"Keep in mind that the police have admitted to having numerous undercover agents in the crowd- only they know exactly how many...." An Attck on the Black Bloc and Prole Revolt and Prole Revolts's Responses >From prole revolt collective <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date Wed, 8 Dec 1999 15:25:22 -0500 ________________________________________________ A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E http://www.ainfos.ca/ ________________________________________________ Below is the attack made on the Prole Revolt posting entitled "Ken McCarthy (of Brasscheck) and His 'Facts'" by [EMAIL PROTECTED] on the indymedia website (http://www.indymedia.org). We reprint it here (followed by our responses) not only so our responses make more sense, but to also show the ridiculous nature of most of the statements made in this attack. It really is an "unintellegable romp thru misinformation", as we call it in our response, and we feel that a great deal of the idiocy is obvious without comment. We responded nonetheless, for reasons we state in our first response. PRC ------------------------------ Electronic propaganda and agent provacateurs by [EMAIL PROTECTED] 7:43pm Tue Dec 7 '99 Electronic propaganda, the case for government infiltration of anarchist groups, and the attack on [EMAIL PROTECTED] There have been multiple articles in the corporate press concerning the role that "alternative virtual media" has played in the mobilization of protesters and the swaying of public opinion. This is obviously an area of expanding interest to the American intelligence community. There have been multiple articles in the corporate press concerning the role that "alternative virtual media" has played in the mobilization of protesters and the swaying of public opinion. This is obviously an area of expanding interest to the American intelligence community. Ken has exposed several disinformation emails (including the "Black Bloc Communique"- check it out at: http://216.173.206.96/imc/display.php3?article_id=521 and found an interesting picture: www.brasscheck.com/seattle/mia.html) that have resulted in somewhat curious "rebuttals"- in fact, the only such personal attacks on the indymedia site have been aimed in his direction. Following Kenís initial statements of fact regarding the widespread observations by protesters, journalists, store owners (and police sources- check out http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/9948/features-anderson4.shtml) that the mayor and police chief instructed the police force to ignore the vandals who had been accused by those same groups of sparking the rioting and looting that provided the justification for the declaration of martial law (and the convenient expulsion of tens of thousands of nonviolent protesters), there was initially a response posted from a Ms. Lyn Gerry that attempted a quite unusual "linguistic analysis" defending the "Black Bloc Communique" (that can be viewed at: http://216.173.206.96/imc/display.php3?article_id=532) The following day there was another subtle attack on Ken, this time from "commie00", http://216.173.206.96/imc/display.php3?article_id=542) which (interestingly enough) took a similar approach to Ms. Gerry: that to suggest there were agent provacateurs who had infiltrated anarchist groups, and that the real reason why the vandals were ignored by police was because the feds had their own man or men "inside"- was to "divide the movement". The following is from the Boston Globe (Dec 3): "Wednesday night police worried that anarchists would try to take over a precinct station on Capitol Hill...Stamper described them as well-trained in mobilization and integration, with reports of them changing clothes three times a day to avoid detection." (Gee, where he did he get such personal info?) But on the same day that anarchists were being compared to Lex Luthor and Al Capone, we have a decidedly different statement from one of the police chief's own detectives (December 3 New York Times): "The Seattle police are taking a decidedly hands-off view of the squatters. 'The situation is being monitored,' said Randy Huserik, a detective with the Seattle Police Department. 'Once the W.T.O. wraps up, our attention will probably return there. With the number of people in there, there would be a great deal of tactical issues to deal with' in getting them out, he added. 'And we have bigger fish to fry right now.' The following is from the Seattle Weekly, December 2 http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/9948/features-anderson4.shtml "Sources say, however, that police and 30 other local, state, and federal agencies have been aggressively gathering intelligence on violent and nonviolent protest groups since early summer (FBI agents even paid personal visits to some activists' homes to inquire about their plans). In past weeks, undercover officers have tailed several groups as they moved about the city in cars and vans, and were doing so after the WTO meetings began. Conference and city officials had met with protest groups such as the Ruckus Society and the Direct Action Network, which promised nonviolence but whose members were among those arrested in the Wednesday sweeps anyway." Today an email from "prole revolt collective" took a slanderous approach to attack Ken's writing: "According to McCarthy (as in Sen. McCarthy?), the "fact" that police were unable to arrest many Black Bloc participants is proof that these participants were cops, in spite of the fact that witnesses (including the corporate media!... c'mon Ken!) and they themselves have stated that they purposefully avoided the police as best they could." The following is from Janet Christensen-O'Brien of the Seattle Detective Bureau Legal Support Services: "[she] saw three men dressed in camouflage and khaki knock down and pummel two protesters. The two were waiting for the light to change at the empty intersection of Third and Union when they were knocked down and beaten. The men, who later identified themselves as police, continued to punch and kick the young man and young woman as they lay on the ground. When uniformed police arrived on the scene, they did not immediately stop the assault, but instead prevented the growing crowd from getting closer. Ms. Christensen-O'Brien said the young woman appeared to be in