said so crudely. That dishonesty is a much bigger problem than a few smashy smashy kids in black levi’s. At least a broken window is an honest statement, not an outright falsehood.
As Amilcar Cabral commanded: Tell no lies, claim no easy victories…
SKS said
Scardanelli:
Just saw your last comment.
Well, I am not certain of this. I will point out, however, that Hedges has written no articles in recent years examining racist police murders and extrajudicial executions in the USA.
Or in here, Carl Davidson goes on and on about how bad “smashy smashy” is but doesn’t speak about how bad police brutality is.
Or how the atriumboro of OWS-NYC has spent the last week discussing nothing else thant the B.B (which has been near to non-existent in NYC) while completely silent on the fact that in the Bronx, a 30 minute subway ride from their comfy environs of lower Manhattan the police killed three unarmed suspects, including a young kid in front of his mother.
Proof, as we know, is in the pudding. And while some anti-BB activists might – individually or in their sects – be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, the movement and its most visible spokespeople and propagandists have not.
I would like it to be different, but it isn’t.
Carl Davidson said
@sks
This is just silly. Can’t we assume, at least in this venue, that we all oppose police brutality as the primary violence to be opposed? Or do we have to bracket every critique or denunciation of BB antics HERE with a laundry list of political correctness before we can make a point?
Good grief…
SKS said
@Carl
Well, can I rip into Hedges without you and the likes of you claiming I support the BB?
Am saying what goes for me goes for you, yeah?
SKS said
Sorry, “support uncritically”.
Carl Davidson said
Read Post 26 again…
Scardanelli said
SKS –
I’m not really interested in further defending Hedges, but comparing the (assumed) psychological dynamics of the b.b. to the state’s trained killers is not the same as equating the outcomes of their actions. Though this is a tasteless move on Hedges part, I’ve seen nothing to indicate that he thinks breaking windows is as bad as police brutality or imperial slaughter.
This is, by the way, the commentary section of an article about the black bloc, written by you. Do you really expect Carl, and other b.b. critics, to preface every comment with a condemnation of police brutality? You consistently accuse b.b. critics of indifference to state violence. Its bullshit.
“To a certain breed of so-called leftist, it is much more important to defend and memorialize the windows of a bank than the life of a human being”
Nobody believes this. Not Hedges, not anybody. You have absolutely no basis for this accusation.
SKS said
Scardanelli,
Have you actually read the piece?
Hedges didn’t merely engage in “comparing the (assumed) psychological dynamics of the b.b. to the state’s trained killers”. He directly compared the actions. Don’t make excuses for him. He also called them, directly, “criminals”. Lets not weasel word here. What was said was said.
My accusation is an accurate and factual description of “a certain breed of so-called leftist”.
And contrary to your naked claim, lets examine just one bit of evidence:
1) A certain breed of leftist wants us to vote for the Democrats
2) The Democrats have:
a) deported more undocumented people in the last three years, than W Bush in 8
b) taken record donations from wall st – wall st donations are tilted solidly Democrat, in particular Goldman and Sachs, the poster child of Wall St. greed and corruption
c) engaged in multiple war actions, including a covert war in Iran
d) Supported a coup d’etat in Honduras, and consistently meddle in the internal affairs of other countries, including supplying the Egyptian army with the weapons used against the revolution
e) done nothing to stop the crisis of criminal activity on the part of the police, including an unprecedented epidemic of extra-judicial murder
3) If you support the Democrats, you support these things.
4) If you support these things, and are critical of the bb smashy smashy precious windows, then you value broken windows more than human life.
This is just one line of evidence. Of course, feel free to move the goal posts as needed, to make derisive claims etc. Yawn. That won’t change the factual accuracy and solid logic of this reasoning.
You might not like it, but it is much more truthful than the slanderous lies that Chris Hedges peddled in his hit piece.
I was extremely charitable to Hedges and his ilk – there are actually much worse things to say, about white privilege and about exoticism of the Other (EZLN anyone?), about pigwork, etc. I chose, purposely, to focus on what I found, not more outrageous, but most central to his argument.
In this sense, consider this:
The Chiapas State Government killed much less people, at the time of the rising, than the Texas State Government. Yet everyone celebrates the EZLN, who actually have killed hundreds, while decrying a few broken windows. Why? I have my own idea as to why, but consider this question – as it speaks directly to the matter.
If you want to me to dig deeper, I can. I do not know if I want to, to be honest: After all, one can only stare into the abyss so much before the abyss stares back at us. An the abyss of “radical” liberalism is dark, murderous, and dishonest. I don’t want that god-like power.
Carl Davidson said
@sks
There a non sequitor in there. Casting a ballot for someone, especially in this system, is not the same as supporting their platform. Many ballots are cast tactically, simply to defeat the other guy.
That may be in your own rule book for voting, but it’s hardly universal.
Otherwise, you’d have to include the voters of minority nationalities as the largest and most consistent mass contingent in the country supportive of the long reactionary list you have assembled, to which you can add even more. And we all know, that is not the case.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
This is from Boots Riley’s Facebook wall –
“Occupy Oakland worked with the ACCE to move a family back into their foreclosed home on Adeline. So far, it has been successful and the bank is going to renegotiate her loan.
The Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense working group is about to start this work up again.
We will be moving folks into foreclosed homes that they’ve been kicked out of, working with families to shut down foreclosure auctions, and putting pressure on banks- through power of numbers- to make them not foreclose on folks.
If you want to get involved, email Brooke at grouchosuave@gmail.com
If you know of a family that needs Occupy Oakland to help them defending against foreclosure, have them email Anthony from ACCE at homedefenders@calorganize.org
With all the talk of what Occupy Oakland should and should not be doing, if this is something you think is a good idea for Occupy Oakland- you need to get involved right now.”
This is also Boots Riley, this time posting on Occupy Oakland’s open discussion group from Facebook, commenting on the composition of the reactionary astroturf “Stand with Oakland” movement which has been attacking Occupy Oakland with the reactionary slogan “Occupy Oakland is White Terrorism”:
“It looked like 1950s Oakland (retired police officers, Chamber of Commerce, an older white doctor who is on the advisory board to OPD has had a career advocating for curfews and more money, less restrictions for OPD, old conservatively dressed White people with white hair)- except for the presence of a Black woman who is running as a Tea Party Republican against Barbara Lee, Deslee Brooks, Phil Tagami- a pretty right-wing real estate developer who used to be part of the Port Of Oakland, one Black man who it looks like from internet research is good friends with Phil Tagami and Lily Schaaf, and 3 people who work with police and have worked hard for the gang injunctions.
There were 3 Black folks there that were under the impression that they weren’t there against OO and liked OO overall, but were trying to get us to pass an anti-graffiti rule. They were part of the Obama 2012 campaign and seemed to have a connection to Quan.”
We haven’t heard any of this from the mainstream press. All we’ve heard is that Occupy Oakland is “alienating its support base” by committing acts of “vandalism” and “flag-burning”, that Occupy Oakland is just a bunch of white punks who are hostile towards native Oakland residents. (Ignoring the fact that many in the more radical wing of the Occupy Oakland movement are in fact Asian, Indegenous, Latin, and New Afrikan,) For example, take the Oakland Tribune hit-piece, accepted at face value by many on the armchair-left: “Chinese community not in support of Occupy Oakland”. (http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_19925214) The Oakland Tribune claims that Occupy Oakland is unilaterally opposed by the “Chinese community”. Upon reading the article, we find out that when the Oakland Tribune says the “Chinese community”, what they actually mean is the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce and Quan supporters such as Pat Kernighan. (who, to my knowledge, is not even Asian) They claim the Chinese community held a “rally” against Occupy Oakland, whereas in fact it was a low-key public meeting attended by political and economic elites. In fact, the J28 march, which briefly marched through Chinatown, was heavily advertized with Mandarin flyers (http://occupyoaklandmoveinday.org/sites/occupyoaklandmoveinday.org/files/J28_handbill_chinese.pdf) and was greeted with enthusiastic cheers from onlooking balconies by Chinese residents of the neighborhood. (Photographic evidence of this can be found on Andrew Kenower’s facebook page under the photo album “J28 – Move-in Day”)
The most absurd thing is that I don’t even live in Oakland. But I took the time to engage in the smallest amount of research to find out what is actually going on there instead of just mindlessly parroting what Quan, the Oakland Tribune, and Howard Jordan want everyone to believe. And I don’t want to make this personal, I have a lot of personal respect for comrade Carl Davidson, but his activism these days consists of trying to establish a warm relationship with the regime-union leadership, the alternative energy industry, and the “progressive” wing of the DNC. The very folks Hedges is defending against charges of “collaboration”. And Comrade Proyect, again, I don’t want to make this personal, but the personal is political. Comrade Proyect fits the bill of a “radical intellectual”. And that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. Some of my best friends are radical intellectuals, including radical deans. But the intelligentsia are not the vanguard class, the proletariat is the vanguard class. And there’s nothing wrong with pointing out that the revolution will not be organized by academics, presidents and secretary-treasurers of regime unions, (which in the US have a history of white male exclusionism) “civil society” NGOs, (such as those that provided conditional, fair-weather “support” for the EZLN back in the day) “environmentalist” venture-capitalists, and so on. In fact, it’s healthy to point out that those class-elements should not have leadership. It’s setting healthy boundaries, it’s what needs to be done to ensure that the proletarian movement remains led by the proletariat. In fact, when and if the “Occupy” meme is co-opted by the Obama election campaign, it will be those very class-elements that help them do it. So while Hedges and Proyect may hate Obama, they are still doing his dirty-work…(Whereas comrade Davidson has already resigned himself to doing much of Obama’s dirty work, which is a shame, because his talents and experiences are needed elsewhere)
Carl Davidson said
@ Boots
..who, in an otherwise informative piece of the PR war in Oakland, says:
First, what the hell is a ‘regime union’? Any AFL-CIO union? If so, that’s problematic in itself. But in any case, I’ll plead guilty to working with union leaders in the United Steel Workers–they did a decent job backing Occupy Pittsburgh and earlier in the G20 protests in Pittsburgh, and well as their green jobs initiatives. Is that what you mean? If so, all I can say is ‘Good grief, we have a ways to go here…’
Second, the alternative energy industry? I suspect he means I think it’s a good idea to support–in fact, demand!– the building of wind farms, wind turbine factories, advanced battery factories and such–not only because these are productive forces we’ll need to deal with the climate crisis under any system, but also because they create new decent jobs for workers in dire need of them. Again, what can I say? Guilty as charged! Do I think this is a substitute for proletarian revolution? No, not by a long shot, but its a decent fight to build your strength along the way.
The ‘progressive wing’ on the DNC? I don’t even know if the DNC has a ‘progressive wing’. If it does, it’s rather small. I’ll check into it, but I’ve never urged such a thing. I usually mention the DNC and DLC as groups that we need to be independent of. What I do support is the expansion of the Congressional Progressive Caucus by re-electing PDA people like Barbara Lee and electing new PDA candidates like Norm Solomon. So if the latter here still fits in what you mean, again, guilty as charged!
I’ve got plenty of good company….but really, we have to get beyond this level of discussion if we want to get serious.
Scardanelli said
SKS –
lets look at what Hedges says –
“Marching as a uniformed mass, all dressed in black to become part of an anonymous bloc, faces covered, temporarily overcomes alienation, feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness and loneliness. It imparts to those in the mob a sense of comradeship. It permits an inchoate rage to be unleashed on any target. Pity, compassion and tenderness are banished for the intoxication of power. It is the same sickness that fuels the swarms of police who pepper-spray and beat peaceful demonstrators. It is the sickness of soldiers in war. It turns human beings into beasts.”
