WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.761 This episode of "It's The End Of The World As We Know It And I Feel Fine", 00:00:03.761 --> 00:00:07.319 was made possible by contributions from slaves like you! 00:00:07.319 --> 00:00:08.532 Spank you very much! 00:00:08.532 --> 00:00:10.634 A lot of people involved in the black bloc on saturday 00:00:10.634 --> 00:00:13.756 and many of them 6 months ago were members of the labor party, 00:00:13.756 --> 00:00:18.026 working for the democrat party and people who really believed back then 00:00:18.026 --> 00:00:20.187 that parliamentary democracy could work for them 00:00:20.187 --> 00:00:22.457 and now they believe it's not gonna work for them. 00:00:22.457 --> 00:00:28.132 It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. 00:00:28.652 --> 00:00:32.371 Gooooooooood morning slaves and welcome to another sedition of 00:00:32.371 --> 00:00:35.569 "It's The End Of The World As We Know It And I Feel Fine", 00:00:35.569 --> 00:00:38.353 the show where all our heroes were masked! 00:00:48.633 --> 00:00:50.351 I'm your host the stimulator, 00:00:50.351 --> 00:00:54.773 and with global may day protests and the occupy wave of actions coming up 00:00:54.773 --> 00:00:58.784 I thought it would be nice to do a little segment about the tactic of tactcs. 00:01:02.184 --> 00:01:03.915 The cancer in Chris Hedge's colon. 00:01:03.915 --> 00:01:06.772 Too big to fail, big enough to fall! 00:01:06.772 --> 00:01:11.467 The most widespread and mimicked street formation of the last 6,000 years. 00:01:15.727 --> 00:01:19.776 And the craze has police departments and politicians wetting their dockers. 00:01:21.716 --> 00:01:22.222 Yep. 00:01:22.222 --> 00:01:24.586 The black bloc - But what about madrid? 00:01:25.556 --> 00:01:27.106 You are right, agitator. 00:01:27.106 --> 00:01:30.932 I must first pay my respects to the lion-hearted peeps in madrid 00:01:30.932 --> 00:01:35.317 who daringly attacked the fuzz during anti-austerity protests last month. 00:01:56.577 --> 00:02:00.747 The underpinnings of this movement are confrontational and radical. 00:02:00.747 --> 00:02:03.026 Many people out there think that the black bloc 00:02:03.026 --> 00:02:05.434 is a gang or a crew that one can join. 00:02:05.434 --> 00:02:08.578 The radical group called the black bloc anarchists 00:02:08.578 --> 00:02:11.091 openly brag about using terrorist-type tactics. 00:02:11.091 --> 00:02:14.659 There are no black bloc anarchists you thick-nost shit rocket. 00:02:14.659 --> 00:02:16.962 The black bloc is simply a fucking tactic! 00:02:16.962 --> 00:02:19.501 Black bloc is not a group or social movement, 00:02:19.501 --> 00:02:23.503 it's simply a tactic used by protesters to protect themselves from police agression 00:02:23.503 --> 00:02:25.970 and express a complete rejection of capitalism. 00:02:32.427 --> 00:02:34.897 Like the tactic of blockading a street. 00:02:34.897 --> 00:02:39.546 The blockade is used with the objective of stopping police or industry traffic 00:02:39.546 --> 00:02:42.555 into an area you're trying to hold or protect 00:02:42.555 --> 00:02:45.967 and it could be part of an overall strategy to protect that forest 00:02:45.967 --> 00:02:48.012 or autonomous zone, for example. 00:02:48.012 --> 00:02:51.746 The black bloc tactic can be used for the purpose of securing streets 00:02:51.746 --> 00:02:55.151 with the strategic goal of creating autonomous spaces for discent 00:02:55.151 --> 00:02:58.343 within a context of intense police repression. 00:02:58.343 --> 00:03:02.010 It can also be used to attack corporate and state infrastructure 00:03:02.010 --> 00:03:04.490 allowing the saboteurs to remain anonymous. 00:03:04.490 --> 00:03:07.638 This tactic has spread around the world like wildfire 00:03:07.638 --> 00:03:10.737 and we have witnessed its power in places such as turkey, 00:03:10.737 --> 00:03:14.473 egypt, brazil and colombia. 00:03:14.473 --> 00:03:17.987 So, to find out more about the history of the black bloc, 00:03:17.987 --> 00:03:21.354 I bring you francis dupuis-déri, a motherfucking anarchist 00:03:21.354 --> 00:03:24.678 and author of Who's Afraid Of The Black Blocs? 00:03:24.678 --> 00:03:26.787 Hey francis, how the fuck are you? 00:03:26.787 --> 00:03:29.365 Huuuuuuuuh I don't know! 00:03:29.365 --> 00:03:32.430 When was the tactic of black bloc first deployed? 