Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
Speaker 2: a weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening, there's
Speaker 2: people who try well, actually, you have a lot of
Speaker 2: reminders of this right now, but there's people who try
Speaker 2: to do good things in response to bad things, or
Speaker 2: even sometimes not in response to bad things, just anyway,
Speaker 2: they just try and do good things. And I think
Speaker 2: we should remember that. We should also remember that I'm
Speaker 2: your host, murder Kiljoy. You actually can forget that, though,
Speaker 2: you don't need to remember that. But what you do
Speaker 2: need to remember is that we have a guest this week,
Speaker 2: and you need to know that our guest is named
Speaker 2: Molly Conger. Hi.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've never heard of you before. Do you
Speaker 2: Do Anything? Molly is the host of one of my
Speaker 2: favorite podcasts called Weird Little Guys that honestly, if you're
Speaker 2: listening to the show, you've probably heard. But if you haven't,
Speaker 2: you don't have to pause this and go listen. But
Speaker 2: after this is done, you should go listen.
Speaker 3: It's sort of the opposite of this show, like tonally,
Speaker 3: it's about bad people who did bad stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I like that. It's like not at the
Speaker 2: like the Hitler scale, it's at the like I don't
Speaker 2: think you've covered anyone I've heard of, and I have
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time doing anti fascist work.
Speaker 3: No, just like weird little freaks trying to be like
Speaker 3: Junior Hitler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but no, I have no good transition for that.
Speaker 2: But we have a producer whose name is Sophie Hi Sophie,
Speaker 2: that's me Hi, And we have an audio engineer named
Speaker 2: Eva hi Eva hi Eva, Hello Eva. And our theme
Speaker 2: musical is written forced by unwoman. And Molly has no
Speaker 2: idea what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 3: It's always so nerve wrecking, like what if it's something
Speaker 3: I can't be funny about.
Speaker 2: What if it's something you hate? I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Well, I actually have some news through even when you're
Speaker 1: trying not to be funny, you're still funny.
Speaker 2: So I've been doing this series that people might have
Speaker 2: or might not been listening to of the previous episodes,
Speaker 2: where I've been covering neoliberalism and the people fighting against neoliberalism.
Speaker 2: And I just finished a four parter kind of about
Speaker 2: this app Batistas and an intention to move into the
Speaker 2: alter globalization movement. But I thought, let's talk about another
Speaker 2: player in the alter globalization protests today, Mollie, we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about the boogeyman of militant street protests. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk about a polarizing tactic that is regularly
Speaker 2: mistaken for a group or an ideology. It's a tactic
Speaker 2: that has escaped containment to get used by terrible people
Speaker 2: as well, though usually not under the same name. I
Speaker 2: don't know whether you can guess yet or not, or
Speaker 2: I'll just tell you.
Speaker 3: Is it the black block?
Speaker 2: It is, we're talking about the black block.
Speaker 3: When you were talking about fighting globalism, I was worried
Speaker 3: you were to talk about Alex Jones, But then I.
Speaker 2: Remember globalization, very big difference. Okay, sorry, let's actually get
Speaker 2: that out of the way real quick.
Speaker 3: I just got over I just got over COVID.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, your brain's not back yet.
Speaker 2: So there's this terribly named movement from the late nineties
Speaker 2: early oughts. I'm not on script right now. I'm just
Speaker 2: telling you all things. It was often at the time
Speaker 2: called the anti globalization movement, but that was a name
Speaker 2: given to it by the media, and some people within
Speaker 2: the movement would call themselves anti globalization activists, but very
Speaker 2: quickly people were like, no, that's actually not the thing
Speaker 2: at all. We are a global movement that is about
Speaker 2: tearing down borders. We are just against the neoliberalism that
Speaker 2: is only tearing down economic borders of ways to extract
Speaker 2: money from developing nations to give to rich people.
Speaker 3: So they're anti globe emoji, guys.
Speaker 2: I don't know whether globe emoji is. So the problem
Speaker 2: is is that anytime someone says globalism, they're actually just
Speaker 2: doing an anti Semitic dog whistle.
Speaker 3: That's why I was confused. Yeah, I'm on track now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's so hard to talk about alter globalization
Speaker 2: movements like when right now the problem is fascism and tariffs. Right.
Speaker 3: But okay, so we're back to black Block. I'm with it.
Speaker 2: You ever heard of the black block? You clearly have
Speaker 2: you guessed what we were talking about.
Speaker 3: I've seen them around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, coming into this, what's your conception of
Speaker 2: the black block?
Speaker 3: Well, one time I was getting beaten over the head
Speaker 3: with a bicycle by a Boston police officer and someone
Speaker 3: from the block who I will never know, whose face
Speaker 3: I never saw, pulled me out of there. And helped
Speaker 3: me wash the pepper spray out of my eyes. So
Speaker 3: in my heart all they are heroes.
Speaker 2: Fuck yeah, I feel like there's the heroic mode of
Speaker 2: black block, and that's that's what it does, is it
Speaker 2: helps the people around.
Speaker 3: I just kind of like wander around process zones like oblivious,
Speaker 3: just like I don't know, like Mannic Pixie dream girl
Speaker 3: at the protest, like nothing back could happened to me
Speaker 3: because I'm just a little girl, Like I'm so fucking dumb.
Speaker 3: So I had my ass like yanked back out of
Speaker 3: the line of fire by a stranger in a mask
Speaker 3: several times. Cool, So thank you strangers.
Speaker 2: The shortest possible version that I could come up with
Speaker 2: of the black block is that it is a street
Speaker 2: protest tactic developed by the anti authoritarian left in which
Speaker 2: everyone wears all black and masks and gathers together in
Speaker 2: a group, a block, as it were. And if you're
Speaker 2: listening to this in audio format and didn't look at
Speaker 2: the title, there's no K in block. This is more
Speaker 2: like block like the Soviet block. That's the only other
Speaker 2: block I know of.
Speaker 3: A clocks, voting blocks, vote voting blocks, just what they see, Yeah,
Speaker 3: people doing stuff together.
Speaker 2: It's not a word we use very often, but by
Speaker 2: everyone doing that, not voting together, but by wearing masks
Speaker 2: and the it creates anonymity which allows individuals to do
Speaker 2: things that they might not want to be known for doing,
Speaker 2: like breaking laws. Most famously, the black block is known
Speaker 2: for smashing corporate property with hammers and bricks, spray painting
Speaker 2: graffiti onto walls, things like that. It is also known,
Speaker 2: i think, more by participants for things like what you're describing,
Speaker 2: of keeping people safe from police violence. When everyone does this,
Speaker 2: when everyone dresses all in black, or rather when a
Speaker 2: significant portion of people do this, it makes it hard
Speaker 2: to single people out for arrest, and it makes it
Speaker 2: hard for individuals who are arrested to be convicted because,
Speaker 2: as the cliche goes, no face, no case, which is
Speaker 2: not legal advice.
Speaker 3: But you know what, it's a none of the sh
Speaker 3: interpreted as advice or encouragement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of me trying to explain that
Speaker 2: this is not encouragement. Despite if you stick around a
Speaker 2: part too, I'll tell you how to do historical reenactments
Speaker 2: of black blocks and how you can make it make
Speaker 2: your loss choices.
Speaker 3: But this is not incitement.
Speaker 2: Right, black blocks allow for people who might otherwise be
Speaker 2: more targeted for arrest for skin color reasons, gender presentation reasons,
Speaker 2: or some other reason to participate in rowdy actions with
Speaker 2: a comparable level of safety. Black blocks also regularly de
Speaker 2: arrest people. They defend peaceful protesters from police violence, and
Speaker 2: they can distract police away from more vulnerable targets. It
Speaker 2: is a contentious tactic, largely because it is usually accompanied
Speaker 2: by property destruction, which is itself a contentious tactic at protests.