This is clearly a comparison of psychological dynamics (a “sickness” in his words). Its like saying “all violence corrupts”. He’s wrong, but thats a very different thing from saying that breaking windows is just as bad as murder. In fact yours is the only response I’ve read that has made this charge against him.
You say –
“3) If you support the Democrats, you support these things.
4) If you support these things, and are critical of the bb smashy smashy precious windows, then you value broken windows more than human life.”
I can’t believe you think this is a logical argument ( or a “line of evidence” as you put it).
For the record, I don’t support Dems, but casting a tactical ballot for the lesser evil in no way implies support for an entire platform. And, for the last time, criticism of window smashing is not about concern for windows, but concern for the movement. Critics argue that it does far more damage to the movement than to capitalism. You can try rebutting this, but stop pretending anybody cares more about windows than human lives. This would be an unfair charge against even the most wishy-washy, reformist, pro-Democrat Occupy supporter, say someone like Thom Hartmann, whom I loathe.
Does Hedges even support Dems? In a recent interview, conducted after his b.b. screed, he says this –
“There has been an extremely concerted effort to destroy it (Occupy), first by physically removing their centers of operation and now attempting to create internal divisions within the movement, using black bloc activity to discredit the movement, attempting to set up front organizations like Van Jones to channel the energy back into the Democratic Party and electoral politics. I think these movements really terrify the power elite and, in particular, the Democrats. One could argue that the greatest enemy of the Occupy movement is Barack Obama.”
On the other hand, you claim in your piece to have voted for Obama. And you also admit to being critical of some b.b. tactics, so now might be a good time for you to confess your secret love of corporate windows. According to your logic, you can’t but value them more than human life.
anewworldispossible said
Hedges may not be explicitly saying broken windows equates to the violence of the date but objectively he is putting the essence of both in the same category – which is very harmful and in the end untrue.
PatrickSMcNally said
I believe it was Vicente Uribe who declared that:
“To win the war we must remove the cancer of Trotskyism.”
So maybe Chris Hedges is more like a Stalinist hack than a Nazi. That could at least be a fairer description.
SKS said
Scardanelli,
The supermarket pulp lyricism aside – in the political language of pathology, equating the disease and equating things is the same thing.
Thus the “Jewish Cancer” and the “Bolshevik poison” were compared, not in their fundamentals, but on the very facts they are to be considered diseases.
And while not many have made the argument I made – many have agreed with it, David Graeber in particular expressed agreement with this line of reasoning. In fact, yours is the first response that focuses on this part of the argument: most people do understand (pro or against) that a comparison like this is indeed a direct comparison within the context of pathologization.
“casting a tactical ballot for the lesser evil in no way implies support for an entire platform.”
Objectively, yes it does.
And here I present to you the real contradiction:
Why is it ok to “tactically” vote for the lesser evil, but it is not ok to “tactically” break some windows?
And which is more harmful to a movement of transformation and regime change?
Why is it possible to make a teleology of the black bloc, but then it is not possible to make a teleology of the “tactical vote”?
That is the emperor’s clothes of those who are critical of black bloc tactics but then go and campaign and vote Democrat: they have a double standard. Violence of the State? Good. Violence of the people? Bad.
I am all for an strategic conversation – and to debate the members of the black bloc on strategy. But as a tactic, the black bloc is ethically and morally much more solid and revolutionary than voting Democrat. And Hedges’ criticism is of tactics – his strategic considerations are brought to the fore rather haphazardly and through the backdoor, using guilt-by-association, and making unprovable claims.
Ultimately, we need strategy but “radical” liberals mire us in the swamp of tactics-as-strategy so that we become part of the Democratic strategy by default: strategy, like power, abhors a vacuum.
And to nit pick:
In the USA there is no such thing as a “tactical vote”. Voting is uniquely strategic in the USA, due to the way the voting system is setup, in particular at a national level.
A tactical vote is when in round-based voting systems one votes for a revolutionary party in the first rounds, and then the lesser evil in the other rounds. Such voting is absent from nearly all US jurisdictions.
And I voted for Obama, strategically, because I want to have that cred, and troll the ultra-left. I collect immense lakes of tears when I bring this up. To my defense, I voted in New York, so my vote made absolutely zero difference, and my voting place was not buildings down from where I lived. That said, I voted for SWP and PSL on everything else, and voted for Obama on the Working Families Party ticket, not the Democrats.
But yeah, I voted for a guy that has killed as much people as Bush. That does weigh on my conscience, unlike some, I do not pretend to be some robot, nor immerse myself in denial. The Democrats are a party of murder and oppression, and when we lend our support to them, these things should be taken into consideration, not brushed aside.
More to the topic, the hypocrisy lies in that the same people who advocate strongly against the black bloc, are often the ones that advocate strongly for strategic support for the Democrats. They make – consciously or unconsciously – a valuation in which a few broken windows are a greater crime than millions dying and suffering. Lets stop the denial and self-delusion.
SKS said
@PatrickSMcNally
The thing is that while Stalinism (and Trotskyism, and liberalism and everyone in politics for that matter) unfortunately have adopted the pathologization of the Other as part of political speech, its first mass, effective, use was in the context Nazi racial hygene ideology. It was used before them, but they elevated it to a mass level, and deployed it to great effect, an effect not lost to history.
Just as many effective things were copied from Nazism, some mundane like autobahns, this pathologization was copied by everyone.
Just look at tons of otherwise reasonable, rigorous people who have fallen for Hedges’ bad joke of an argument. And they did, because pathologization works. Hedges knows this and deployed it consciously – his article is full of analogy and metaphors of disease and hygiene.
So my critique in this sense is both specific and general, while at the same time, paradoxically, I deploy the same: Stockholm syndrome. Less dramatic than cancer, but pathologization it is.
In this sense, I think it is most useful to go to the radical origin of the meme, because we should bring to the fore the Nazi origins of this sort of speech, and make it a problem. Just because everyone does it, it doesn’t mean its right.
(Also, google “stalinist cancer” for its use by critics of “stalinism”)
Ghan Buri Ghan said
“@ Boots..who, in an otherwise informative piece of the PR war in Oakland”
That was not boots, that was me…
Carl Davidson said
@sks
I can’t believe that a grown-up person with years of experience would pose such a question.
Am I only one one of a small handful around here that thinks the battle for mass opinion means something in political battles? If so, we’re in bad shape.
Agreed, on some public opinion, sometimes I go against the tide. I’ve done so around here with friends, family and neighbors for many years–on whether Blacks had the same rights as the rest of us, on whether women had a right to decide whether to be pregnant or not, on whether resisting the draft or rebelling as a soldier was proper during the Vietnam war, and so on. In the beginning on all these points, local public opinion here in Hillbilly Heaven was against me.
But those things MATTERED. And public opinion eventually came around because growing numbers of us stuck to the moral high ground. Because we did, we could even make a case that the rebellions after the killing of MLK were justified, even if unfortunate for those having to live in the immediate surroundings. We could even eventually make a case that the Vietnamese were right to throw us out.
But why in the world does it MATTER to break Starbucks windows? Or any storefront windows. Or burn a flag. I just don’t get it. I do know It matters in a negative sense to very large numbers of people, which is why the police and the media lustily use it as a wedge against us with considerable glee.
I don’t know a single person around here who hates Starbucks. Most people who know about the few local ones we have actually like them, as a place to socialize and hang out. Most other people never heard of them, and thus have no particular gripe. But nearly everyone is friends with someone or has a family member that owns a small store or works in one. And when they hear about a bunch of kids smashing store windows, they identify completely with the owners, and cheer on the cops trying to bust the window breakers.
To me, this is as obvious as the day is long. It’s also obvious that it makes it MUCH MORE difficult for us to win wide active support for OWS. And it’s obvious to everyone else I work with politically here, too. And HERE is a typical sampling of blue-collar, rust-belt, stressed-out America. If you can’t win here, at least in substantial numbers, you’re not going to win anywhere over the longer run.
PatrickSMcNally said
“It was used before them,”
Yes, Engels was one of those who used it when critiquing Dühring:
“This is an infantile disease which marks, and is inseparable from, the incipient conversion of the German student to Social Democracy, but which our workers with their remarkably healthy nature will undoubtedly overcome.”
SKS said
Or for that matter, Lenin’s “Infantile disorder”.
But this psycho-pathology is different – as I argue in the essay, less shocking – than the “body pathology” of cancer.
There the Nazi’s elevated the mundane to an effective tool of propaganda.
I make this difference explicit in my essay, so I wont repeat the argument here, except to say I consider the “body pathologization” to be worse politically than the mental one, because it is much more visceral.
louisproyect said
But why in the world does it MATTER to break Starbucks windows? Or any storefront windows. Or burn a flag. I just don’t get it.
—
Still, I would never personally sanction, much less participate in the burning of an American flag. This is for a very simple reason: that action makes no strategic sense and is in fact quite strategically stupid for a movement that claims to be serious about real and lasting connections with a working class majority of Americans. Whether some radicals like it or not, the national flag really does hold positive meaning – connoting such ideas as freedom, democracy, justice, and equality – for the preponderant majority of everyday American people, who share Occupy’s sense of enmity towards the excessive wealth and power of the super-rich and the rule of Wall Street and its corporations. Predictably enough, the Occupy Movement’s public support (as measured in polling data) plummeted once the flag burning went viral on television and the Web. What is the strategic point, exactly of deeply alienating those with whom you need to connect to build a true popular movement for justice, equality, and democracy – a movement that can and has in fact used the flag as a symbol to turn (on behalf of the 99% of the Americans) against the highly globalist wealthy few who wrap their narcissism, authoritarianism and indifference to most of their “fellow Americans” in, yes, a star-spangled banner of lies?
full: http://www.zcommunications.org/on-the-fetishization-of-expression-by-paul-street
Ghan Buri Ghan said
The difference, I is it’s the pathologization of the under-class, which is on full display, not just in Hedges article. When Occupy radicals in Seattle who disrupted and heckled a panel comprised of representatives from AFL-CIO leadership, GMMB, Second Avenue Partners, The True Patriot Network, etc., The Stranger characterized the radicals as homeless vagrants who “reeked of BO”. When they recently cleared out Occupy DC camp, (many of whose full-time residents were homeless inner-city DC folks who lived in McPhearson square prior to Occupy) they were wearing hazmat suits. many on the right have described Occupy Oakland with racialist undertones as “vermin”.
And I myself don’t think this is just something the Nazis have done. Take this Prussian police spy’s lurid description of Marx’s apartment: “in his private life he is highly disorderly [...] He lives the life of a gypsy, of an intellectual Bohemian; washing, combing and changing his linen are things he does rarely, he likes to get drunk. [...] For him there is no such thing as a fixed time for sleeping and waking. He will often stay up the whole night and then lie down on the sofa, fully dressed, around midday and sleep till evening, untroubled by the fact that the whole world comes and goes through his room. Marx lives in one of the worst, and therefore one of the cheapest, quarters of London. He occupies two rooms. [...] There is not one clean and solid piece of furniture to be found in the whole apartment: everything is broken, tattered and torn; there is a thick coat of dust everywhere; everywhere, too, the greatest disorder. [...] together with several cups with chipped rims, dirty spoons, knives, forks, lamps, an ink-pot, glasses, dutch clay pipes, tobacco ash—in one word everything is topsy turvy, and all on the same table. A rag-and-bone man would step back ashamed from such a remarkable collection. When you enter Marx’s room, smoke and tobacco fumes make your eyes water so badly, that you think for a moment that you are groping about in a cave. Gradually your eyes become accustomed to the fog and you can make out a few objects. Everything is dirty and covered with dust. It is positively dangerous to sit down. One chair has only three legs.” It goes on like that, but you get the idea.