00:03:32.430 --> 00:03:36.970 The black bloc the way we know it appeared the first time in germany 00:03:36.970 --> 00:03:41.145 in west berlin, at the end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s. 00:03:41.145 --> 00:03:48.127 The first time the term "black bloc" was coined in germany was in 1980 00:03:48.127 --> 00:03:52.440 and it was called at the time the autonomen movemen, 00:03:52.440 --> 00:03:56.481 movement mainly of political sqatters who were involved 00:03:56.481 --> 00:04:02.334 in the protest agains the nuclear industries and nuclear weapons 00:04:02.334 --> 00:04:05.555 and the neofascist movement in germany. 00:04:05.555 --> 00:04:09.023 So at the time in germany they were wearing leather jackets, 00:04:09.023 --> 00:04:12.922 that was fashionable at the time, so black leather jacket, 00:04:12.922 --> 00:04:20.066 black motorcycle helmet and they were merging in black bloc to get a mass of 00:04:20.066 --> 00:04:24.526 anonymous people, because you can't recognize people in a homogeneous 00:04:24.526 --> 00:04:29.902 mass of people wearing black and masks and they were using this tactic 00:04:29.902 --> 00:04:38.295 to confront and fight the police, which was coming to expulse them from their squats, 00:04:38.295 --> 00:04:42.334 for instance, or to fight agains neo-nazis in the streets. 00:04:42.334 --> 00:04:45.382 In the description of your book, "Who's afraid of the black blocs", 00:04:45.382 --> 00:04:50.593 it states that the image of the window-smashing thugs hides a complex reality. 00:04:50.593 --> 00:04:51.764 Can you fucking explain? 00:04:51.764 --> 00:04:59.180 Too often the black bloc is described by politicians, by police officers, by journalists, 00:04:59.180 --> 00:05:06.033 by scholars, even, as something really not interesting from a political point of view. 00:05:06.033 --> 00:05:12.148 They're described as a bunch of hooligans and as apolitical individuals 00:05:12.148 --> 00:05:19.698 who just like to riot, like to smash things without any political rationale. 00:05:19.698 --> 00:05:29.849 The black bloc, which are primarily white, sort of nihilistic, destructive... 00:05:29.849 --> 00:05:36.685 embracing confusing, petty vandalism in this repellent sort of cynicism with revolution... 00:05:36.685 --> 00:05:41.206 And of course when you listen to them, when you watch them in action, 00:05:41.206 --> 00:05:45.366 when you look at them, when you follow them 00:05:45.366 --> 00:05:49.688 and when you try to understand what they do in germany, in france, 00:05:49.688 --> 00:05:52.215 in great-britain, in greece, in brazil, 00:05:52.215 --> 00:05:56.803 you rapidly understand that it's only about politics. 00:05:56.803 --> 00:05:59.917 There are 50 thousand other people that are gonna be here 00:05:59.917 --> 00:06:04.392 and I figured even if they are here protesting in a way that I don't like, 00:06:04.392 --> 00:06:08.620 advocating a reform or abolishing some particular institution 00:06:08.620 --> 00:06:12.679 at leat there's 50,000 people that really care and are worked up about something 00:06:12.679 --> 00:06:15.075 and hopefully we can come out here and give them a show 00:06:15.075 --> 00:06:16.989 of a little more radical direction. 00:06:16.989 --> 00:06:21.455 About politics, about the economics, of course, also about power relationships, 00:06:21.455 --> 00:06:27.856 about domination, and it's a way to express a radical criticism of 00:06:27.856 --> 00:06:34.419 these systems: the state system, the capital system, the bank system, 00:06:34.419 --> 00:06:41.479 and their targets is the message. It's what they target that give us 00:06:41.479 --> 00:06:43.066 the meaning of their action. 00:06:43.066 --> 00:06:44.606 Thanks francis. 00:06:44.606 --> 00:06:48.931 Stay tuned after the break for an interview with a montreal streetfighter. 00:07:58.865 --> 00:08:03.784 Viewers of this fucking show know that in 2012, thousands of people took part 00:08:03.784 --> 00:08:06.864 in the 6 months insurrection in montreal. 00:08:06.864 --> 00:08:09.872 What is popularly known as the maple spring 00:08:09.872 --> 00:08:14.073 began as a student strike but evolved into a popular revolt that included 00:08:14.073 --> 00:08:16.152 many sectors of society. 00:08:16.152 --> 00:08:20.017 The sheer fucking number of protester and the non-stop use of militant 00:08:20.017 --> 00:08:24.953 street tactics exhausted non only the cops but also their budget. 