Speaker 3: You can't look at a burning waimow and tell me
Speaker 3: you don't think that's sexy. Those people are liars.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, I know that's okay. This is one
Speaker 2: of the things that would come up all the time,
Speaker 2: right is people would always be like, oh, this alienates people,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, think so man, A lot of people
Speaker 2: are like that's pretty cool, Like I hate the cop
Speaker 2: car and now the cop car's on fire. This seems nice,
Speaker 2: but you know, teach their own. Okay, wait with the
Speaker 2: burning weymo. Are either of you all got Speedy Black
Speaker 2: Emperor fans, the band from the late nineties early odds. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: this is important to approximately neither of you and some
Speaker 2: small portion of our audience. There is a song called
Speaker 2: the Dead Flag Blues and it starts with this long
Speaker 2: poem that's very like apocalyptic anarchy stuff. Right. This is
Speaker 2: a big band at the time, I swear, and the
Speaker 2: first line is the car is on fire and there's
Speaker 2: no driver at the wheel.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. They predicted it.
Speaker 2: They predicted it.
Speaker 3: They predicted the burning weymo.
Speaker 2: I know, which means the flags are all dead at
Speaker 2: the top of their polls, and it means the skyline
Speaker 2: was beautiful on fire, all twisted metal stretching upwards, everything
Speaker 2: washed in the thin orange haze, the prophecy, and we're
Speaker 2: going to open up our wallets and be full of blood.
Speaker 2: So just to give everyone a heads up about what's going.
Speaker 3: To happen, I mean, parts of revelation are coming true.
Speaker 3: So it only makes sense that there would be modern
Speaker 3: day prophecy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, a bunch of post rock people from Canada.
Speaker 2: So black block isn't always an appropriate tactic, but it's
Speaker 2: a sexy one, and sometimes people make use of it
Speaker 2: in moments when it might not be the best tool
Speaker 2: available in the toolbox, Partly because when people are drawn
Speaker 2: to it. They're drawn to it, you know, but it's
Speaker 2: an important tool that's available for people want to participate
Speaker 2: in militant street demonstrations. And I swear I actually did
Speaker 2: plan this as my topic before the actions of the
Speaker 2: last week two weeks ago for you all listening Synchronicity Baby,
Speaker 2: and this week we're going to talk about the history
Speaker 2: of the Black Bloc from its roots in West Germany
Speaker 2: before it's spread across the world. And we're talking about
Speaker 2: the Black Bloc today in the context of talking about
Speaker 2: the ultra globalization movement, where it was a fairly major
Speaker 2: social force. And I have a few different anecdotes I'm
Speaker 2: going to use to start this story. This is gonna
Speaker 2: be one of those episodes where Margaret is vaguely like,
Speaker 2: I've heard of this allegedly from a long time ago.
Speaker 2: I don't know Statue's limitations are, but it's at least.
Speaker 3: That I mean, as long as it's more than five
Speaker 3: years ago, you're probably good in most states federally for sure,
Speaker 3: unless it was terrorism.
Speaker 2: And also, like, genuinely it would be stolen valor for
Speaker 2: me to claim that I am much of a frontlines
Speaker 2: activist these days, but I mus start with some anecdotes.
Speaker 2: One the video I saw this weekend from ongoing anti
Speaker 2: ice demonstrations where people seemingly from all walks of life
Speaker 2: are putting their safety and liberty online to materially stop
Speaker 2: the functioning of the state and its deportations.
Speaker 1: Kidnapping people from their home. Yeah, business is the street.
Speaker 2: Children, Yeah, parents, It's a nightmare and it's bad, and
Speaker 2: it's good that people are trying to store neighbors. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fuck ice.
Speaker 2: Fuck Ice. Demonstrations that are happening, at least right now
Speaker 2: as we record. I don't know, you know, you all
Speaker 2: in the future, we'll have a different sense of what's happening.
Speaker 3: It's probably worse by the time they hear this, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Or continuingly exciting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hope better.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Demonstrations seem to be aware of the weight of history,
Speaker 2: of the fact that if we don't stop authoritarianism, there's
Speaker 2: actually no limit to how bad things might get. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And there's a video, and I honestly don't know what
Speaker 2: from what city. I'm literally just guessing Seattle of some
Speaker 2: riot cops trying to grab someone who's wearing all black
Speaker 2: and arrest this person. There are maybe eight cops. In
Speaker 2: this video, the person being grabbed, a couple of their
Speaker 2: friends come forward, take a hold of their friend, and
Speaker 2: under a hail of less lethal munitions escape with their
Speaker 2: friend pull their friend of freedom. All three of them
Speaker 2: were dressed more or less identically, and they disappeared into
Speaker 2: a crowd that presumably you can't talk as of the
Speaker 2: angle of the shot, but presumably there's a crowd with
Speaker 2: many more people dressed identically to them. So it seems
Speaker 2: quite unlikely that the police would be able to single
Speaker 2: out the same person or the rescue ever again. And
Speaker 2: I don't know that there's a single action I can
Speaker 2: point to that communicates the idea of solidarity and shared
Speaker 2: risk more than de arresting people. Two people went at
Speaker 2: it against eight cops and got away and rescued their friend.
Speaker 3: It always looks like a miracle.
Speaker 2: I know, you look at it and you're like, but
Speaker 2: there's this kind of thing sometimes we just want it
Speaker 2: more than them.
Speaker 3: Because they're just at work. I mean, some of them
Speaker 3: have this like horniness for blood, and they really just
Speaker 3: like they love hurting you. A lot of them like
Speaker 3: to be honest, but like they're just at work, and
Speaker 3: like if it becomes too hard. Sometimes they will just
Speaker 3: give up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're like, well, we can just go beat
Speaker 2: another person soon, or like like literally in this case,
Speaker 2: they just like fall back and start shooting people with stuff.
Speaker 3: I'll just go beat somebody that doesn't fight back.
Speaker 2: Totally well, And that actually even gets to what's so
Speaker 2: useful about these demonstrations is that they're like, oh, people
Speaker 2: fight back when we do this. That's hard. We don't
Speaker 2: like when things are hard, you know. And to me,
Speaker 2: this is the kind of heroism that fantasy books are
Speaker 2: built on. I feel non hyperbolic when I say this.
Speaker 2: And what allowed them to do this in this particular
Speaker 2: context of this particular video was black block attire. Sometimes
Speaker 2: the black block is not perfect, or it might not
Speaker 2: be the right move on any given day. Not everyone
Speaker 2: who does any given tactic is a good person even
Speaker 2: or a sint or a hero, but it is a
Speaker 2: powerful tool and is one of many tools available to
Speaker 2: people when downtrodden people are fighting against the people doing
Speaker 2: the trotting. And I like this way of phrasing it
Speaker 2: because I'm currently obsessed with words that are derived from
Speaker 2: other words that are no longer used. Trotting. No one trods,
Speaker 2: but down trodden. We know what that means.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's a word for that, for those like when
Speaker 3: like every form of the word doesn't survive.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: I was just reading about that the other day.
Speaker 2: My favorite is overwhelmed. Do you know what whelmed means? No,
Speaker 2: it means overwhelmed.
Speaker 3: Fuck, it's like flammable and inflammable.
Speaker 2: I know, I know. Anyway, language nerds trying to talk
Speaker 2: about history. Okay, another anecdote. I'll give you some anecdotes.
Speaker 2: I I'll tell you the history. When I was a
Speaker 2: baby author, I put out a book about anarchist fiction,
Speaker 2: and for it I interviewed my hero Bursula Lquin and
Speaker 2: we did a talk together. But this is literally just
Speaker 2: like I can shoehorn in that I once got to
Speaker 2: do a talk with Liquin. That's not actually the purpose
Speaker 2: of this, but I know right exactly, and it's all
Speaker 2: been downhill from then. But doing a talk together was like,
Speaker 2: honestly one of the highlights of my life. We talked
Speaker 2: about the role of anarchism in fiction for an hour
Speaker 2: or so and then took questions. And this was interesting,
Speaker 2: right because people came out who wouldn't have just come
Speaker 2: out to see Margaret talk about anarchism and fiction, right,
Speaker 2: And one man in the audience he raised his hand
Speaker 2: and he said, and I'm paraphrasing from memory here, why
Speaker 2: do you anarchists show up at anti war protests and
Speaker 2: ruin them? And this is a question I had heard
Speaker 2: a lot before, because I lived in Portland for a while.
Speaker 2: I cut my teeth there as a protester during anti
Speaker 2: war protests of like two thousand and two and three.