shock and was crying out "Don't hit me." The young man had been thrown to the ground so hard that his mouth was bleeding. O'Brien said the police told her it had been impossible to arrest the two earlier when they were part of a crowd and that they had been targeted and somehow physically tagged for later arrest." (http://216.173.206.96/imc/display.php3?article_id=123) Keep in mind that the police have admitted to having numerous undercover agents in the crowd- only they know exactly how many. But since Seattle was hosting Secretary of State Madeline Albright, the top US trade rep, hundreds of top level corporate executives, and expecting President Clinton the following day, I am willing to go out on a limb and say it was A LOT. Now as long as I am making these wild conjectures, I am going to postulate that some of these undercover agents just might have been somewhere in the vicinity of Niketown, Old Navy, and the Gap, seeing as how these were the locations of demonstrations the previous two days, and in fact the precise location (Niketown) of the very first deployment of Seattle Riot Police the previous day. Returning to the "prole revolt collective" email, The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/propaganda/contents.htm) lists "name-calling" ("as in Senator McCarthy?") as one of the most popular propaganda techniques. "The name-calling technique links a person, or idea, to a negative symbol. The propagandist who uses this technique hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the negative symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence. The most obvious type of name calling involves "bad names." For example, consider the following: Commie Fascist Pig Yuppie Scum Bum Queer Feminazi" The other propaganda technique used by the "prole revolt collective" is the "bandwagon" approach: (From the "prole revolt collective"): "Look at the popular support for the property destruction (which is wider than desired by pacifists and reformists) despite the fact that the bureaucrats and media are working hard to convince us that destroying corporate property is wrong." In fact, the posting from prole revolt collective includes two of the seven most common propaganda techniques listed by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. What happened to the other five? Obviously, this is by no means to suggest that all anarchists housed in the squat were government agents- nor that all anarchists engage in property damage--nor even to debate the relative pros and cons of property damage as a legitimate or illegitimate political activity. But lets face it ladies and gentlemen: we have a a big stinky skunk in the house. --------------------------------- Prole Revolt's Defense by prole revolt collective 8:06am Wed Dec 8 '99 Prole Revolt not an angent-provocateur group; [EMAIL PROTECTED]'s attack an unintellegable romp through misinformation. We members of Prole Revolt are not surprised that we have been attacked by the reactionary elements of the so-called "left" for our attack on Ken McCarthy's misinformation campaign (our article is at http://www.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=653; the idiocy by [EMAIL PROTECTED] is at http://www.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=685). So now we will "unmask" ourselves a bit, in order to prove the reactionary nature of these attacks. The Prole Revolt Collective is an affinity group based in Morgantown, WV. The members of Prole Revolt all grew up in the same home town. In fact we know each other's parents! We all also participate in the Morgantown Anarchist Group (M@G) (which participats in the Atlantic Anarchist Circle (AAC)) and which can be contacted in these ways: email: [EMAIL PROTECTED], snail: c/o PO Box 563 Morgantown WV 26507. There are several long standing members of the anarchist movement involved with M@G who can vouch for our legitimacy (and no, the members of Prole Revolt do not make up all of MAG... in fact, we are the minority in the group). We are also involed with the initiative for a Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists. "For the record", as they say: No one involved in Prole Revolt was in Seattle. We do however have many comrades who were there. We do not know the ACME collective, nor do we know if any of our comrades participated in the Black Bloc actions. We choose not to know as not to endager them. We do, however, stand in solidarity with the Black Bloc and fully support their actions. The person behind the "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" post is a part of our collective. And [EMAIL PROTECTED]'s complete misunderstanding of that post is monumentous. It does not suggest that: "there were agent provacateurs who had infiltrated anarchist groups, and that the real reason why the vandals were ignored by police was because the feds had their own man or men 'inside'--was to 'divide the movement'" It actually was a simple statement suggesting that since the Black Bloc was obviously (for anyone who has any sense whatsoever) not the work of agent provocateurs, perhaps the sources of all this endless bickering, who are seeking to scapgoat the anarchist movement, misinform people, and divide the movement against globalization, are effectively the real provocateurs (whether they are paid by the police/ FBI to be or not). We engaged in humorous and inflamitory rhetoric in our message 1) to be funny and lighten up some of this discussion; and 2) to make a point. The reference to Sen. McCarthy (which we used to make fun of Ken McCarthy's idiocies) was there to make a point. This violent attack on the anarchist movement by liberal-left pacifists and reformists amounts to a witch-hunt within the left itself. This witch-hunt is attempting the scapgoat a section of the movement against globalization which is growing; a section of the movement which is not in the control of mainstream groups; a section of the movement which is an actual threat to the authority of not only the world globalizing forces, but to the authority of the liberal-left (and conservative, etc. for that matter) reformist establishment who have kept dispossesed people marginalized for a long time... This growing "section" is the anarchists and libertarian ulra-leftists, backed up by a growing number of "non-aligned" people (note that they