Stop Me Before I Vote Again

When I was in Greece just a couple of months ago, I was on that exact street and the protests were intense but no where near this level.

Not sure burning people alive is a good idea. Besides, cops should never be made to look like victims.

Not sure burning people alive is a good idea

Besides, cops should never be made to look like victims.

I don't think they're really terribly brave people, for the most part, and I like to see things happen that might make them reconsider their choice of profession.

I see your point, MJS, but perhaps victimhood works too well a fit on police. They have cop dramas and the press to back them up.

Now, powerlessness...c'etait pour les autres.

As for cop dramas -- The nice thing about propaganda is that there's a point when it stops working. We've seen a few of those lately.

The organs of indoctrination are kinda paper tigers, really; the less attention you pay to them, the sooner they fail.

An old activist mentor of mine used to say that "there's no such thing as bad publicity."

Burning cops in the States would be bad publicity. Greece doesn't have anywhere near the mediation and mercenary framing that the US has. And it's had a series of fairly hamfisted governments since the close of the last world war. Ones which ruled rather nakedly, and with little attention to or investment in dominating narrative and culture.

That's not the case, here stateside.

Hell, kids broke some windows in Seattle and its still a pretty effective rallying cry for anti-demonstration legislation and practice. Burning a ski lodge doesn't get you an arson charge. It gets you twenty years in supermax as an "ecoterrorist."

Got to be smarter than playing into the needs and greeds of the corporate press.

Especially with a public that's still pretty damned comfortable with "free speech zones" and the global war on everything.

Anyway, I'm all for scaring cops, and prison guards, and anyone who badges up for Uncle's penny, on a personal level. Just not for the cameras and the lawn order voters.

Indoctrinate, don't incinerate! Or, as Monte Python said, use sarcasm!

Underestimating the opposition's determination and courage can be a fatal mistake. If there is one thing I learned in the military, it's how cheap and common physical courage is. If it wasn't, wars would be rare. Cops may not be the bravest souls, but I doubt most of them are cowards. You are not going to intimidate them or their masters that easily.

Violence should be a last resort, both as a matter of principle and pragmatics. Molotov cocktails have far more propaganda value for the government than they do combat value for any revolutionary movement. This sort of thing only serves to make martyrs of the cops, and that's not a good thing in a country as reflexively authoritarian as ours is.

I agree with everything Sean says.

Also, the revolution in Middle East suggests that seeing the security and military apparatus as forever on the side of darkness is impractical. If the cops are asked to fire on protesters, it's going to be a lot easier for them if the protesters have been attempting to burn them alive.

Dear me. What a depressingly conventional comment thread. Did someone even use the abstract noun "violence"? -- As though "violence" weren't the very thing that police are all about.

What a depressingly conventional comment thread.

Well, Michael, it's not like you're doing anything new here. You haven't made any practical case for throwing bombs at cops, other than the implicit one, which is that some old white dude on the UWS likes watching them burn. You're talking shit mostly: Cops are cowards and maybe they won't be cops if a few more of them get burned alive. That's not conventional, I suppose. It's also not very, um, stimulating.

Chacun a son gout.

Recent comments from our nihilist honor guard
Have bristled with charges of corruption and violence
Words better displayed next to the finger sandwiches

What sensitive souls these parlor anarchists of ours seem to have

Nighting gales among the lone falcons of the people
As more bloody minded anarchos fancy themselves

I'm growing disappointed with our brew of spontaneous revolutionary action
Lobby
All hat no cattle

Non violence certainly is the answer in libya no ?

Do we need a better lesson in the varieties of state reaction
Then these risings in the Arab world ?

The Arab states are like a series of Petrie dishes
All with a different strain of state toxin

In the one marked Libya the toxin kills people

Obviously any remedy needs to deal with that strain eh ?

How it "reads" to the public
Is always a consideration
But in greece cops particularly security cops may read more like cops here
Read in black neighborhoods then in whitey's neck of the woods

It's all context and juncture
Only a fools misses that point
When means are discussed

meh... I didn't see anyone here complaining about Egyptian protesters throwing molotovs, or the molotov cocktail prominently featured in Fluggenock's cartoon. But now, once one actually connects -- beautifully, I might add -- everyone is all shocked and appalled. Wasn't this the aim of all those other molotov cocktails?

