warriorhun wrote:Dear nonhocapito,
you say:
But it is not so with this disgusting "Anonymous". Nobody wants to take the consequences, nobody wants to carry the deed. Nobody wants to take responsibility. To me, the rule is now perfectly simple: if you need to wear a mask to accomplish something illegal, I'm not on your side.
I, as a "veteran" of the Budapest 2006
riots 
have to disagree with you. I was rioting back then with a covered face as all the clever ones. Why?
Because there were cameras around and they could identify you from pictures. Because people were hunted down and thrown into jail because of their faces appeared in pictures.
It is OK that if they catch you, you can nothing to do except to accept the fall, but why helping them?
That the first law the Government installed after was that you are not allowed to cover your face on political rallies told me all I needed to know.
Besides, becoming a Martyr may sound the next best thing to a blowjob if you are Shia Muslim, but somehow I can not see how getting beaten to shit by primitive cops and then getting ass-raped by cannibal Gypsy criminals in a prison cell will further your cause...
Well first we would have to agree on what is your "cause"... Back when people would not cover their faces (in "democratic" western nations I mean) to accomplish something illegal, the illegal acts would be demonstrative ones, like resisting the police with a sit-in, climbing up on a monument to hang a banner, burning documents, refusing certain mandatory laws etc etc. Nobody would have the face covered doing those things, and the acts were not simply "peaceful" and "law abiding" either. Protesters would be arrested in mass, declare themselves "political prisoners" and look after each other backs in jail until the others, outside, would not summon the money and the lawyers to get them out. And yes, a lot of things were achieved that way.
Here's the thing:
a society is expected to be peaceful and in order. It is childish and irresponsible to overlook this simple assumption, that works for every kind of decent or indecent society. The moment the rioter breaks the peace, which he is entitled to do of course, he has to be accountable for it. Otherwise the only reason he can show for is hatred and contempt (contempt towards all the "little people" that represent his parents who did not understand him or something):
why the rest of the society should carry the burden of the rioter's contempt? Clean up the mess he leaves behind? Accepting the risks and the consequences (for unjust they may be) is the only way to prove to the silent majority that the rioter's intentions are good.
Sure, I have know decent people that went to demonstrations with the intention to "riot", with helmets and scarfs, ready to battle with the police.
Without them telling me, I always knew perfectly well the
personal reasons why they would do it: the adrenaline rush, the admiration of girls, hatred towards the authority. But challenged to give a political reason for their actions, they were at a loss and would resort to call you names.
But maybe you will be able to finally explain to me the political achievements obtained with this kind of rioting. So far, the only immediate achievement, past having ruined the actual demonstration against global corporate greed and local hypocrite governance, has been that
the Minister for Internal Affairs in Italy is about to pass new laws to allow more power to the police against the citizens, while all the grassroots organizations are about to be raided by the police. Yay!
Oh, and newspapers are publishing pictures of black blok characters with their faces covered, so that the people can collaborate with the police in trying to recognize them. How edifying.
upstream wrote:When they're peaceful, nobody listens.
When they're violent (or fake violent using 'black bloc"), the media portrays the protesters as brutal and stupid. Giving the police extra powers to bash heads and take prisoners.
And when media portrays protesters as "good", it's for 'limited hangout' creation purposes. Trying to rope people into useless causes and co-opted groups.
What are the point of these gatherings? It just gives the perps the oppurtunity to identify "radical" people and keep them on file.
Well I see what you mean, and personally I could agree with you that on a general, political level it seems pretty useless to go to demonstration. I haven't been to one in a very long time, and even when I went, I hardly felt "part" of it, and I certainly never felt I was in my place behind this or that banner or flag.
But aside of the televised perception of what a demonstration is, there is something else to it: being outside; being with other people; not caring about TV; not caring about what TV will make of it; get to know like-minded individuals that feel like you about a lot of things; being amidst of a crowd that, for a change, is made of individuals who are concerned, passionate, enthusiastic about something. All these things make it worthwhile, I believe, and in a way or another are bound to change the perception we have of the society we live in, at least a little bit.
Also, you have to ask yourself why the pigs in charge use the black blok strategy to ruin every demonstration. Wouldn't be enough to just not give the news on TV, if the purpose was to silence the protest?
No, the real purpose of the Black Blok is to discourage people to get down to the streets, because that simple act can mean a step forward for a lot of people, in the conscience of what it means to be citizens, and responsible, concerned ones at that. That doesn't work with the idea of citizen-consumer or citizen-slave that the pigs in charge have been working so hard at in the past decades.
