Part Two: The Black Bloc: It’s a Tactic, Not an Organization
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Anything goes with my Casamigos. Anything goes with my Casamigos. Beau, you're a poet.

Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that I have a podcast. Your twice-weekly reminder that I have a podcast. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and I have a show, and it's about people who do good things from my perspective. And you should just all agree with my perspective. That's the whole point of the show. That's why you're here. One of your best intros, personally. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And someone who doesn't have to agree with my position, but so far we seem to be on a similar page, is my guest, Molly Conger. Hi. Hey, glad to be back. And someone who is also on the call and is my friend is my producer, Sophie. Hi. Hi, Sophie. Not on the call, but listening before you, dear listener, is our audio engineer, Eva. Hi, Eva. Hi, Eva.

Wow. Yeah. She gets the first listen. What a treat. I know. I know. That first pass. One word for it. Yeah. That uncut file is full of burps, coughs. Yeah. Actionable crimes. I didn't hear anything like that. I don't know what you're talking about.

And our theme music was written for us by Unwoman. And not listening to her music would be a crime. That's true. I think it's a federal felony. Yeah. So be a rebel and don't listen. No, wait. Oh, no. I backed us into a corner. Oh, no. Anyway, this is part two of a two-parter about the Black Block, a controversial and interesting tactic that has existed since at least the very early 80s that is worth paying attention to.

and worth understanding. And you don't actually need the history in order to do that, but I find it neat. And you probably do too, or you wouldn't be listening to a history podcast. I'm learning a lot. Yeah. And if people don't know who Molly Conger is, it'd be very confusing because then you're listening to part two without part one. But Molly has a podcast called Weird Little Guys. It's the opposite of this show. And it would make me so happy if you would listen to it or at least download it on multiple apps. Yeah. There's no reason not to.

So, the Black Block tactic, we talked about how it expressed itself in Germany before there was an ultra-globalization movement. The tactic looks different in different places at different times. The Dutch squatters of the 1980s, they were like, we're not fucking with ski masks. That's too much for us. They formed the Black Helmet Brigade and showed up to every march. For a while, Dutch squatters were pretty limited in how they'd fight cops. They were like pretty like, not quite at the German level of intensity or whatever, but

And then in 1985, a squatter named Hans Koch was mysteriously found dead in police custody. And this was widely believed to be police murder. And at the very least was neglect. They were like, oh, he was like drunk or drugs or I don't know. He's just dead. Having absolutely zero information about the situation, I'm comfortable saying that the police murdered him. The Occam's razor here, based on all of the times this happens all over the place, is

is that they murdered him or they murdered him through neglect. They're responsible for his death. And I'm very comfortable with that. Yeah. With saying that, not with that it happened. Yes. To hate that it happened. Yes. So squatters were like, all right, you killed us. We're mad. And they're like, we're not bringing out guns because you don't want to just stand in the street and shoot at each other. That's just like never a good day, you know. But they sure started bringing out Molotov cocktails and things got spicier.

Although, OK, wait a second. Hold on. So you said they didn't want to bring guns. They brought Molotov cocktails. If you were listening to this in the United States of America, the National Firearms Act, a Molotov cocktail is a destructive device that was charged the same as having a gun. So legally, a Molotov cocktail is a gun. Well, it's also worse than a gun because there's no legal way to have one. Right. So just think about that. Yeah. Just know that that it is a federal

federal gun crime. Well, this is important because the next paragraph I have is, I'm really not trying to paint this type of escalation as inherently good or situationally appropriate in every environment. While the use of Molotovs is illegal probably everywhere, I feel like most states probably have a don't throw Molotovs at cops rule somewhere on the books, you know? I imagine there's probably half a dozen different statutes you could charge that under. Yeah. The level of punishment for the act of throwing a Molotov is not the same around the world.

When I first went to Amsterdam, I met someone who got out of spending seven months in a low-security prison for throwing a Molotov at cops.

I mean, if you're doing the cost benefit math, everyone's math is different. Everyone's math will be different. And if you're in the States, your math is real different. There's a lot more stuff on one side of that equal sign. Yeah. Meanwhile, back at home, when I went to the Netherlands for the first time and met this person, a non-white anarchist named Roblos Ricos, which is a very clever name, was spending seven years in prison for throwing a rock at a cop. And so I'm like, yep.

