VIOLENCE means working for 40 years, getting miserable wages and wondering if you ever get to retire …
VIOLENCE means state bonds, robbed pension funds and the stockmarket fraud …
VIOLENCE means unemployment, temporary employment …
VIOLENCE means work “accidents” …
VIOLENCE means being driven sick because of hard work …
VIOLENCE means consuming psych-drugs and vitamins in order to cope with exhausting working hours …
VIOLENCE means working for money to buy medicines in order to fix your labor power commodity …
VIOLENCE means dying on ready-made beds in horrible hospitals, when you can’t afford bribing.
All ideologies and, for that matter, religions have found ways to justify and encourage the violence of their followers whenever it has been considered necessary, so it should not surprise us that anarchists and Black Bloc members have sometimes employed force to defend and further their ideas. Liberalism, nationalism, Marxism-Leninism, fascism, and Christianity, each in its own way, and far more frequently than anarchism, have all resorted to assassination, often of anarchists. Hence, the association of the terms “anarchism” and “anarchist” with chaos and bloody violence has always been questionable, especially because not every anarchist supports the use of force; indeed, some adhere to non-violence, at times dogmatically.1
A case in point is the somewhat surrealistic debate on the distinction between violence and non-violence that took place among Boston anarchists in 1978. The anti-nuclear organization Clamshell Alliance was planning a massive occupation of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant construction site about 50 kilometres from Boston. After the initial occupation in April 1977, when 1,414 activists were arrested, a steel fence had been erected around the site, and the anarchist affinity group Hard Rain proposed bringing bolt cutters to open a breach in the barrier. A number of activists opposed the idea on the grounds that using a cutter would amount to culpable violence, which would alienate individuals, thus deterring them from joining in the action, and provide an excuse for police repression. As an alternative to cutting the fence, thus destroying private property, it was proposed that the protesters climb over it or dig a tunnel underneath.2 However, the members of Hard Rain argued that overly symbolic actions risked distancing the anti-nuclear movement from working-class people, who were more prepared to confront the police than many members of the coalition. The “anti-cutter” faction won the day, but they did not succeed in organizing the occupation and ultimately settled for a rally outside the enclosure. A few months later it was decided to stage another occupation and this time to bring bolt cutters. The fence was breached, but behind it stood a line of police officers, whom the activists chose not to confront.
All of this illustrates the deeply ethical mindset prevailing in anarchist networks. Faced with the almost infinite power of a nuclear facility and the repressive power of the police assigned to protect it, these militants spent many hours debating whether the use of bolt cutters to open a fence would constitute an act of violence. The defenders of other ideologies often have had fewer qualms about using devices vastly more destructive than bolt cutters. The only people ever to have given the order for atomic bombs to be dropped on cities—Hiroshima and Nagasaki—were liberals.
Actually, many anarchists consider non-violence more legitimate than the use of force, which for them is justifiable only under exceptional circumstances. Among the most influential anarchist thinkers there is no consensus on the use of violence. Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) and Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) are the anarchist theorists most directly identified with the notion of armed revolution; both took part in a number of insurrections throughout Europe. By contrast, William Godwin (1756–1836), the English philosopher and a forerunner of anarchism, believed in the virtues of education and that to change the world one must change mentalities. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) promoted education and advocated electoral and parliamentary action; in his later years, he proposed that workers organize themselves immediately on an egalitarian and libertarian basis rather than strive to overthrow the state. Emma Goldman (1869–1940) and Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) changed their positions several times, though both consistently pointed out that anarchist violence is a great deal less deadly than that of the state. Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) noted that all ideologies find ways to justify the lethal violence of their supporters. Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) dogmatically repudiated all forms of violence and was a powerful influence on the strategic choices of Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), the pre-eminent non-violent activist of the twentieth century, who, though not an anarchist, had read Kropotkin’s works and had respect for anarchism.3
Notwithstanding the special connection that is widely believed to exist between political assassinations and anarchists, followers of every political ideology have been involved in such attacks. Dissenting Christians encouraged the assassination of corrupt monarchs and sometimes carried out those acts. Henri III of France was killed by Jacques Clément, a Dominican friar, on August 1, 1589. Ten years later, the Spanish Jesuit Mariana wrote in his De rege et regis institutione (1598), that “everyone can kill [a despot] and deprive him of life and power.” In 1610, François Ravaillac, who dreamed of joining the Jesuits, stabbed Henry IV to death. Anti-monarchists, too, have assassinated heads of state. Charles I of England, in 1649, and Louis XVI of France, in 1793, were decapitated during moments of revolutionary ferment; Carlos I of Portugal was shot to death in 1908. No anarchists took part in the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy (as far as we know), or in the failed attempts on the lives of Ronald Reagan, Charles de Gaulle, and John Paul II. Many heads of state have been assassinated in the wake of a coup d’état or a revolution, among them Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Thomas Sanaka in Burkina Faso, and Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu in Romania. No anarchists were involved in those killings. The Red Brigades, who assassinated the Italian prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978, were Marxist-Leninists. In India, Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, and finally her son Rajiv Gandhi were killed without the slightest involvement of anarchists. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was murdered by “Islamist” soldiers of his own army, and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed by a Jewish nationalist. Nationalists of all stripes have assassinated far more heads of state than anarchists. The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi lost their lives on April 6, 1994, when their airplane was brought down by a missile; the Rwandan prime minister was killed the following day by soldiers of the regular armed forces; these actions plunged the region into genocide. Add to this list state-sponsored terrorism and as well as the attempts, successful or not, on the lives of heads of state directly or indirectly orchestrated by, for instance, the United States: Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Muammar Qaddafi, and others. As part of their “war on terrorism,” the United States today practises targeted killings—often by drones—of the leaders of Islamist networks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. And for years, the Israeli armed forces have been eliminating Palestinian leaders through targeted killings.