Speaker 2: And I thought about the man's question for a second,
Speaker 2: and I told him, what you don't realize is that
Speaker 2: when you have these big anti war protests are honestly
Speaker 2: protests about almost anything. The ones that you think that
Speaker 2: anarchists have ruined were often organized by anarchists in the
Speaker 2: first place, and maybe not solely anarchists, and not necessarily
Speaker 2: by people who are then in the black block, right,
Speaker 2: But people who believe in direct action are everywhere and
Speaker 2: do an awful lot of the behind the scenes work,
Speaker 2: way more behind the scenes work than on the groundwork,
Speaker 2: just because literally in already to get anything done, you
Speaker 2: have to do more behind the scenes work, which is
Speaker 2: why we thank Sophie approximately once a week.
Speaker 3: Thank soph You're welcome.
Speaker 2: I actually literally, that's what we were talking about before
Speaker 2: we got on this, talking about like, we are so
Speaker 2: grateful that all we have to do is spend hours
Speaker 2: and hours and hours researching things we don't have to
Speaker 2: then also do administrative back end work because we have
Speaker 2: producers and editors and amazing teams.
Speaker 3: I can't send an email.
Speaker 2: Imagine sending an email. No, I also don't.
Speaker 1: Like sending an email, but I do it.
Speaker 2: Because you're so brave and strong. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Total, every time I do it, I'm like, oh, you
Speaker 1: can do it. If you do that, you can pet
Speaker 1: a dog. You can pet a dog. Oh it works.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. And so when I answered to this
Speaker 2: man that there's all this behind the scenes work, I
Speaker 2: don't think it helped him, but it was the best
Speaker 2: I could do in terms of an answer. I think
Speaker 2: he kind of came at that. You probably guessed by
Speaker 2: the way I read that question.
Speaker 3: I don't think that was a good faith question.
Speaker 2: I'm not convinced it was. But the thing is is
Speaker 2: that black Block was for years and I don't know
Speaker 2: if this is still the case or not. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it was the most visible component of the anarchist movement.
Speaker 2: It had black bloc, often have people with black flags,
Speaker 2: and you know it could be easily recognized. But this
Speaker 2: is only the tip of the iceberg, and not just
Speaker 2: of anarchism, but of militant street demonstrations and things. And
Speaker 2: if you thought regular protesters have a lot of thoughts,
Speaker 2: pro and con about the black Block, wait till you
Speaker 2: hear anarchists discuss it.
Speaker 3: Because nobody has more opinions about the tactics of anarchists
Speaker 3: than anarchists.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I read so much discourse so
Speaker 2: that you all don't have to. So many scenes were
Speaker 2: written in two thousand and two about.
Speaker 1: This, But like, I'm so tired thinking about how much
Speaker 1: you had to create.
Speaker 3: I can't go back in time and get in that
Speaker 3: man's face and interrogate this bad faith question that he asked.
Speaker 3: But my feeling is is a lot of people who think, like, oh,
Speaker 3: like the block ruined this protest, Like what what do
Speaker 3: you mean by that? Because to my mind, a lot
Speaker 3: of people who feel that way they saw that, like
Speaker 3: the black Block was involved in what the newspaper would
Speaker 3: call a clash with the police. It's like, well, who
Speaker 3: started it?
Speaker 2: Did that happen?
Speaker 3: Because the block was there or was it going to
Speaker 3: happen regardless, and the person who took that baton hit
Speaker 3: was wearing a mask and.
Speaker 2: Not you Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, Like we had, you know, rounds of this discourse
Speaker 3: here in Charlottesville where I live. About eight years ago,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of talk about the block right,
Speaker 3: and people who had never had this experience before were
Speaker 3: radicalized by it. In favor of the block, in favor
Speaker 3: you know. I think a lot of people are used,
Speaker 3: like you know, Antifa and the block interchangeably, because those
Speaker 3: are the people who are visibly anti fascist, visibly anarchists,
Speaker 3: visibly experienced protesters, and you have like middle aged soccer
Speaker 3: moms getting up at city council and say, don't you
Speaker 3: dare speak ill of those people. They saved my life. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like that protest was going to get ruined either way.
Speaker 3: The block didn't ruin it. They saved people's lives.
Speaker 2: I think that that's actually one of the most important
Speaker 2: things that comes up, is that discourse about it that's
Speaker 2: had by people who aren't present. Looks really really different.
Speaker 2: When I was young, I was wearing all black at
Speaker 2: a demonstration and had a group of older women come
Speaker 2: up and be like, we love you all. We have
Speaker 2: developed a system to help hide you from police if
Speaker 2: you need sweeties. And like they were like all had
Speaker 2: costumes with like wings so that they could hold them
Speaker 2: open and stuff, you know. And it's like, yeah, like
Speaker 2: because actual solidarity is built in the streets together, you know,
Speaker 2: and being brave together. And I'm going to tell one
Speaker 2: more anecdote about the block, and this one I think
Speaker 2: you'll have more information about than me, so that's why
Speaker 2: I put it in. On January twentieth, twenty seventeen, Trump
Speaker 2: had his first inauguration and there was a man named
Speaker 2: Richard Spencer. You ever heard of Richard Spencer?
Speaker 3: Molly Oh, Richard the name I haven't heard in a
Speaker 3: long time.
Speaker 2: And the reason we haven't heard his name in a
Speaker 2: long time for anyone who doesn't know, there's this prominent
Speaker 2: at the time right wing influencers, one of the more
Speaker 2: important parts of the alt right. And he was giving
Speaker 2: a speech to some media on the street when someone
Speaker 2: in all black and a mask punched him in the
Speaker 2: face and then ran off. That's incredible. The puncher was
Speaker 2: never caught, remains anonymous to this day. One of the
Speaker 2: most perfect crimes that's ever happened just.
Speaker 3: On camera in Washington, d C. And heavily surveilled cops
Speaker 3: everywhere on camera. Yeah yeah, I hope we never find
Speaker 3: out who it was, and I hope that he never
Speaker 3: pays for a drink.
Speaker 2: I know. I like, there's this thing where sometimes you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that random, annoying ponk Hou's staying on my couch or whatever,
Speaker 2: and you're like, you know what.
Speaker 3: It could be him.
Speaker 2: It could be him because he can't tell anybody. Nope,
Speaker 2: can't tell anyone. Sucks so bad, I know, And Richard
Speaker 2: Spencer being decked became a meme. My personal favorite is
Speaker 2: the Blue Monday remix, And best as I can tell,
Speaker 2: there's a direct correlation here to his star fading and
Speaker 2: him becoming a joke instead of a figurehead. Is that
Speaker 2: a So?
Speaker 3: I wish that that narrative felt true to me.
Speaker 2: You should fuck up that narrative.
Speaker 3: That's fine, because it's so satisfying to me to say that, like,
Speaker 3: getting punched on camera is what ruined Richard Spencer, but
Speaker 3: it's unfortunately it's.
Speaker 2: Not Oh great, no, no, yeah, because that happened.
Speaker 3: In January of twenty seventeen, Unite the Right was in
Speaker 3: August of twenty seventeen, So this is before Unite the
Speaker 3: Right was even contemplated, right, Like, yeah, the event had
Speaker 3: not even been dreamt up at that time, so the
Speaker 3: planning and implementation of that rally all took place after
Speaker 3: this moment. I think it certainly hurt his feelings very badly,
Speaker 3: but ultimately what ruined him was getting sued into oblivion
Speaker 3: and also his divorce. Oh okay, but he did deserve it,
Speaker 3: and it is fun to look at, and I think
Speaker 3: it still hurts his feelings to this day.
Speaker 2: I also suspect it hurt his image among his peers.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, because he looked like a sad little dandy,
Speaker 3: like he didn't take the punch.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean he looked like what he was. I
Speaker 2: hate to talk shit on dandy, but but you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, like he didn't.
Speaker 3: Take it like the Hilarian figure he imagines himself to be.
Speaker 2: Right totally. Do you know what's completely unrelated to any
Speaker 2: of that?
Speaker 3: Is it products and services?
Speaker 2: It is I hope they have no relation to any
Speaker 2: of that unless it's positive, unless it's buy a drink
Speaker 2: for random people, because they might have punched Richard Spencer
Speaker 2: that's what this podcast is brought by.