Setting people on fire for the cameras is dumb. I suppose it might take an actual nihilist* to think otherwise.

* - as opposed to the imaginary ones dull thinkers conjure up so that they have moral hominiculi with which to play, the better to impress their lesser lights, and in order to beggar every point...

Boo yah! Beeyoootiful!

I caught this footage on Al Jazeera "Newshour" last night during a break in their Libya coverage. I taped it, too, needless to say. Fucking priceless. Mind you, the guy probably wasn't hurt that badly, considering all the goddamn' body armor and helmets and other shielding they wear. Still, it really did me good to see. I think it's the least the people could do; after all the abuse they've taken from Capital, the State and the police, I think the response is entirely justified. What Americans don't realize as they get bent out of shape over stuff like this is that in most other countries, the people don't glorify and lionize the police the way we do here. In Europe and elsewhere, people rising up don't have any qualms about fighting the police in the streets. Here in the bad old USA, however, our activists are still hamstringing themselves with tired old Nonviolence™ dogma. The more I see of State behavior in North Africa and Greece, the more convinced I am that Nonviolence™ is an ideological luxury affordable only to the affluent, cushy-living US "Left".

In my email and my Twitter feed, I've been seeing local calls to action for Egyptian and Libyan solidarity protests, accompanied by admonishments to adhere to Nonviolence™ principles. I responded by suggesting that US Nonviolence™ dogmatists take a look at what's happening in North Africa and the Middle East, and to talk about Nonviolence™ to a Tunisian, an Egyptian, an Algerian, a Libyan, a Moroccan, a Yemeni, a Bahraini, a Palestinian, and let me know how that turns out.

Jack Crow writes on 02.23.11 at 23:43:
Anyway, I'm all for scaring cops, and prison guards, and anyone who badges up for Uncle's penny, on a personal level. Just not for the cameras and the lawn order voters.

I forget who it was who said this, but this discussion reminds me: if you spend all your time worrying about the media or the "voters" will think, your revolution will never get anywhere.

Mike,

That's fine and well in Greece, where the state is sort of nakedly black hat, a point made earlier above. It's just dumb to do it here. Fucking dumb. You molotov a cop in the States and you can be damned certain that they'll all get bigger budgets. It's not going to persuade most Americans to believe they can resist the police. It's going to make them sympathize.

And while I'm certainly no pacifist or mystical satyagrahi, it's probably a good idea to avoid the casting call for morons who want to spend the rest of their lives in Florence.

The public interface with authority is not degraded enough to do it stateside. That's the first and perhaps the hardest obstacle.

Mike,

We have the press we have, not the one we want. It has to be calculated, because its impact on the culture is not only impressive, it's often pretty damned seamless.

I mean, it would be nice to live in a country like Libya or Egypt, with a degraded octogenarian regime, a wooden and obviously scripted, laughable state teevee and an entire generation which has stopped believing in its own prospects for personal fulfillment and individual aggrandizement.

But we don't.

Burning cops won't get us there. That's playing the house on bank day, and a card counter at the Mirage has better chances of avoiding the heavy hand of reaction.

jack if you're "hard to figure"
constantly escaping
characterizations and cartooning
it might be because you're an amorphic blob
of rage and sentimentality
that if not nihilist is in fact simple against anything practical sustainable
ie
"improving "
you are turned off by everything that "works"
confining your support to vague romantic
gestures of resistence
purfied by the final martyrdom
of all good and free beings
no that doesn,t make you a horse's ass
but tedious and ridiculous

go alpine sled -ing
with oxy the expert of the snow drift

i'm told by winter sport friends
there are trees in the path
big pine trees
ready to hault abruptly
the down hill progress
of any overly linearizing
guileless fools

martyrs of the path of rectitude

unarmed peaceful property abiding demonstrations are wonderous affairs
in the correct context
not in tripoli today obviously

and after demos have received a stone wall
new tactics must emerge
you hardly protest a standing armed state
ready to protect itself by upping the ante
by charging its bastions with sticks and stones

the battle of liberation square
was a fight mostly against
off duty goons probably bombed
restricting their tools of struggle
to pre fire-arm stages
stages where the angels in the square could with courage hold their ground
the miltonic reference to day two
of the battle in heaven seems appropriate

btw
the molotovs were primarily of goon origin
as i understand it

look
as super al points out some where
if fringe direct actionists
trigger a violent reaction by security forces
against a peaceful mass of demonstraters
that is a crime against the people
there under the understanding it was to be peaceful

provocative actions whether by agents or oxy
are against the poipular movement not for it

if the state is to be confronted
forcefully
the plans and organizing muyst be quite different
you don't lead pacific folk
unknbowingly
into a clubing fest you plan to provoke

flash points happen anyway
but they don't look like the trashing binges
so loved by anarcho noodle heads
that never got into a bar fight
let alone won one