The official history of modern liberal states is replete with violent direct actions carried out by individuals who today are hailed as heroes for having furthered the cause of freedom, equality, and justice. On December 16, 1773, when North America was still under Britain’s imperial yoke, colonists in Boston donned disguises to avoid recognition, slipped into the harbour in canoes, boarded three ships, and dumped their cargoes of tea into the water. These “vandals” destroyed several tons of merchandise to denounce the taxes imposed by Great Britain on imported goods and the Crown’s financial subsidies to the East India Company. This was, in a sense, direct action in support of free trade. At the time, the British colonial authorities and moderate American patriots like George Washington saw this as little more than vandalism and illegitimate violence. Today, however, the patriots who staged the Boston Tea Party are regarded as heroes of the movement that led to the independence of the United States of America. Similarly, the French Revolution involved a multitude of direct actions, the most renowned of course being the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris by a large crowd on July 14, 1789. Bastille Day was later proclaimed the French national holiday and to this day is celebrated with great pomp by the President of the Republic and the armed forces. All of this prompted a woman who took part in the Black Bloc in Toronto in 2010 to deplore the “hypocri[sy] of bourgeois states [that] call us terrorists, while celebrating, for instance, July 4th in the United States and July 14th in France, dates that marked the culmination of bloody revolutions.”4
Almost all of today’s liberal regimes, which claim to embody values of freedom, equality, and justice, were founded through acts far more violent than the direct actions carried out by present-day activists. The United States, after winning its War of Independence, conquered the Native Americans through a series of wars. Modern France emerged as a result of several revolutions, not to mention colonialist wars. Liberalism was imposed on Germany through a military conquest, and on Japan with the help of atomic bombs. Once established, the liberal state strives to inculcate the population with the idea that it alone is entitled to employ political violence. Political authorities organize public events to underscore their claims to a monopoly on violence. The major international summits are examples of this; they serve as opportunities for these leaders to deploy thousands of heavily armed and highly visible police officers. Honour guards, shouldering arms in full dress uniform, greet foreign dignitaries as they step out of their airplanes to the sound of national anthems, many of which glorify martial values. Some examples: “perilous fight” and “bombs bursting in air” amid “battle’s confusion,” followed by the rallying cry “then conquer we must,” in the Star Spangled Banner; “thy arm ready to wield the sword” in O Canada! (in the original French version); and, of course, the bloodthirsty refrain of La Marseillaise, which calls for the “impure blood” of the enemy to “water our furrows.” Briefly put, claims to a monopoly on violence underpin the state’s political authority. This authority, however liberal the state may be, ultimately rests on the violence of its police and armed forces.
Western governments and their supporters go so far as to back groups engaging in violent direct actions against enemy regimes. Two well-known examples, from the 1980s, were the armed militias of “freedom fighters”—the mujahedeen of Afghanistan and the contras of Nicaragua—funded and armed by the United States. The CIA produced and distributed a Manual for Freedom Fighters that instructed Nicaraguans opposed to the socialist Sandinista regime on how to make Molotov cocktails and use them to attack police stations.5 Liberal politicians and journalists have often shown sympathy and respect for rioters confronting police forces in foreign states; in 1989, for example, a crowd of “youths” battered the Berlin Wall with sledgehammers.6 Not one Western journalist or observer tried to minimize the political import of these violent acts by depicting the men and women committing them as drunken, thrill-seeking “young rioters” or “thugs.”
Conservatives, too, have resorted to direct action when political authorities make decisions contrary to their interests. On the night of April 24, 1849, in Montreal, then the capital of Canada, the Parliament building was set ablaze by an angry mob that also sabotaged the city’s firefighting equipment and attacked the governor’s entourage. The crowd was composed almost exclusively of members of the city’s Anglo elite. Over the following days, the prime minister’s residence was attacked twice; the Cyrus Hotel, where the inquiry into the torching of Parliament was under way, was also set on fire. The “vandals” in this case were reacting to Parliament’s decision to compensate French Canadian victims of repression in the aftermath of the republican Patriots’ failed uprising of 1837–38. It is worth noting, moreover, that Montreal’s Anglo elite was all the more enraged because for a number of years the British government had been threatening to drive many of its members into bankruptcy with a free trade policy that would deprive Canadian exporters of preferential tariffs in British markets.7 More recently, in France in the early months of 2013, hundreds of thousands marched in opposition to a new law allowing same-sex marriage. The demonstrations ended in riots, with groups of homophobes and neo-fascists attacking journalists and throwing stones and bottles at the police. Finally, turning to religious mythology, one finds, once again, heroes who are perfectly ready to destroy commercial property. According to legend, Jesus drove the Jerusalem merchants from the temple with a whip and cast their money and ritual offerings on the ground. This is the act that is reputed to have convinced the Jewish religious authorities that Jesus had gone too far and deserved the death penalty.8
It is true that over a century ago, anarchists did assassinate several reigning monarchs and presidents. Their primary purpose was to avenge the deaths of comrades and workers at the hands of executioners, police officers, or strike breakers, by singling out the political figures deemed responsible for the bloody repression. Anarchists also expressed solidarity with far left, vaguely Marxist and libertarian terrorist groups that in the 1960s and 1970s were active in Germany (Red Army Faction), Italy (Red Brigades), and France (Action directe) and that were involved to varying degrees in the assassination of politicians, military officers, and the heads of major corporations. In every case, the terrorists’ ultimate aspiration of seeing the masses rise up in a great revolutionary surge was never realized, and the ensuing repression inflicted on the protest movement as a whole was exceedingly harsh. Indeed, certain voices on the left and the far left (echoing statements made on the right and by security “experts”) have warned Black Blockers against the “temptation of terrorism.”9
