If I have to choose between radical window breaking activists and democrat co-opters beholden to wall street greedsters plundering the earth and dooming civilization, I’ll take the window breaking freaks ok?
I’ve always appreciated Chris Hedges writing.
Yeah, I normally agree with Chris Hedges, and started out there four days ago. I initially agreed with the rather harsh anonymous video and was writing something similar. When I got done, I didn’t post it because it felt wrong and I shared it with two friends I trust to know that It’s not my opinion, but just where my head is at with this in a process…
so it’s just spin, neo-liberals will always purge their radicals just like the McCarthy fascists purged the communists from the unions to kill the sit down strike when they started up the NLRB, the neo-liberals want to make their Wall Street masters happy so under the bus the people go that really have the balls to change anything in order to Secure their neutered neo-liberal power in the beltway.
So, it goes back to this: A guy “steals” an orange… and we think that’s a crime without thinking for a moment about the fact that it is a much larger crime that people are without food, housing and other essentials rights like education.
Chris Hedges has fallen into the neo-liberal trap about which he has so eloquently written in “The Death Of The Liberal Class” and encouraged throwing the radicals under the bus rather than pointing out that a few broken windows is absolutely nothing compared to the death and destruction that has been financed by Wall Street Greedsters.
I’m ashamed of spending even a single day in this delusion, I hope Chris Hedges comes to his senses and apologies to the people that worked their asses off to make this movement what it has been. Besides, I’m not going under the bus again for these neo-liberals.
I’m in solidarity with a diversity of tactics, that’s not code for “were going to break some windows” It’s code for your greedy wall street whorshipping days are numbered.
Being a dirty hippie, this hits home. I’ve always been a believer in non-violent resistance. But I’m certainly a non-violent anarchist freedom fighter and I’m not going to remain silent as my brothers and sisters are marginalized from the movement by neo-liberal democrat co-opters and I really hope Chris recants his hasty condemnation of the very people that stand a chance of being bold enough to actually get something done.
working within the system = things stay the same
working outside the system = things actually change
Breaking windows in a chain store is not violence, breaking the economy and forcing people out of their homes is economic violence… get it right Neo libs!
Hey, this is fun using Chris Hedges logic against Chris Hedges reactionism, it just disolves like a cloud of steam in a stiff breeze…
So the whole Death of the Liberal Class argument is all about how the Neo-liberals threw their best and brightest radicals under the bus thereby destroying any chance for the left to succeed at changing things over the last 70 years or so.
But I understand why this delusion happened to Chris and many others within the movement. We all have so much riding on this, Chris wants to see this movement succeed. I do too. We are all perhaps “mother henning” a bit. We should just understand that this is spin that petty vandalism even matters in comparison to the greed of wall street and the unholy corporatism that grips the world today through America, the greatest purveyor of violence in this world today… Breaking windows? Give me a break, that doesn’t even register on my radar…
We should be certainly having the discussion regarding what are the best tactics to use but we shouldn’t be so quick to jump to condemnation of our radicals, it only hurts us to do so. We should instead immediately stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters instead of allowing the 1% spin to divide us and allow the democrat co-opters opportunities to own the conversation and encourage us to keep doing the same thing and hoping for different results this election like always…
In response to: The Cancer in Occupy, by Chris Hedges
Related Reading:
Interview With Chris Hedges About Black Bloc – Truthout.org
How not to block the black bloc – Waging Non-Violence
Nonviolent Action as the Sword that Heals – Training for Change
In response to “The Cancer in Occupy,” by Chris Hedges.
A Bustle in Hedges’ Row – Counter Punch
Activists and Anarchists Speak for Themselves at Occupy Oakland – Truthout.org
Will Occupy Choose Super-PAC Funding Over Radical Action? – News Junkie
So you criticize Chris Hedges hit peice on black bloc Anarchist tactics, by …creating your own hit peice on “neo-liberal Democrat co-opters”…
Is that right?
Credibility is basically non-existent. The only co-option going on here is people trying to turn a peaceful movement into a violent revolution.
Occupy is NON-VIOLENT, get it through your thick skull!!!!!
I thought I outlined pretty clearly what I think of Chris Hedges, I read him all the time and believe he has made an articulate case for not throwing our radicals and best activists under the bus.
I disagreed with Chris for using such strong terms (cancer?) rather than thinking it through and coming up with a face saving way out for the “Black Bloc Anarchists”. Something Gandhi recommended in order to eliminate the “us and them” thinking that happens to humans on occasion. I’m clearly leaving Chris a way out of it, I too was thinking similar things as were several of my brothers and sisters in this. We talked, I didn’t feel that this strong language against the most active members of occupy was going to be useful at anything other than being divisive. I expect Chris will come around to the idea that even these radicals are our brothers and sisters.
The more relevant question that I believe Occupiers should be asking, and here I’m being a sort of Frank Luntz for Occupy and suggesting if someone starts talking about the random acts of broken windows, just ask them how they think the few broken windows stacks up against a broken world economy and a billion starving people… let the crimes be compared in that light and you will find the conversation more about what it needs to be about. Non-violence.
Bayard Rustin, an openly gay civil rights activist would drink whiskey all night with the “militant radicals” and talking with them about how non-violence was more powerful. Ultimately he convinced most of them and it was through remaining in solidarity with them rather than tossing them out (like a cancer).
