I think a lot of people are missing the point , Wu Ming is reporting the new developements in the investigation into what happened in Genova. He is trying to report the new revelations as accurately as possible .
it seems that a lot of people tuned to this channel jump to conclusions and make assumptions that are unrelated to the point he is trying to get across . anyone who knows anything about Italy will know that it's very difficult to understand what the fuck is going on in ordinary circumstances , with smear campaigns and counter smear campaigns and incredible far fetched stories inserted by secret services, mafia .ect .
After genova there is ten times the amount of bullshit flying around. Some people seem to be of the opinion that he is attacking the black bloc, he is not. There has been so much debate about black bloc that it's got very boring. I am definately not anti black Bloc.
I have read dozens of eye witness reports that speak of a gang of very big, heavy looking guys who acted like a militay unit, smashed up private shops and non luxury class cars. ect
The corporate media reported that these people were black bloc and none of them mentioned the fact that they might instead be nazis bussed in by the authorities to give them the violent images they so badly needed.

I also took a spin around genova on sunday night and saw clear distinctions between zones, some streets only the banks had been daubed with anarchits slogans and the cash tills doors trashed. While small shops right next door had been left un touched, other small areas had been totally wrecked
local shops , small cars, a different approach .

It's true wu ming has not given enough details about the germans he says are nazi's . He has not supplied the names of the the right wing groups that are alleged to have been in genova. I for one would be very interested in these details.
I hope wu ming will continue to report on this story and I hope that other people in UK and germany for starters will
start to help, as he says in one of his articles referring
liam doggy stevens . 'these guys are in UK you find them'

let's help wu ming to find out the full facts about these
right wing elements that were present in genova and who helped them to get there and why. He is on the case in Italy.

how about a campaign to make sure that the UK press reports on the new developements, that will be the day !!!

the fascists were there under an arrangement with the police upper echelons with the express purpose of drawing the police response in to the peaceful demonstrators. no?

I can assure you - being a long term anti-fascist expert that no way were there 500 british nazis - and I really dont think there were 600 nazis there. Maybe there were some, I had my own suspions - that maybe a handful. Maybe there were Italians??? There were some people from London staying at Carlini, that I had my suspisions about - about a handfull - maybe someone can confirm themselves - or can add to my suspisions.
Keep the truth clear - the Black Block have been getting stick and the state want to isolate them from the movement, because they refuse to play by the rules of the state etc -so we need to put these alligations into context.
Diago Jones

Actually the preventive report quoted in the piece makes reference to 500 British Black Blocsters, not nazis, which was grossly exagerated, the journalist quotes this as a by-the-way , tongue-in-cheek hint: when the media attacked the Berlusconi government, the geezer replied that the cops were taken by surprise and were not ready to stop the Black Bloc. Now we find out that the Genoa cops expected no less than 500 Britons to show up dressed in black and trash the town!
A few days before the Genoa demonstrations, we all decided not to wear the overalls and swich back to plain clothes, as everybody who was in Genoa perfectly knows. This must have puzzled the fascists who where about to mimic our sartorial style. Try to figure out nazis in white injuring or even killing a cop! I guess they had to throw their jumpsuits in the trashcans. They infiltrated the Black Bloc, instead, as witnessed by numberless people. The concrete evidence of this is the presence of Liam "Doggy" Stevens, a 26-year-old nazi from Birmingham, UK, in the middle of the riot in via Canaregis, and the two German fake Black Blocsters under arrest had a shitload of pics from nazi conventions recently held in their beloved fatherland. Soon after the two German guys were arrested, some lawyers of the GSF got suspicious. They got to know that the German counsels hired by the families were notorious ultra-right lawyers, who usually defend NPD militants, nazi skinheads etc.
In plain words, the Black Bloc WAS infiltrated. No way anyone can deny this. I understand that, in the hot days after the police raided the IMC and the schools in via Battisti, people who weren't in Genoa might suspect we were spreading yet another crazy conspiracy theory, but now, nearly two months have passed and the evidence is coming to the surface.