Regarding terrorist organizations, activists appear to have drawn some lessons from past experience. Sofiane, who in recent years participated in political riots in Europe, declares his solidarity with the members of France’s now-defunct Action directe, but adds that “we don’t agree with what they did. We’re sufficiently aware of global political history over the past 50 years to avoid repeating the same mistakes.”10 But on May 5, 2010, during a massive demonstration in Athens against the government’s austerity policies, a group of anarchists threw a Molotov cocktail at a bank despite efforts by other anarchists to dissuade them. Three bank employees died of asphyxiation. In the wake of this event, anarchist collectives published many texts. Notwithstanding rumours that the assailants had actually been agents provocateurs belonging to the police, some anarchists made no effort to distance themselves from the attack, stating that Greek society was in the grip of a social war in which there was no neutral position and that bank employees were not altogether blameless. In many other texts, however, the authors sought to dissociate themselves from the lethal attack, using one of two lines of argument. The first position, representing a minority, was that anarchism had become too dogmatic and must be abandoned and replaced by post-anarchism, that is, an anarchism unfettered by dogmatic references to the historical workers’ movement and the revolutionary myth. The second, endorsed by the majority of organizations associated with “official” anarchism, accepted a share of the responsibility for what had transpired, inasmuch as they viewed themselves as guardians of the anarchist tradition and regretted having let the activists who had torched the bank assume a militant posture that amounted to little more than rioting, the fetishizing of violence, and the adoption of what in effect was an antisociety attitude. A few of the texts rebuked the “anarcho-patriarchs” (i.e., veteran anarchists) for taking up too much space in the movement, thereby alienating younger militants, who then chose to play at rioting.11 Overall, the vast majority of Greek anarchists felt that the attack on the bank had not been intended to cause death, but neither was it a model of successful or indeed desirable action.12
Still in Greece, some activists, such as the members of the Revolutionary Struggle organization, claimed in 2011, in a communiqué from prison, “that armed struggle is over time an integral part of the revolutionary movement of the struggle and social revolution. That armed struggle is more suitable and necessary than ever, especially under the current conditions of economic crisis.” In their communiqué, Pola Roupa, Kostas Gournas, and Nikos Maziotis explained that they “come from the anarchist milieu and have many years of experience participating in mass events, demonstrations, squats; in clashes in the streets and assemblies, as well as, some of us, experience of participating in collectives and groups.”13
Although a few proposals made by Black Bloc supporters lean toward a clandestine, rather hierarchical organization moving in the direction of armed struggle, and even a military-style mass organization,14 activists by and large seem critical of this sort of approach (although solidarity with those facing repression and imprisonment is always necessary and important). In the words of a militant who acknowledges having confronted police and destroyed some symbols of capitalism, “armed struggle is elitist activity conducted by a small group meeting in secret. This is bullshit—we will all do it for ourselves.”15 Even those who feel, for example, that “capital is waging war against us,” and that the deadly structural violence of the system is equivalent to a kind of “social war,” do not stockpile weapons or pursue training in how to use them, apart from a few Molotov cocktails. Today’s anarchists may talk or dream about “revolution,” but they are not preparing for one.
In reality, and despite a genuine renewal, anarchism remains a relatively weak social movement, one that gave up the armed struggle long ago and whose actions are incomparably less violent than those of the state. Still, anarchist discourse—in analytical texts, pamphlets, songs, and graffiti—abounds with calls to revolt against the police, the state, and capitalism. The Anarchist Youth Network of Britain and Ireland declared in 2003: “We want to destroy government and rich people’s privileges … Capitalism must be fought in the streets.”16 That is why there is also a tendency to associate the Black Bloc with insurrectionary anarchism, which valorizes sabotage and rioting, echoing the discourse of Alfredo M. Bonanno in Armed Joy, or of The Coming Insurrection by the Comité invisible (Invisible Committee). To quote the pamphlet Some Notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism,
As anarchists, the revolution is our constant point of reference … Precisely because it is a concrete event, it must be built daily through more modest attempts which do not have all the liberating characteristics of the social revolution in the true sense. These more modest attempts are insurrections … The passage from the various insurrections—limited and circumscribed—to revolution can never be guaranteed in advance by any method. What the system is afraid of is not these acts of sabotage in themselves, so much as their spreading socially.17
In a more poetic vein, following the demonstrations against the G8 in Germany in 2007, a communiqué put out by two anarchists of the Calisse Brigade under the title “A. Anti. Anti-Capitalista!” declared,
Similar to love, a riot can sometimes take us by surprise, when we think we are not prepared, but if we have an open disposition, a riot, like love, will allow us to seize opportunities and situations. It would be futile to say that we can prepare a riot, though we can at least prepare for riots: do what it takes to help ignite the fire.18
Is Political Violence “Effective”?
Ideological and moral debates aside, history and sociology unfortunately provide no clear answer to the question of the political “effectiveness” of social movements, demonstrations, and tactics, whether violent or non-violent. Analyses of this issue are rare and their results inconsistent.19 Steven E. Barkan and Lynne L. Snowden conclude that with regard to collective actions, since we can’t know for sure what the difference is between violence and non-violence, we can’t determine the best strategies for achieving the changes that protest groups seek.20
The debate over violent versus non-violent tactics is all the more inevitable because it is extremely difficult to agree on the criteria for judging the effectiveness of a social movement or even a demonstration (as acknowledged, among others, by the anarchist activist and writer Randall Amster).21 What is the measure of a demonstration’s success? The degree of attention received from political leaders, the general public, the media? The extent to which the political and economic life of the city or country is disrupted? The fact, however shocking, of being arrested or even beaten by the police—something that Gandhi and his supporters invited at times—so as to expose the dark side of the “rule of law”? The increased personal prestige of the demonstration’s organizers?
Furthermore, beyond any single demonstration, how can the broader objectives of a social movement be defined? If one considers, for example, the movement against capitalist globalization, is the goal to bring down capitalism or to reform it? If the latter, will the actions of the Black Blocs and their allies hinder the non-violent activists demanding reforms, or will such actions, because they are so highprofile, exert pressure on the political authorities to the point of hastening reforms? Is it a matter, finally, of exchanging one political elite for another—more specifically, of replacing the current leaders with spokespersons for major organizations in the alter-globalization movement or anti-austerity campaigns?