Owen,

You're worse as a psychologist than you are as an astrologer. But, it's good that this is what your waste your time on. Avakianism should trouble itself with internet turf wars and obscurantist poetry, not real struggle.

I'm in favor of practical, not stupid and quixotic.

Setting cops on fire is not only not practical, it's dumb. That's all.

Yeah, Pope. I hadn't posted in this thread because I hit a tree. You smug pompous fuck.

You berate Jack for highlighting a truth, when your whole schtick, when not posting crytomeme, is to degrade everyone's ideas but your own. Then you have the Papal Temerity to call everyone but yourself a nihilist. I suppose one could chalk that up to satire, self-effacing focus variety, but it's not playing well except to the 1 or 2 people here who may know you personally.

I think Clio fucked you in the ass with a glass-impregnated baseball bat and instead of learning the lesson, you became her slave, asshole bloody and rougly reamed, smile bigger than the Cheshire Cat's.

How's that for sarcasm, senecal?

uh, that's "cryptomeme" not "crytomeme."

looks like Clio got me. oops.

**********

I wonder how many of the people chastising Jack have been arrested and processed in this century.

And truly: what greater fucking irony than chastising someone for observing the way things work while suggesting we need to focus our energies on micro-economic theory.

Seriously, what fucking planet did you come from, Pope? Planet Irrelevance?

OP once mocked the Unrepentant Marxist as a site where more words have accomplished less than any other. Have no fear, OP, we're running a close second.

"I'm in favor of practical"
wonderful

start demonstrating
instead of misleading us with all your blither
about corruption and violence
like your a maiden aunt of woodrow wilson
i'd be delighted to find i'm wrong and you actually aren't an anarch-nihilist
but its only fair to expect you not to comment as if you were ...an anarcho - nihilist

btw
oxy
correcting obvious typos displays a sacred notion of your own writings
not all that impressive a "tell"

Charles,

Fiddling with marginal rates is revolutionary. Suggesting that setting cops on fire in the US is a wee bit counterproductive is penultimate nihilism.

You should know that.

Ha, ha, ha. You guys. Stop, stop it. Whew!

How little distance separates 'who has the biggest' and 'who is the biggest?'

How about a treat for Mr. Smith..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l-qWjem_VI

sen
i'm
prepared to ignore comments
by some
perhaps i ought to

its not my prime directive
to bore the hell out of "activists "
gathering here to warm their hands
by splitting cross hairs
with anarcho nihilist
minimal paw print
lucky star jack rabbits

not that in my crumbling mental condition
i have much else to offer "the cause "

one thing is certain
any attempt to discuss macro economics
is wasted on
the type of blank faced humanists
and nyetski club members
running what amounts
to a squatters annex here at SMBIVA

sort of an omega school of kultur -doom
allowed by squire
michael " all worthy " smith
and his diligent associate
j dabblemint white the third
aka perry

such indulgence by the good squire
is a grace note here
at least so long as they adjure
the imposition
of their excessive nose ski-ing
and bob sled / bumper car
know nothingism
on the asshole innocent passers thru that from time to time drop off a comment

clap
is the soloist an elevator operator ??

and
btw

clap
do you prefer the caw of the crow go unanswered ???

if so

say so
dick size long ago bored me
in fact at camp thunder club
aged 11

i won too often

"it's good that this is what you waste your time on "

how 'bout if i get

"arrested and processed "

i pad's allowed in cell 13 ???

haha.. he does seem like a good singer (not that I'd really know) but his presentation had me creasing. what a ham

oh man OP, you're really going there? tmi, man, T.M.I.

That goes for oxtrot, too

Cops are bullies. Bullies are cowards at heart; the overwhelming paramilitary force America's cops are using to bust small-time pot dealers is proof of that, as is the draconian treatment of anyone charged with assaulting or killing a cop.

