One view from my armchair. In the U.S., public opinion plays a big part in
the consent of the ruled. The rulers are well aware of this. America’s
general population is probably the most propagandized group of people of all
time, IMHO. Thus billions of dollars are spent on public relations and
"respectable" opinion and reporting to encourage their passivity.
Preventing the activism of the American work force on behalf of themselves
(corporate farming, racial profiling, etc.) and other workers worldwide
(Iraq's sanctioning, Africa's imploding) is the current "threat to
democracy." The bottom line? The credibility of the suits in the suites is
determined in large part by the activity or passivity of the working class
in the streets.
Seth Sandronsky
the significance of global riots
by Chris Burford
21 July 2001 07:59 UTC
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The "protestors" are of course much more than a "travelling circus of
anarchists", but they may not have a fully rational strategy for dealing
with state power internationally. The movement can still go on even if no
one has. The problems will be resolved in the course of practice.
But these violent disturbances inevitably fill a social and political role,
even if you do not entirely agree with them. Like the riot in Brixton,
south London, last night by 40-100 protestors after a protest against the
police shooting a black man a few days ago who had an imitation gun on him
as a cigarette lighter. Windows were smashed.
The jacquerie at the time of the French revolution, going back to the
peasant uprisings in mediaeval France. The Gordon riots in 18th century
London.
VViolent crowd behaviour may be stereotyped as mindless but it plays a
social role. It challenges the existing state structures and forces those
who support some sort of state structure to argue which reforms are
necessary to reestablish some sort of social order.
If militant anti-capitalist protestors make it virtually impossible for the
capitalist leaders of the rich world to meet for their conferences in
publically accessible places, then these leaders radically lack global
legitimacy however many votes they have won in bourgeois democratic
elections in their own countries (dominated by the capitalist media).
The state is a compromise between bodies of armed men to uphold it, and a
measure of ideology and ideological state structures to smooth over the
class and other contradictions.
These battles therefore are about what compromises must be made to
establish some form of accepted world government.
Chris Burford
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