With regard to anarchists’ collective mobilization, Randall Amster says that one might also be concerned about
the utility of disruptive tactics; cultural changes rather than only political or economic ones; the directionality of change rather than only just specific outcomes; the reclamation of space for movement activities; changing the salience of issues in the public debate; reframing the meanings of terms and interactions; focusing on the empowerment and identity constructions of movement actors; highlighting the worthiness and commitment of participants; the creation of a “credible threat” to established authorities; and the level of repression experienced by the movement, either overtly or covertly.22
In any case, the “effectiveness” of a militant action or a social movement must always be examined. Was it able to mobilize people? Increase media exposure? Shift the balance of power vis-à-vis one’s enemies? Win over allies and play a leading role among them? Provide an example for the populations one claims to represent? Obtain more resources through public funding? Affect the outcome of elections? In addition, the “effectiveness” of a social movement or a demonstration must be determined in relation to the heterogeneity of the participants, who will view that effectiveness differently depending on whether they are new to the movement, veterans of autonomous activism, volunteers in a militant organization, employees of a community association, militants dreaming of a career in a political party, individuals with official titles in their organizations (e.g., president, treasurer, media spokesperson), and so forth. Academics and militant “leaders,” however, tend to conceive of effectiveness in terms of systemic gains, that is, stronger representation in official institutions and a greater share of collective resources.23 The tendency to reduce a movement’s effectiveness to its potential for bringing its “representatives” into the decision-making process of the institutions overseeing economic globalization is precisely why organization leaders are inclined to condemn the Black Blocs (a point examined below).
This dynamic is not unique to the alter-globalization movement. Frances Piven and Richard Cloward, as well as other sociologists, have described how the self-proclaimed leaders of a social movement are likely to keep its members disciplined so that the official political elite will acknowledge the “leaders” as the only responsible and respectable representatives of the movement.24 Yet ironically, the direct actions of the Black Blocs and their allies may have positive effects for the reformists who are so ready to censure them. For the actions—indeed, the very existence—of the Black Blocs and their allies have the potential to send shock waves through the entire political sphere, obliging officials and reformist office-holders to reposition themselves, and engendering debates, struggles, and shifts in alliances, strategies, and orientations that can transform the economic and political status quo, give rise to negotiations, and ultimately generate reforms. Reforms brought about by radical actions—a paradox? Not really. Indeed, the use of force by certain components of a broad social movement can benefit the very people who condemn this tactical choice.
The classic examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are enlightening in this regard. Official history ascribes great political and moral wisdom to these two celebrated advocates of non-violent direct action. They are often described as having triumphed solely through non-violent practices. Yet each was part of a vast movement encompassing political actors who did resort to force and who carried out armed assaults against the police and the military. Would nonviolent activists have succeeded on their own, without the violence of their allies, in driving the British colonizers from India or checking racial segregation in the United States?25 Examples from the feminist and labour movements are equally illuminating. As discussed earlier, feminists of the early 20th century, despite their marked penchant for non-violent action, sometimes resorted to force, setting fire to mailboxes and churches, breaking store windows, occupying polling stations, and destroying election ballot boxes and ballots. Around the same time, union militants, in the face of often bloody police and military repression, engaged in violent actions that punctuated the labour movement’s campaigns for political rights and decent working conditions. As Emmeline Pankhurst recalled about the 1880s, the very early days of the suffragist movement,
not one woman took counsel with herself as to how and why the agricultural labourers had won their franchise. They had won it, as a matter of fact, by burning hayricks, rioting, and otherwise demonstrating their strength in the only way that English politicians can understand. The threat to march a hundred thousand men to the House of Commons unless the bill was passed played its part also in securing the agricultural labourer his political freedom. But no woman suffragist noticed that.26
It is quite plausible that in all these cases the pressure generated by violent actions prompted the political authorities to seriously consider accepting a certain degree of emancipation with a view to isolating and neutralizing more easily those involved in such actions. In this way, the use of force may have contributed to India’s independence, the end of racial segregation in the United States, and the relative emancipation of women and workers in the West. Seen in that light, the use of force in the political arena may well be an effective way to engender debate and change in situations that at first glance seem immutable.
Be that as it may, since the beginning of the alter-globalization movement it has not been at all clear what effect, if any, peaceful mobilizations and protests have had on neoliberalism and capitalism. Ward Churchill, in his study Pacifism as Pathology, warns against dogmatic advocates of non-violence, who willingly labour under the “pathological” illusion that a candlelight vigil in front of, for example, the headquarters of the war department, is an “effective” way to stop a war (just as it would be absurd to suppose that hurling a stone at a bank window disrupts capitalism; in both cases the action is ultimately a symbolic one, expressive to varying degrees of a more or less potent critique). The anarchist activist Tammy Kovich, who marched with the Black Bloc at the Toronto G20 Summit, has stated,
The pacifist position is accepted without question, while advocates of more aggressive tactics are put on the defensive. We need to turn the debate on its head—given the severity of the situation we face, in light of the pervasive nature of the systems of domination and oppression that we oppose, and acknowledging the pressing need for an intensification of our struggle, we need to begin asking ourselves if non-violence can be justified.27
In the current non-revolutionary context, radicals, instead of biding their time while they watch for the advent of a new world, fight in the existing world to open up and enlarge spaces of freedom, equality, and justice. Activists may find this frustrating inasmuch as it bespeaks their lack of control over the potentially reformist repercussions of their political actions. But so it goes for any political actor in a complex world.28
Outside the debates in the alternative media, however, the message of this political “violence” remains generally misunderstood. Considering how they are vilified by the mainstream media, which, at the same time, massively promote consumerism, the Black Blocs and their allies will have to carry out many more direct actions for material goods to lose their sacred status and for Black Blockers to make a difference on the political scene.
