{"id":34978,"date":"2013-10-15T01:07:59","date_gmt":"2013-10-14T15:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=34978"},"modified":"2013-10-15T01:08:59","modified_gmt":"2013-10-14T15:08:59","slug":"cheeky-brazilian-anarchists-promise-to-disrupt-absurd-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=34978","title":{"rendered":"Cheeky Brazilian anarchists promise to disrupt &#8216;absurd&#8217; World Cup [The Times]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[*Teachers in Brazil have been on strike. In Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday last week &#8216;Anarchist groups smashed banks and burnt a bus, while &#8220;Black Block&#8221; protesters threw firebombs at the police, who responded with teargas, rubber bullets and percussion grenades&#8217; (<em>Grauniad<\/em>). The teachers&#8217; union has reportedly <a href=\"http:\/\/odia.ig.com.br\/noticia\/educacao\/2013-10-09\/sindicato-dos-professores-declara-oficialmente-apoio-aos-black-blocs.html\" target=\"_blank\">declared support for the bloc<\/a>.]<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i03Kq7CBsOY?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Anarchists promise to disrupt &#8216;absurd&#8217; World Cup<br \/>\nJames Hider in Sao Paulo<br \/>\n<em>The Times<\/em><br \/>\nOctober 14, 2013<\/p>\n<p>BRAZILIAN anarchists, who form part of the global anti-capitalist movement, have pledged to target next year&#8217;s World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>The group says the event is an extravagant waste of money in a country where millions live in poverty.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with <em>The Times<\/em>, a member of the Black Bloc anarchist group [<em>sic<\/em>] said: &#8220;FIFA lies to us, it is all money laundering. The people get nothing out of it. They&#8217;ve spent millions on stadiums and have a law saying they don&#8217;t have to disclose how much they spend. FIFA will rule this country for the time of the World Cup.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 26-year-old heavily-tattooed black-clad anarchist, who asked not to be identified, said: &#8220;The World Cup is absurd. It will be a focus for us and we will fight it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Brazil is under intense scrutiny to show that it is able to contain mounting social unrest as it tries to organise two of the world&#8217;s most watched sporting events &#8211; a football World Cup next year and the Olympics, in Rio, in 2016. It is already far behind schedule in building the stadiums and infrastructure required for next year&#8217;s event.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Black Bloc, whose origins [kinda] lie in the European anarchist movement, shot to prominence in Rio and Sao Paulo when dozens of their number attacked banks, buses and shops after a demonstration by striking teachers descended into clashes with the police.<\/p>\n<p>Wearing black clothing, crash helmets, gas masks and scarves round their faces, they set fire to banks, sprayed anti-World Cup grafitti on the walls of damaged buildings and handed out leaflets saying: &#8220;Relax people. It&#8217;s us, the Black Bloc. What you can&#8217;t do, we can. We don&#8217;t just attack, we defend people against police abuse and defend our right to protest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Political analysts believe that while many Brazilians deplore the violence, their disillusionment with the police and systemic corruption is fuelling support for the protesters and the anarchists who champion them.<\/p>\n<p>The member of Black Bloc claimed that the principal role of the activists was to protect protesters calling for social change from police onslaughts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are growing,&#8221; he said, his clothes adorned with the names of punk banks. &#8220;Before, it was a small punk group from the underground culture, but now people from other social groups are coming along. Upper-middle class kids are agreeing with us. Young people have more destructive energy and see it as a way to express themselves.&#8221; He said social media groups that helped them to organise themselves were infiltrated by police informers during the summer protests.<\/p>\n<p>Black Bloc spontaneously present themselves at left-wing demonstrations, such as last week&#8217;s teachers&#8217; strike, and confront the police. Armed with gas masks and plastic shields, they say they want to help legitimate protesters to be heard.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our goal is protection. We know the police are better equipped, with rubber bullets and teargas, which they often fire in large quantities,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But if we stand our ground, the people will stay and the protest will go on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The authorities&#8217; response has been to flood the streets with police, gendarmes and even the army: when the Pope visited Rio in June after protesters disrupted the Confederations Cup, more than 10,000 security personnel lined the streets.<\/p>\n<p>Rafael Alcadipani, a professor of organisation theory at the university of Sao Paulo who has studied Black Bloc, said that with a murder rate of 40,000 a year fewer than 10 per cent of which are solved Brazilians believe the police have other priorities than &#8220;people breaking windows with stones&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The more aggressive and violent the police are, the more they will fuel protests,&#8221; he said. &#8220;My guess is that they will try to stop a match of the World Cup, which will be big news. Brazilians are crazy about football but the majority of them can&#8217;t afford a ticket &#8230; it&#8217;s a tournament for the rich and people are upset about this.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[*Teachers in Brazil have been on strike. In Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday last week &#8216;Anarchist groups smashed banks and burnt a bus, while &#8220;Black Block&#8221; protesters threw firebombs at the police, who responded with teargas, rubber bullets and percussion &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=34978\">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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,2,29,3,16,9,8,893,15],"tags":[922,1683,1684],"class_list":["post-34978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natas","category-anarchism","category-broken-windows","category-collingwood","category-media","category-state","category-television","category-thats-capitalism","category-war-on-terror","tag-black-bloc","tag-brazil","tag-world-cup"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-96a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34978","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=34978"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34981,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34978\/revisions\/34981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}