The Saturday riot in Rostock (1)

Before the fighting started, I witnessed several Black Block members in a quiet back-alley, (right next to the location of the fighting pictured above) pushing over trashcans and attempting to light them on fire. Some unmasked protesters scolded them and put out the fires, and the Black Blockers complied, but were soon attempting to fire to other things nearby.

There are two possible conclusions:

1. The police had dressed up as Black Block members to give themselves an excuse to attack the protesters.

2. The Black Block started it. The police can not, of course, allow demonstrators to light things on fire next to civilian buildings.

So a few rubbish bins on fire would justify wanton violence against protesters and bystanders by very violent police, not to mention violations of basic civil liberties?

I am sick of hearing what "of course" the police "cannot allow". What about what the rest of us can and cannot allow the police to get away with? What about that we cannot allow them to get away with preventive detention? With dubbing protesters as "terrorists"? With violating the basic right to protest at the summit site?

Even supposing for a moment that a few people set fire to bins, and supposing (for sake of argument) that they shouldn't have done and that it was unprovoked. How can this justify police violence and aggression against a mass of other people, or violent arrests of a type which it was known would lead to confrontations? If the police interest is in as little social deviance as possible then they will calculate whether their actions will calm or escalate, whether trying to stop or punish some single act of deviance is worth a course of action which will cause many more and much greater harm, whether by provoking others or through abuses by police themselves. The police and their supporters are either too irrational and stupid to make such calculations, or else calculate that police violence is a small price to pay to defend their own unconditional intolerance of deviance.

Incidentally, even the mainstream media (reporting on the day - things changed after the police started spewing propaganda) admitted that the police started the confrontations.

"The police did not contribute to de-escalation," said Monty Schaedel, spokesman for the Rostock Action Alliance. He called the police response "clumsy and unprofessional."
 http://www.eux.tv/article.aspx?articleId=9122

Peter Mueller, who was among the demonstrators, had tears streaming from bloodshot eyes after the tear gas was released. "As long as the police were in the background it was OK, but as soon as one took a step closer, it went out of control," he said.
 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10658862

What goes missing in official accounts is that no distinction is made between being "prepared" for clashes with the state - being masked, equipped, etc - and being "bent on" or determined at any cost to CAUSE clashes with the state. Preparedness can be preparedness for defence in the likely event of state attack or provocation. There have been peaceful protests before (the big march on the last day at Gothenburg, for example) where protesters were prepared for battle but were not forced to fight physically, because police did not interfere in their exercise of basic rights.

Look especially at this previous Indymedia post, to understand the logic of the Black Bloc:

"While marching, German anarchists more or less engage with the police in careful negotiations until the permitted demonstration gets as close to the desired location as possible (such as a financial district, a fascist demonstration, or in this case the EU-ASEM Summit meeting in the town hall), and then, all bets are off. The demonstration will then generally be aggressive towards police lines, attempting to wreck havoc by escaping off the official route as a bloc, or break into small affinity groups to build barricades and attack police cars."
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371873.html

Of course this will not impress fanatics for whom the police have replaced the Kings of old as untouchable "bodies of power" against whom one is never to resist or use force, for whom any provocation or violence by police and the powerful is insufficient to justify breaching the symbolic taboo protecting these state thugs - the same way a slave who responded to an abusive master by striking out, or an Indian who struck a European, was never justified in colonial discourse. Well, let these fanatics whine - their prejudices are deadly, contributing to impunity of agents of the state and to the rise of the police state. It is known very well in Germany, that the threat of state fascism must be met with force.

Alan seems to have the exact same views as a cop...

I do not support the actions of the police, and think they stepped way out of line. But the fact is, they didnt start it, The Black Block did.

That does not justify what the police did, but it makes it possible for the press to write that we were the ones who started it, and be right.

I saw the police hit unaggressive bystanders in the face because they tripped and stumbled towards the police; of course I dont support them!

Im just stating a fact, that I have observed, that contradicts what the article says: The black block started it.

Maybe you could explain to me the purpose of breaking off from a peaceful protest to light trashcans on fire in a quiet sidestreet?

I do not support the actions of the police, and think they stepped way out of line. But the fact is, they didnt start it, The Black Block did.

That does not justify what the police did, but it makes it possible for the press to write that we were the ones who started it, and be right.

I saw the police hit unaggressive bystanders in the face because they tripped and stumbled towards the police; of course I dont support them!

Im just stating a fact, that I have observed, that contradicts what the article says: The black block started it.

Maybe you could explain to me the purpose of breaking off from a peaceful protest to light trashcans on fire in a quiet sidestreet?