{"id":28967,"date":"2012-02-09T03:47:31","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T17:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=28967"},"modified":"2012-02-12T00:29:33","modified_gmt":"2012-02-11T14:29:33","slug":"i-am-the-cancer-i-am-the-dynamite-i-am-the-table-i-am-i-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=28967","title":{"rendered":"I am the cancer! I am the dynamite! I am the table! I am, I said!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LOL.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fJlU_9Vyvqs?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Twitter informs me that some bloke called Chris Hedges has written a rather silly critique of The Black Bloc Anarchists\u2122 called &#8216;The Cancer of Occupy&#8217;. It presents a rather daft (which is to say inaccurate) account of the origins of the black bloc and ascribes to its adherents a range of political positions which are rather, um, controversial. Naturally, his article has provoked a range of responses.<\/p>\n<p>Two things.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever its precise content in Oakland or elsewhere in the Occupy movement in the US, to the best of my knowledge the black bloc is better understood as a tactic having evolved among autonomist (or autonomous) social movements in Germany in the late 1970s and early 1980s, spreading elsewhere in Europe in the ensuing decade, and finally arriving at <a href=\"http:\/\/uncyclopedia.wikia.com\/wiki\/UnNews:United_States_May_Not_Be_Center_of_the_Universe\">The Centre of the Universe<\/a> in the early 1990s. <em>See<\/em> : George Katsiaficas, <em>The Subversion of Politics<\/em>, AK Press, 2006 (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.eroseffect.com\/books\/subversion_download.htm\">online<\/a>) and David Van Deusen and Xaviar Massot (editors), <em>The Black Bloc Papers<\/em>, Breaking Glass Press, 2006 (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.infoshop.org\/amp\/bgp\/BlackBlockPapers2.pdf\">online<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>I dunno WTF is going on on the ground in Oakland but it&#8217;s kinda unfortunate that Hedges&#8217; essay is as badly-written as it is as it addresses some serious questions regarding WITBD. Otherwise, the flaws in Hedges&#8217; analysis are fairly self-evident I think; from his distorted account of the black bloc&#8217;s origins and conflation with a particular mode of anarchist politics (invoking John Zerzan, an essay not published by Zerzan on the <a href=\"http:\/\/flag.blackened.net\/revolt\/mexico\/anarchist.html\">EZLN<\/a>, and so on), to an otherwise inexplicable reliance on Derrick Jensen for expert opinion and an under-theorisation *cough* of the relationship between violence and the state, police, media and social control.<\/p>\n<p>*shrugs*<\/p>\n<p>More later maybe. Then again, maybe not.<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah. David &#8216;The Beast&#8217; Graeber writes <a href=\"http:\/\/nplusonemag.com\/concerning-the-violent-peace-police\">&#8216;Concerning the Violent Peace-Police: An Open Letter to Chris Hedges&#8217;<\/a>, n+1, February 9, 2012; Peter &#8216;Monstrous&#8217; Gelderloos dissects Hedges in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2012\/02\/09\/the-surgeons-of-occupy\/\">&#8216;The Surgeons of Occupy&#8217;<\/a>, Counterpunch, February 9, 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LOL. Twitter informs me that some bloke called Chris Hedges has written a rather silly critique of The Black Bloc Anarchists\u2122 called &#8216;The Cancer of Occupy&#8217;. It presents a rather daft (which is to say inaccurate) account of the origins &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=28967\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18,2,9,17,893,15],"tags":[922,1376,1377,1327],"class_list":["post-28967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natas","category-anarchism","category-state","category-student-movement","category-thats-capitalism","category-war-on-terror","tag-black-bloc","tag-chris-hedges","tag-occupy-oakland","tag-occupy-wall-street"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-7xd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28967"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29011,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28967\/revisions\/29011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}