a point to this post?

...there are radicals who do geniunely support violence, either tactically or morally. We're not all pacifists, you know, and it is disingenuous to suggest non-pacifists must be agent provocateurs.

And no, I'm not an agent provocateur, and neither am I a violent nutcase. But I certainly don't have a problem with people who want to assassinate Prime Ministers or the aristocracy.

This post seems to be part of an anti black bloc agenda that someone has been running for a few weeks now using indymedia.

Perhaps you can help? Looking at this post, I can't find where it says "non-pacifists must be agent provocateurs"?

Personally, I'm no pacifist either, nor am I a provocateur (nice to know we've got so much in common!) but there are situations in which violence is morally justified, but where it is at the same time politically, tactically and socially counter-productive. I'm sure you know that?

You might also have noticed that the only people who were assassinated as a result of the Cato Street Conspiracy weren't the PMs or aristos you talk about, but instead 5 agitators.

It seems to be this post isn't about the ethics of violence, it's about warning people who believe in violence that the State uses the lure of violent actions in order to trick the gullible into walking into traps

Problem is that this post seems (and yes I've checked) to be 100% factually accurate

Unless you can prove otherwise?

I don't see any problem with violence providing its properly targeted. The problem comes when after the violence is used, the state will carry out its own violence in order to compell its ranks to fight back. If you start using violence against the state, the state will immediately recognise that you have identified its own tactics for keeping power and will resort to indiscriminate bombing of its own people, in order to create the required number of reactionaries to fight back at you.

But these are the politics of a bygone age. In this day and age, better and more peaceful tactics are available. Its possible to engage in targeted violence against property and the bits and bobs of state while also waging a campaign of attrition.

Not that any of this is relevent in the UK. Nation of shopkeepers n all that. War against the UK state is always economic. The UK people will do what their bank balances, wallets and purses tell them to. Its the same in the US. The thing that makes the people pliable for UK and US stateholders is also the thing that can be used to fight against them. Its just a case of recognising what the politics of the middle classes are. UK and US polticals have made the middle classes weak by design, it doesn't take a genius to work out how to take them on.

Obviously, the state will always try to associate violence with indymedia so they have something to bleat about. Probabaly happens everytime there's an argument about funding for weapons and staff numbers.

Picture the scene...government bod to senior cop...

"We will be strengthening the service the police provide by funding adjustments taken up by all stakeholders. This will allow the police service to make more effective use of its resources to provide a more robust response to the challenges we face".

Senior cop to government bod...

"Fine, but you are aware that somebody is plotting an attack right now don't you? You don't want to cut our budgets just before they strike! Wouldn't that look bad on the front page of the Sun?"

Government bod to senior cop...

"What evidence do you have of that?"

Senior cop to government bod...

"We found this on Indymedia a few minutes before we came into this meeting!"

i still find it amazing that people can still believe that the system will change WITHOUT violence. i think the big problem here is, good people who have consciences want a non-violent reviloution. the bad people with out one have made all their money through violence and will defend what they have made with extreme voilence. i would love to see peaceful change but this world and the people and animals in it are worth fighting for.

The argument against the use of violence to achieve political change is one of a break from history and an attempt to break out of cycles of violence. The type of change that anarchists ask for is more cultural and behavioural and will take a long time to come about. It is not the type of change that can be achieved through political systems and/or violence or even within a single generation.

Consequently, the political concessions that are achievable are ones of creating spaces for people to live as they so choose, rather than forcing a belief system upon others via violence, which is what some of the faux-anarchists and communists I read on indymedia promote. Indeed, anarchists, by their own philosophy and its base assumptions, would contradict themselves if they led a ‘revolution’ to impose their beliefs on others. It is a shame that the base human drives and desires that these faux-anarchists express through their advocation of violence, are the same at root as those that they wish to oppose.

All that an ‘anarchist’ can ask and fight for (i.e. use the political system), is the space and resources to set up communities so they can live as they so choose. There are enough of us in the UK to achieve such an end via the political systems we have. When you are able to see through the trees and understand, there is much hope and light at the end of the tunnel.

Who the fuck are you to judge?

is there
02.10.2012 11:41
a point to this post?
digger
Also...
02.10.2012 13:18
...there are radicals who do geniunely support violence, either tactically or morally. We're not all pacifists, you know, and it is disingenuous to suggest non-pacifists must be agent provocateurs.
And no, I'm not an agent provocateur, and neither am I a violent nutcase. But I certainly don't have a problem with people who want to assassinate Prime Ministers or the aristocracy.
anon
crock of shit
02.10.2012 14:37
This post seems to be part of an anti black bloc agenda that someone has been running for a few weeks now using indymedia.
Sus

And do any of these I’m-into-violence-but-am-not-a-police-agent-honest activists have an answer to the issue put which is that the state will forment violence within a protest movement in order to eliminate genuine activists and justify its general repression based on their formented violence.

Or doesn’t that matter to these I’m-into-violence-but-am-not-a-police-agent-honest activists?

Answers from Black Bloc especially welcome.