So no, this isn’t a hit piece, Chris Hedges isn’t a cancer to be excised, but rather a seriously respected author who like myself cares deeply about the world and sees Occupy as a very important step for humanity to take if it expects to survive too much longer. I expect him to come up with an apology within days…
I would like to point out that I do eschew violence in all things having been a peace and love dirty hippie for the last 35 years, so I do share the concerns of all involved regarding the non-violent nature of this movement. There is truly an active debate we’re currently having that is worth paying attention to. It’s gotten a lot easier since Chris has written this article for us to sort of pick away at… There are people that think that the threat of violence is enough… in other words, lets make friends with the Black Bloc, learn from them their perspective, which btw is very much more diverse than the Hedges article would lead you to believe. He’s made the same mistake that people made when reporting upon the Egyptian Revolution. When reporters asked “who their leader was” you could see them not understanding that they didn’t have any. They really thought they just weren’t telling them and that there really were leaders. The decentralization of the revolution is an artifact of open source software development. It’s complexity theory or Chaos theory as it is more commonly known. The Black Bloc is more of that, not really a group that has this sort of ideologically driven core message but rather an egalitarian decentralized democracy which allows not only for a diversity of tactics but also a diversity of ideology.
Note: I realize that I may have seemed to be calling Chris Hedges a Neo-liberal democrat co-opter. I’m not. His argument though is what I believe is a “slippery slope”. The purge will take with it anyone else deemed “unfit” such as the “dirty hippies” and where the purge stops nobody knows… that’s all, I’m just convinced that the “us and them” language is wrong and will hurt us way more than a few broken windows and the few conversations we need to obviously have with our youth about such things.
I do believe that we are protected by the constitution if we so choose to “reboot” democracy and you may take that any way you like. The trick is scaring only the 1% with this talk and making it quite clear that this will not actually hurt anyone else… Though there will be sacrifices along the way that will have to be made by everyone no doubt.
My belief is that we can include the black bloc without saying we endorse broken windows or violence.
My article is more about “Hey look, I know broken windows is not what we want as non-violent activists, but lets not lose sight of the comparison of the crimes… broken windows / broken economies… you decide who the real criminals are…
A complex issue, to be sure. You also have the agents provocateur out there meddling in our affairs and inciting our youth to random violence could be a problem.
Then finally, you have the neo-liberal democrat co-opters that have always thrown people like me under the bus… When they start purging the “black bloc anarchists” they won’t stop there… I’ll be next and we’ll be ineffective because purging anyone is the beginning of the end for any movement. The civil rights movement may not have catered to the gay issue very vocally but MLK didn’t speak a single word against Bayard Rustin the whole time. So they knew, no one goes under the bus. Instead they ended up being the movement peace keepers.
I expect you’ll “moderate” my comment fairly…
Great job. I fell into the same trap as you did, but this article feels much better and more consistent with what we’ve talked about. I certainly don’t want to throw anyone under the bus. Framing petty vandalism vs looting 50+ years of American wealth and work really puts things into context. Dont afraid go ahead.
Thanks Bro! That earlier stuff was hard to write too. This came out easily and fairly clear right away and left me pretty un-conflicted about it.
A lot of good points here. I get sick of liberal peaceniks going on about non-violence without any realization that the threat of violence has to be present, or a possibility in the future, before any authorities will take an activist group seriously.
If we look through historical examples, MLK was the safer option to deal with, while Black Panthers, Black Muslims and race riots in major American cities were a reality in 1967. Same goes for Gandhi in India. The Colonial forces would have just kept clubbing pacifists rather than give up the largest British colony, if it wasn’t for their fear of revolutionary groups taking control of the opposition.
The comfortable liberals of my generation have largely forgotten that it was primarily the threat of Communism and the Soviet Union that kept the corporate class making concessions. After communism disappeared as a real threat, they unleashed the Neoliberal dogs of war and have been expanding their control of the economy and government for the last 30 years.
Hedges has done such a good job of critiquing the Liberal Class, that it’s a tragedy that he doesn’t understand that pure pacifist movements will just be marginalized and ignored, if the authorities don’t perceive a greater threat by not making concessions to them.
All good points!
It is rather ironic that all my reasoning for not throwing the “black bloc” under the bus comes directly from Chris Hedges great critique of Neo-liberals and their total lameness over the last 70 years.
I have always thought the Drug War destroyed any chances of the left ever being in power again since they had been tricked into continually throwing their best and boldest freedom fighters under the bus for decades.
I think Chris will realize the error of his ways and apologize soon actually. I could be wrong, we’ll see.
The very real fear that Chris has is that the 1% will simply spin things into ramping the police state up and that a tiny amount of insignificant violence will be used to increase police control. He could be right. But I would argue they’re already going to do that, lets just assume it and strategize around that probability.
I think perception is important, how the public perceives the movement is important. How we perceive it internally may be more important though. We would do better to remain in solidarity and eschew violence, but the fact remains; the mainstream media is going to say what it says and it will always be negative regarding the movement. We should expect that.
Going forward, just compare the broken windows to the broken economy and suggest that doing it the same old way we’ve been doing it is never going to save us. Only by acting outside this broken system will things change. We need everyone at the table, all hands on deck to save our world from the 1%.
The worst part? We’re talking about this instead of talking about the ACTUAL violence of the Oakland police last month. and all police all the time, for that matter.