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Diversity of Tactics
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  1. Black Bloc
    Connexipedia Article

    Resource Type: Article
    People who engage in protests wearing black clothing and masks and engaging in property damage. The tactic was developed in the 1980s by anti-nuclear activist autonomists, and was subsequently adopted by some anarchists, as well as some right-wing groups such as the autonomous nationalists of Europe. Black blocs lend themselves to infiltration by police and agents provocateurs, and it has often been alleged that their primary function, whether intentional or not, is to provide a pretext for police repression.
  2. A Diversion We Don't Need
    Against The Current vol. 158

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2012
    We know from our own experience that none of us wants to have the Diversity Of Tactics argument again. So why does it continue to happen? Because we radicals and anarchists have unintentionally become a Silent Majority, unwilling for whatever reason to prevent these ideologues, who are only a tiny handful of people with loud voices, from controlling the direction of our meetings.
  3. The futility of activism using violence as catharsis
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2010
    The anarchist practitioners of violence are fundamentally elitist. They do violence because it makes them feel good, and they don't care about the fact that it undermines the real work for social change that movement activists are doing.
  4. How the 'black bloc' protected the G20
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2010
    The black-clad mob in Toronto has left a lot of people not only in the general public but in the wider nonviolent social/global justice movements in Canada feeling disgusted, demoralized and dispirited. Just the result you want if your goal is to marginalize and stifle dissent. The blocistes, in other words, are the most effective tool on the ground for silencing the valid concerns of the broad social movements.
  5. In the Aftermath of the G20: Reflections on Strategy, Tactics and Militancy
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2010
    The tactics of the Black Bloc make it clear that, for them, it is more important to smash windows than to try and march with thousands of workers and engage them in arguments about how to move struggles forward or that the problem is capitalism. How radical is it to trash a few windows? For us, radical is about workers gaining confidence and consciousness to fight back, not just at work, but in solidarity with others. Radical is about developing a sense of mass power, organising based on moving others into struggle, winning others to challenge the power in their workplace or community collectively, beyond the individualization of our society. Radical is about going to the roots of the system - not trashing its symbols.
  6. Throwing Out the Master's Tools and Building a Better House
    Thoughts on the Importance of Nonviolence in the Occupy Revolution

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2011
    Diversity of tactics does not mean that anything goes and that democratic decision-making doesn't apply. If you want to be part of a movement, treat the others with respect; don't spring unwanted surprises on them, particularly surprises that sabotage their own tactics -- and chase away the real diversity of the movement.
  7. Who Controls The Black Bloc Anarchists?
    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 2009
    Whose interests do the violent actions of the black bloc benefit? The interests of the general public in using free speech as a means of political change? Or the interests of the authorities in providing the perfect pretext with which to crush and outlaw that free speech? You can't overthrow the entire system by smashing one bank and starting a bonfire. Real political change takes generations of struggle, decades of building respected educational platforms, and a gargantuan grass-roots movement focused on taking power on the local level and expanding upwards. Throwing a brick through a window isn't going to achieve anything other than making the vast majority of the general public despise you even more, and support the very systems of power that you are supposedly opposing. The black bloc sect exist to provide the media with violent footage with which to demonize legitimate protesters.
  8. You Can't Blow Up a Social Relationship
    The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism

    Resource Type: Article
    Published: 1981
    An Australian socialist-libertarian response to terrorism in the aftermath of the 1978 Sidney Hilton bombing, and a meditation on the inferior logic of terrorist-based politics.


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