00:08:24.953 --> 00:08:28.981 Since-then the montreal po-po have smarten up and have consistently 00:08:28.981 --> 00:08:34.719 cattled anticapitalist demonstrations as a way to avoid a repeat of 2012. 00:08:34.719 --> 00:08:38.205 This year, comrades have been having conversations as to how to regain 00:08:38.205 --> 00:08:42.234 the street power that was obtained on that insurrectionary moment. 00:08:42.234 --> 00:08:46.040 So to review some of their tactics used in the balance of that year, 00:08:46.040 --> 00:08:49.339 I bring you nick, a university student involved in much of 00:08:49.339 --> 00:08:53.748 the street fighting of 2012. But first, a fucking disclaimer. 00:09:07.319 --> 00:09:08.915 So enough of that noise. 00:09:08.915 --> 00:09:10.810 Hey nick, how the fuck are you? 00:09:10.810 --> 00:09:12.493 I'm feeling great. 00:09:12.493 --> 00:09:14.981 So, how the fuck the street fighting progress in montreal? 00:09:14.981 --> 00:09:17.914 From the beginning of the strike, We saw the use of masks 00:09:17.914 --> 00:09:20.893 go from being an isolated practice to something that became normal 00:09:20.893 --> 00:09:22.339 for hundreds of people to do. 00:09:22.339 --> 00:09:24.631 This explosion in the use of masks wasn't magical. 00:09:24.631 --> 00:09:28.242 It took anarchists consistently masking up and explaning why they mask up 00:09:28.242 --> 00:09:30.344 in flyers and in conversations. 00:09:30.344 --> 00:09:32.639 The same can be said for attacks agains police. 00:09:32.639 --> 00:09:35.993 As the strike progressed, the isolated attacks on police that characterized 00:09:35.993 --> 00:09:39.059 the demos during the beginning of the strike, so does a couple of rocks 00:09:39.059 --> 00:09:42.547 thrown in their direction eventually became more popular to do 00:09:42.547 --> 00:09:46.633 up to the point where demos sometimes became very uncontrollable for hours. 00:09:46.633 --> 00:09:48.853 This is simply a matter of persistence. 00:09:48.853 --> 00:09:53.321 Fuck! Holy shit! 00:09:54.621 --> 00:09:57.832 As people continue to see massed up street fighters getting away 00:09:57.832 --> 00:10:00.375 with attacking the pigs we'd been clubbing them for weeks. 00:10:00.375 --> 00:10:04.263 They start to see themselves as capable as acting conflictually as well. 00:10:04.263 --> 00:10:07.739 I imagine that this involved many different groups of friends in the students milieu 00:10:07.739 --> 00:10:11.217 making plans to come to demos with these intentions for the first time 00:10:11.217 --> 00:10:14.499 but also probably involved many people coming back themselves. 00:10:14.499 --> 00:10:18.121 The tension that can be felt against the police during strike initially mostly only 00:10:18.121 --> 00:10:21.702 manifested itself in chance. But over time this transformed into the more 00:10:21.702 --> 00:10:24.479 empowering practice of attacking police directly. 00:10:24.479 --> 00:10:28.136 And as more and more people took this up it snowballed into being normalized. 00:10:28.136 --> 00:10:31.651 And what are some of the tactical lessons learned from that period? 00:10:31.651 --> 00:10:34.301 When you look at the confrontation with police that we've seen here, 00:10:34.301 --> 00:10:36.701 it can basically be broken down into two things: 00:10:36.701 --> 00:10:38.973 confrontation that frees up space in the police, and 00:10:38.973 --> 00:10:41.751 confrontation that doesn't have the force to make police retreat 00:10:41.751 --> 00:10:44.730 but is still valuable obviously. From what I've seen the factor that make 00:10:44.730 --> 00:10:47.677 projectile attacks, for instance, capable of winning the space 00:10:47.677 --> 00:10:50.259 are coordination and widespread participation. 00:10:50.259 --> 00:10:53.875 With an offensive mentality that doesn't wait for police to attack us first. 00:10:53.875 --> 00:10:57.572 This is how fear changes camp, severing the cycle of police inevitably attacking 00:10:57.572 --> 00:11:00.661 the demo and dispersing it as everyone runs from police charges. 00:11:00.661 --> 00:11:03.733 In montreal the courage to confront police is already held by many people, 00:11:03.733 --> 00:11:06.973 while often the level of self-organization is not quite developed enough 00:11:06.973 --> 00:11:08.912 to make these confrontation long-lasting. 