Or the CIA’s 1958 description of Che: “The remaining noticable characteristic of ‘Che’ is his filth. He hates to wash and will never do so. He is filthy, even by the rather low standard of cleanliness prevailing among the Castro forces in the Sierra Maestra. Once in a while, ‘Che’ would take some of his men to a stream or pool, in order that they might wash. On those occasions ‘Che’ would never wash either himself or his clothes, but would sit on the bank and watch the others. He is really outstandingly and spectacularly dirty.”
There are scores of other examples we can cite, from the counter-insurgency claims that the RAF were manufacturing botulinum, to the sensationalist Seattle-era reports that blac blocs were plotting to throw shit. I appreciate SKS’s critique of pejorative patholization in general, but I feel that Hedges was engaging in a much more specific tradition.
SKS said
@Carl
Don’t get your jimmies all rustled…
Now we are getting somewhere.
So the problem with the black block is not the “smashy smashy” per se, but the image of the smashy smashy, a question of strategy, not tactics.
Fair enough. That is not what Hedges argument amounts to (although he alluded to this in a somewhat pulled out of thin air way).
So, lets say the majority of people supported “smashy smashy”, then it would be OK?
If so, I have no problem with that assessment.
I do have a problem with pathologizing and misrepresenting the black block, as Hedges and others have done. David Graeber’s excellent response addresses this even deeply.
So lets get that out of the way.
Now, to focus on strategy you say:
“It matters in a negative sense to very large numbers of people, which is why the police and the media lustily use it as a wedge against us with considerable glee.”
Fair enough. Then what is the alternative?
And here is when the question gets messy, and why I speak of a Stockholm Syndrome of the left.
As you comment, politics are about seeking to strike a balance between were people are, and where people should be according to your politics. This is true of all politics. Sometimes, you can get away with things not based on agreement, but on simple lack of will of the opposition. Sometimes the inverse is true: the conscious will of the opposition is greater than yours.
Mao put forward the mass line as a method to examine and study, and execute, communist politics, the hypotheses of the mass line is one in which a dialectical progression of consensuality can be achieved without it being necessary to have even majority agreement on all questions, just a generalized agreement on the line regarding the main questions.
The very amorphous nature of the mass line, and the tendency to mechanically adopt it, has meant that more often than not the mass line is an empty label used to describe “correct” positions – regardless of how it came about –
In my estimation and study, I have come to a conclusion that a fundamental difference in the application of the mass line in the USA, as opposed to other conditions, is that revolutionary socialist politics cannot be won over to majority of the USA. The reasons are various
So I can tell you with confidence, that while burning a Starbucks might be offensive to large sections of the population of the USA, an equally large section doesn’t care one way or the other, and a significant section is actually not opposed on principle.
In the section that is supportive in the abstract, there is a division into two: there are those who believe that while in principle there is nothing wrong, it might
In other words, what premises you are establishing as immovable truths are actually not so true. This country is populated by people who understand violence as political tool perhaps more than anyone else: it has one of the largest per capita armed forces in the world, it has one of the largest per capita armed law enforcement, its heroes are more often that not bloodied.
The same media that latches into the Starbucks burning celebrates Baghdad burning. Which means that their opposition is not a tactical one, based on images of violence, but a strategic one, based on who does violence. Gramsci understood this, but his students so far have been lacking.
Hedges made a terrible claim in this regards: the claim that Tony Bologna’s abuse was central to the explosion of Occupy. It certainly didn’t hurt, but no one that supported the regime before that image, stopped supporting it after that image. Those cynical and ignorant remained so, those who support the regime remained so – if from the Republican and Centrist Democrat side expressing support for Bologna, if from Democrats expressing mild outrage – those of us who believe in regime change. Tony Bologna had zero effect. What had an effect is the economic crisis brought about by Obama’s and W Bush’s cozy relationship with Wall St. and with Obama’s inability to deliver in his promise of hope and change.
Carl is often keen on citing this quote from Alvin Toffler: ‘If you don’t have a strategy, you’re part of someone else’s strategy.” Carl likes to think the left wags the Democratic dog, or could ever wag it. It can’t. It needs to build itself. And to build it self it requires to unite the advance. And the kids in the black bloc, not the labor bureaucrats, not the management of NGOs, are the advanced. We need to bring their tactics under strategic control, and this is not done by calling then jackasses in black levi’s. Carl sees hope where I see cynicism. I see hope were Carl sees nihilism.
There lies our fundamental difference: your analysis – if any – misidentifies who we can win over to revolutionary politics, and misidentifies the capacity of the people to assume revolutionary tasks. Part of this might be a result of similar errors in the past, part of it might be a subjective embrace of a narrow definition of the possible.
Well, Che Guevara put it succinctly: “lets be realists, demand the impossible”.
I am being charitable, however, the reality is that most people who claim to be for systemic change are like Hedges: revolutions are ok as long as they are somewhere else.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
@Proyect:
“Still, I would never personally sanction, much less participate in the burning of an American flag. This is for a very simple reason: that action makes no strategic sense and is in fact quite strategically stupid for a movement that claims to be serious about real and lasting connections with a working class majority of Americans. Whether some radicals like it or not, the national flag really does hold positive meaning – connoting such ideas as freedom, democracy, justice, and equality – for the preponderant majority of everyday American people, who share Occupy’s sense of enmity towards the excessive wealth and power of the super-rich and the rule of Wall Street and its corporations. Predictably enough, the Occupy Movement’s public support (as measured in polling data) plummeted once the flag burning went viral on television and the Web. What is the strategic point, exactly of deeply alienating those with whom you need to connect to build a true popular movement for justice, equality, and democracy – a movement that can and has in fact used the flag as a symbol to turn (on behalf of the 99% of the Americans) against the highly globalist wealthy few who wrap their narcissism, authoritarianism and indifference to most of their “fellow Americans” in, yes, a star-spangled banner of lies? ”
Yes, and to the working-class majority of Japanese, the hinomaru holds a positive meaning – connoting the Japanese monarchy’s divine lineage tracing back to the sun goddess Amaterasu-omikami. (But ask the minority of Okinawans, Ainu, Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, etc. what they think…) And to the working-class majority of Britons, the union jack holds a positive meaning – connoting the concordant loyalty of all subjects of the British isles to the crown and the constitutional monarchy. (But ask the minority of Irish Catholics, Welsh, Scots, etc.) And to the PRC’s working-class majority, the five red star flag holds a positive meaning – connoting the CCP’s ongoing commitment to the revolution and the unity of the four revolutionary classes under the Party. (But ask the minority of Tibetans, Uyghers, Mongolians, etc.) Yet these are all political fictions, every one as patently false as the next. The US flag being a symbol of “freedom, democracy, justice, and equality” is a fiction. These fictitious illusions must be smashed and set aside. There is no freedom, democracy, justice, or equality for national minorities in the US, and there never has been.
The notion that it is our goal simply to build a “popular movement” is absurd populist opportunism. A popular movement yes, but towards what end? To promote myths that justify the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie?
Transform the connotations of the US flag? Do you not see the odious social-patriotism behind that? Should Occupy Tokyo try to convince Koreans and Okinawans that the hinomaru is a symbol of democracy, justice, freedom, and equality, against their actual experiences with the flag and what it represents? Should the Occupy movement in the UK try to convince Celts that the Union Jack is a symbol of democracy, justice, freedom, and equality? Is it always incorrect to be divisive, to draw a line in the sand in order to boldly articulate the correct political position? Is our praxis centered around appeasing working-class white men who are constitutionalists who only want to end the fed and create a small-scale agrarian capitalism? Or are we actually trying to raise consciousness? What about when Douglas wrote “what does the 4th of July mean to the slave?” What about when the AIM occupied Mt. Rushmore, or when the Young Lords draped a Puerto Rican flag across the forehead of the Statue of Liberty? Aren’t the 4th of July, Mt. Rushmore, and the Statue of Liberty also beloved symbols of “freedom, democracy, justice and equality” to many in the working-class white majority? Doesn’t the working-class majority in the US associate communism with Josef Stalin’s purges, the Khmer Rouge, and exaggerated accounts of famines in China during the 1950s? Maybe we should pack away our red flags,our copies of Marx, and our references to “communism” and “socialism”, opportunistically conceal our aims instead of engaging peoples’ interest in history and alaysis and opening an honest dialogue about why past attempts at socialist construction ended in capitalist reconstruction. But on the other hand, you run a blog called the “unrepentant Marxist”, but from the sound of your rhetoric you are more interested in repenting to the reactionary sentiments of right-wing patriotic populism.
Carl Davidson said
@Ghan
Except for waving the Red Flag on May Day, I’m neither a flag-waver nor a flag-burner.
But I’ve yet to see how burning the US Flag in this country has done anything but raise consciousness against us, the left, in the wrong direction.
Somehow I’ve managed to get through scads of sessions of revolutionary education and political actions against social-patriotism and social-imperialism–and often effectively, thank you–without burning a single flag.
For goodness sake, once again, why can’t we debate things that really MATTER, rather than these juvenile fantasies indulging in a self-defeating politics of self-expression?
Why some here want to try to tease some revolutionary meaning out of stupid tactics is beyond me. If you want a different and sane view from some left folks involved in OO, read this link–but even there, the same nuttiness goes back and forth in the comments Read them, too. http://oaklandradicals.wordpress.com/
Red Fly said
Actually, I think it does. Objectively. The Democratic Party doesn’t care that your support is “qualified.” They don’t care if it’s only for “strategic reasons” that you vote for them. They just want to make sure that, after all your discontent has been aired, your a good little communist and you at least pull that lever for Team Lesser Evil at the very least (and bonus Radical Points if you actually work to get organizationally to get Democrats elected.)
Tell No Lies said
It has been a while, but I burned a very large American flag once when the U.S. had sent thousands of troops to the Honduran side of the Nicaraguan border in apparent preparation for an invasion of Nicaragua in 1988. Those protests were massive and uncharacteristically militant with outbreaks of fighting with the police and attacks on military recruiting stations. I think the level of anger was a genuine surprise to the powers that be. In any event, they backed down and didn’t invade Nicaragua. The picture of the of the flag burning appeared in newspapers across the U.S. where it undoubtedly alienated some people. It also provoked arguments within the movement that I still think were very valuable just like this one about the real limits and dangers of social patriotism. The picture didn’t just appear in newspapers in the U.S. though. It also appeared on the front page of newspapers in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba and Egypt if I recall correctly and probably in many other countries. And I think it is important to ask not just what the impact of this action was on patriotic workers in the U.S., but also on those oppressed people around the world who came to know that there were people INSIDE the U.S. who shared their hatred of the power that was supporting death squads in El Salvador, Contras in Nicaragua, the embargo of Cuba, and the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt.
I don’t think this necessarily means flag burning is always the wisest move. Its important to think strategically about its immediate effects on coalitions in the streets. But I also don’t think the question of its potential impact internationally is a minor consideration.
SKS said
Tell no lies:
Lets not forget that the Seattle Black Bloc, so decried, became a world-wide inspiration – from the Second Intifadah, to student struggles world wide, and dare say, the Arab Spring and the Greek uprising.