Speaker 3: You know, I think just live your life as though
Speaker 3: every stranger you meet is that hero.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like that parable Jesus, where like it's every
Speaker 2: person I mean Jesus. Yeah, exactly. The Bible says you
Speaker 2: should be nice to everyone because they might have punched
Speaker 2: Richard Spencer. Here's ads and we're back, Molly. I can't
Speaker 2: believe you were worried that there would be a topic
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't be able to find a way to
Speaker 2: make funny. I know, I was like, well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: What if it was like some important historical event that
Speaker 3: everyone knows about and I just had to pretend I
Speaker 3: knew about it, because like, what if it was like
Speaker 3: my secret blind spot and then I felt stupid for
Speaker 3: an hour. That'd be horrible. That's like my greatest fear.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. But now I have this terrible intrusive
Speaker 2: thought where I want to write a fake event, oh
Speaker 2: my god, and act like everyone knows it, and then
Speaker 2: have you on as the guest and tell oh, that's
Speaker 2: gonna be my villain arc is when I start telling.
Speaker 3: You stories, see some fake war that I have to
Speaker 3: be like, oh yeah, that war was like, that was bad.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that to Mollie. But some man,
Speaker 1: oh totally.
Speaker 2: No. The best is we'll get some man who will
Speaker 2: be like, oh, yeah, totally and then like also claim
Speaker 2: and make up facts about the fake war.
Speaker 3: Just just yes, and your way into some like obscure
Speaker 3: seventeenth century European war.
Speaker 2: Yeah totally, but that doesn't actually exist, Like you remember, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the papal states were just in disarray.
Speaker 3: I remember love that for us.
Speaker 2: I feel like I was like caught in a terrible
Speaker 2: trap earlier today because I was talking to a friend
Speaker 2: at a coffee shop and they were like, actually, I
Speaker 2: don't really know much about the Spanish Revolution, like what
Speaker 2: was the Spanish Civil War? And I was like, am
Speaker 2: I on camera? What's happening here? Am I?
Speaker 1: BEI? PI of my Like you're like, boy, how did
Speaker 1: you come to the right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just sweep everything off the table and just
Speaker 3: put down a banger.
Speaker 2: But then halfway through get very self conscious about taking
Speaker 2: up space and conversation anyway. I know how to socialize
Speaker 2: off microphone. I'm a socially competent person. Doesn't live alone
Speaker 2: in the mountains. By and large, the Black Block had
Speaker 2: its roots in the German squatter scene the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: We haven't talked about this particular culture before on the show,
Speaker 2: but we've talked about a lot of parallels, like the
Speaker 2: anarcho punks of the UK. People want to listen to
Speaker 2: our episodes about the band Crafts for more information about that,
Speaker 2: or the squat scene of the Netherlands, which you can
Speaker 2: listen to an episode about the squat scene of the
Speaker 2: Netherlands that turns vacant property into housing and vibrant cultural centers.
Speaker 2: These are related scenes to the German scene that we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about, but we can go back even
Speaker 2: further if we'd like, and if you know me, that
Speaker 2: means yes, I would like. There is an anarchist group
Speaker 2: called Black Mask in New York City in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: which we also tied a bunch of episodes about in
Speaker 2: the episodes about Up against the Wall Motherfuckers, because that's
Speaker 2: what they later became. Black Mask was a group of
Speaker 2: direct action like art pranksters basically who later became the
Speaker 2: famed and fabled anarchist street gang Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers.
Speaker 2: The only podcast episode where we couldn't put the subject
Speaker 2: in the title, and Black Mask, true to their name,
Speaker 2: wore black masks to protests. It is hard to say
Speaker 2: if there's a direct line between those protests and German
Speaker 2: squads and the next like fifteen years later or so.
Speaker 2: But I can tell you I've traced Black Mask and
Speaker 2: Up against the Wall Motherfuckers and like two UK radical journals,
Speaker 2: and like the conversation was happening, right, this is not
Speaker 2: an isolated thing. These are large communities.
Speaker 3: I mean, we know the fascists have international connections. There's
Speaker 3: no reason to believe the anarchists wouldn't too, right.
Speaker 2: Totally, and while the tactic is widely adopted by and
Speaker 2: associated with anarchists, although actually, as you point out out now,
Speaker 2: it's more of like antifa. I'm sure you've talked about
Speaker 2: this before. What a great semantic trick they pulled when
Speaker 2: instead of saying like antifa and they turned it into
Speaker 2: antifa to make it so that it's not we're against phuh,
Speaker 2: but instead we're just a thing.
Speaker 3: And they always write it in all caps to like
Speaker 3: it's an acronym or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, like what is the FA short for buddy? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Say it? Yeah, The answer, by the way, if you're curious,
Speaker 2: is fascism. It's an anti fascist organization.
Speaker 3: So when people say they're anti antifa, it's like, well,
Speaker 3: why don't you say the whole word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I didn't do great in math, but I
Speaker 2: learned enough math you can.
Speaker 3: Cancel a little bad boys that you can reduce that fraction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I have I've seen at least one
Speaker 2: anti anti Antifa sticker, but I think at that point
Speaker 2: it's a joke.
Speaker 3: It has to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the group that this grew out of, Black
Speaker 2: Block were out of, is inspired at least as much
Speaker 2: by autonomous Marxism or autonomism as it was by anarchism.
Speaker 2: The late sixties was kind of lit all over the place.
Speaker 2: One of the places it was lit was Italy. Starting
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine, you have this new social movement,
Speaker 2: the autonomists, and these are autonomous Marxists, And what that
Speaker 2: means is like it's hard to conceive of in the US,
Speaker 2: where like Marxism is a bad word, right.
Speaker 3: Not my house, fair enough, have.
Speaker 2: You far enough? Left becomes a bad wordy and not
Speaker 2: really on it anyway. Whatever, So.
Speaker 3: But I got my husband an original English printing of
Speaker 3: the Little Red Book for Valentine's Day last year. So
Speaker 3: just to give you a taste of what's going on
Speaker 3: in our house.
Speaker 2: Oh hell yeah. So in Italy and a lot of
Speaker 2: other places, you have these very institutional communist parties. They're
Speaker 2: parts of government. They're like, you know, they're not a
Speaker 2: thing to be radical around, right, and so people who
Speaker 2: had no interest in communist party bullshit but are interested
Speaker 2: in Marxism developed autonomous Marxism. And we'll probably talk about
Speaker 2: more about them as some other times. But if if
Speaker 2: you ask me more questions, I would immediately start running
Speaker 2: out of things that I can claim to know about this.
Speaker 3: That thing I was afraid of happening, Like would be
Speaker 3: talking about theory.
Speaker 2: Oh great, No, we're doing the tiniest bit to big
Speaker 2: questions about it. That's totally fine. In some ways, this
Speaker 2: is more of a like to like show that there's
Speaker 2: this diversity of ideological stuff that created as cultural movement.
Speaker 3: These are anarchist Marxists. I'm on board.
Speaker 2: I have moralized right, I definitely. At one point I
Speaker 2: met this older anarchist from Japan who was at a
Speaker 2: squad I was at in the US, and he didn't
Speaker 2: speak much English and talking to him and he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're anarchists, and I'm like yeah, and he was like
Speaker 2: me too, and he thinks and he goes autonomist. And
Speaker 2: I love that that's one of the only English words
Speaker 2: he knew.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Every other conversation we had to sit there with a dictionary.
Speaker 3: But I see, like anarchist Marxists, Like, I don't even
Speaker 3: care that that's a contradiction because like the average person's
Speaker 3: politics are incoherent and it doesn't matter totally.
Speaker 2: Like all of the random words that people have described,
Speaker 2: it's the thing that comes up constantly where you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: the like uh, you know, social libertarians or the you know,
Speaker 2: like republican, Like are you talking about nineteen thirty Spain,
Speaker 2: you're talking about nineteen sixteen Ireland, you're talking about the US.
Speaker 2: Now you're talking about the US thirty years ago, all different,
Speaker 2: completely different ideologies with the.
Speaker 3: Party in other countries. That doesn't mean what I thought
Speaker 3: it meant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then the Liberal Party in Mexico isn't metted
Speaker 2: by Ricardo Flores mcconne the anarchists, So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm never going to read a book. I don't even care.
Speaker 2: It's all meaningless. Labels. Fuck them. Sometimes they're nice, shorthand.
