One crucial element that is failing here, is what the actual goal is of the anarchist participation, and if the black block tactic is a productive means to this goal. We have to be clear that one of our main efforts today is popularizing anarchist ideas. Masking up and making one inrecognizable also makes you less accessible and thus potentially forms a barrier between us and other people that are not yet known to the ideas.
Making a block also separates you more from others, especially when you pull up banners and block yourself in. You literally shield yourself off from the outside. In that sense I think its an important question raised on the Black Block.
As the author of this article says, the tactic does serve as a good mean for certain actions. We should however not always take the hammer out of our toolbox, sometimes we also need a screwdriver or plyers.
There do is a fetishation where identification and the need to express a certain identity is more important that political goals, and this is I think something we should collectively question and get over. Where is this need to seem 'different' comming from? Can this also have to do with the capitalist identitarian society that we are living in, where our being different needs to be expressed through consumerism and now also through our political believes?
In my opinion we should develop an anarchism of every day life, an anarchism of workers, an anarchism of mothers and fathers, of students, pupils, teachers and cleaners, an anarchism of the common people and not of a closed of sect. We have had this problem before and it was the dead end street that isolated our movement in the 90s and 2000s which led to its downfall. Now, with the new 'aufschwung' we should not fall for the same easy mistakes.
Lets not make the same mistakes
One crucial element that is failing here, is what the actual goal is of the anarchist participation, and if the black block tactic is a productive means to this goal. We have to be clear that one of our main efforts today is popularizing anarchist ideas. Masking up and making one inrecognizable also makes you less accessible and thus potentially forms a barrier between us and other people that are not yet known to the ideas.
Making a block also separates you more from others, especially when you pull up banners and block yourself in. You literally shield yourself off from the outside. In that sense I think its an important question raised on the Black Block.
As the author of this article says, the tactic does serve as a good mean for certain actions. We should however not always take the hammer out of our toolbox, sometimes we also need a screwdriver or plyers.
There do is a fetishation where identification and the need to express a certain identity is more important that political goals, and this is I think something we should collectively question and get over. Where is this need to seem 'different' comming from? Can this also have to do with the capitalist identitarian society that we are living in, where our being different needs to be expressed through consumerism and now also through our political believes?
In my opinion we should develop an anarchism of every day life, an anarchism of workers, an anarchism of mothers and fathers, of students, pupils, teachers and cleaners, an anarchism of the common people and not of a closed of sect. We have had this problem before and it was the dead end street that isolated our movement in the 90s and 2000s which led to its downfall. Now, with the new 'aufschwung' we should not fall for the same easy mistakes.