I know for a fact that in all these places these risings that so many people like Hedges celebrate the local “realistic left” uses the same arguments. They did in Egypt, and continue to do so there. That is why it is critical, when questioning the strategic validity of the black bloc, to really see what is being said.
Because to me, a lot of what is being said sounds like hostages with Stockholm syndrome, trying to justify why they are unwilling to do what needs to be done. Not strategic considerations of generals leading us to victory…
SKS said
Ghan Buri Ghan,
I agree with you, but as a note of history, Puerto Ricans also occupied the Statute of Liberty in the early 2000s as part of the Vieques struggle – not just the Young Lords.
And that second occupation might have ruffled a few feathers in the US left, and certainly ruffled that of the right and the Democrats. Yet it had an electrifying effect in Puerto Rico, and was a turning point in that ultimately victorious struggle.
And tell you what: I know the people who did it. They are actually like the caricature that Hedges painted. They were so disorganized that they forgot rope to tie the flags, and had to do it with their shoe laces. They were deeply individualist. One of them was actually discharged from the US coast guard for mental health issues! The other is now an eco-freak trying to “save” invasive reptile species from “extermination”.
Yet their action was a strategic turning point for the Vierques struggle, one that cemented civil disobedience as the leading tactic of the movement, established the primacy of the diversity of tactics, and destroyed the possibility of a longer term exit for the US Navy because of the pressure it created on the civilian government.
And their personal courage and tactical bravery is the stuff of history and even legend. Whatever their faults, they are heroes of the people.
Maybe, when we look back, so will be the kids that painted that Whole Foods. At the very least, when history looks back, we will remember them, not the cranky white men telling us to go back to our rooms or to sit in the kiddie table while they decide for us if burning a flag is a good thing.
I find Proyect’s tender love to the flag moving – because pandering to nationalism has *always* led to good things, right? I mean, this is the same guy who decries Stalin for doing exactly as he prescribes, pander to the backwardness of his countrymen. Tender, tender, tender, hypocrisy, disguised as pseudo-strategy. Scratch a Trot and there lies a shiny Stalinist…
SKS said
Carl,
Yes I went to Oakland Radicals, and while the article is *yawn* and completely devoid of any depth of analysis, and clearly pre-configured (ie it is from people pushing their own agenda regardless of the situation on the ground), a lot of the comments are very good.
This is my favorite so far:
“I’m having a hard time distinguishing between this article and the press releases from City Hall and the OPD saying that Occupy Oakland is composed mostly of “outside agitators” (who live in…Hayward or something) who unlike “authentic” Oakland residents all fully support the mayor, the city council, and the police department.
As a POC, I’m sick of this argument that gets repeated over and over that only white people can confront the state. Who are the “Oakland Radicals”? You’re an affinity group with a political perspective. Congratulations, you now “have previous ties to each other” and are a conspiracy which needs to be exposed. At least you’re not “academics” (what’s up with the anti-intellectualism).
Okay, so most of the Occupy encampments in the US have been cleared through violent police evictions and Occupy Oakland still has weekly FTP marches and can still turn out 1000-2000 for coordinated actions which are publicized as confrontational.
And yet this article argues the opposite, that “dramatically shrinking numbers reveal that this ideology and organizing style either misreads the real political situation in Oakland, or else underestimates the importance of consolidating and advancing a broad, united and popular front.” Okay, what is the real political situation in Oakland?
The Occupy movement is dead in most of the rest of the country, and Occupy Oakland is one of the only places keeping it alive, through good and bad choices. It’s militant. People like Chris Hedges hate it. The Democratic Party is horrified.
If the article authors think they have a better reading of the political situation in Oakland and don’t like the way things are going, then they should organize their own actions. If it takes off, awesome. You were right.”
Contrary to the “scary scary” around the “smashy smashy” – and the false allegation that militancy is a minority voice – the reality in the ground is that a lot of people support either side and the discussion is not a fait accompli. So Carl, stop the “scary scary” and actually read what people are saying. If there is even an ounce of rigor left in you, you will be surprised to see what you find…
zerohour said
Hedges’ piece supports the agenda of social democratic and liberal forces within Occupy who want some kind of rapprochement with Democrats and no doubt, many will use his arguments to try and consolidate their influence. Within days of Hedges’ piece appearing, Todd Gitlin published an article in The Nation basically advocating this position.
It’s not hard to see how this can play out. First, demonize so-called “black bloc anarchists,” then use it as a perjorative term for any militancy that steps out of “respectable” norms.
I tend to look at Hedges’ disease terminology as something consistent with a certain kind of principled non-violence. As SKS correctly points out, calling people a “cancer” leaves one with the logical conclusion that the only way to remove them is through drastic, violent means. But pacifists won’t employ such means so who will? The state.
This is the unspoken premise of much principled non-violent political action. Non-violence only refers to the immediate actions of its advocates. On the other hand, they don’t always object an external force, like US marines or cops, employing violence on their behalf, in fact, sometimes they call on them.
Neither Hedges, nor Gitlin, go so far as to say that Occupy should turn people over to police. They do call on people to deny them space in the movement, reject solidarity with them. Hedges even goes so far as to call black blocs “criminal.” In an election year, when the Occupies are facing heavy repression, what is this supposed to lead to?
Red Fly said
Is this true? Did the cancer analogy originate with the Nazis? I’m obviously aware the Nazis made frequent use of this kind of language but was unaware that they actually originated it.
I’d always thought it was just a generic insult.
Red Fly said
I think it depends on the context. When it’s just an isolated act of a few individuals, it doesn’t matter much. On the other hand, when it’s part of massive street fighting campaigns, like we see now in Greece, it sends a message to the world that this rotten system is in deep crisis.
Scardanelli said
SKS –
Your posts are so full of contradictions, confused terms, hollow fulminations, and half-baked rhetoric, I don’t know how to respond. Its obvious this is going nowhere. But a couple things before I quit.
When you claim that someone “values windows more than human life” you are making a moralistic claim about that persons subjective beliefs. It is therefore irrelevant whether their casting a tactical vote for a Dem is “objectively’ an endorsement of the whole Dem platform (not at all clear that thats the case anyways). What matters, to you, based on arguments (put charitably) you have laid out, is subjective values.
“Why is it ok to “tactically” vote for the lesser evil”
Never said this, only that those who do aren’t the moral midgets you accuse them of being. Your obviously pleased with your revolutionary purity. It must be difficult for you to deal with all those people in the 99% who, by your logic, care more about windows than human lives. Maybe more smashing will get through to them. Best of luck. I personally would like to think that theres more to revolutionary politics than cultivating a sense of moral superiority.
“And I voted for Obama, strategically, because I want to have that cred, and troll the ultra-left. I collect immense lakes of tears when I bring this up”
Charming.
Red Fly said
Speaking for myself, it’s not a matter of revolutionary purity at all. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it’s a rather pragmatic recognition that it’s a dead end for revolutionaries to legitimize this system and it’s major institutions.
I’m also not convinced anymore that the Democratic Party is any kind of lesser evil. NDAA, extrajudicial assassination, massive expansion of drone wars…these are all things more reactionary than George W. gave us and they are all enthusiastically supported by Barry the Droner.
The true puritanical utopians are those who actually believe that the Democratic Imperialists can be pressured with phone calls and sternly worded letters to “do the right thing” or by electing more “progressives.” It is completely and utterly absurd. A total fiction with zero basis in reality, as the last 40 years have made abundantly clear.
IkeNCumalot said
It’s not a matter of violence vs non-violence. It’s a matter of viable tactics. The question that nobody wants to address is what are the results of the actions? Skinny protestors vs. cops jacked stacked n swoled. Bottles and rocks vs. tear gas, rubber bullets, AR-15s. In a physical confrontation, who do you think will win? Do you care about winning or do you care more about propping up a revolutionary facade?
You write as if the “Black Bloc” is a legitimate group or “tactic”. The “Black Bloc” is nothing more than agent provocateurs working the oldest trick in the book. They are there to provoke the cops into being more brutal. The result is the Oakland PD will go into receivership sooner rather than later. This insures the feds will take over the OPD and then we have the feds all up in our ass and “revolution”…. a socialist revolution… is much further away than before. Who’s da chumps?
It’s not about violence vs non-violence. It’s about tactics tied to an overall strategy to win people over to a socialist revolution vs. tactics that satisfies the individual’s need for an outlet to vent their anger with no overall strategy. You only have to look at the results of these DOT tactics. Fewer people are coming out to the occupy Oakland events. Police are increasing their brutality violating their own policies which pushes them into receivership sooner. People getting arrested unnecessarily. We’re being shut down. There is no revolution.
FleeYourHomes said
I Re-posted this to challenge anyone to find any content in it. Also, who ends a post with …”charming”
Lastly, get over the remark about Hedges caring about windows more than humans, OBVIOUSLY it is a literary device used for effect (like ALL CAPS)
the meat of the post is about the moralistic “left” and their dangerous and slanderous portrayal of militancy in the U.S.
get it…
“SKS –
Your posts are so full of contradictions, confused terms, hollow fulminations, and half-baked rhetoric, I don’t know how to respond. Its obvious this is going nowhere. But a couple things before I quit.
When you claim that someone “values windows more than human life” you are making a moralistic claim about that persons subjective beliefs. It is therefore irrelevant whether their casting a tactical vote for a Dem is “objectively’ an endorsement of the whole Dem platform (not at all clear that thats the case anyways). What matters, to you, based on arguments (put charitably) you have laid out, is subjective values.
“Why is it ok to “tactically” vote for the lesser evil”
Never said this, only that those who do aren’t the moral midgets you accuse them of being. Your obviously pleased with your revolutionary purity. It must be difficult for you to deal with all those people in the 99% who, by your logic, care more about windows than human lives. Maybe more smashing will get through to them. Best of luck. I personally would like to think that theres more to revolutionary politics than cultivating a sense of moral superiority.
“And I voted for Obama, strategically, because I want to have that cred, and troll the ultra-left. I collect immense lakes of tears when I bring this up”
Charming.”
louisproyect said
The obsession over the black bloc in the past few months is a distorted reflection of the very real predominance of this tactic in contemporary struggles. This is somewhat odd, because in our current cycle of struggle, the black bloc has genuinely appeared in only a few areas, mainly the Northwest United States. But while the tactic’s geographic reach is somewhat localized, its presence in the movement’s collective imagination has grown to immense proportions. It seems like the black bloc is everywhere, a palpable reality, something everyone has to take a side on – even, and perhaps especially, those who haven’t actually seen it in action firsthand.
But it’s precisely the continued obsession with this single tactic that prevents us from seriously interrogating the necessary other term in this relationship: strategy. The discussions over the so-called “diversity of tactics” indicate the problem: by focusing all our energies on disputing the merits of a tactic, we end up neglecting strategy altogether. A “diversity of tactics” has little to do with strategy; in fact, it seems to replace strategy with liberal pluralism. The question isn’t whether to pursue a “diversity of tactics,” but rather: what kind of strategy allows us to effectively incorporate a diverse range of tactics?
It soon becomes clear that the hypertrophy of this tactic is actually a direct result of the atrophy of any corresponding strategy. As Alberto Toscano has recently written, “if something marks out the contemporary resurgence of theoretical interest in communism, across its various species, it is the almost total neglect of the question of strategy.” We might also add that since strategy and tactics can only exist in a reciprocal relationship, the deformation – or perhaps even absence – of former can only lead to a destabilization of the latter.