Speaker 2: I don't want to walk into a cafe and be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd like that food that doesn't have dairy, or like,
Speaker 2: oh do you want dairy? Be like no, do you
Speaker 2: want eggs? You want no? Like do you want meat? No?
Speaker 2: Oh you're vegan. Be like, oh, I don't like labels,
Speaker 2: You're like. Shorthand is sometimes useful, but also then people
Speaker 2: get really hung up on them, and then all the
Speaker 2: problems in.
Speaker 3: SOO, but no, two anarchists have the same definition of anarchism.
Speaker 3: So cares.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great. So you have all these youth and
Speaker 2: they're like doing a big social movement in Italy in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties. But then the state starts This is
Speaker 2: a cycle that we've seen a million times. The state
Speaker 2: starts fucking with them real bad, and they start breaking
Speaker 2: up their connection of mass movements and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: if we do anything above ground, we're going to get
Speaker 2: caught and go to prison for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 2: And so they go where many social movements go to die.
Speaker 2: They went to Clendestinity, They went to smaller and smaller,
Speaker 2: more isolated clicks of people doing more and more militant action.
Speaker 2: They started involving guns in their things, and you know, like,
Speaker 2: that's just a thing that sometimes happens, especially the late
Speaker 2: sixties movements.
Speaker 3: To be fair to these Italian anarchists in the sixties
Speaker 3: and seventies, they needed those guns.
Speaker 2: That's also true. Shit was dark. Yeah, I know, I
Speaker 2: was saying that, and I was like, I'm very grateful
Speaker 2: for the people who hold rifles in front of Drag
Speaker 2: Story Hour right now.
Speaker 3: Italian black shirts were just beating communist organizers to death
Speaker 3: in the streets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's true. So it's a completely understandable thing
Speaker 2: that they moved into more isolated groups. The problem is
Speaker 2: that when you get more isolated, you get more echo chambery,
Speaker 2: you stop being able to bring in new recruits, and
Speaker 2: you just become less and less of an impactful social force.
Speaker 2: And anyway, I'm not even trying to put a moral
Speaker 2: judgment on any of this. They started doing some terrorism,
Speaker 2: these autonomous Marxists, and you had all these urban guerrillas,
Speaker 2: and then this big growing scene instead became increasingly isolated,
Speaker 2: paranoid and militant to that is the best I've.
Speaker 3: Again, they weren't the only ones doing terrorism in Italy.
Speaker 2: It's true. I'm just gonna be very fair to them.
Speaker 2: It's true. And before they did any of that, they
Speaker 2: inspired some folks. They inspired folks in West Germany by
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties who had also taken inspiration from the
Speaker 2: Dutch squatter scene and I believe anarchist punk rock. Basically,
Speaker 2: the German youth were ready for this. Suburbanization had gutted
Speaker 2: German cities. So it's all these empty buildings, like basically
Speaker 2: like not white flight out of the cities, but like
Speaker 2: flight out of the cities, German flight out of the
Speaker 2: German cities. I don't know, and all these buildings, and
Speaker 2: people are like, yeah, we'll move into those, and we'll
Speaker 2: fight for activist causes like stopping nuclear proliferation and fighting
Speaker 2: for the legalization of abortion. These are the two biggest
Speaker 2: causes that they were fighting for that I'm aware of.
Speaker 2: And so people are like, yeah, fuck yeah. Autonomy and
Speaker 2: squatting this is what it's about. They started squatting empty
Speaker 2: buildings for housing and social centers that has housed bookstores
Speaker 2: and coffee houses. This is one of those words. I
Speaker 2: have literally no idea, Like, here's thing, it's called infoshops.
Speaker 3: We have one here it is you've been there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a very nice infoshop. Infoshop is like a
Speaker 2: blurry word for a place with like zines and books
Speaker 2: and shit you can go to and learn about radical
Speaker 2: causes and things. This word very likely has its origins
Speaker 2: etymologically in these German info loden infoshop.
Speaker 3: Oh that does feel very German. Now these I just
Speaker 3: never questioned the term. It makes it knows, but like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that makes perfect sense. It feels German.
Speaker 2: I'm a because I can be trusted with my use
Speaker 2: of time. I'm part of a large signal loop of
Speaker 2: anarchist history nerds, and we had a recent discussion about
Speaker 2: the history of the word infoshop, and I was fully
Speaker 2: expecting it to be like one hundred years old. And
Speaker 2: the oldest that anyone that I've seen has currently attracted
Speaker 2: back to is nineteen ninety two in English in the
Speaker 2: United States.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love that.
Speaker 2: But in nineteen ninety two there was like a conference
Speaker 2: of all of the info shops, so clearly it goes
Speaker 2: back before then. And that's besides the point. But I
Speaker 2: like words, so they started building all of this infrastructure.
Speaker 2: The German West German punks. The reason I say West
Speaker 2: German for folks who there was a Cold War and
Speaker 2: there was East Germany and West Germany and there were
Speaker 2: different countries. So they started building all this infrastructure in
Speaker 2: these abandoned buildings before the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Speaker 2: before the reunification of Germany. This was a massive counterculture
Speaker 2: and one that really pulled people out of regular German
Speaker 2: ways of life. All of these young folks had very
Speaker 2: few social prospects because of this massive economic downturn, and
Speaker 2: so they started just being like, fuck it, let's just
Speaker 2: do some shit. Let's well to quote an article by
Speaker 2: Daniel Dylan Young quote. Similar initiatives for alternative living as
Speaker 2: resistance were percolating in the nineteen eighties and in some
Speaker 2: places much earlier and Holland, Denmark and elsewhere throughout Northern Europe. Eventually,
Speaker 2: all of these Northern Europeans living in decentralized social groups
Speaker 2: dedicated to creating non coercive, non hierarchical society, they became
Speaker 2: collectively labeled as autonomen.
Speaker 3: I wonder how much of this is influenced too, So
Speaker 3: this is just like what the seventies early eighties we're
Speaker 3: talking about. How much of this is influenced that, Like
Speaker 3: these people in their twenties and thirties are born in
Speaker 3: the immediate aftermath of World War Two, so like they're
Speaker 3: being raised by parents who are shattered in a landscape
Speaker 3: that is just bleak.
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of that, and I think
Speaker 2: that also specifically, one of the things that I've read
Speaker 2: has said that like one of the cultural impacts here
Speaker 2: is that they didn't get to see the late sixties
Speaker 2: early sets these radical stuff, so instead they're in this
Speaker 2: like really banal time of just like one type of
Speaker 2: like super pacivism isn't always banal, but like one particular
Speaker 2: model of this is the way that non violence needs
Speaker 2: to be done, and it's a very non confrontational version
Speaker 2: of non violence. And you know, like this is kind
Speaker 2: of a like bored and poor generation because you have
Speaker 2: this massive recession and they're like everything from before us
Speaker 2: is boring and shitty. Let's become punk rockers and you know,
Speaker 2: do weird shit. Just honestly, that's probably a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: So they're doing all of these protests and shit, they're
Speaker 2: taking over nuclear power plants.
Speaker 3: Oh hell yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's so funny too, right because the things
Speaker 2: that are like important issues change generationally a lot, right,
Speaker 2: Like anti nuclear power plants isn't like a major issue
Speaker 2: for a lot of people right now, you know.
Speaker 3: I'm not interested in that at all, but yeah, time
Speaker 3: period it felt urgent.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, And it's just so interesting to me though,
Speaker 2: like EBB and Low of these things that, like, like
Speaker 2: the alter globalization movement was trying to combat free trade agreements,
Speaker 2: right and right now our problem with tariffs. You know,
Speaker 2: bad people will do bad things with like any hand
Speaker 2: you give them, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, It's not that they were wrong to have had
Speaker 3: that opinion, then, it's just that like the thing that
Speaker 3: is bad changes.
Speaker 2: Right totally. In the winter of nineteen eighty, West Germany
Speaker 2: was like, man, we can't handle these fucking altonomen We
Speaker 2: got to fucking do something about this. Fuck it, We're
Speaker 2: going to evict all the squads fuck them. And this
Speaker 2: seems like a very run of the mill thing to
Speaker 2: do in the US because you're like not allowed to
Speaker 2: live in other people's houses, right, But in the US
Speaker 2: you're can evict someone if they don't pay rent in Germany.
