This kind of thing can actually be effective, but only in conjunction with actual militant resistance. Part of the reason that 2020 (briefly) went as well as it did for us is that the BLM protests had liberal wine moms showing up en masse along with black bloc folks willing to throw down with Proud Boys and cops ( ). To ordinary people, black bloc looks scary. A bunch of people who are clearly ready to fight and light cop cars on fire–as cool and good as that is–feeds the narrative that this is a “war” against a dangerous, violent, scary group. It’s a lot harder to sell that narrative when the same movement includes grandmas and people in silly dinosaur costumes. Footage of the cops brutalizing “antifa” members actively fighting back doesn’t resonate with the public the same way footage of Cathy from your bookclub getting maced in the face for standing quietly does.
However that militant wing is important too. Without people who are willing to actually fight back, you’re just feeding people to the meat grinder in the hope that it’ll eventually gum up the works enough to shut the whole thing down. That’s never, ever worked before and it won’t work now. Building a mass movement of resistance is important, but there are different roles to play within that. The mistake that liberals make isn’t in thinking that this kind of performative protest is useful, but rather in thinking that it’s the only thing that’s useful, or that it’s capable of stopping the death machine on its own.
The important thing to recognize about black bloc is something you describe in your commrnt, but I want to highlight it: they are escalatory. Black bloc is generally not a carefully organized and principled group that carries out operations with the wider community strategy in mind. They are pissed off “autonomous” (read: unorganized) people who want to intimidate their enemies (usually cops) and destroy private property.
Both of those things are awesome in most contexts, but in situations like, say, Portland being targeted for fed harassment, black bloc is solely helping to manufacture the feds’ excuse for being there.
Another example: blacl bloc folks love to set dumpsters on fire and build flaming barricades. Those are cool by themselves, yeah nice fire and such. But most often I have seen this, again, simply become an excuse for the powers that be to enter community-organized spaces. Fire is a safety concern, etc etc. Did the flaming dumpster really provide protection? It didn’t stop the cops from entering the space at all. Surely there should be some kind of evaluation of whether you are ready to defend the flaming dumpster before creating it as a supposed deterrent. Usually black bloc seems to “disperse” or retreat at those exact moments when cops and firefighters show up in numbers to put out the flaming dumpsters and invade the community space. They didn’t organize sufficient numbers to actually hold the space, did not understand6 their capacity, and simply escalated.
This kind of thing can actually be effective, but only in conjunction with actual militant resistance. Part of the reason that 2020 (briefly) went as well as it did for us is that the BLM protests had liberal wine moms showing up en masse along with black bloc folks willing to throw down with Proud Boys and cops (
). To ordinary people, black bloc looks scary. A bunch of people who are clearly ready to fight and light cop cars on fire–as cool and good as that is–feeds the narrative that this is a “war” against a dangerous, violent, scary group. It’s a lot harder to sell that narrative when the same movement includes grandmas and people in silly dinosaur costumes. Footage of the cops brutalizing “antifa” members actively fighting back doesn’t resonate with the public the same way footage of Cathy from your bookclub getting maced in the face for standing quietly does.
However that militant wing is important too. Without people who are willing to actually fight back, you’re just feeding people to the meat grinder in the hope that it’ll eventually gum up the works enough to shut the whole thing down. That’s never, ever worked before and it won’t work now. Building a mass movement of resistance is important, but there are different roles to play within that. The mistake that liberals make isn’t in thinking that this kind of performative protest is useful, but rather in thinking that it’s the only thing that’s useful, or that it’s capable of stopping the death machine on its own.
The important thing to recognize about black bloc is something you describe in your commrnt, but I want to highlight it: they are escalatory. Black bloc is generally not a carefully organized and principled group that carries out operations with the wider community strategy in mind. They are pissed off “autonomous” (read: unorganized) people who want to intimidate their enemies (usually cops) and destroy private property.
Both of those things are awesome in most contexts, but in situations like, say, Portland being targeted for fed harassment, black bloc is solely helping to manufacture the feds’ excuse for being there.
Another example: blacl bloc folks love to set dumpsters on fire and build flaming barricades. Those are cool by themselves, yeah nice fire and such. But most often I have seen this, again, simply become an excuse for the powers that be to enter community-organized spaces. Fire is a safety concern, etc etc. Did the flaming dumpster really provide protection? It didn’t stop the cops from entering the space at all. Surely there should be some kind of evaluation of whether you are ready to defend the flaming dumpster before creating it as a supposed deterrent. Usually black bloc seems to “disperse” or retreat at those exact moments when cops and firefighters show up in numbers to put out the flaming dumpsters and invade the community space. They didn’t organize sufficient numbers to actually hold the space, did not understand6 their capacity, and simply escalated.