The symptom of this destabilization is the compulsion to repeat. The tactic of street-fighting is now being repeated obsessively, overcompensating for the shortage of strategy. At its crudest, this just means repeating the same thing over and over again in the hopes of forcing some kind of breakthrough; some claim that the repetition of a tactic will in itself generate a strategy.
full: http://viewpointmag.com/2012/02/12/on-the-black-bloc/
Carl Davidson said
Proclamations that ‘OWS is dead’ are not only premature, but unhelpfully backward.
It is true that most the the encampments have folded–some by force, some by choice. But those involved continue to meet regularly, usually indoors at a space they have secured. They continue to hold GAs, study, plan, carry out actions against things like foreclosures, hold teach-ins and otherwise consolidate their gains from this first wave. I spoke at one in Pittsburgh about a week ago, and I will at another coming up in Indiana this week, and still another in Kentucky a little later. To call this ‘dead’ is disorganizing and unduly pessimistic.
All this is as it should be–consolidate after the last wave to prepare for the next one, likely to arise in May around May Day then Chicago for NATO/G8. Oakland’s passage through the ebb side of its wave is part of the same process, only with harsher divisiveness to overcome for moving forward on the next one in a unified way.
Strategy is about asking and answering, ‘Who are Friends, Who are Adversaries?’ from the perspective of the whole. Then going on to plan how to develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces and isolating, dividing and defeating the right diehards batch by batch. It’s about discerning periods of strategic defensive, strategic equilibrium and strategic counter-offensive, as well as developing plans for wars of position and wars of movement. Tactics serve strategy, and a good tactical orientation is one that wages struggle on just ground, to our advantage and with restraint.
None of the above barebones frame, some of you will note, is original with me. It’s something I learned back in my days as a ‘Maoist’ but which I continue to find valuable and continue to work on developing and deploying. If you have a better frame, put it out there–otherwise work with this one until you find a better one.
Scardanelli said
“Lastly, get over the remark about Hedges caring about windows more than humans, OBVIOUSLY it is a literary device used for effect (like ALL CAPS)”
So thats what all those baseless assertions are? Literary devices? I’d be more inclined to believe this had SKS not written –
“My accusation is an ACCURATE and FACTUAL description of “a certain breed of so-called leftist”.
Notice my use of the “ALL CAPS” literary device to emphasize the key words in that sentence.
I am also opposed to moral denunciations of the b.b.. My beef is with tactics that I find counterproductive. SKS is the one making moralistic claims about “values”. And I refuse to conflate window smashing with militancy.
Zen Eiguntum said
“Strategy is about asking and answering, ‘Who are Friends, Who are Adversaries?’ from the perspective of the whole. Then going on to plan how to develop the progressive forces, win over the middle forces and isolating, dividing and defeating the right diehards batch by batch. It’s about discerning periods of strategic defensive, strategic equilibrium and strategic counter-offensive, as well as developing plans for wars of position and wars of movement. Tactics serve strategy, and a good tactical orientation is one that wages struggle on just ground, to our advantage and with restraint.”
Carl in the history of human kind….this has never happened, I know you think it has, but in all honesty the basic movements that define a species are novelty and habit, there is no controlled mechanism for reigning either of them in. That means no unity, no winning over middle ways largely because it is undefinable, I suppose you’ll live the rest of your life thinking otherwise, to bad.
Carl Davidson said
@Zen
Never happened? The victory of the Vietnamese people over the U.S. consciously made use of this framework, albeit in more detail and sophistication. Read Truong Chinh’s ‘Forward in the Banner of Karl Marx’ to see it elaborated rather well. Of course, the map is not the territory–but never say never. Life is green; theory is grey -Goethe
As for ‘novelty and habit,’ I prefer static and dynamic as the two core aspects of the Tao–one to conserve life and protect life; the other to free life, and us, beyond old constraints, to leave the future open and to create new things under the Sun. And they inter-penetrate.
That’s why strategy and tactics are best viewed as working hypotheses–open to adjustment, building the road as we travel.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
“First, what the hell is a ‘regime union’? Any AFL-CIO union? If so, that’s problematic in itself.”
I borrowed the term from the Italian left-communists (omg ultra-left) who acccurately descried many labor unions throughout the world in the latter half of the 20th century:
“…regime unions [are] intimately integrated into the institutional apparatus of capitalist power. [...] No longer do they belong to the working class, they are closed and impenetrable structures, just like all the other Institutions of the regime.”
As the Sojourner Truth Organization pointed out:
“in all developed capitalist countries, the unions function to channel every rebellious tendency into legalistic and quasi-parliamentary arenas where the power and hegemony of capital is most difficult to isolate and attack and where the workers have the most difficulty gaining a sense of their own collective potential. In this country an even more important, though related, function of unions is to freeze the divisions within the working class which obstruct any real steps towards class unity by institutionalizing the privileges of white male workers through job category definitions and the seniority system, if not outright exclusionism.” (AFL-CIO’s legacy of white male exclusionism is especially heinous)
Lenin himself made it very clear that the goal of the communist is to move beyond the limitations of militant unionism, but this is not a question of militant unionism. Here in Virginia, where I live, approximately 5 percent of the workforce is unionized. (That’s according to a 2010 statistic by the US Bureau of Labor, that is to say it is likely very conservative for our purposes because it probably does not factor in housewives, school-children, the unemployed, prisoners, and other segments of the proletariat that revolutionary Marxists view to be politially advanced) Now, here in a state like Virginia, the primary task of a revolutionary unionist would be to take advantage of this vacuum and build a revolutionary union from scratch. (As many of my comrades in the Richmond IWW are doing) However, I myself am a Leninist rather than an economist, so I recognize that revolutionary unionism is only one part of the greater picture. But sorry to repeat myself, we are not talking about revolutionary unionism right now. According to 2010-2011 statistics from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 13 percent of those in management/professional occupations are union-members, roughly 35 percent of those in protective services, roughly 18 percent of those in construction, roughly 15 percent of those im production, roughly 15 percent of those in telecommunications, and roughly 17 percent of those in transportation. Now, obviously, some of these occupational fields, like construction, production, transportation, are important demographics, yet those who are actually union members are only a minority, even if it”s a sizable minority. There are more unionized police officers than there are construction workers, telecommunications workers, factory workers, and truck-drivers in the state of California. But let’s keeep looking. Only 4 percent of those employed in computer and mathematical occupations are union-members. Only roughly 6 percent of those employed in arts, design, entertaiment, sports, and media occupations are union-members. Only roughly 8 percent of healthcare support workers are union-members. Only 4 percent of food-service workers are unionized. Only 7 percent of sales workers and 10 percent of office and administrative support workers are unionized. Less than 4 percent of those employed in the agricultural sector are union-members. This is in California, you’d imagine that in a “right to work” state (such as the one I live in) the statistics are even more abyssmal.
Now I didn’t say anything about “working with the unions”, I mentioned union bosses. Hedges criticizes the “black bloc anarchist” for viewing “unions” and “the workers’ movement” as “collaborators”. We see something very disengenous here. He’s trying to decide for us what constitutes the “workers’ movement”. Union bosses are simply another layer of management, more often than not, during any actual workplace struggle, they have an interest in getting workers back to work as quickly and smoothly as possible. They have no interest in disrupting production. They have an interest into forcing workers into a conciliatory position with management. Many workers distrust the unions, not simply because they’re brainwashed by Fox News, but because union presidents and secretaries are paid higher salaries than the average union worker, with money taken from their mandatory salary deductions, to pretend to represent their interests, when they really represent the interests of management and capital. (A picture is worth a thousand words: http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/p480x480/429733_3033816818624_1659037280_32699757_550317904_n.jpg) We have seen the reactionary role that union management has played in the workers struggle here in the US during the Verizon strike, and we’re also seeing in in Seattle with the Washington AFL-CIO leadership buckling behind the Democrats and the “populist” venture capitalists, and how the ILWU leadership has attempted to censor the revolutionary rank-and-file.
“Second, the alternative energy industry? I suspect he means I think it’s a good idea to support–in fact, demand!– the building of wind farms, wind turbine factories, advanced battery factories and such–not only because these are productive forces we’ll need to deal with the climate crisis under any system, but also because they create new decent jobs for workers in dire need of them.”
I’m not going to address the “decent jobs” claim – I don’t have time right now, but yes, humanity needs sustainable energy sources, but towards what ends? Capitalism has nearly blown through the Earth’s oil and coal in the span of a century, and most of that energy has been squandered on luxuries only available to the bourgeoisie. Currently, the sustainable energy industry uses third world slave labor to manufacture materials needed to construct wind turbines and solar panels, with no regard for the ecological devastation caused by heavy metal mining in those reigons. Solar panel batteries are dumped into landmines in the third world, where toxic battery acid leaks into the workers’ and peasants’ drinking water. Here in the first world, wind turbines are placed in locations with maximum windflow, with no particular regard for human or ecological planning. The bourgeoisie has a tendency to build hydroelectric dams in places where indigenous territories are flooded. Rainforests are burnt to the grounds and people are starved so that agricultural land can be used to grow biofuels. Etc. I’m not pointing this out to make some anarcho-primitivst argument about how these technologies are inherently evil, merely to point out the character of exploitation that occurs when the motors of “sustainable energy” are controlled by the bourgeoisie. And would any green-capitalist be happy about workers siezing control of his wind-farm? Or would he call in the police to shoot them? Is it wrong for the rural poor to object to having their homes siezed to build wind turbines, or to not want to live in a trailer park next door to a wind farm? Again, this is not an anarcho-primitivist argument against the use of these technologies, but merely pointing out the dynamics that currently exist. Regardless of how our civilization extracts energy, the primary consumption of energy will be spent on the luxury and hubris of the bourgeoisie. The capitalist need for overproduction and unfettered expansion will cause ecological chaos regardless of the mode of energy extraction. And of course the mode of energy extraction has no bearing on the human misery and exploitation inflicted on the proletariat and peasantry. Furthermore, and more importantly, we do not need to wait around another fifty or one hundred years for the bourgeoisie to make the prolonged and chaotic transition to a private sustainable energy economy. The technology for an ecologically sustainable human civilization that still provides the masses with modern necessities and conveniences already exists. The ecological crisis has not made a faction of the bourgeoisie progressive.
“What I do support is the expansion of the Congressional Progressive Caucus by re-electing PDA people like Barbara Lee and electing new PDA candidates like Norm Solomon.”
Setting aside the heavier discussion of parliamentary participation, social-democracy, etc., the “progressive” segment of the legislature is not going to abstain from voting for Obama, or running a protest candidate against Obama. Nor are they simply going to quietly vote for the “lesser evil” and leave it at that. Come election time, they will throw their time, money, and energy behind the nomination of Barack Obama. (The CPUSA, for example, is already begun the process of campaign-work for Obama) They are providing political legitimacy for the Obama administration – for the tortures of Latin workers, the extra-judicial killings, the NDAA, the repression of the FRSO and Anonymous, the imprisonment of whistle-blowers such as Bradley Manning, the imperialist escapades in Libya, Honduras, Pakistan, etc., the drone bombings, the depleted uranium, the foreclosures, the dictatorship of civil society by Wall st., the murder of Troy Davis, the violent supression of Occupy camps by Democratic mayors and police chiefs, the health insurance subsidizes disguised as “health care reform”, environmental policies co-authored by Monstanto, the continued murder of workers of color by the police, the continued torture of prisoners of color by corrections officials, and so on. in short, virtually every injustice that has mobilized and energized the US left in the past four years – to line up behind the Obama campaign is to white-wash every crime we have denounced in the last four years, and will strip us of any moral legitimacy in the eyes of the masses. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important to work with the Democratic Party’s progressive base, (I’m even friends with the chair of my town’s local Democratic Party) but to bring them to the revolutionary left. Not to do volunteer work for them, to grant them political legitimacy, or to allow them to draw you and your base to the right. Comrade Davidson, you speak of independence from the DNC, but there’s a reason you are regularly mentioned on right-wing anti-communist conspiracy theory blogs as “proof” that Obama is a Marxist.