Speaker 2: This is pretty serious and offensive to the German idea
Speaker 2: of justice. Is that there was an empty house and
Speaker 2: someone was living in it because they need somewhere to live,
Speaker 2: and how you're going to make them be homeless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like they had the right idea.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is the way to understand that. It also
Speaker 2: meant that the West German government mobilized police at levels
Speaker 2: that you hadn't seen in Germany since Germany did the
Speaker 2: one thing it's kind of famous for having done that
Speaker 2: at one hundred percent should not have done.
Speaker 3: Rounding up a bunch of people with a large scale
Speaker 3: mobilization of it probably looked pretty pretty bad to a
Speaker 3: lot of Germans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people weren't into it fucking middle of the winter.
Speaker 2: So West Germany started trying to evict the squats, and
Speaker 2: so squatters started defending themselves and defending their squats. Also,
Speaker 2: people did this through massive nonviolence sit ins and things
Speaker 2: like that, but they also got rowdy, and every building
Speaker 2: that was evicted meant several more squatted for years. Mass
Speaker 2: arrests were met with nationwide protests. One protest saw fifteen
Speaker 2: thousand Germans destroying an entire wealthy shopping district because of
Speaker 2: repression of the autonomen God and return. I know, well,
Speaker 2: there's this way in which it's like culturally normalized in
Speaker 2: a way that you know, I was gonna say it's
Speaker 2: hard to understand the US, but I actually think as
Speaker 2: time comes on, I actually think that these sorts of
Speaker 2: tactics make more sense to more Americans.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what I'm seeing anecdotally, just like in
Speaker 3: the comment sections on things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's all this repression against the autonomen in Germany,
Speaker 2: and so they invent the black block. If they all
Speaker 2: go in matching clothes, they could do what they felt
Speaker 2: needed to be done to defend themselves against police attack
Speaker 2: without being singled out for arrest. Their uniform the first
Speaker 2: black blocks was a black motorcycle helmet and or black
Speaker 2: ski masks and all black clothing. I think black leather jackets,
Speaker 2: but I actually am not one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: And if they had motorcycle helmets, they probably had cool
Speaker 3: leather jackets, but.
Speaker 2: It might have been bomber jackets, That's what I don't know.
Speaker 2: They would have looked cool either way. Yeah, don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong. Many of them wore steel toed boots, people
Speaker 2: brought shields and batons to fight the police off. And
Speaker 2: for better or worse, being dressed this way and the
Speaker 2: anonymity of the crowd brings out a certain magic. I
Speaker 2: don't know how else to describe this as a crowd magic.
Speaker 2: It's a dangerous and powerful and beautiful magic what people
Speaker 2: can do in crowds. And it's not like what people claim.
Speaker 2: It's not this herd mentality, it's not this it's like
Speaker 2: a leader full thing in a really interesting way. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it makes people feel powerful. And so the Black Block
Speaker 2: started doing what it eventually became famous for. It would
Speaker 2: smash up banks and bougie stores and shit like the
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen thousand people who trashed a boogie shopping
Speaker 2: district to quote Daniel Dylan Young again quote. In this way,
Speaker 2: the black Block is a form of militants that mitigates
Speaker 2: the problematic dichotomy between popularly executed nonviolent civil disobedience and
Speaker 2: elite secret of guerrilla terrorism and sabotage. So you have
Speaker 2: this problem right in Italy where you're like, oh, we
Speaker 2: have these big peaceful movements or even like we have
Speaker 2: this kind of routy movements and the beating us all
Speaker 2: up right, So we're all going to go underground, and
Speaker 2: that has its other problems. So the Black Block was
Speaker 2: developed kind of organically grew out of needing to find
Speaker 2: a solution to that, needing to be able to do
Speaker 2: mass demonstrations that are actually direct action in a way
Speaker 2: that is harder to repress, and you get clandestinity without
Speaker 2: the really high stakes that are escalated through gorilla groups.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. They bridge the gap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had never thought about it that way until
Speaker 2: I was reading that particular analysis of the block, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, that's actually that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just another one of those things that you're
Speaker 3: just so used to seeing that you don't really think
Speaker 3: too hard about where this came from or what it means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like always people always did this.
Speaker 3: You see the way that it functions, But like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's yeah interesting.
Speaker 2: And tactics are tactics. They are not imbued with moral weight.
Speaker 2: They just you know what it's like, it's like ads, hmmm.
Speaker 2: I think that people should make their own decisions about
Speaker 2: which ads or any that they you like supporting or
Speaker 2: listening to. But now you have that choice. I have
Speaker 2: given you choice and tim much like when you walk
Speaker 2: into the grocery store and there's a million types of oreos.
Speaker 2: That's the freedom that you all have. Here's here's ads
Speaker 2: Andrew back. Do you a favorite Oreo?
Speaker 3: I have sea like disease, so they only Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: just the one kind for me and I love it.
Speaker 2: Are they like.
Speaker 3: Oreo makes one and they're good?
Speaker 2: Oh cool?
Speaker 1: Do you like original Gooden fra Ario or do you
Speaker 1: like the yellow ones?
Speaker 2: Regular?
Speaker 3: It's like when you go to Wendy's and you see
Speaker 3: what a frosty and they say chocolate or vanilla, and
Speaker 3: it's like, I Am going to set this place on fire, Like,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about? Chocolate? I said a frosty?
Speaker 3: I don't know what vanilla? Soft serve the Trader.
Speaker 1: Joe's Gluten free, JoJo's aka oreos are really good.
Speaker 2: It's good.
Speaker 3: It's just the one, just the one.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see.
Speaker 3: I think we were at diversity of tactics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ieah, And so people were embracing this tactic. The
Speaker 2: tactic to quote Liz Hileyman who said, quote coming out
Speaker 2: of the stultifying political climate of the Reagan and Bush years,
Speaker 2: many young activists had gotten sick of protest as usual,
Speaker 2: mostly in their teens. Throughout through thirties, few Black blockers
Speaker 2: remembered the glorified nineteen sixties. They grew up on a
Speaker 2: diet of well choreographed rallies, permitted marches, and planned mass arrests,
Speaker 2: and there's like not having it. So the autonomen regularly
Speaker 2: started winning considerations from the government. They would get this
Speaker 2: or that squat legalized if the state just found it
Speaker 2: not worth evicting it. Although actually the legalization and recognition
Speaker 2: of squats in Europe is actually part of a divide
Speaker 2: and conqueror strategy from the state too, so it's kind
Speaker 2: of a little of a It's complicated, and the Black
Speaker 2: block held a lot of symbolic importance. By dressing identically,
Speaker 2: you become leaderless and therefore much harder for the state
Speaker 2: to disrupt, both in the moment and later. Anyone who
Speaker 2: pays attention to American history knows that they sure like
Speaker 2: killing protest leaders. I think that that's probably happening these days,
Speaker 2: and it's just not then a lot of the people
Speaker 2: involved in like the Ferguson uprising just kind of die.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like some suspicious suicides, some obvious unsolved murders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just like whistleblowers. So anyway, I would say
Speaker 2: there's no flag bears to the black block except actually
Speaker 2: marching bands with flag communication. There's definitely a guy with
Speaker 2: a flag. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like ways of doing
Speaker 2: semaphore and stuff that people use to communicate, like hey,
Speaker 2: police that way, or like we think we may want
Speaker 2: to go this way. It's fun. People developed this, and
Speaker 2: there's a symbolic dropping of who you are in your
Speaker 2: regular life. There's this conception of the black blocker. It's
Speaker 2: one that's encouraged by the media that every black blocker
Speaker 2: is a white, middle class, troubled young man with nothing
Speaker 2: better to do. And to me, what this ties into
Speaker 2: is how people are marginalized in others by society in general.
Speaker 2: If a person is unmarked by society, you know, if
Speaker 2: they're an unmarked person, truly normal within our society, then
Speaker 2: they assume to be white, middle class, able bodied straight men,
Speaker 2: because anything else is different, even though god, what tiny
Speaker 2: percentage of the world is white, middle class, able bodied
Speaker 2: straight men. Right?
Speaker 3: The default is actually not too common, is it.
Speaker 2: No, especially since a lot of those things are absolutely temporary.
Speaker 2: Everyone is only able bodied temporarily, and you know, many
Speaker 2: people are only straight men until they meet. So people
Speaker 2: assume that if you remove identity, you put everyone in masks.