I was in Genoa on the 20th/21st of July and spent much of this time with the Black Bloc activists. First of all, there were several groups of Black Bloc in Genoa, and many of these guys had never met before. It is quite likely that undercover police and/or closet Nazis were present among their ranks, but I never saw any evidence of this. Let us look at the facts. 1) The Black Bloc are overwhelmingly anti-militarist, anti-violence (some would even use the term "pacifist" to describe themselves) and anti-corporate. This is the exact opposite of what it means to be a Nazi (or a cop). 2) The Black Bloc is not some kind of sinister secret organisation. It is simply a tactic that any activist may adopt on a demonstration. Most Black Bloc activists (contrary to popular belief) do not go around attacking journalists, and welcome newcomers with open arms. 3) The Black Bloc cannot prevent infiltration, but these guys do their best to make decisions in an open and accountable manner. If some protestors are getting out of hand on a demonstration, other activists will step in and attempt to reason with them . . . all this is very different from the impressions given in the Daily Telegraph et al. Let us prevent the IMC from becoming yet another forum for trashing anyone who uses the term "anarchist" to describe themselves.

...quite the reverse, please take a look at the document I posted a few days after Genoa, it was titled "The Magical Mystery Tour of the Fake Black Bloc in Genoa".
I despise conspiracy theories, which are substantially reactionary and foster a feeling of frustration and impotence. However, this is no *theory*, we have facts and names. How long will you hardcore anarchists keep denying evidence? You had better give a contribution to re-thinking the movement's tactics instead of pig-headedly defend your reputation as the coolest guys in the world.

Right where are these countless persons who saw neo-nazi infiltrators in the Black Bloc? The suggestions along these lines I have seen are a)the Black Bloc had a marching band (apparenlty very un-anarchist, or un-left) b)they wear black, black equals blackshirt, and therefore they are fascists.
I have seen one photo, of people that didn't look particularly black bloc coming out of a cop station, and seen references to one Communist M.P. and one Catholic priest (obviously trustworthy people then!)who saw persons in black co-operating with the police.
Right there is a contradiction here if the two Germans inside are state infiltrators from neo-nazi groups then why are they inside.
There were state pseudo -protestors in Seattle, Prague and Barcelona, so yeah they were very probably in Genoa also, which we could say even if no evidence existed. Why is this dominating post-Genoa debate is my question.
Is this just a smear campaign? Such as the long campaign against Class War claiming that they were all neo-nazi skinheads wearing wigs, or countless corporate media bullshit such as the Sunday Times claiming anarchists had links to loyalist paramilitary groups.
BTW using a corporate media source such as the supposed interveiw with the Brummie nazi really makes me distrust these accounts of events, like did it ever occur to you that journalists are paid to lie? At one of the recent MayDay events in London they ran a report that the Nazis from Gegen in Germany where there!
It looks to me like the State, Corporate media and the left united in a smear and disinformation campaign. Quite possibly this included the use of infiltrators, used in such a way to divide and create more hostilities between different groups at the protest, and which is then blown out of all proportion 'cause it can be used as a poltical football.
An obvious point is that if state agents were there to promote violence they wouldn't be in the Black Bloc would they!!??????.
Another one is that the Black Bloc were given "free rein", which is complete bollox.
Yes the cops came down harder on other groups of protestors,
why is this, well it could be 'cause they wanted to promote violence (if that is what they wanted to do) aiming to cause a reaction, thereby justifying their repression, or it could be that, if we believe what advocates of 'non-violence' say, that as 'non-violence' = a good media image = more popular support = a greater strength to put their agenda into action, then very obviously it is the 'non-violent' people who represent the greatest threat to the status quo and are therefore the most likely targets of police violence, or it could be that unlike everyone else the Black Bloc just wasn't a 'soft target'.
Another lie is that the Black Bloc were tolerated by the police so as their actions could be used to justify the police violence, which makes me wonder where the Black Bloc were during the Poll Tax revolt, the Miners Strike or Bloody Sunday.
Oh and there are very good reasons why an anti-fa would have video footage of nazi rallies, there are also very good reasons why anyone with a video camera was not exactly welcome in the Black Bloc (the same reason).
I'm not questioning that there were police agents among the crowd against the G-8, and some of them may have been in the Black Bloc, and there may have been some small number of far-right in the crowd of perhaps as many as 300,000 (highest estimate I have seen)also. I am questioning why this is dominating post-Genoa debate, why am I not seeing a frank and open discussion of the actions of all the different blocs/sections?

Hi, Wu-Ming, if you have facts, names, evidence, etc.. (and I'm not saying you don't)could this stuff be posted to indymedia? For starters the names of the two guys in prison who are suppoesd to be nazis and also their lawyer. Perhaps putting it on Indymedia Germany would be a good idea also.
Furthermore even if there were no State agents within the Black Bloc it would have been piss easy to put them there (or anywhere else for that matter), and there were lots of stupid actions connected to the Black Bloc, so there is a need for questioning and improvements and reconsidering and so on. I don't deny it. However I just wonder why everyone else is so interested in the Black Bloc and the actions of other blocs/sections seem to get no criticism, constructive or otherwise.