As for the thug getting set alight in the video above: all I can say is, my first instinct on seeing that was to applaud. The guy's wearing armor and backed by a goon squad outfitted with clubs, guns, tear gas and riot gear, for fuck's sake. He's there to beat the shit out of someone - particularly, someone who is not in much of a position to beat him back. Whatever ordinary people can do to fuck up these assholes, let them do it, as often as humanly possible. It's only by going through them that we can hope to get to the assholes holding their leash.

Go on, Owen. Take a walk down to Tremont and set a BPD beat cop on fire.

See how many people treat it as a revolutionary act and decide to join the struggle to remake society.

And thanks for the window on your true self. What's wrong with squatting? Your turf really is ideological property, isn't it?

Sectarian pointillist.

According to the lyrics, he throws vodka bottles at the heads of those of his guests who bore him (no mention of igniting the contents, though) .

This shows how astute is the cultural reference of Smith's repartee.

As for the nasty hackysack, I'll just ration myself to a few portions a session. Have at it.

If you believe in torching cops with Molotov cocktails, then the next time there's a protest, why don't you throw a Molotov at a cop? When you can understand your own reasons for being reluctant to do so, perhaps you can understand why some of us might be reluctant to encourage others to do so.

I have no use for Gandhian puritanism, and neither did Gandhi, apparently. There are times when violence may be necessary, certainly in self-defense. But there are plenty of options that need to be exhausted long before we get there. If you take that route you had better be prepared for the consequences and they will be harder than anything you have ever experienced in your life. If you haven't worked up the nerve to destroy your TV or burn your subscription to the NY Times, you aren't ready for violent confrontations with the government.

jc
you are mis understanding me to your own convenience

re read my comments
i doubt you'll find me suggesting
torching american cops

its okay if we agree now and then
your status won't change

but i wonder some...
since t'is odd
for the likes of you
hardened enemy of ALL STATES
to object to violent direct action
against one of the STATE's agents

even if you only oppose it as a tactic
likely to alienate popular opinion

what kind of anarchist are u

my gosh are you ...an AINO jc ???

oh ya
you are a self defining free spirit
like your two man bob sled partner oxy

btw
the point about which community
black or white
you are concerned about
reacting badly to a torch job on a cop
is signifigant no ???

------

fb
i take
tmi
to mean
too much information
never fear
any personal information i give is false
in whole or in part

------
its fair to say
idiotic back and forths
in comments
can ruin even a good blog
why would anyone want to ruin father smiff's blog

in fact i rather think
as the target of most of this pathetic nonsense
i really oughta stop comments here
even on my own posts

leave it at this:

no comment by me from here on out
doesn't mean
i have no response to a comment
i have one
i always have one
polite or otherwise

i'm just keeping it to myself
and saving the site from
demoralizing fool krieging

these are great days earth wide

no time for pip squeaking

now, once one actually connects -- beautifully, I might add -- everyone is all shocked and appalled.

Whose appalled? Some privileged Manhattan pussy whoops it up over some arbitrary Molotov thrown on some arbitrary cop sprinkles needless French everywhere. A handful of sober gents openly wondered, what's the point?

Now OP's vomiting on everything with his usual self-awareness.

But feel free to think the naysayers here are appalled, if it will make one more middle class pussy feel edgy and tough by comparison.

Op-san, JC is a Zarathustra-thumping Nietzschean, but, he says, not a nihilist. There's some poetry in that, at least. Also proof he can't read.

One also notes the "Avakian" label. Very nice, especially in tandem with the Glenn Beck diatribes about "DM." Was Senator McCarthy a nihilist, too?

Cops would just as soon shoot you as talk to you. In fact, they often do, unless you shoot them first.

Why anyone would care about one getting the crispy critter treatment is beyond me. Oh wait, I forgot... they're "working class heroes".

Bleah.

And I'm not a nihilist, I'm just interested in self-preservation like any other person. And if you asked the cops they'd say the same thing, but in their case they have a license to blow your shit away at the drop of a hat and will always get the "get out of jail free" card from the local DA and his kangaroo court Grand Jury every fucking time.

Fuck them.

op will get his echo chamber one day

Why anyone would care about one getting the crispy critter treatment is beyond me. Oh wait, I forgot... they're "working class heroes".