Speaker 2: They're like, ah, that's just a white man, right.
Speaker 3: And it's also a way of like undercutting their commitment
Speaker 3: to any kind of social justice cause like, oh, they
Speaker 3: couldn't possibly sincerely care about the rights of black people
Speaker 3: or Hispanic people or immigrants, or this is just because
Speaker 3: they have a fetish for violence, right.
Speaker 2: Like, so they go out and risk prison time on
Speaker 2: a regular basis and get PTSD because it's fun.
Speaker 3: None of these lies hold up, right, Like, oh, paid protester,
Speaker 3: how much would you have to pay me?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: What is the number of zeros on the check? Where
Speaker 3: you risk death in permanent imprisonment?
Speaker 2: Yeah, god damn it.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like even the fascists probably aren't paid protesters, you know, Like.
Speaker 3: I have found a vanishingly small number of instances where
Speaker 3: that does appear to have happened. Like, it's not that
Speaker 3: it's impossible, is that it's not likely and it's not practical.
Speaker 2: I will say I've been a paid picketer for a union,
Speaker 2: but that's different.
Speaker 3: That's a job, I know.
Speaker 2: So these early black blocks, they were in marches with
Speaker 2: like to use one example from nineteen eighty six, ten
Speaker 2: thousand people marching, of whom a solid fifteen hundred were
Speaker 2: in block. These are bigger than we see in the
Speaker 2: United States. Yeah, and they would drive back to the police.
Speaker 2: This was the same year as Chernobyl, and so the
Speaker 2: anti nuclear movement was like, see we told you so,
Speaker 2: and anti that's fair, Yeah, totally nearby and bad. When
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan came to Berlin, he's a big, famous neoliberal.
Speaker 2: Fifty thousand people, that's what he's only famous for. Uh,
Speaker 2: fifty thousand people marched against him, with three thousand of
Speaker 2: them in block. And in its way, this is interesting
Speaker 2: to me because in the last series of episodes I
Speaker 2: did about Zapatistas, I'm largely saying that the anti neoliberal movement,
Speaker 2: the alter globalization movement, started with Zapatistas, and I think
Speaker 2: that you can say about a lot of the groundwork
Speaker 2: does come from the Zapatistas. But these actually do predate
Speaker 2: the uprising in Chiapas of nineteen ninety four, although doesn't
Speaker 2: predate the apatist is getting ready for that uprising. But
Speaker 2: whatever for folks who haven't listened to the explainer I've
Speaker 2: done on neoliberalism. Well, earlier we talking about how words
Speaker 2: are meaningless when they're in political contexts. Neoliberalism sometimes people
Speaker 2: think that just means like a liberal, it's liberalism, that's new. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's more or less unrelated. They have the same etymological route.
Speaker 2: But if you start with one, you're not getting to
Speaker 2: the other. I mean, like many people are both, but
Speaker 2: it's just a fucking unrelated think of them separately. And
Speaker 2: Neoliberalism is a set of policies and ideas that prioritize
Speaker 2: creating a global free market with which to extract value
Speaker 2: from developing nations to make specific groups of rich people
Speaker 2: and developed nations much richer. Basically is a way to
Speaker 2: steal money from the global self. Sounds bad, It is bad.
Speaker 2: It means destroying unions and environmental protections in order to
Speaker 2: maximize profit. And maybe the first people who really felt
Speaker 2: its effects were the British working class under Margaret Thatcher,
Speaker 2: who systematically gutted workers protections and organizing. Then the model
Speaker 2: soon exported all over the world. Roald Reagan did a
Speaker 2: whole lot of it here and then therefore a whole
Speaker 2: lot of it throughout the American Empire, and everything bad happened.
Speaker 2: And one of the means by which it destroyed places
Speaker 2: is predatory lending through the World Bank and the International
Speaker 2: Monetary Fund. That are two groups that are really annoying
Speaker 2: to disinvaguate. So I'm not going to. I did a
Speaker 2: little bit of it in some other episodes. They're like,
Speaker 2: all right, your country's in trouble, we'll bail you out. Now.
Speaker 2: You just need to accept these structural adjustment programs. It's
Speaker 2: the fucking mafia. Is what a shark? Yeah, it is
Speaker 2: loan sharks on a global scale with armies involved. You
Speaker 2: need to accept these structural adjustment programs to restructure your
Speaker 2: entire economy to pain back not the loan, but the
Speaker 2: interest on the loan of what you owe to us,
Speaker 2: and it removes country's abilities to develop stable economies and
Speaker 2: decent standards of living all at once. Trying to build
Speaker 2: a stable economy after being forced into structural adjustment programs
Speaker 2: is like trying to heat a house where a wall
Speaker 2: is missing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because the cool aidue man keeps smashing through it
Speaker 3: to demand more structural adjustments.
Speaker 2: Stop unionizing your bricklayers. Boom.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, that's what he says, right, I think, so
Speaker 3: why does he say that?
Speaker 2: Because he has kool aid neoliberalism. I'm not a big
Speaker 2: fan of it. It was spreading unchecked for quite some
Speaker 2: time into a worldwide network of activists from Mexican peasants
Speaker 2: to German squatters to Indian farmers banded together and stopped
Speaker 2: it spread, which is a pretty fucking cool thing that happened.
Speaker 2: And that's the ultra globalization movement, generally seen as having
Speaker 2: kicked off formally in Seattle in nineteen ninety nine, but
Speaker 2: the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico were building that worldwide network
Speaker 2: that became it starting at least nineteen ninety four and
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety eight. The World Bank and the International
Speaker 2: Monetary Fund, those two groups that are hard to disambiguate
Speaker 2: and are generally bad. They like both loan money and
Speaker 2: are friends with each other, but they like loan money
Speaker 2: in slightly different ways. It's really annoying. They had their
Speaker 2: meetings in Berlin. Eighty thousand protesters showed up from at
Speaker 2: least Europe in the US and fought the cops tooth
Speaker 2: and nail I don't believe that they stopped these meetings,
Speaker 2: not one hundred percent certain, but the groundwork was laid.
Speaker 2: If you want to have secret meetings of all the
Speaker 2: behind the scenes world leaders, which is another thing that
Speaker 2: always made about conspiracy theories, like some of it's real well,
Speaker 2: and it's also it's behind the scenes, but it's not
Speaker 2: hidden like these people are like, oh yeah, I'm like
Speaker 2: the world leader does all this stuff. They just don't.
Speaker 3: You don't need to make stuff up about these organizations,
Speaker 3: like the bad stuff they're doing, like you can see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like like all secret pedophiles, Yeah, we know about them.
Speaker 2: We don't need to invent new ones. Like you're on
Speaker 2: the right track, but like focus on the stuff that's real. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: eighty one thousand people did, and they went to Berlin,
Speaker 2: you know, and they're like, all right, if you try
Speaker 2: to have these kinds of meetings, you're gonna have a
Speaker 2: nightmare of a riot that people will not forget. And
Speaker 2: to make sure that most cities want to have nothing
Speaker 2: to do with this kind of summit, and in this
Speaker 2: big protest, there's an awful lot of black block I
Speaker 2: don't have the number of it blocks in these protests.
Speaker 2: Another thing that they would do is that they would
Speaker 2: take perimeter positions at the front, back, and or sides
Speaker 2: of these big marches and basically exists as a shield
Speaker 2: that protects the rest of the march from snatch squads
Speaker 2: and police harassment. They would build reinforced banners, which are
Speaker 2: like more literal shields, but several people long, and sometimes
Speaker 2: you just have like a giant flag or banner that's
Speaker 2: like eight feet tall and it's just literally to block
Speaker 2: view of you know. The alto nomen of Germany were
Speaker 2: largely gone by the late nineteen nineties. Most of the
Speaker 2: squads were eventually evicted, although if you became legalized and legalizing,
Speaker 2: some of them pulled pressure off. Was like a pressure
Speaker 2: release valve thing. Legalized squatters were sometimes, but not always,
Speaker 2: afraid to work in solidarity with non legalized squatters because
Speaker 2: they're like afraid of losing their styles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's like it's good that you won that concession,
Speaker 3: but like was that given to you because you won
Speaker 3: or because they knew it would break you?