Carl Davidson said
This is classic left syndicalism. Nothing new here since 1930. And we don’t have ‘parliaments’ here, we’re more backward in our electoral system. For a more more accurate portrayal of the US trade unions today, read Fletcher and Gaspin’s ‘Solidarity Divided.’ And good luck with your ‘revolutionary union’ organizing that doesn’t care much about the fight for jobs.
SKS said
@Carl
And the business unions cares about fighting for jobs?
I am very practical when it comes to unions in the USA, if you deliver, I am with you, if you don’t I am not. The unions in the USA do not deliver, hence, I am not with them.
They have transformed into social service NGOs paid by a payroll tax on workers and large lobbies mostly (but not exclusively) supporting the Democrats. Year in and year out, membership disappears, benefits and conditions get negotiated away, and while average wages have remained higher for union members than for non-union members, the failure of unions to defend non-unionized workers – that is, class rather than guild politics – has mean the creation of a huge reserve army of labor than continues to chip away at whatever historic gains the US labor movement ever won – victories that were largely achieved by feats called “Battle of [Insert place name]” by most historians, not “Historic negotiations”. And lets not get into the deep history of anti-communism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia of the labor movement, and how these things have often and sadly been defended by Communists, people of color, women, immigrant, and LGBTs in the name of not “alienating” the base. A deep tolerance for self-hate, or self-medication with alcohol, is a requirement for any leftist who is any sort of official in a US union. I have yet to meet an emotionally balanced or non-alcoholic, labor leader who claims to be Marxist. All of them regardless of group are seriously fucked up as people. Its a machine that grinds away at your psyche and destroys you from the inside and then spits you out 40 years later a pale shell of what you once were.
I have no illusions, unions will always be bureaucratic and to a degree undemocratic – a reflection of the workplace discipline – but that would be bearable if they truly delivered and mobilized for the working class. And it is deeply demoralizing when people who should know better, or begin in a different place, transform into simple administrators rather than labor militants.
I do reject – to an extent – the universalism of the left-communists, which approaches abstentionism and immposibilism, but I equally reject – to an extent – the rosy picture and strategic line that unions as they exist can be reformed or even that we must reform them. Communists must relate to unions, and unionists, but only in-so-far as they are workers being represented by them. All of these Ivy League bureaucrats who rule the Teamsters without ever having been inside a truck or a shipping plant or having zero knowledge of practical logistics, need to STFU and go get a job as lawyers and make money off the rich, instead of off the workers.
However, as a Puerto Rican, the US unions have played and continue to play a nefarious role in the perpetuation of colonialism. And this extends beyond the immediate colony: most of the left in Latin America, including that which agrees with you on other questions, considers the AFL-CIO to be the AFL-CIA, and not just as epithet. In all justice, since Lovestone died, there has been a slow reform of this reputation, but there still remains the imperialist and colonialist “we know better” attitude based on money and hegemony. See for example the terrible role played in Venezuela by US business unionism, which even extended support to one of the key figures behind the attempted coup against Chavez in the name of “labor solidarity”. That would be palatable if it weren’t for the fact that back home this same unionism supports far more anti-worker governments than Chavez’s.
See for example:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/05/the-afl-cio-and-the-colombia/
Food for thought.
And “Solidarity divided” is a very bad book, beneath the writing capacity of both authors, and which amounts to a (self) justification for inaction. I suggest reading it as an example of how not do it. It also glosses over both insurgencies within the existing unions – some of which have had interesting sucesses – and independent unionism, not just “red unions” like the IWW, but unions not affiliated to the internationals, which have had on average more success than the internationals in both organizing and defense.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
“This is classic left syndicalism. Nothing new here since 1930.”
Just to reiterate, I said: “Lenin himself made it very clear that the goal of the communist is to move beyond the limitations of militant unionism, but this is not a question of militant unionism. [...] I myself am a Leninist rather than an economist, so I recognize that revolutionary unionism is only one part of the greater picture.”
“And we don’t have ‘parliaments’ here, we’re more backward in our electoral system.”
Oh, I agree completely, but how is this an argument FOR campaigning for “progressive” Democrats, especially on the legislative and executive level? (Considering, as I’m sure you know, the CPC includes Barney Frank and Pelosi)
“And good luck with your ‘revolutionary union’ organizing…”
Well, I myself am not currently directly engaged in revolutionary union organizing, as I am an unemployed college student. (So it’s ironic that you characterize me as being callous regarding the subject of unemployment.) However “job creation” is used to justify all sorts of reactionary shit that fucks workers over, such as building prisons, munitions plants, uranium mines, etc.
SKS said
@Scardanelli
We agree that one shouldn’t conflate “window smashing with militancy”.
If we are to discuss anything of value, you need to be more clear – because the criticism you leveled at me is precisely the criticism I leveled at Hedges, yet you agree with Hedges (“in the main”) but not with me.
I feel you keep moving the goal posts. The only contradiction I see is the wholesale embrace of the moralistic pathologization of Hedges being acceptable, but my moralistic pathologization of Hedges and his ilk being unacceptable.
As to literary devices, while English is my second language, and I might not have been as clear – after all I am not a professional writer as Hedges is – I point to this in my essay:
“In my defense, it is the game field Hedges presents.”
I feel it is dishonest to evaluate my essay separate from Hedges’, as what is true for mine is even truer for his. So please do not move the goal posts.
My further comments here can to an extent be evaluated outside of this context, but with great caution to context.
I do not worry about revolutionary purity, but I do worry about revolutionary politics. I am for advancing them. The anti-revolutionary politics of Hedges, because they are anti-revolutionary, are being embraced by otherwise revolutionary people. That is a dangerous, constant conflation.
We can be critical of the black bloc tactics in the current period, but to be universally critical of them – as Hedges does – and to launch right-opportunist unity with Hedges, rather than carve a space that is revolutionary in content for the criticism of the black bloc, is not bad because it is not “pure”, it is bad because it leads to defeat.
While my criticism of Hedges plays in his moralistic playing field, my perspective is material: what leads to a strategic strengthening of the revolutionary organic forces? Dissolution into the Democrats? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt (and I had to pay for it).
In how the battle lines have been drawn, pro-bb vs anti-bb, revolutionaries should evaluate from where the protestations come from. And with the exceptions of the expected sectarian musings (ie ISO), largely the anti-bb forces are also subjectively anti-revolutionary forces, and the pro-bb forces are largely subjectively revolutionary forces. Its about a two-line struggle, not moralism.
And in this struggle, it is of strategic importance to pick the right side. Liquidationism continues to strike, again and again. We have been down this road before, and time and time again the victory of liquidationism has been a result of the intercine struggle within the revolutionary camp, precisely over the question of “smashy smashy”.
Carl mentione the WUO as it relates to the black bloc. Well, I think the WUO resulted from a failure on the part of more strategic forces to relate to those who wanted more aggressive action – had Avakian and Klonsky embraced this section instead of fighting each other and them the WUO would have probably not emerged, and as the movement matured organically, perhaps more strategically sound and less tactically undeveloped NCM might have emerge.
I of course speculate, but there seems to me that boogeyman Black Bloc is are the witches in the witchhunt for who is responsible for the apparent demobilization in OWS. And it is a convenient mythology that allows the actual forces behind the demobilization which are the liberal Democrats and the anti-revolutionary radicals.
SO while the black bloc are to be critiqued tactically, I think the strategic problems are of primary consideration – and have had a much more negative effect on the movement. Of course, the tactical disaffection of some in OWS with the BB is being exploited, left, right, and center, by others for strategic advantage, and it is this battle that needs to be fought.
A clear example is the “Oakland Radicals” blog Carl cited: anything that Carl – with his long time ties to the labor bureaucracy and the Democrats – is immediately suspect as a target for co-option.
So I reject squarely any and all accusations of moralism and “revolutionary purity” unless they come from people who:
1) attack with the same vigor the moralism of Hedges
2) denounce the outright lies and misrepresantions that Hedges did
3) Provide a criticism of the black block that is not moral
4) Present strategic line to combat the influence of liberalism and anti-revolutionary politics in OWS, while still respecting the consensus politics of OWS (ie not ultra-left take-overism, but an actual struggle for hegemony)
The task of communists is always to unite the advance, to lead the intermediate to struggle against reactionary. This is better said than done, but I do know that one doesn’t do this by pandering to the intermediate before a measure of unity has happened within the advanced. The atomized sects of the left are into the cannibalization of the b.b. as so many vultures whatever they can from the black bloc. And then they will come for us.
After all, the first Red Scare in the USA began with the anarchists (which assassinated a president, not smashed some windows), and no amount of criticism of “anarchist terrorism” and not millions of votes, saved the rest of the left from being prosecuted and smashed.
There are lessons in our past for those who care to learn them. Meanwhile, I do predict that if this boogeyman black block comic book politics continue, OWS will become the label of progressive Democrats, rather than a space were revolutionary politics could break from its now traditional isolation.
Carl Davidson said
The U.S. trade Union movement is in bad shape, down to 12 percent. Much of it is it’s own doing, and much of it is a consequence of forces beyond its reach. I nonetheless defend them against the GOP and rightwing populists who aren’t happy with 12 percent, and want zero percent. And if the rest of you here, meaning those who apparently could care less about them, had any good sense, you would, too.
Sorry you haven’t been helped lately by a union, SKS, but I thought you had more sense than to view things that narrowly. Maybe you’ve never has to collect unemployment or you’re too young to apply for you social security. Where do you think those came from? From the kindness of the bosses? We have an entire region here that would be totally screwed and on the streets were it not for a few protections won by their unions. That’s not saying much, but it matters a great deal.
We need to build class struggle unions, both new ones and by moving the old ones to the left and helping them grow. It it’s too tough or boring or not flashy enough for you, just get out of the way. There are changes at the top, middle and bottom of today’s unions that you either are blind to or simply dismiss from old habits. Too bad, but I’m in touch with a new generation of very good young organizers who will more than take up the slack.
But the degree of ignorance here about unions is rather amazing, and pitiful as well. I expect it from the right, but this is supposed to be ‘the revolutionary left.’ So it goes..
SKS said
Carl, you speak out of your ass. I am collecting unemployment as we speak, after being laid off. And I never graduated from college – having had to earn my keep from a young age.
And these things (unemployment insurance and social security) came as a result of real union struggles, fought back when the unions – even if they were as undemocratic and bureaucratic as they are today – actually fought tooth and nail for their share of the pie. In fact, to this day railway workers have a separate social security system because their unions won it – through radical struggle that makes the black bloc seem like Gandhian model students- way before the rest of society did (and the pressure of having to administer dozens of separate system as each union won this what was prompted the SS as we know it).
That argument ad nostalgium doesn’t cut it and its a logical fallacy: just because 80 years ago unions worked it doesn’t mean they work today. Or that those unions of yesterday were the same as the unions today.