Hi,
first of all "Wu Ming" is my collective, while "Wu Ming 1" is my alias.
I translated that article from "Il Secolo XIX" because I deem it as useful, not because I want to start a smear campaign.
The White Overalls are re-considering their tactics and politics, to such an extent of self-criticism that the white overall is gone, puff!, they got rid of their symbol and style in order to merge deeper into the global movement. Civil disobedience the Italian way proved to be ineffective, we're trying to devise something else. Therefore, it is absurd to say that we are only interested in questioning other people's tactics. We're questioning ourselves.

The Black Bloc wasn't the only target of infiltration. Indeed, it is more correct to say that the Black Bloc was MOCKED by people acting somewhere else, not directly INFILTRATED. The *real* Black Bloc (the people carrying the "SMASH!" banner and the marchin' band) was infiltrated only by a journalist of "Panorama" weekly magazine named Giacomo Amadori. He witnessed that an Italian guy marching alongside the BB smashed the window of a little shop and a bloke from the Black Bloc stopped him and told him to smash the window of a nearby bank. That's consistent and, in a way, "responsible".

What worries me is the obstinacy of those people who dismiss any source, either because un-anarchist or "institutional". Journalists lie, the left conspires in order to smear the anarchists, that guy is a fucking priest and so on. Why not try to tell the bullshit from the reliable testimonies?

Two Italian journalists interviewed a British nazi, mentioning his name, age, hometown and group. Instead of trying to track the bastard, some Britons ask us Italians to show some more evidence. Hey, wake up, fellas: *YOU* are in the UK, not us! Find the bloke.

It appears that two of the arrested guys (no, as yet I don't know their names) are defended by notorious fascist lawyers, and their cameras contained photographs of Nazi conventions.
You ask: why are they in prison if they are state assets? The fact is: the article does not say they are state assets, only that the police knew nazis were in town. I think some of them (especially the Italians) were protected by the cops, but this is an opinion.

Indymedia-Italy has footage showing two FredPerry-wearing boneheads (by the way I'm a skin myself, albeit a leftist one) getting instructions by riot squad carabinieri, then putting one white rubber gloves, overturning a parked car and setting it on fire. More footage shows two masked big guys wearing combat boots, black T shirts and army trousers chatting with riot squad carabinieri, then chatting with two men in black on a scooter, then the scooter leaves and presumedly reaches the riot to pass on instructions.
OK, this is an interpretation of the footage, not yet *evidence* of cops directing fascists or fake Black Blocsters.

Several people spotted nazis in Genoa, and you ask: why didn't they tell us? WELL, they told everyone they could, there were press conferences, and the Italian press covered this starting from Saturday 21nd, when Liam "Doggy" Stevens appeared in the press!

And now I append stuff I wrote in response to another posting:
"Colucci was fired by the government soon after Genoa, which means that he's no longer willing to support any scheme. The government's tactical error was: first you accept to set up a commission, THEN you lay off your employees. We should be open minded and understand the divisions between sectors of the State. A plenty of details on repression in Genoa is surfacing thanks to these feuds between angry and disappointed officers. Violence in Bolzaneto was not investigated till a cop decided to confess anonymously. Thereby, it is absolutely pointless remarking the fact that Colucci is a cop. Furthermore, he's interrogated by a commission investigating the facts, and was forced to reveal things, there were too many eye witness accounts, names, disturbing video footage.
This is not a *conspiracy* theory aimed at framing the Black Bloc. The *real* Black Bloc was in Genoa too, they hit the selected corporate targets, but there were a lot of bastards dressed in black committing themselves to irrational, stupid, reactionary devastation. This damages and defames the Black Bloc, what are you gonna do about it?
You should help us to rethink the movement's tactics, instead of pig-headedly defend your reputation as the coolest guys in the world."