Speaker 2: Right, Which is actually a really important way to understand
Speaker 2: reform as any political movement, is that there's this quote
Speaker 2: from Malatesta my favorite man who's ever hidden in a
Speaker 2: creative sewing machines to escape Italy to radicalize the bakers
Speaker 2: of Argentina.
Speaker 3: Not a competition there, I know, but he's.
Speaker 2: The best one. Malatus as a quote when he's talking
Speaker 2: about reformism where he's like, we must take all possible
Speaker 2: reforms as an army marching forward, taking ground, like we
Speaker 2: need to see this as like we won this, not oh,
Speaker 2: they gave this to us, like and so it's not
Speaker 2: how do we appease them to be get given more crumbs?
Speaker 2: We say, great, you've given us crumbs. Now we want
Speaker 2: the whole fucking cake. And it's still the same act,
Speaker 2: Like we want gay marriage, we got it. We hope
Speaker 2: we keep it, you know, but don't go home. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So when the Berlin Wall fell, the German left moved
Speaker 2: from this sort of squadron activism into anti fascism because
Speaker 2: of a large neo Nazi scene that developed in East Berlin.
Speaker 2: And it's been a long time since I've been in Berlin,
Speaker 2: but there was very clear delineations. I would state these
Speaker 2: anarchist squads and they'd be like, hey, this is an
Speaker 2: anarchist neighborhood. Don't go into that neighborhood at night alone.
Speaker 2: Maybe just don't even go into that neighborhood period. Anyone
Speaker 2: from one factor and another is caught and the others
Speaker 2: would likely get beaten or hospitalized.
Speaker 3: Oh like gang turf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sometimes the problem when you're like, oh Antifah
Speaker 2: and regular Fu just sometimes if they stay in stasis
Speaker 2: with each other, create history is messy.
Speaker 3: It's complicated.
Speaker 2: Yeah. While I was there talking to people about this,
Speaker 2: this is the first time that I heard people talking
Speaker 2: at length about one major problem of the black block tactic.
Speaker 2: Tactics can be used by anybody. Anybody can slip in, well,
Speaker 2: anyone can slip into a black block. But that actually
Speaker 2: doesn't happen much that I'm aware of, right, because there's
Speaker 2: always the like, oh, the police instigators are going to
Speaker 2: get in there, and I'm like, a person through the
Speaker 2: brick was an instigator? No, it wasn't. And the reason
Speaker 2: I can tell you this is that enough people get
Speaker 2: caught throwing bricks and then they go to prison and
Speaker 2: I know them, yeah, like I am friends with them,
Speaker 2: and they were not cops. They were just there and
Speaker 2: like they might not even have thrown the brick. They
Speaker 2: just you know, you could disagree with what they're doing, but.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean they were a part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the German neo Nazis would just have black blocks.
Speaker 2: They should have to wear a different color.
Speaker 1: Just what.
Speaker 2: It's not confusing you would think that, but think about well,
Speaker 2: one American fascist group does do the all white but
Speaker 2: I mean, like, what is the modern cop uniform but
Speaker 2: fucking black block. Yeah, I'm Patriot Front.
Speaker 3: They all dress alike. I mean, it's a stupid outfit.
Speaker 3: It's not as cool as black block, but they all
Speaker 3: dress identically. That's very intentional. Yeah, they invented like Uncle
Speaker 3: Sam block because they're wearing like khakis in blue.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, it's so Jesus, imagine taking yourself seriously. It's
Speaker 2: like not they are we the Batti's sketch? Which everyone
Speaker 2: loves the are we the battiest sketch? But I don't
Speaker 2: because I also wear all black all of the time
Speaker 2: and like not afraid to put skulls on stuff. But
Speaker 2: if you're like, are we the dorks, you.
Speaker 3: Know, make sure you get the right matching windbreaker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Paul, that's not the right windbreaker. Yeah, grow up. Yeah, God,
Speaker 2: the fucking boat shoes kill me. Oh. So that's the
Speaker 2: origin of the black block, How it's been used elsewhere
Speaker 2: over the decades, and how anyone at home who would
Speaker 2: like to just do some costuming for fun to go
Speaker 2: to anime conventions. How to put those together we'll talk
Speaker 2: about in part two.
Speaker 3: Are we going to get into what kind of dye
Speaker 3: you should be using to make sure your blacks match.
Speaker 3: I think that's a huge point of contention.
Speaker 2: I see you hung out with goths. My strongly held
Speaker 2: opinion about black and how it changes color. This is
Speaker 2: really as a goth and not as an anarchist. Black
Speaker 2: looks better and it fades in the sun, then in
Speaker 2: the wash.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's good advice.
Speaker 2: It fades to brown in the sun, and it fades
Speaker 2: to blue in the wash.
Speaker 3: I hate a green faded black.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so if you pair the two it fades
Speaker 2: nicely too. You can still wash your clothes, Margaret says,
Speaker 2: you can wash your clothes, but looks good if it
Speaker 2: fades in the sun. No, it's not actually going to
Speaker 2: be a very like. This is not gonna be a
Speaker 2: how two episode, and people are gonna have to do
Speaker 2: their own research and or talk with folks. Actually, it's funny.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, go to someone and block and
Speaker 2: just ask him how to do it. But that's actually
Speaker 2: literally how I got into radical politics. I went up
Speaker 2: to someone out of demonstration and was like, what's this about,
Speaker 2: and explained anarchism, I know, explained anarchism very succinctly, and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. I was like,
Speaker 2: do you have an extra mask? And he was like,
Speaker 2: I do, and he gave me a mask.
Speaker 3: Oh that's really cute and not usually how it would go.
Speaker 2: No, probably not, but I was like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: already wearing all black, but that's just again goth. But
Speaker 2: Molly got an thinking of all my plug.
Speaker 3: Yeah, listen to my podcast We're Little Guys anywhere you
Speaker 3: get your podcasts. It's like this show but opposite, and
Speaker 3: it will make you sad.
Speaker 2: Yay, I it doesn't make me sad. I like laughing
Speaker 2: at these people. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, the subjects
Speaker 2: of your episodes are jokes.
Speaker 1: Plenty of hahaha.
Speaker 2: Yeah. People should listen to that. I listen to it
Speaker 2: while doing the yard work and building things in my garage.
Speaker 2: This sounds sketchy woodworking. I do it while the woodworking,
Speaker 2: so people should listen to it also people should Okay.
Speaker 2: My other plug is that the way to not let
Speaker 2: movements get divided is to not let people divide them,
Speaker 2: not to try and stop people from doing divisive things,
Speaker 2: because people are going to do what they feel drawn
Speaker 2: to do. But nothing scares the state more than when
Speaker 2: not only are people taking militant action to stop people
Speaker 2: being kidnapped in their homes, but when people who aren't
Speaker 2: doing that militant action vocally support or materially support, although
Speaker 2: not in a criminal way. The people taking those actions,
Speaker 2: the people who are bringing lunch and sunscreen to people
Speaker 2: who are out there risking themselves, or the people who
Speaker 2: just to say no, matter what I would think of
Speaker 2: the tactic, I care a lot more about my neighbors
Speaker 2: than I do about whether or not someone threw something
Speaker 2: at an ice agent.
Speaker 3: And you know what, when people say, oh, that just
Speaker 3: gives the police an excuse to they were going to
Speaker 3: do it anyway. If they had to invent an interviews,
Speaker 3: if they had to fake an excuse, if they had
Speaker 3: to recreate one out of their ass later on, out
Speaker 3: of thin air. They're going to do it anyway. I've
Speaker 3: been at protests where I got beat by a cop
Speaker 3: after somebody broke a window. The cop didn't beat me
Speaker 3: because somebody broke a window. I'm not mad at the
Speaker 3: guy that broke a window. That cop wanted to hit me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: live your life, don't try to control other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and don't support people. If you're listening to this
Speaker 2: in your ice, quit your job.
Speaker 3: They don't even make that much money. I looked at us.
Speaker 3: If they're doing this.
Speaker 2: For they're doing it for the love of the game.
Speaker 2: I thought they make cop money, which is ridiculous, not
Speaker 2: that good.
Speaker 3: Honestly, you joined the SS for fifty k, grow up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck that, You get a nonprofit job making that
Speaker 2: money anyway. See Old Wednesday.
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