Yet the Black Blocs have garnered some sympathetic responses. Indeed, their actions have sometimes been praised by those non-violent protesters who realize that force is sometimes necessary to boost the visibility and dynamism of progressive campaigns. Black Blocs are often accompanied by dozens or even hundreds of demonstrators whose presence testifies to their symbolic, moral, and political support. This was the case, for instance, when radical feminist blocs waved black and purple flags (the anarchist-feminist colours) at the Toronto G20 Summit in 2010 and during the May Day demonstration in Montreal in 2012. A journalist covering the No TAV protests in Italy in 2011 quoted “an elderly lady” on the subject of the Black Blocs: “They may be anarchist, but we should thank them anyway because they are doing something for us.”29
The Target Is the Message
Protest is never organized haphazardly; its targets are always chosen for their symbolic value. Clément Barette interviewed participants in political riots in Europe and reported that “all the subjects asserted that targets were chosen because of the symbolic weight attributed to them. Almost all stressed that certain ethical principles were applied to the destruction [of the targets], with respect to the projected image of the riot as well as personal, political, and social ‘morals.’”30
On the subject of the Black Bloc presence at the Occupy Oakland rally, an anonymous commentator observed:
To the pleasure of a great majority of the several hundred demonstrators, an active minority within the march set about attacking a series of targets: Chase Bank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Whole Foods, the UC Office of the President … The choice of these targets seems intuitive to anyone attuned to the political climate of Oakland. The banks attacked are responsible for tens of thousands of foreclosures in Oakland alone … Despite any number [of] reasons to destroy these places, the remarkable point of these attacks was that no justification was necessary. As each pane of glass fell to the floor and each ATM was put out of service, cheers would consistently erupt. In 1999, at the height of neoliberal prosperity, participants in the black bloc at the Seattle WTO summit issued a communiqué detailing the crimes of their targets. A dozen years and a worldwide crisis later, such an indictment would seem silly. Everyone hates these places.”31
On principle, Black Blocs do not strike community centres, public libraries, the offices of women’s committees, or even small independent businesses; their attacks focus on the soulless premises of large corporations. Again, the target is the message. Critics of the Black Blocs have often pointed out that amid all the confusion, small independent businesses have been attacked. In his article “The Cancer of Occupy,” Chris Hedges asserts that “groups of Black Bloc protesters, for example, smashed the windows of a locally owned coffee shop in November in Oakland and looted it.”32 Admittedly, the targets of Black Bloc actions are not always emblematic of the state or of corporate capitalism. On May Day 2013, in Seattle, the police broke up a demonstration and some protesters reacted by smashing windows, including those of a local bar named Bill’s Off Broadway. According to an observer, activists were saying: “I’d gladly smash a Bank of America window, but I’d never— and I don’t know anyone who would ever—want to break the window of a neighbourhood bar or pizzeria. What the hell happened there?”
Then who did it? Was it random free agents with no political consciousness, or was it “demonstrators who forgot the ‘targeted’ part of ‘targeted property damage’”? In any case, a group named the Anarchists of Puget Sound sent this message: “We support everything that happened last night but feel that it is our responsibility to support our neighborhood small businesses as well … We would like to throw a benefit for Bill’s Off Broadway and other small businesses to help them with the cost of replacing their windows.”33
My own observations are that it is quite exceptional for Black Blockers to smash the windows of small shops. In any case, it is prudent to investigate further before concluding that merely gratuitous violence was involved. In Montreal, for example, the glass door of a pizzeria was broken during a demonstration; what came to light a few days later was that several police officers had taken shelter in the restaurant after apprehending a protester and that the Black Bloc had been attempting to free their comrade. In Strasbourg in April 2009, a Black Bloc threw a Molotov cocktail at an Ibis Hotel. Why?, I asked myself, notwithstanding that Ibis is a major international hotel. Several years later, from a pamphlet about that specific mobilization, I learned why the activists had considered it a legitimate target: the hotel had housed journalists attending the official NATO meeting; police were hiding in it to spy on protesters, and it was regularly making a profit from refugees who were in the process of being expelled.34 Concerning the incident in Oakland, the graphic journalist Susie Cagle explained: “The ‘local coffee shop’ vandalism Hedges contends was committed by Black Bloc [activists] was in fact one window of a corporate coffee chain smashed … and by someone not wearing a mask, not wearing black.”35
For three days in April 2009, thousands of protesters in Strasbourg, some peaceful, some militant, marked the 60th anniversary of NATO.
Over the years, more and more witnesses have come forward to recount that Black Blocs have often protected other demonstrators against police assaults. During the debate in the United States about the presence of Black Blocs in Occupy Movement demonstrations, a journalist-activist declared: “I have seen black blocs de-arresting their comrades [stealing people back from police custody], without hurting anyone or anything … I have seen them returning tear gas canisters from whence they came in order to mitigate the suffering of children and elderly protesters in their midst.”36
During the Quebec student strike of 2012, a number of statements on the Web thanked the Black Blocs for protecting or rescuing demonstrators from police brutality. A 67-year-old man posted this comment on the blog of Jean-François Lisee, a well-known Quebec journalist and politician:
Yesterday my wife and I went to join the young people in the streets. A police officer called my wife an old bag so I went over to give him a piece of my mind and he pepper-sprayed me. A Black Bloc member came to help me and splashed a liquid on my eyes that eased the pain. Before, I was afraid of the young masked Black Blockers … Not any more. Now I’m afraid of the young masked officers of the SPVM (Montreal police force).37
Similarly, after seeing the Black Bloc lob tear gas canisters back at the police, erect barricades, and provide first aid to the injured, a female protester wrote on Facebook:
I didn’t hear anyone thank the members of the Black Bloc and the other radicals who had the courage to put themselves between the police and the population … THANK YOU … I refuse to condemn you … I hope you won’t have to intervene again. I would like for your presence to be unnecessary … But you are actually the last defensive wall for people trying to exercise their democratic rights.38
A Black Blocker kicks a tear gas canister back at police during the Quebec Liberal Party Congress of May 4, 2012, Victoriaville, Quebec.
Heart Attack protest against the 2010 Olympics, Granville Street, Vancouver, Canada, February 13, 2010.