00:11:08.912 --> 00:11:11.081 Something that some anarchists quickly realized 00:11:11.081 --> 00:11:14.042 was that if we want to hold the streets after things start to get wild, 00:11:14.042 --> 00:11:16.109 projectiles must be collected as soon as possible. 00:11:16.109 --> 00:11:19.928 During the demos with more militant tone, like march 15th, the night demos, 00:11:19.928 --> 00:11:23.416 the book fair weekend, april 25th, may day and others, 00:11:23.416 --> 00:11:26.409 whithin the first 10 minutes you would see crews running to houses and gardens 00:11:26.409 --> 00:11:30.443 to collect rocks inside bags, using hammers to pry rocks up from the street, 00:11:30.443 --> 00:11:34.097 or thrashing the larger pieces into throwable sizes on the sidewalk. 00:11:34.097 --> 00:11:36.468 People who collected rocks would then distribute them amongst 00:11:36.468 --> 00:11:37.830 the masked portion of the demo. 00:11:37.830 --> 00:11:40.613 Something that also started to happen more often with people counting down 00:11:40.613 --> 00:11:44.368 for throwing, so that instead of just one or two rocks actually connecting with police, 00:11:44.368 --> 00:11:46.104 there were volleys that could make police retreat. 00:11:46.104 --> 00:11:48.623 Another tactic to accompany rock-throwing that has been used 00:11:48.623 --> 00:11:52.309 pretty extensively is throwing paintballs. These often have a limited effect 00:11:52.309 --> 00:11:56.002 unless aimed well enough to hit a visor. I've seen this happen only once. 00:11:56.002 --> 00:11:59.223 Fire extinguishers filled with paint, on the other hand, as seen in oakland 00:11:59.223 --> 00:12:02.347 during the general strike, are the perfect weapon agains police. 00:12:02.347 --> 00:12:05.433 With one swoosh you can blind an entire riot cop line 00:12:05.433 --> 00:12:08.177 and take them out for as long as it takes them to clear their visors. 00:12:08.177 --> 00:12:10.700 The same goes for police vehicle's front windshileds. 00:12:10.700 --> 00:12:14.353 Fireworks are also often shot at police lines, but the few times 00:12:14.353 --> 00:12:17.893 road flares have been used, they've been far more effective than fireworks. 00:12:17.893 --> 00:12:20.882 It's also really important for undercovers and corporate media to be fought 00:12:20.882 --> 00:12:23.276 out of the demo as soon as things start to get rowdy, 00:12:23.276 --> 00:12:26.334 to make it safe or to eventually disperse and demask. 00:12:26.334 --> 00:12:29.125 And finally, wearing black socks over shoes and ditching them 00:12:29.125 --> 00:12:31.504 with everything else can save you a lot of trouble. 00:12:31.504 --> 00:12:33.273 So can wearing cotton gloves. 00:12:33.273 --> 00:12:34.625 Yep, that's about it. 00:12:34.625 --> 00:12:35.842 Thanks, nick! 00:12:35.842 --> 00:12:37.693 And that's about it for this sedition of 00:12:37.693 --> 00:12:40.563 "It's The End Of The World As We Know It And I Feel Fine". 00:12:40.563 --> 00:12:45.101 As always, this here labor of love and rage is brought to you by slaves 00:12:45.101 --> 00:12:48.733 who shared their fiat currency so that we can keep the lights on. 00:12:48.733 --> 00:12:53.248 So muchas motherfucking gracias to... jason, samantha, katie, kylon, fiona, 00:12:53.248 --> 00:12:57.705 rahina, daniel, patrick, miguel, gavon, adrian, tim, angela, thomas, 00:12:57.705 --> 00:13:02.587 preston's production, rosemary, tom, alexander, gregory, jimmy, 00:13:02.587 --> 00:13:07.963 dylan, christian, kyle, valentine, françois, alyssa, jennifer, liam, richard, justin, 00:13:07.963 --> 00:13:13.888 james, robin, chris, aaron, mika, steven, shawn, serena, patrick, (inaudible), F.G., 00:13:13.888 --> 00:13:16.670 bruce and... steven. (inaudible). 00:13:16.670 --> 00:13:20.622 Also I wanna give a warm welcome to the newest members of the taconspiracy: 00:13:20.622 --> 00:13:23.726 ashley, emilia and... justine. 00:13:23.726 --> 00:13:24.610 Bienvenidas! 00:13:24.610 --> 00:13:29.231 For links to information about militant street tactics, just visit my fucking website: 00:13:31.373 --> 00:13:34.666 And to quote from sun tzu's The Art Of War: 00:13:34.666 --> 00:13:38.213 The ultimate skill is to take up a position where you are formless. 00:13:38.213 --> 00:13:42.256 If you are formless, then most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, 00:13:42.256 --> 00:13:46.413 or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you. 00:13:46.413 --> 00:13:47.802 See you in the streets...