We need unions, and unions have done great things, and we need to defend unions against the GOP, but we need to defend them in spite of themselves, who are hell bent on destroying themselves – and to face this reality is not ignorance, but precisely pessimism of the mind that Gramsci, who you claim to follow, advised. I mean look at the total defeat in Wisconsin: people were demobilized after showing up in record numbers to protest by the union’s recall strategy, which also was a disaster. A unionism unwilling to throw all in in such a critical juncture is more concerned with slowing the decline until they can pass the buck to the next generation than in actually stopping it and reversing it.
And I am not ignorant of unionism, by my own calculations in my grand total of two years of union membership I paid ~10,000 in dues, mostly to the CWA. And I didn’t even get a lousy t-shirt.
My dad spent 25 years in the independent unions for telephone workers in Puerto Rico (Which the CWA tried multiple times to break, until it reached a sort of confederative agreement with them), I grew up in unions, among unionists, and not just in opposition. I have also been a union organizer and a negotiation consultant (I once single-handedly held up the implementation of a drug testing policy for two years to buy time for a challenge). I have deep inside knowledge of unions, both independent and internationals. I seen the good, bad, and the ugly of unions.
So you fail completely in the ad hominem too, not just the argument ad nostalgium.
Such derisive comments, Carl, might cut it when speaking to impressionable college kids, but wont cut it with someone who has actually had to work for a living, and dealt with unions both professionally and as a member. I speak from the inside, having seen the abyss.
The pollyanna you express reminds me of the tailism to OWS that many had in its early days. That method of politics is like a flare: it burns very brightly but very shortly. We need oil lamps, and that requires brutally honest assessment and self-assessment: something the leadership of most unions has been completely incapable of doing.
And if you want a date, for the final nail in the coffin, it was when the entire labor movement hung the Air Traffic Controllers out to dry when Reagan fired all of them. That was a time to launch a nationwide general strike to bring them to their knees, of apocalyptic final confrontation, but by that time the labor movement was so self-weakened by their struggle against communism (Reagan, after all, first rose to political prominence as one of the leading anti-communist labor union leaders in the USA), that it was unable to do anything about it. It has been precipitously downhill from there.
That is the reality, protest all you want, launch personal attacks all you want.
Carl Davidson said
@SKS
Well, I’m glad you’ve come around and covered your butt with this more all-sided reply. And you should also know better than to just tie you unemployment check to something that happened 80 years ago, We just went through several battles to have the payments extended, and today’s unions had a hand in that one, too.
As for being Pollyanna about unions, you won’t find any in my corner. I know them rather well, too–good, bad and in between. But you won’t find any pollyanna here as to how we can just ignore or dismiss them as ‘dead,’ either.
It’s a very tough fight for better unions, but it’s a an even tougher fight for socialism. The two are actually connected, so enough with the kvetching about it, unless you have something new to say, and let’s just get on with the tasks at hand regarding them.
SKS said
I haven’t declared them dead, I declared them dying of self-inflicted wounds.
Because the enemy attacking is completely understandable. Losing to them a battle here and a battle there, also understandable. But the disorganized, demoralized rout of the US labor movement of the last 50 years, its all its fault. No one told the labor movement to embrace anti-communism. No one told the labor movement to abdicate basic solidarity. No one told the labor movement to accept – without question – this road. Its a tomb of their own doing.
Even smaller movements without the luxury of a close workshops, like that in France, have achieved much more than the US labor movement. The difference lies in a deep understanding of the irreconciliable difference of interests between workers and bosses, and while as is the case of any trade union, this doesn’t transform into political revolutionary action, it does have the effect of the bureaucrats never losing sight of the prize.
When the top labor leaders are certifiably members of the 1% – earning hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the highest paid member – you know that we have a problem of priorities.
IkeNCumalot said
SKS Wrote:
“And I am not ignorant of unionism, by my own calculations in my grand total of two years of union membership I paid ~10,000 in dues, mostly to the CWA. And I didn’t even get a lousy t-shirt.”
I was in a union and we never paid that much in union dues. CWA union dues are no more than 2% of your salary/wages. Your number of 10,000 is nice and round and does not add up. I don’t think its true.
Union busters always attack union dues. They will lie and claim that workers pay too much, dues get misused, dues should be returned, dues only go to the executives of the union. Why do you use the same rhetoric?
Another tactic of union busters is to get people’s attention on the top labor leaders salary to get them fighting against the leaders. All that time spent fighting against the leaders is detrimental when there’s a union busting campaign going on. The union busters have got you & they got you good. Why do you use the same divisive rhetoric?
SKS wrote:
“My dad spent 25 years in the independent unions for telephone workers in Puerto Rico (Which the CWA tried multiple times to break, until it reached a sort of confederative agreement with them), I grew up in unions, among unionists, and not just in opposition. I have also been a union organizer and a negotiation consultant (I once single-handedly held up the implementation of a drug testing policy for two years to buy time for a challenge). I have deep inside knowledge of unions, both independent and internationals. I seen the good, bad, and the ugly of unions.”
“Negotiation consultants” is usually a term for union busters hired by management. Having an “inside knowledge” of unions can mean either a person appointed/elected to a post in the union or a union buster hired by the company.
The line you espouse is identical to that of the Black Orchid Collective on unions. They believe that unions are part of the capitalist milieu and do not serve the workers. The union busters could not have come up with a better way of busting unions. “They” can bust unions from the left.
I notice that with your extensive experience with unions, you neglect to mention the biggest reason unions have been failing in the U.S….. union busters. Union busters are union consultants, labor lawyers and starting from the 1990s, they have joined forces with security firms to come up with strategies and tactics to bust up unions. It’s billion dollar industry with 10s of thousands of practitioners in the U.S. These are the people hired by companies to bust up the unions. There is no way that unions collude with “capitalists” to undermine the workers.
I know an ideology is wrong (either by ignorance or opposition propaganda) when one is attacking anyone other than the perpetrators. The perpetrators behind union busting is not the “labor tops”, its the union busting firms that need to be torn down. The specific individuals (perpetrators) behind the failed “black bloc tactics” are already known, but you are attacking Chris Hedges for pointing out the failure of the “Black Bloc”.
The “Black Bloc” is nothing more than a construct by people within U.S. intelligence to discredit the Occupy Movement Note the result…. it’s divisive. This is nothing new. It’s a reenactment of the 60′s all over.
From:
http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=8691
“A massive radicalisation in 1967 saw the flowering of the ‘Yippies’ and the ‘Motherfuckers’, which preached confrontation with the authorities but still rejected organisation and ‘ideology’. In the student movements of Germany, France and Italy there was the same stress on ‘spontaneity’. Such ‘structurelessness’ fitted situations of sudden, explosive involvement of very large numbers of students – and in Italy workers as well – for the first time. As they took to the streets and occupied buildings they unbalanced the authorities and did not worry unduly about strategy, tactics and organisation.
But none of the ‘swarms’ succeeded in going beyond shaking the established power structure to destroying it. And it was not long before it was hitting back.
So the year in which the movement in the US reached its highest pitch, 1968, was when it began to suffer its first serious setbacks. Police battered protesters outside the Democratic convention in Chicago, while the FBI orchestrated a campaign of frame-ups and murder against the leaders of the Black Panthers.”
Note the progression from “peaceful” to violent. Hippies to the weather underground which discredited the movement in the eyes of the vast majority of Americans. Note how it ended up with the Black Panthers devastated by the FBI.
And what’s happening now? It’s moving along at a much faster pace. Peaceful Occupy to FTP marches with fewer and fewer people going to the Occupy events. And when they do clamp down, the Oakland police who were radicalized battling Occupiers will come down that much harder on the black community.
Zen Eiguntum said
Carl what made the north Vietnamese ‘army’ and combatants win was the terrain, not any kind of silly romanized idea of unity, and they were far from unified(see the indigenous forces that sided with the US for understandable reasons of perceived self-preservation, many got it with no lube after the north won) Ceasar pondered that if if the gaels were united they would have won, well know, actually it would of come down to whatever spatial dynamics did the talking and what situational moves were made.
It doesn’t matter what two terms you use to define the dao,the point is novelty and habit or your two terms are beyond political intentionality, these forces of enframing persist regardless of doers and their deeds. Habit is beyond political reproach and novelty cannot be conceived in contemporary political habits.
Scardanelli said
SKS –
Obviously we’re talking past each other. I don’t think I’ve moved the goal posts. I said in my first post that violence is justified. Its a tactical question of what type of violence (if any) and in what context. I think bb actions are counterproductive and hurt the movement. I never endorsed Hedges moralizing, in fact I called his comparison of b.b. psychology to that of the police and military “tasteless” and “wrong”. I took issue with specific charges you made, in your article and subsequent posts, that I found unfair and unfounded. Don’t think I can make it any clearer than I already have. I won’t pursue this further.
Hopefully we can have more productive exchanges in the future.
SKS said
Scardanelli,
Perhaps we are indeed speaking past each other.
However, do read what I have written in context and without universalizing. I am much more nuanced and detailed than what you have represented me to be.
And, we disagree that “bb actions are counterproductive and hurt the movement”. I think they have been tactically unsound in some aspects, and some actions actually immature, but by an large the effect of the actions have not have such a nefarious effect.
What is counterproductive and hurts the movement, in my estimation, is the inability of the movement to frame and defend its most militant expression from the enemy – and the adoption of the enemy’s ideas, prejudices, and frames of thinking in order to establish either sectarian difference with this militant expression.
The transformation of the bb from nuisance to cancer, or from section of the movement to enemies of the movement – of which Hedges is yet another salvo, but Naomi Klein’s “fascist” categorization takes the prize – is what is really counterproductive and hurts the movement.
It transforms the movement from the amorphous convergence of dissaffections, from a movement with true political independence, into the wholly owned subsidiary of the “progressive” Democrats, politically subordinate to this political space.
Once they are done with the black bloc, next they will go after the reds (and in fact, at the very beginning of OWS in NYC they did try to go after the reds, explicitly, an effort which was only stopped – ironically – by the anarchists around David Graeber and by embeded reds in the invisible leadership.) And when they are done with the reds, they will go after the labor oppositionists, and then after the Greens and the third party people. They will hang us up one by one for not hanging together.
Until all that is left is Democrats and NGOs – and what ever reds are left, who then get to be managers in the NGOs and staffers in the unions, and pat themselves on the back for being so “unsectarian” and “strategic” and mean while wars get fought and cops kill people and savings get wiped out.
That is why Carl’s jimmies get all ruffled. He knows I am giving a truthful account of how social movements in the USA have worked in the last 30 or so years. And truth hurts.
So I am for strategies of survival and deep thinking, but any strategy that calls upon tactically throwing under the bus any section of the movement, calling them cancer or “counterproductive” and “hurtful” while remaining silent on the Democrats, its a strategy for liquidation. I say based on the recent history of the USA.
anewworldispossible said
SKS, well stated and captures the essence of change.
SKS said
I forgot to add, that that hangpeople, while hanging us, will cite Gandhi and Dr. King while doing so.
Ironically, for a whole part of this essay, I completely ripped off ideas put forth by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Betcha none of those who love to quote him didn’t notice this… :)
Carl Davidson said
@SKS and any others concerned…
While we should oppose terms like ‘cancer,’ for all the reasons you’ve stated, much of the BB antics are indeed ‘counter-productive’ and ‘hurtful’. That is simply telling the truth, and discounting it or sweeping it under the rug with liberalism toward it doesn’t help anyone. This battle has been brewing for a long time, long before Occupy, and if we can’t find a way through it, we’re screwed. We will never come to scale–forever ‘stuck inside a mobile with the Memphis Blues again…’
SKS said
@Carl
How is it “counter-productive” and “hurtful”, and more importantly, “counter-productive” to what ends, and “hurtful” to what means?