Anarchist Violence and Respect for Tactical Diversity
The violence versus non-violence debate is a perennial source of tension in progressive and radical circles, where the ethics of using force are of greater concern than they apparently are for the political elites, including liberals. In the early 1990s, the expression “fluffy vs spiky” was how English-speaking activists characterized the debate.39 In those oversimplified terms, the Black Blocs are of course quintessentially “spiky.” In reality, however, such distinctions are moot. In 2000, during the anti-IMF/World Bank rally in Prague, the Black Bloc brought a beach ball four metres across to play with the water cannon, but it also threw Molotov cocktails at the police.40 At the same event, a member of the Tactical Frivolity collective, composed of women disguised as giant fairies and associated with the Pink & Silver Bloc, expressed her weariness with the “fluffy vs spiky” debate. One might have expected her to categorically condemn all violence. Instead she wondered: “What is violence anyway when the State is, like, killing people every day, man. And the people in the World Bank eat Third World babies for breakfast, so if they get bricked then, hey, that’s their fault.”41
Yet it is not unusual for debates, shouting matches, and even scuffles to break out among protesters, with “violent” activists being laid into by “non-violent” activists or the “peace police”—as they were dubbed in “A Communiqué from one section of the Black Bloc of N30 in Seattle,” sent out on the Web after the demonstrations in 1999. To quote from that communiqué: “On at least six separate occasions, so-called ‘non-violent’ activists physically attacked individuals who targeted corporate property. Some even went so far as to stand in front of the Niketown super store and tackle and shove the black bloc away.”42 More than ten years later, during the Occupy rally in Oakland, Black Blockers were jostled by “non-violent” demonstrators, one of whom threatened them with martial arts moves. More recently, during the Quebec student strike of 2012, “non-violent” protesters assaulted members of the Black Bloc, manhandling them or tackling them from behind and pinning them to the ground. Two demonstrators were even proud to tell the media, with reference to broken windows: “We don’t want that. Okay, so in the streets tonight we’re taking the law into our own hands!”43
Those “peace police” activists were clearly authoritarian and repressive in their efforts to impose non-violence by force. But does this mean that a group of a few dozen amilitants can legitimately use force against symbols of capitalism or the police during a demonstration at the risk of turning the thousands of other protesters into targets of police violence?
For a few of the mobilizations that took place around 2000, it was proposed to identify certain areas of the city by colours so as to allow different types of demonstrations to be held simultaneously. This was done at the Reclaim the Street rally in London on June 18, 1999; at the first Global Day of Action called by Peoples’ Global Action (PGA), an anti-capitalist network founded in Geneva in 1998 and close to the Zapatista rebels; at the protest marches against the IMF and World Bank in Washington in April 2000; and in Prague on September 26, 2000, for the protest against the IMF and World Bank Summit. Colour coding made it possible to distinguish among three separate marches: blue for the Black Bloc, accompanied by the Infernal Noise Brigade marching band; yellow for the Tute Bianche; pink for the Pink and Silver Bloc.44 In Prague, it was necessary to establish a “separation between permitted and non-permitted events by time and space to insure safe space for internationals, high risk folks or others who want to be assured of avoiding police repression in any form.” It was also important to cultivate a “sense of unity between all aspects of the action whether permitted or non-permitted.”45 In Montreal, militants belonging to the Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes (CLAC: Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles) believed that in order to facilitate tactical diversity, appropriate forms of mobilization, organization, and discourse would be needed.
In 2001, CLAC, together with the Comité d’accueil du Sommet des Amériques (CASA: Welcome Committee for the Summit of the Americas), proposed a new concept, “respect for diversity of tactics,” a principle that valorized political autonomy while also stressing the legitimacy of multiple forms of protest within a single movement.46 The expression was not altogether new. For instance, it had been used in the United States in 1990 during discussions on the antiwar movement as a whole, which, it was argued, should accept legal, peaceful demonstrations as well as acts of sabotage.47
CLAC, founded in April 2000, specialized in organizing demonstrations—putting up mobilization posters, renting trucks and music equipment, distributing food and water, setting up teams to provide medical and legal assistance, and so on. But it did not participate directly in the actions of affinity groups and individual protesters. Respect for diversity of tactics and the deliberate absence of marshals meant that those taking part in CLAC rallies could carry out actions within a very broad spectrum ranging from street theatre to attacks on symbolic targets. This meant that CLAC’s “media committees” would not denounce the actions of the Black Blocs and their allies in their public statements. Furthermore, when organizing a demonstration, CLAC identified three zones: “green,” “yellow,” and “red.” The green zone was a sanctuary where demonstrators were, theoretically, in no danger of being arrested. The yellow zone was for those undertaking nonviolent civil disobedience and involved a minor risk of being arrested. The red zone was for protesters who were ready for more aggressive tactics, including skirmishing with the police. These spatial divisions were also meant to allow protesters who were unwilling to take part in such confrontations or risk being arrested to openly associate with radical organizations like CLAC. Note, however, that the police in Montreal and Quebec City have not always abided by these divisions. Indeed, they have attacked “green” zones on a number of occasions; for example, they arrested 240 people assembled in a green zone during rallies against the WTO in Montreal in July 2003.
CLAC was able to articulate the concept of “respect for diversity of tactics” thanks not only to the valorization of the autonomy of collective action among its members but also to international circumstances and the particular context of activism in Montreal at the time. In the late 1990s many CLAC members had worked in SalAMI, a group established to protest against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI, or AMI in French) through non-violent civil disobedience and voluntary mass arrests. Over time, SalAMI grew increasingly authoritarian, its leaders more and more inclined to “moralize” about non-violence. On several occasions they even publicly admonished the “vandals” belonging to other militant groups.48 At a rally held in Montreal on March 15, 2000, by the Collectif opposé à la brutalité policière (COBP: Committee Opposed to Police Brutality), demonstrators clashed with the police, a McDonald’s and some banks were attacked, and over 100 people were arrested. SalAMI’s leaders, along with those of the Mouvement action justice (MAJ: Justice Action Movement), publically condemned the “vandals.” At that point a number of militants abandoned SalAMI and joined CLAC or other militant groups promoting respect for tactical diversity.