are mostly proletarians themselves) who support the property destruction in Seattle. Name calling is not only a techniques used by propagandists, but also a technique long used by human beings (including anarchists) to make fun of people they regard as fools. To insinuate that the only people who use name calling are propagandists makes most every person in existance a propagandist. Of course, the biggest problem with this section of [EMAIL PROTECTED]'s attack is the tacit assumption that somehow all propaganda is manipulative or wrong. This is absurd at best. Propaganda is defined by the Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition -- 1993) as: "ideas, facts, or allegations spread diliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause." So, yes, we are propagandizing... we are spreading ideas, facts, and allegations to damage the cause of Ken McCarthy and his cronies who seek to scapgoat anarchists and undermine the victory in Seattle. And you know, it does sound like a lot of the people attacking the property destruction are middle class activist-wannabes, or, uh, yuppie scum. (hehe.) Prole Revolt is accused of bandwagon jumping for using the word "we", but this is exactly who we are. We are self-organized, consciously revolutionary members of the proletariat. We all grew up working class in a heavily industrialized section of West Virginia, we are all poor, and we are all angry. So when we placed ourselves into the context of ordinary people who are pissed off, we were simply stating the truth. [EMAIL PROTECTED] delt the Black BLoc's ability to avoid the police a rather weak and pathetic blow when s/he stated that: "I am going to postulate that some of these undercover agents just might have been somewhere in the vicinity of Niketown, Old Navy, and the Gap[...]" in an attempt to show that the police ignored property destroyers because the property destroyers were cops. This comes after s/he referenced the report that cops physically assaulted two protesters who had gotten away from the crowd. The point that [EMAIL PROTECTED] misses in the report is that the cops were obviously only attacking people away from large groups, when they could be more easily picked off, and when the police didn't have to worry about a large group of people watching and possibly attempting to protect/defend their fallen comrades. This is a widely known police technique, and is why this advice is often given to people who are going to protests: stay in large groups. So it is more likely that Black Bloc participants stayed in larger crowds, thus avoiding police attacks, in order to protect themselves. This is basic common sense at work again. Not agent-provocateur tactics. Well, enough with this. [EMAIL PROTECTED]'s weak accusational posting (and probably email) is terribly argued and almost unintellegible anyway. But we felt it best to respond as to not let the last word on this issue be from a person or group of people who really have no clue what they are talking about. This is illustrated by the fact that these people keep refering to property destruction as somehow being "violent". This shows how completely locked into capitalist property metality they really are; to the point of effectively granting corporations "persons rights", just like the US Government did in the late 1800s. Violence is only committed when a person is directly injured. [EMAIL PROTECTED] is right about one thing though: "we have a a big stinky skunk in the house", only it's not anarchists... but it's certainly the liberal-left pacifist/reformist tendency which is attempting to divide and undermine real struggle thru misinformation and conjecture. They are trying to turn the victory in Seattle into a joke. ------------- We Forgot to Mention... by prole revolt collective 8:52am Wed Dec 8 '99 There is no connection between Prole Revolt and Lyn Gerry / Police violence began before the property destruction There is no connection between Prole Revolt and Lyn Gerry ("interestingly enough" [hehe]), tho we do appreciate her annalysis and rebutal. Also: [EMAIL PROTECTED] again tries to place the blame for the crack down on anti-WTO activists on the Black BLoc actions (just like the police and the media... "interestingly enough"...). This ignores a vital point: The police attacks on portesters came before any property destruction began on n30 (as has been stated repeated by protesters in Seattle). This was also shown by the live media on n30: reports of police violence started long before anyone said anything about the property destruction. In fact, members of Prole Revolt were watching a live feed from a Seattle station via the internet on n30 when they started showing the property destruction as it was begining, live. Taking all of this into account brings us to another important point to consider: The police reaction (the "expulsion of tens of thousands of [...] protesters" from the area around the WTO meetings, the arrests, continued police-state tactics, etc.) came about because of the effectiveness of the combined forms of struggle (blocking of intersections etc., property destruction, marches, etc.) that successfully shut down most of the WTO meetings on n30. But because these attacks by the police began in earnest in response to the effectiveness of the non-violent blocking of intersections etc., and before the property destruction began, it is pretty damn reasonable to believe that protesters would have been shut out anyway. So: We don't all have to like one another, or totally agree on everything, but let's stop with all the dividing and fight the real fucking enemy... capitalism and it's globalizing forces (corporations, governments, the meida, etc.)! Onward! ******** The A-Infos News Service News about and of interest to anarchists ******** COMMANDS: [EMAIL PROTECTED] REPLIES: [EMAIL PROTECTED] HELP: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WWW: http://www.ainfos.ca INFO: http://www.ainfos.ca/org To receive a-infos in one language only mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] the message unsubscribe a-infos subscribe a-infos-X where X = en, ca, de, fr, etc. (i.e. the language code) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Prev by Date: (sv) Motkraft Nyhetsbrev #74 * Next by Date: (en) Boston Anarchist N30 Presentation and Discussion Panel
