A history of the Black Bloc

This episode of "It's The End Of The
World As We Know It And I Feel Fine",

was made possible by contributions
from slaves like you!

Spank you very much!

A lot of people involved in the black bloc
on saturday

and many of them 6 months ago were members of the labor party,

working for the democrat party and people who really believed back then

that parliamentary democracy could work
for them

and now they believe it's not gonna work
for them.

It's the end of the world as we know it
and I feel fine.

Gooooooooood morning slaves and
welcome to another sedition of

"It's The End Of The World As We Know It
And I Feel Fine",

the show where all our heroes were masked!

I'm your host the stimulator,

and with global may day protests and
the occupy wave of actions coming up

I thought it would be nice to do a little
segment about the tactic of tactcs.

The cancer in Chris Hedge's colon.

Too big to fail, big enough to fall!

The most widespread and mimicked
street formation of the last 6,000 years.

And the craze has police departments
and politicians wetting their dockers.

Yep.

The black bloc - But what about madrid?

You are right, agitator.

I must first pay my respects to the
lion-hearted peeps in madrid

who daringly attacked the fuzz during
anti-austerity protests last month.

The underpinnings of this movement
are confrontational and radical.

Many people out there think
that the black bloc

is a gang or a crew that one can join.

The radical group called the black bloc
anarchists

openly brag about using terrorist-type
tactics.

There are no black bloc anarchists
you thick-nost shit rocket.

The black bloc is simply a fucking tactic!

Black bloc is not a group
or social movement,

it's simply a tactic used by protesters to
protect themselves from police agression

and express a complete
rejection of capitalism.

Like the tactic of blockading a street.

The blockade is used with the objective
of stopping police or industry traffic

into an area you're trying to hold
or protect

and it could be part of an overall strategy
to protect that forest

or autonomous zone, for example.

The black bloc tactic can be used for
the purpose of securing streets

with the strategic goal of creating
autonomous spaces for discent

within a context of
intense police repression.

It can also be used to attack corporate
and state infrastructure

allowing the saboteurs
to remain anonymous.

This tactic has spread around the world
like wildfire

and we have witnessed its power
in places such as turkey,

egypt, brazil and colombia.

So, to find out more about the history
of the black bloc,

I bring you francis dupuis-déri,
a motherfucking anarchist

and author of
Who's Afraid Of The Black Blocs?

Hey francis, how the fuck are you?

Huuuuuuuuh I don't know!

When was the tactic of black bloc
first deployed?

The black bloc the way we know it
appeared the first time in germany

in west berlin, at the end of the 70s,
beginning of the 80s.

The first time the term "black bloc"
was coined in germany was in 1980

and it was called at the time the
autonomen movemen,

movement mainly of political sqatters
who were involved

in the protest agains the nuclear industries
and nuclear weapons

and the neofascist movement in germany.

So at the time in germany they were
wearing leather jackets,

that was fashionable at the time,
so black leather jacket,

black motorcycle helmet and they were
merging in black bloc to get a mass of

anonymous people, because you can't
recognize people in a homogeneous

mass of people wearing black and
masks and they were using this tactic

to confront and fight the police, which was
coming to expulse them from their squats,

for instance, or to fight agains neo-nazis
in the streets.

In the description of your book,
"Who's afraid of the black blocs",

it states that the image of the window-smashing thugs hides a complex reality.

Can you fucking explain?

Too often the black bloc is described by
politicians, by police officers, by journalists,

by scholars, even, as something really not
interesting from a political point of view.

They're described as a bunch of
hooligans and as apolitical individuals

who just like to riot, like to smash things
without any political rationale.

The black bloc, which are primarily white,
sort of nihilistic, destructive...

embracing confusing, petty vandalism
in this repellent sort of cynicism with revolution...

And of course when you listen to them,
when you watch them in action,

when you look at them, when you
follow them

and when you try to understand
what they do in germany, in france,

in great-britain, in greece, in brazil,

you rapidly understand that
it's only about politics.

There are 50 thousand other people
that are gonna be here

and I figured even if they are here
protesting in a way that I don't like,

advocating a reform or abolishing
some particular institution

at leat there's 50,000 people that really
care and are worked up about something

and hopefully we can come out here and
give them a show

of a little more radical direction.

About politics, about the economics, of course, also about power relationships,

about domination, and it's a way to
express a radical criticism of

these systems: the state system,
the capital system, the bank system,

and their targets is the message.
It's what they target that give us

the meaning of their action.

Thanks francis.

Stay tuned after the break for an
interview with a montreal streetfighter.

Viewers of this fucking show know that
in 2012, thousands of people took part

in the 6 months insurrection in montreal.

What is popularly known as
the maple spring

began as a student strike but evolved
into a popular revolt that included

many sectors of society.

The sheer fucking number of protester
and the non-stop use of militant

street tactics exhausted non only the cops
but also their budget.