Ghan Buri Ghan said
Ike, your summation of the US labor movement since 1935 is schematic and non-dialectical. A fact is not rendered false because it is used as a component of bourgeois ideology.
Your argument follows the same logic as that of “national bolshevik” who claims that Kruschev and Brezhnev cannot themselves be imperialist simply because the dominant bourgeois ideology of US imperialism claimed the USSR was an “evil empire”, a line borrowed from the popular science fiction film “Star Wars”. US imperialists such as Ronald Reagan (and many contemporary DoD personel) identified with the protagonists of the film “Star Wars”, who fight a democratic resistance against an evil totalitarian empire, and took advantage of these mythical political undertones in the ideology used to support the Strategic Defense Initative.
Yet in the “Star Wars” films, the so-called “rebels” enslave and exploit a fictional race of Stone Age aliens. (Who live in the jungle and have brown fur – how else do you read into that?) Astrophysicist Chris Saxton, who writes “technical commentaries” on the inane fiction of Star Wars for a living, says it best: “…it is important to realise that the most effective forms of propaganda do not falsify verifiable truths and circumstances; instead they weave a preconceived pattern of significance through cleverly judicious use of available objective facts.” (In the case of bourgeois ideology, you have to know the enemy to understand the enemy. Imagine if we lived in a world where physicists like Chris Saxton were free to work towards the betterment of humanity instead writing fan fluff for “Star Wars” merchandise.)
My point, if you’re still following me, is that the Saxton quote applies to all reactionary bourgeois propaganda, not just “Star Wars”. Look at the mythology of the religious right. Look at reactionary-bourgeois religious politician Pat Robertson, whose 1992 book “The New World Order” is as much of a political fiction as “Star Wars”. Robertson talks about a judeo-masonic conspiracy of “ascended masters” who use esoteric magic to maintain their elite political and economic status. Behind Robetson’s magical ideological superstructure, we have the articulation of a reactionary Southern settler haute-bourgeoisie ideology which uses anti-Semitic scapegoating and anti-masonic and anti-clerical anti-rationalism to direct the masses of declassed and petit-bourgeois settlers against Robertson’s political opponents on the bourgeois left. (And this is nothing new, Blaming the continental-bourgeois Jacobian “Illuminati” for Black slave revolts is an old card of the Southern settler aristocracy) But would Robertson’s political rhetoric have any popular resonance if it did not speak to the real material frustrations of the masses of declassed settlers? A bunch of kids at a party last night were joking that a peer who hadn’t seen the “Star Wars” films was a “communist”, meanwhile millions of mostly-workingclass, mostly-older, mostly-white, and mostly-male Amerikans earnestly and sincerely believe in Robertson’s “New World Order bolognia.
Let’s extend this meandering line of investigation to other reactionary myths. There is the myth about progressive Democrats. (friends of comrade, Davidson who is doing Glenn Beck’s field-work by associating the DNC with communism) Barney Frank is a “Jewish homosexual pedophile” and Nancy Pelosi is a “Jewish lesbian feminazi”. What is the the material resonance behind this hateful anger that is common among the reactionary masses as well as the intellectual right? Obviously it’s very anti-semitic and macho but also angry at the DNC’s close economic relationship with finance capital. Again, is this anything new? Proudhonists and Sorrellians (who are closer in strategic vision to Chris Hedges, despite his whining about “anarchists”, who dreams of the idyllic “penny capitalism” of his childhood in upstate New York) have been attacking the women’s movement and “Jewish” finance capital for almost two centuries.Yet the left also attacks finance capital, not from imbecilic anti-Semitism but from scientific anti-capitalism.
Now let us look at the bourgeois ideology of the industrial capitalists and their managerial Cossacks who are engaged in a protracted rivalry with the Labor-bourgeoisie. Their ideological myth can be heard on any right-wing talk show from Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck. It is not the “job creators” among the industrial haute-bourgeoisie or their army of managers who are exploiting the workers, it’s the greedy union bosses who “force” workers to join unions.
There are a few immediate things we can learn from this. Firstly, no one “forced” the workers to form unions, it was something the workers did of their own out of their historical material interest as a class. Secondly, if the “greedy labor bosses” were really a threat to the industrial haute-bourgeoisie and their toadies in management, they could simply be imprisoned or killed. But some of the strongest unions in the US are police and prison guard unions. Remember that the 1918 London police strikes were a moment of extreme anxiety for the English bourgeoisie. Here in the US, high wages, lucrative benefits, job security, and a degree of white male preferentialism and (partial) exclusionism ensures the loyalty of domestic counter-revolutionary armies such as police departments and corrections offices. A crucial bolt in this structure is the police unions, who unlike in 1918 play a completely reactionary and counter-revolutionary role.
Does a scientific anti-capitalist approach dismiss the reactionary nature of police and prison guard unions based on a schematic understanding of labor relations that pits “unions and workers” against “bosses and police”? This is so undialectical and idealist it makes me laugh! It almost rivals the ultra-left “Maoist Third Worldist” schematic of 21st century global class war between the “imperialists” and “labor aristokkkrats” against the third world workers, peasants, and patriotic national-bourgeoisie.
Expanding this line of inquiry, do CWA directors who earn six figure salaries have the same class-interests as workers in the CWA? Take the recent struggles of districts 1 and 2-13 against Verizon, a sign of the times in which unionized labor mobilized to strike and even the union leadership adopted militant slogans and emblems (red flags, red fists breaking iron chains, etc.) Compare the alleged “sickness” of instances of hooliganism in Oakland (smashing the occasional window of a bank or “local” coffee chain tagging van, tagging the strike-busting Whole Foods or the exterior wall of a museum, lighting bonfires or burning a U$ flag, etc.) with the rampant wildcat industrial sabotage during the recent Verizon strike, which the union leadership denounced. When it comes to property destruction as a tactic of class warfare, who are the novices and who are the pros? With all due respect to both parties of rebellious proles, unemployed teenagers and public college students with black hoodies and ear-marked copies of “The Coming Insurrection” are the novices, phone and cable company workers who know how to bring down the infrastructure of entire cities and counties are the pros.
Now take the role of union leadership of the CWA struggle. For the Marxist, a strike is a skirmish of war, an exercise in the political autonomy and leadership of the proletarian class, the vanguard-class. The post-1935 US union leadership has an entirely separate class-interest in maintaining their role as paid officials bargaining with management and capital to negotiate and compromise the historic gains of the previous epoch of workers’ upheaval. The reason we must defend attacks against the regime unions from the GOP and the mobilized right is because it is in that role as paid custodians in previous gains that forges a strategic alliance. Non-strategic and moralistic whining about “union-busting” does not account for the complexities of the situation. When the strike began here, there was triumphalist excitement from all segments of Virginia’s working-class. I remember a couple of months ago Oldheads who worked for the cable company back in the day, but who are now forced into the low-wage non-union sectors such as food service, freelance carpentering, janitorial services, telemarketing, and the black market; they were acting like the Verizon strike was the start of the revolution in the US. This was before everyone was going on about “Occupy”, before there was a public obsession with class war in the US. None of the youngheads – the ex-gangbangers, insurrectionary anarchists, wobbly kids, community college students, computer hackers, precariously employed service labor, unemployed hipsters etc. (The so-called “89%” of the Black Orchid Collective) were into union absenteeism or ultra-left liquidationism. They may not have played a crucial role in the struggle, but no one was making stupid ultra-left arguments about the unimportance of the union struggle.
But what role did the leadership play? They dragged their feet every step along the way, prematurely ended the strike against the wishes of the rank-and-file.
Ghan Buri Ghan said
Also compare the “hooliganism” in Oakland to the Georgia Prisoners’ Strike and the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike, which was also a heroic moments in 2010-2011, an ongoing of acute global class struggle, and an underlooked precursor to the “Occupy” phenomenon. The bourgeois-left press; Hedges, The Nation, AlterNet, et al, mostly ignored these historic events, but if pressed, any bourgeois liberal who hides behind the legacy of Gandhi and King would defend these actions. But these actions were also quite violent. In the case of the latter, starving yourself to a point of near-death is an incredibly violent act. Anyone who denies this will likely themselves never have to deal with the long-term health ramifications of engaging in a prolonged hunger strike. Another hypocrisy of the Gandhian liberals is that they fetishize the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi while at the same time dissing the significance of spontaneous, unorganized, and impulsive acts of symbolic violence by oppressed people suffering from the psychological alienation of capitalism. Zerzan and his fan-club are reproached for defending Kaczynski, (who was, deservedly or not, a counter-culture icon of the late 90s anarchist milieu – he even gets a nod in “Good Will Hunting”, Ben Aflek and Matt Damon’s cinematic love-letter to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn) however, Kaczynski’s misanthropy, social-darwinism, anti-rationalism, primitivism, millennial castrophism, borderline-euro-nationalist tribalism, and subtle misogyny are not explicitly reproached. These are all hallmarks shared by Hedges’ ideological ally Derrick Jensen. What is reproached, with some degree of ideological legitimacy, is a confused admiration for pointless individual rebellion which is a serious problem among the infantile spontaneist and “anti-authoritarian” left. Yet the western Gandhian liberal fetishizes Bouazizi’s self-destructive violence and – rightfully – grasps the symbolic significance of his moment of self-destructive individual rebellion in the Arab world. I’m sure if you took a poll of insurrectionary anarchists on the West Coast, admiration for the Unabomer or his reckless violence would not be very high, most of those kids, for all their juvenile faults, have out-grown their infantile third positionist anarcho-primitivist.
But we hear about how treacherous renegades like Zerzan unjustifiably scorn Chomsky as a “sell-out”. Sell-out to whom, for what? Left-wing academic linguists do not view Chomsky as a “sell-out”, they just view him as a bulwark of the structuralist old-guard who has waged some important intellectual attacks against US imperialism throughout his academic life. Chomsky himself has specifically stated that he is a member of the academic bourgeoisie and has no short-term plans to abandon his bourgeois class-status. Lots of kids were talking about how Chris Hedges is a “sell-out”, but it is not correct to say Hedges had sold out, because he’s always been a radical liberal journalist, not some kind of communist revolutionary. (It’s all very reminiscent of teenage music fans complaining that their favorite pop-musicians have “sold out”) Every four years Chomsky endorses the Democratic candidate, this legacy remains unchanged – and this year he endorses Obama as the “lesser evil”. (And the credibility Chomsky enjoys among student anarchists is itself a significant campaign asset of the DNC) So the issue here is the impending two-line struggle between the Obama campaign and the amorphous, independent left. Hedges, whether he hates Obama or not (and he appears to hate Obama) is being a useful idiot for the former – establishing a vivid and visceral strawman caricature to be deployed by the armies of bourgeois co-option against anyone who wants political independence from bourgeois academia, the non-profit industrial complex, reactionary union elements, and the progressive Democrat “hope bloc”.
John Zerzan and his cohorts at Green Anarchy have said a lot of stupid shit over the years. I remember, I was a confused teenage stoner getting zonked and reading Green Anarchy. I remember when Green Anarchy published an article in which John Zerzan compared the RAF and the Red Brigades to fascists. Why didn’t Hedges mention this fact? Because it doesn’t serve his interests, he would probably rather paint communist revolutionaries as fascists himself. But what is fascist is Hedges’ agrarian petit-bourgeois ideology.