That's all for now,

WM1

Right I read yir report 'The Mystery Tour of the Fake Black Bloc' previously and I know where ye are coming from I think yir alright. However what I'm talking about in my posts, and what does very much exist, is a smear campaign which basically claims that the Black Bloc is an instrument of the State used to justify State violence. I would refer you to Socialist Worker, which interveiwed various Italians who were part of the White Overalls march on the day, also the Weekly Worker, which had an interveiw with the leader of the Communist Refoundation party's youth wing, basically claiming this (and I have heard far, far worse). So the main source of the defamation is the left not police agents or neo-nazis.
Right since Genoa, it has been the Black Bloc which has been getting the most attention, so what I say about the fact that people would be better off questioning what they were doing and not what another Bloc was doing holds true.
Having read previous stuff from ye, I know the White Overalls (or at least some of them) are, so that is not directed at ye.
Moving onwards I know some people (Black Bloc supporters) are questioning, discussing and so on, I hope, as you do, that more people are doing this, but I should imagine that like the White Overalls they are doing it in their own circles.
Bascially as far as I see it in Genoa the state (unsuprisingly with hindsight) adapted to all our tactics obviously blockade was worthless against the fortress city, the police violence was too much for Ya Basta! type stuff, and the Black Bloc was divided up by police action and went for property destruction in what was a residental area not a central business district which was a bad mistake. But actions of this nature always have problems with drunken youths and so on. That's nothing new.
I think we all need to adapt. Unrelated to the Black Bloc, there was also a complete abscence of people putting forward libertarian ideas, as far as I could see, e.g. no anarchist info-stalls and so on.
So there is a whole range of problems, I just think that the whole State agent business is overstated and is being used by certain elements (see above) as part of a propaganda campiagn against the Black Bloc (some of them also mounted a campiagn against Ya Basta!)because they fear losing influence to more radical direct action types and so they must defame the radicals in the eyes of their followers.
There is actually very little evidence of police and fascist infiltration, there is some yes, but any amount to suggest this was out of the ordinary, no?
Again I'm not questioning the fact that there were state agents present, I just do not think it is that big an issue, after all if their intention was to discredit the Black Bloc well they must have infiltrated the editorial boards of various left wing publications! I'm not questioning the sources (apart from the corporate media one)
my comments re: the M.P. and the priest were sarcasm, to me it's just all been blown out of proportion.
P.S. At the bottom of my website you will find a link to 'Revolt' once there by going to 'What's new' you will find a whole bunch of different accounts and reports of the Genoa demonstrations.

I'd like to thank One Hung Low for setting the records straight.
Actually it isn't me who says that two of the Germans are nazis: the journalist of Il Secolo XIX wrote it. So far, I haven't seen any concrete evidence of this.

dear wu ming
could you put up a list of the right wing groups
who were present in genova. It would also be good if we could have photo's of their insignia, and what kind of kit they wear. I think that it will be important in the future to identify agent provocatuers as early as possible and photograf and flim their actions so that any contact they have with the security forces can be slapped in the corporate media's face before they can beam their false images round the world and discredit the whole movement.

The media ploy of criminalising the movement by laying the blame for all the violence on the black bloc worked very well. It was so effective that it has caused a polemical
argument within the various factions of the movement which is still raging even now. It's almost impossible to say anything about the violence in genoa without some one taking offence.

Instead of fighting amongst ourselves we should be preparing for a whole series of demo's planned for the autumn.
If we don't do something about identifying infiltraters we will find that genoa will be repeated over and over again.

well at least your on the case ...

What do you mean, WE ARE THE COOLEST GUYS IN THE WORLD!!!

Remember that in Genoa, we were the ones who took all the risks against the Robocops . . . remember Carlo Giuliani, anyone? This is not stupid or reactionary. It is the only way to defeat capitalist oppression while all the *armchair revolutionaries* are endlessly discussing re-runs of October 1917!!!

The problem of infiltrators is easily solved as much as it can be solved, learn from the German experience of having very tightly organised Black Blocs. Have guidelines for your Bloc, so who goes outside them can be identified as not part of the Bloc. Communication between everyone so people realise that if someone dressed as whoever comes up and hits them it's an imposter. The problem of pseudo-protestors is more difficult. If the state has them in another part of the city from us will we know until we watch the news broadcast? We should not concern ourselves with what image the corporate media portrays for the simple reason it always will be hostile to us. Work to undermine it and replace it.
Back to specifics, One Hung Low, you write of countless reports which would suggest the existance of a pseudo-black bloc, can you post up the URL's.
I have seen a report which suggest that much destruction took place on the White Overalls march, can any one comment on this?
Also I saw a report on Indymedia about a Russian and Ukrainian delegation invited by Belgian ATTAC which openly included 'Red-Browns' (Third Position/National Bolshevik/srasserite Nazis), I have no knowledge of this apart from that report, any one know anything about this or have any thoughts on it?
Also if property destruction is so open to abuse (by whoever) is it not time to end this tactic?