Since-then the montreal po-po have
smarten up and have consistently

cattled anticapitalist demonstrations
as a way to avoid a repeat of 2012.

This year, comrades have been having
conversations as to how to regain

the street power that was obtained
on that insurrectionary moment.

So to review some of their tactics used
in the balance of that year,

I bring you nick, a university student
involved in much of

the street fighting of 2012.
But first, a fucking disclaimer.

So enough of that noise.

Hey nick, how the fuck are you?

I'm feeling great.

So, how the fuck the street fighting
progress in montreal?

From the beginning of the strike,
We saw the use of masks

go from being an isolated practice
to something that became normal

for hundreds of people to do.

This explosion in the use of masks
wasn't magical.

It took anarchists consistently masking up
and explaning why they mask up

in flyers and in conversations.

The same can be said for attacks
agains police.

As the strike progressed, the isolated
attacks on police that characterized

the demos during the beginning
of the strike, so does a couple of rocks

thrown in their direction eventually
became more popular to do

up to the point where demos sometimes
became very uncontrollable for hours.

This is simply a matter of persistence.

Fuck! Holy shit!

As people continue to see massed up
street fighters getting away

with attacking the pigs we'd been
clubbing them for weeks.

They start to see themselves as capable
as acting conflictually as well.

I imagine that this involved many different
groups of friends in the students milieu

making plans to come to demos
with these intentions for the first time

but also probably involved many people
coming back themselves.

The tension that can be felt against the
police during strike initially mostly only

manifested itself in chance. But over time
this transformed into the more

empowering practice of attacking police
directly.

And as more and more people took this
up it snowballed into being normalized.

And what are some of the tactical lessons
learned from that period?

When you look at the confrontation with
police that we've seen here,

it can basically be broken down
into two things:

confrontation that frees up
space in the police, and

confrontation that doesn't have the force
to make police retreat

but is still valuable obviously. From what
I've seen the factor that make

projectile attacks, for instance,
capable of winning the space

are coordination and
widespread participation.

With an offensive mentality that doesn't
wait for police to attack us first.

This is how fear changes camp, severing
the cycle of police inevitably attacking

the demo and dispersing it as everyone
runs from police charges.

In montreal the courage to confront police
is already held by many people,

while often the level of self-organization
is not quite developed enough

to make these confrontation long-lasting.

Something that some anarchists
quickly realized

was that if we want to hold the streets
after things start to get wild,

projectiles must be collected
as soon as possible.

During the demos with more militant tone,
like march 15th, the night demos,

the book fair weekend, april 25th,
may day and others,

whithin the first 10 minutes you would see
crews running to houses and gardens

to collect rocks inside bags, using
hammers to pry rocks up from the street,

or thrashing the larger pieces into
throwable sizes on the sidewalk.

People who collected rocks
would then distribute them amongst

the masked portion of the demo.

Something that also started to happen
more often with people counting down

for throwing, so that instead of just one or
two rocks actually connecting with police,

there were volleys that could
make police retreat.

Another tactic to accompany
rock-throwing that has been used

pretty extensively is throwing paintballs.
These often have a limited effect

unless aimed well enough to hit a visor.
I've seen this happen only once.

Fire extinguishers filled with paint,
on the other hand, as seen in oakland

during the general strike,
are the perfect weapon agains police.

With one swoosh you can blind
an entire riot cop line

and take them out for as long as it takes
them to clear their visors.

The same goes for police vehicle's
front windshileds.

Fireworks are also often shot
at police lines, but the few times

road flares have been used, they've been
far more effective than fireworks.

It's also really important for undercovers
and corporate media to be fought

out of the demo as soon as things start
to get rowdy,

to make it safe or to eventually disperse
and demask.

And finally, wearing black socks
over shoes and ditching them

with everything else can save you
a lot of trouble.

So can wearing cotton gloves.

Yep, that's about it.

Thanks, nick!

And that's about it for this sedition of

"It's The End Of The World As We Know It
And I Feel Fine".

As always, this here labor of love
and rage is brought to you by slaves

who shared their fiat currency so that
we can keep the lights on.

So muchas motherfucking gracias to...
jason, samantha, katie, kylon, fiona,

rahina, daniel, patrick, miguel, gavon,
adrian, tim, angela, thomas,

preston's production, rosemary,
tom, alexander, gregory, jimmy,

dylan, christian, kyle, valentine, françois,
alyssa, jennifer, liam, richard, justin,

james, robin, chris, aaron, mika, steven,
shawn, serena, patrick, (inaudible), F.G.,

bruce and... steven. (inaudible).

Also I wanna give a warm welcome to the
newest members of the taconspiracy:

ashley, emilia and... justine.

Bienvenidas!

For links to information about militant
street tactics, just visit my fucking website:

And to quote from sun tzu's
The Art Of War:

The ultimate skill is to take up a position
where you are formless.

If you are formless, then most penetrating
spies will not be able to discern you,

or the wisest counsels will not be able
to do calculations against you.

See you in the streets...