Finally, CLAC’s declared position in favour of tactical diversity was intended to foster greater awareness among Western activists of the significance of “violence.” As a member of Peoples’ Global Action (PGA), CLAC thought it useful to recall that what in the West is perceived as “violent”—taking down a fence, breaking a window, throwing a stone at a police officer—may seem trivial from the standpoint of the protest and resistance movements of the “South,” where political and economic conflicts are far more polarized, protesters often risk their lives when taking action, and the use of weapons such as machetes or even firearms is at times considered necessary to prevent massacres at the hands of police, military, or paramilitary forces.49 CLAC embraced PGA principles proposing, among other things, the adoption of a “confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organisations,” and the employment of “direct action and civil disobedience.”50
Respect for tactical diversity is also consistent with anarchism. Indeed, what sets anarchism plainly apart from other political ideologies is not its attitude toward violence, but its profound respect for equality and individual freedom. Clément Barette has interviewed a number of French citizens who have taken part in demonstrations. He notes that they define themselves as “anarchists,” “autonomous activists (autonomes),” “communists,” and “libertarian communists.” He adds that, beyond the welter of labels, “autonomy in decision-making and action [is] the main criterion … with regard to political activity or the recourse to violence.”51
However, among Black Blockers and their allies there are some who occasionally adopt a dogmatic and disdainful stance toward those who do not use force, an attitude expressed in their refusal to debate in good faith at meetings where preparations for a demonstration are being discussed. At such times, the notion of respect for tactical diversity may be used disingenuously as an excuse for not considering the viewpoints of those who are uncomfortable with rowdy demonstrations.52 On the whole, however, Black Blockers have no problem respecting tactical diversity and the plurality of collective actions at demonstrations: marching peacefully with signs, flags, and slogans; staging sit-ins or die-ins and non-violent blocking actions; performing street theatre, music, and giant puppet shows; displaying large banners and writing graffiti; and, possibly, resorting to force. Indeed, Black Bloc activists are well aware that many anarchists and anarchist sympathizers, including close friends and relations, engage in non-violent civil disobedience and peaceful demonstrations, and that their choices must be respected and their safety ensured.53 An interviewee who participated in various affinity groups within Black Blocs said: “I never obliged anyone to throw anything. I’m for the diversity of tactics and there are Black Bloc members who don’t want to use force and who form affinity groups of volunteers, medics, for example.”54 A Boston resident who had participated in various demonstrations without ever having used force said in an interview that “respect for the diversity of tactics is essential. Each person must do what she or he thinks is right … When it comes to violence … I know perfectly well that I don’t have all the answers on the subject of violence/non-violence, so I’m not going to prevent people from doing what they want to do; I don’t want that sort of power.”55
Tactical diversity sometimes takes the form of parallel demonstrations, such as those organized recently for May Day in Berlin and Montreal. In the march held by labour unions, demonstrators were kept in line by a corps of marshals, while a separate anti-capitalist march was more tolerant of direct actions. During the protests against the Toronto G20 Summit in 2010, the Black Bloc and its allies split off from the mass demonstration, dashing in the opposite direction to attack symbols of capitalism. Throughout the Quebec student strike of 2012 there were calls for autonomous “disruptive actions.”
In other situations, after some windows were broken at large demonstrations, a number of people angrily accused the Black Blocs of endangering protesters who had decided to march peacefully. Notwithstanding their abundant references to equality and citizens’ participation, very few progressive organizations respect tactical diversity and applaud pluralism among activists. In fact, most spokespersons for reformist groups find such an approach intolerable. Surprisingly, the same has been true of the Convergence des luttes antiautoritaire et anticapitaliste (CLAAACG8: Convergence of Anti-Authoritarian and Anti-Capitalist Struggles), an umbrella organization of French and European anarchists, including Alternative libertaire, the Confédération nationale du travail, Fédération anarchiste, Organisation communiste libertaire, Organisation socialiste libertaire, and the Réseau No Pasaran. CLAAACG8 was founded during the runup to the June 2003 G8 Summit in Évian. Its aim was to enable those all too often rival groups to unite their forces and co-operate with social democratic organizations in the massive unitary march protesting the Summit. One of its goals was institutional in nature—that is, to see its red and black contingent surpass in number those of other participating organizations, such as the LCR, the Greens, and ATTAC, which had jointly negotiated the route and the march’s security arrangements with the French and Swiss authorities. Mission accomplished (if one credits the reports in Le Monde), to the great delight of the anarchist organizers.56
But this political choice had meant reining in the protesters to keep things from getting out of hand (thereby ensuring the success of the organizers’ institutional strategy and projecting the desired public image of the CLAAACG8). While paying lip service to tactical diversity, CLAAACG8 had put together its own corps of marshals and had made it known that the red and black contingent would not allow itself to serve as the “aircraft carrier” (as one organizer put it) for those planning militant direct actions. The reason given for all this was that demonstrators unwilling to confront the police should not be put in harm’s way.57 As it turned out, the CLAAACG8 contingent did take part in the very peaceful “unitary” march, but by then, a series of disruptive actions had already taken place, earlier that morning, far from the site of the mass demonstration.
CLAAACG8’s “institutional” approach was deplored by a number of autonomous groups and individuals, who were deeply disappointed to see anarchist groups surfing the alter-globalization wave and measuring the success of their own mobilizations by comparing them to those of the social democrats and in terms of the mainstream media coverage. In response, a handful of anarchists from Strasbourg and elsewhere formed a contingent that identified itself as the “CLAAAC réfractaire” (Insubordinate CLAAAC), which marched directly behind the marshals of the official CLAAACG8 chanting slogans about the “libertarian police.” The Humus Bloc, for its part, put out a sarcastic statement concerning the “security arrangements of the demonstration made in agreement with the police to prevent ‘vandals’ from executing any ‘terrorist’ actions,” and asking if it was “necessary to negotiate the self-management (autogestion) of demonstrations with the cops.”58
Performative Symbolism
The Pink Bloc carnivalesque protest actions like the one just described can be problematic for elites precisely because they are carried out in a largely festive spirit. Similarly, the Black Blocs “play” at incarnating the character of the “violent anarchist,” at once adopting and shaping the image associated with anarchists in the Western imagination. According to the anarchist activist and anthropologist David Graeber, even the most aggressive actions taken by Black Blocs have more to do with spectacle than with actual violence.