No one said they're working class heroes, DP. The problem is that throwing a Molotov at a cop accomplishes nothing, while handing the government a propaganda victory. It allows the thugs to take the moral high ground. This is the same for all acts of random violence. The powers-that-be hire agents provocateurs to do this stuff for a reason. Why hand them a free victory and an excuse for a violent crackdown?

Your best hope for victory in any revolution is to get most of the army and the cops on your side. Or at least, willing to stand out of the way. Burning them alive pretty much guarantees that won't happen.

Sean, I appreciate your comments. They're actually quite level headed. Let me assure you I'm not actually advocating for throwing molotov cocktails at anyone. Violence begets violence and every act of violence invites escalation of violence. I'm no fool.

But sometimes violence floats around and lands on people and cops generate plenty of it, so if it rebounds back on them and they get "burned" (so to speak and only as a figure of speech), then I'm not gonna spend much time worrying about it.

"No one said they're working class heroes, DP."

Sean... by the way I do need to mention, that there was a poster here who in fact did assert that cops are working class.

And when I was abused by one while working my 6 dollar an hour job in a fly by night print shop during my drug days well... he abused me because I was condescending to him from my lofty perch.

Seriously, I had someone tell me that here on this very list.

It's interesting how this comment thread has devolved into a discussion of the random Molotov-ing of cops -- walk up to one on the street and set him afire mid-doughnut. A thing nobody suggested, as far as I can see.

The Athenian Democracy incident that formed our starting point here seemed to have quite a different story line -- a riot cop apparently driving a motorcycle into a group of insurrectionary citizens, and getting Molotov'd for his pains.

The straw man is random one-on-one violence against cops; the actual incident was fighting back, in the moment, with the means available, against frank, overt repression.

Watching the Greek incident got me thinking: what's going to happen in Wisconsin? If the thing doesn't just fizzle -- if people don't just get bored or discouraged and go home -- then sooner or later the cops are going to get the order to clear the capitol building.

Will the crowd obey when the Riot Act is read? If they don't -- Will the cops fire? Will they ride their motorcycles into the crowd? Who knows?

But if they do, and if it should happen that a couple of Molotovs come back at 'em, then shock and horror would not be the uppermost emotions in my mind.

I like it when people fight back. I'm not a pacifist. If violence is used against you -- and it routinely is -- then you should make use -- crafty, cunning use, of course -- of whatever means of violence lie within your grasp.

That's why my hat's off to the Greek democrat who sauteed that cop. Once the cop is back on the street, he'll think twice about making another such cowboy move.

"That's why my hat's off to the Greek democrat who sauteed that cop. Once the cop is back on the street, he'll think twice about making another such cowboy move."

Fuckin' A

Nice work at distilling the point MJS.

Oh, and I'll drink to that.

op
you are not allowed to stop commenting

The footage on CNN's website makes the fact that the cop had just willfully driven into a protester more obvious.

What I find surprising is the notion that the thugs will be allowed the moral high ground by someone reacting with reciprocal violence to the violence that's been used against them.

Here's the situation even in a "peaceful" protest and rally of any prominence: the cops show up armed with tear gas canisters, pepper spray, riot guns with "bean bag" grenades (actually they're filled with birdshot), batons, tasers, and sometimes even firearms with live ammunition. They are all there to do one thing: use the constant threat (and sometimes reality) of overwhelming force to squelch dissent as soon as the order to do so is given. If you can't explain why that is a thoroughly fucked-up situation to an average voter, who already simmers with resentment over something as comparatively minor as a traffic citation, then there really is no helping you.

squeeze off four or five rounds
into that ministry of justice
fellow

who may have done nothing to you

but who's friends/employees/employer
enjoyed burning half inch deep holes
in arms and thighs

enjoyed tying insecticide laden
leather capucha over yours and
thousands of other heads

and many other much nicer means
of communication with those
'suspected of being...'

Interesting development in Wisconsin:

http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/14115

“Hundreds of cops have just marched into the Wisconsin state capitol building to protest the anti-Union bill, to massive applause. They now join up to 600 people who are inside.”

“Police have just announced to the crowds inside the occupied State Capitol of Wisconsin: ‘We have been ordered by the legislature to kick you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what’s right from wrong. We will not be kicking anyone out, in fact, we will be sleeping here with you!’ Unreal.”

update
wisconsin
feb 26:

http://www.thegic.org/profiles/blogs/wisconsin-police-union?xg_source=activity