This talk of an anti-black-bloc agenda being pursued on Indymedia? Where? I can't find it - the agenda here is obvious - it's anti-police

If terms like "police" and "home office" equal "black-bloc" in the minds of some readers that's a Freudian slip, perhaps those readers know something they'd like to share with the rest of us?

Finally @Simon - if they were capable of answering your question, they'd answer it

BLAC BLOCK IS A TACTIC NOT A GROUP! 100 lines, now!

> BLAC BLOCK IS A TACTIC NOT A GROUP! 100 lines, now!


Yes. Made up of people. Which means it is a group.
Ie. you can point at them and say "That is a group of people."

Given that some people are not in the black-bloc and some people are, it is a safe to safe that some people are "block bloc"

So..... the black bloc is made up of people who are black bloc-ers.

Meaning -> it is a group

derailed
Who the fuck are you to judge?

To answer, I believe myself a human. You know, that thinking, scheming, judging, biological machine.

You are free to disagree with my opinion and view. I would not dream of imposing it upon you.

Ah, Indymedia. Had been on the wagon for a while, as any sustained period of keeping up with the posts and especially the comments tends to lead me to alcohol abuse, depression and/or hysteria. But dipped in again recently out of idle curiosity. Get the gin and seroxat ready again, Ma…

The same old moronic debates and shaky-finger pointing… That really annoying thing where in stead of writing in proper sentences you copy in bits of your opponents posts and it repeats till everyone is a wee bit confused as to which ‘side’ you’re on… Scroll down: ‘Fascists’ and ‘anti-fascists’ swapping gossip and phone numbers: why not all get a room? It’s be quicker… and since most of us haven’t a clue what you’re on about, would free up space for more useful…

Oh sorry, it’d just free up more space for another meaningless cyberspat about VIOLENCE.

I am not either a ‘member’ of the Black Bloc, if it has ‘members’ (Face? Bothered?) , or an anarchist, though I did call myself the latter a couple of decades back, and have many anarchist friends (or is it ‘faux-anarchist’ friends), and some ideas in common with/partly owed to my involvement in anarchism, I guess. So I don’t know if I am qualified to answer the question Simon asks. Or if I even can… Anyway here’s some thoughts.

Violence or non-violence, as a choice, one or the other, is a false choice. Both are TACTICS, ways of getting things done. Non-violence as an IDEOLOGY, or its (possibly less theoretically defined) counterpart, the belief that only violent action matters, or an obsession with violent confrontation above all else, are both generally counter-productive. But it’s keeping the divide between the two alive and seething that is most of all in the interest of the status quo. However you want to define ‘us’ – by class, or politics, or whatever – if we want a genuinely transformed world free from capitalism and all that, we need to refuse to abide by other people’s definitions and divisions. A multiverse of tactics, ideas and interests are likely to be involved in getting us anywhere, and some basic acceptance that we don’t have a monopoly on the correct forms of struggle and behaviour will help.

But violence is, now and again, necessary. And if we do think there’s a chance of a world free from hierarchy, profit, war, exploitation, rape, alienation and the fucking 6.30 alarm clock, I don’t think it’s really ultimately achievable without some agro and, yes, coercion. Coercing people, including those with a lot more power and resources than us, who aren’t willing to be convinced by earnest example and rambly discussions. The current social system is not just a mechanical organism, it is administered, supported, theorised, built upon people, real people, some of whom have a lot at stake in its survival. Any serious attempt to overthrow it means civil war. How bloody and destructive a war depends on how strong and powerful we can create a movement to pose a real alternative.


Now I’m not very ‘violent’, partly cos I’m a bit weedy. But I have participated in violent actions when they seemed necessary to me. On balance I have received more violence from the social system than I have managed so far to pay back, but I’ve also had liberating times in riots.

I kind of liked the original post, partly cause I’m a history freak; I didn’t take it as necessarily implying that anyone advocating more than a muesli-in is Mark Kennedy. Its always worth reminding ourselves that police or state infiltration is old as the hills. But the Cato Street conspirators, like other radicals busted for planning uprisings from the 1790s to the 1840s, were up against viciously repressive governments, who were killing or jailing people for asking politely for mild reform. They felt they had little choice. We really may have more, now, on the surface, though it doesn’t take much rebellion for liberal democracy to flip.

How you tell who’s instigating trouble because they believe its useful and who’s a cop I don’t know. None of us sussed Bob Lambert, Mark Kennedy, Jim Sutton or any of the others, or not enough to be sure, till they had done a lot of damage. But I don’t recall Jim, who I knew best of all the undercover filth, agitating for anything tasty – or initiating things much at all in fact when he was most active people were more suspicious of others in Reclaim the Streets, including one who was obviously dodgy mostly because he was a working class eastender. Ffff) . Bob Lambert and others, by all accounts, were more pro-active. Their tactics change, adapt (since Bob later became Jim’s controller this may be them learning more effective strategy). But most of the time its hard to tell the spy from the loudmouth. Or even the sensible reasoned justifiably physical.