Many elements of the popular rebellions in medieval Western societies have endured and re-emerged in the large anti-capitalist rallies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In the Middle Ages,59 the people often took advantage of carnival days, when the streets belonged to them, to express—sometimes festively, sometimes violently—their dissatisfaction with the political, religious, or economic authorities. Anonymity was a concern even then, and scholars of popular protest movements have identified a “tradition of anonymity”—a tradition worth upholding today, given that as the powers-that-be have no misgivings about meting out punishment to those who defy them.60 Behind their disguises and masks, the people who joined in the medieval celebrations felt less exposed to the brutality of the authorities. Centuries later, during the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, members of the Black Bloc wore masks on which the following statement was printed in English and French: “We will remain faceless because we refuse the spectacle of celebrity, because we are everyone, because the carnival beckons, because the world is upside down, because we are everywhere. By wearing masks we show that who we are is not as important as what we want, and what we want is everything for everyone.”61 Medieval carnivals also made it less hazardous to express anger, whether through laughter and satire, symbolic violence (e.g., burning effigies), or physical violence (e.g., pillaging shops known to overcharge for basic necessities, or ransacking the tax collector’s residence).
International summits themselves are in fact festivals—admittedly more ceremonial than festive—where the elites occupy centre stage and put on a show for the whole world. A G20 Summit attracts thousands of journalists, who are greeted and accommodated in keeping with the detailed plans of the Summit organizers. The purpose of such events has much more to do with symbolism than decision making; most of the negotiations have already been conducted, and the major decisions have been made beforehand, at far less visible ministerial meetings. In the face of the official spectacle designed to legitimize and glorify power, the “street party” counter-spectacle strives to demonstrate the power of protest and to chip away at the aura of legitimacy of official power. It is in this light that one can interpret, for instance, the idea of the Deconstructionist Institute for Surreal Topology (DIST), a group that brought a full-size catapult to the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. For the first time in recent history, the authorities had established a security perimeter several kilometres across, which the local population soon dubbed the “wall of shame.”62 The catapult, whose ammunition consisted exclusively of teddy bears, served to highlight the image of power entrenched behind a wall. What ensued was nothing short of a farce. Jaggi Singh, a well-known member of CLAC, was identified by the police as the leader of the Black Blocs, arrested, and detained for weeks on charges including possessing a weapon, to wit, the catapult seized by the police. This was a first in North American jurisprudence. Jaggi Singh would eventually be acquitted of all charges. Serge Ménard, Quebec’s Minister of Public Security during the Summit of the Americas, formulated his personal theory about the catapult: “I know that in the long run this is part of a plan. Because at the next demonstration they organize, wherever in the world it may be, something will be hidden inside the teddy bear. It may be acid, a Molotov cocktail, bricks.”63 Twelve years after the Summit of the Americas, no other catapult has ever popped up in an alter-globalization mass demonstration.
Some activists, such as the anarchists who issued the “Manifeste du Carré Noir” (Black Square Manifesto) during the Quebec student strike of 2012, regard their attacks against public or private property not as violence but as a “political and symbolic gesture.”64 The targeting of symbols can be understood as a form of “propaganda of the deed.” Destroying or pillaging merchandise enables one to openly express a radical critique of specific companies or of capitalism and consumer society in general; at the same time, it allows one to dent the sacrosanct aura surrounding consumer goods in our society.65 A Québécois woman who had been in several Black Blocs put it this way: “Breaking a window or attacking a media vehicle is an attempt to show that material goods are not all that important.”66 Indeed, a number of those who participate in direct actions are surprised that so many people are outraged by a few broken windows, given that “property feels no pain,” to borrow a phrase from graffiti written in Seattle during the events of November 30, 1999.
In his research, the anthropologist and activist Jeffrey Juris focuses on the “symbolic-expressive” aspects of what he calls “performative violence.” (Another scholar, Maxime Boidy, is studying the social meaning of the Black Bloc’s visual performance.) Having closely studied the Black Blocs in action at the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, he observes that, beyond the low-intensity “violence,” the action’s purpose is to “produc[e] concrete messages challenging global capitalism and the state” and “generate radical identities.”67 Graeber contends that the low intensity of the violence is exactly what perturbs the elites, because “governments simply do not know how to deal with an overtly revolutionary movement that refuses to fall into familiar patterns of armed resistance.”68 Indeed, who looks more violent? A heavily armed police officer, or an anarchist sporting a simple wool cap and a flimsy scarf for a mask? And of the two, who actually is more violent, at least potentially? Here is one activist’s bemused response: “But come on—a stone against a helicopter, a stick against an armoured car—and they call us violent? Frankly, there is no comparison—they are the real butchers, they are the ones whose hands are soaked in blood.”69
The Canadian artist Marc James Léger, arguing for an aesthetic approach to the issue, compares the Black Bloc’s actions at the 2010 Toronto G20 Summit to a work of art, and concludes that
such actions are not premised on their immediate fulfillment but in the communication that the desire to smash capitalism can never be satisfied with such limited gestures. The desire is deeper and spreads from one symbol to another, reproducing itself toward infinity. Still, as the broken window affirms, the transgression of the symbolic Law also brings on anxiety … What movement activists should do is look indirectly at the smashed window, aesthetically perhaps.70
Yet some on the far left reprove the Black Blocs precisely for being content to strike the aesthetic pose of the rebel while their actions fail to significantly hinder capitalism.71 For the Canadian anarchist Tammy Kovich, this criticism
completely skirts the prefigurative characteristics of the bloc. It is absolutely true that smashing a window does not begin to approximate the acts required to create a new society; however, there is more to a black bloc than the smashing of windows. The bloc, as a pulsing body on the street, is organized horizontally. Decisions are made on the ground by all participants … The picture of the bloc from the outside is very different from the reality and experience on the inside; the ethos of the black bloc is one of solidarity and collective care … Crucial to the project of creating a new society is creating new ways of being, interacting and organizing with each other.72