Because every now and then the European anarchists would be like, oh, you American anarchists don't do anything. And we're like, yeah, so... It's different here. Crime is different here. Yeah. And also, I don't know, whatever. I'm not telling anyone what to do. But I suspect that if people threw molotovs at cops, it would... I mean, the Marines are already at play. Right. So I'm literally saying nothing about this. I'm just saying the crime is a crime.

And there's a difference between saying this thing from the past was very cool and me saying it would be so cool if you did it now. Right. Just if the cops are listening. It's different. It's a serious cost-benefit analysis that anyone would need to make. And it might not be the most effective way to try and solve problems. Okay. So.

That's probably the most caveati section of this script. Sorry, I'm a coward. No, no, no. But it's like, okay, just simply be transparent about it. It's not just a like, I don't want to get in trouble, right? But it's true, I don't want to get in trouble. But it's also like, I don't want to get people in trouble. I do not want to suggest to people...

what they should do. And that's like almost why I was like, oh, I don't want to talk about it because I don't want to say anything about it because I don't want to tell people it's cool and good or that it's bad and counterproductive. You don't want to be the Jodie Foster to somebody's John Hinckley. I get it. Yeah. Makes nice symbolism when you draw it in art. We'll go with that. I have it on a shirt. Yeah. Yeah. So...

I've read in one place that the anarchist punk scene of the 80s and 90s in the U.S. made occasional use of the black bloc before it broke onto the world stage in 1999. I've also read that the first one was 1991, so not the 80s. I don't know which one's true. But the first one I can tell you about was 1991. It was assembled during the anti-desert storm protests in D.C. in 1991.

And they were organized through the Love and Rage Anarchist Federation, which put out a call for affinity groups, which we'll talk more about later, but it's a you and your friends making your own decisions together group, to come in block. This was presumably inspired by the autonomans' attack on neoliberalism because that block, when they got together to protest Desert Storm, went to the World Bank building and smashed all its windows.

Had it coming. I mean, what was the building wearing? I know. And it's like one of these things where you're like, oh, it wasn't even related to the protest. I'm like, no, but they sure are stripping all of the resources out of the developing world. Which I think actually does have a lot to do with the causes of war. Yeah, totally. And just to get a taste of how political discourse and terminology has and hasn't shifted, I read a lot of communiques and stuff and discourse from the early 90s about this, I was saying, in the early aughts. But

I read an internal communique, not like an internal, like never published. You can find it online, but like meant for discussion within people doing this. A communique from 1992 about a second block that had been attempted on April 5th, either as it was a women's march, but I don't know if it was an anti-war march or not, or if it was just a women's march. This block, one commenter felt, had not been as much of a success.

One reason behind it was the lack of solidarity from male block organizers. There was also women block organizers. And specifically, the male block organizers didn't have solidarity enough with the women organizers. Women in this case spelled W-I-M-Y-N. Oh, hell yeah. That's so early 90s. And the best part about it, from my point of view, is that this word is both woman and women because it'll say women.

A women came up and said the following. Women and woman are spelled the same in this way. Right, because they're taking man and men out of it, right? So it's like, but there's no distinguishing between singular and plural. Right, besides the article that precedes it. And what's also funny is like, I was telling this to my friend while I was getting ready for this. And they were like, yeah, why did we hate the O? Like, I get the E and the A, but what's our problem with the O? Wait, what do they replace the O with?

I-W-I-M-Y-N. Why did they do that? I don't know. I guess if you're going to make up a new word, you might as well go all in. But like... That's true. It looks kind of cool. Okay, now I need to know. I know. And someone listening knows. Write in.

If you're familiar with the etymology of these feminist neologisms from the early 90s. Because there was another one that I ran across more, which was W-I-M-M-I-N. Oh, I used to know more about the etymology of words like woman and man and stuff. Because man used to literally, I think, there was a different word. Were was the word for man. Right, like werewolf. Yeah, exactly. Or weregeld, which is the money you had to pay to someone's family if you murdered them. Oh, shit.

Anyway, a more civilized time. We'll find out more about this situation. We'll get to the bottom of this another time. So this protester was like,

talking about how it was and wasn't organized effectively. And honestly, the men not pulling their weight, same as it ever was. No, I know. Totally. And I like I'm not even trying to be like, oh, they spelled words funny. I'm like, I'm trying to say like everything's the same. Right. And it's just like such a time capsule of the early 90s. Like if you see women spelled that way, like you know where we are. Right. Totally. And like specifically, they were like, hey, you know, there was a women's caucus that was, you know, part of this. And then like the organizing wasn't quite structured enough in a way that it

make the men actually pay attention to what the Women's Caucus said. Oh, the men weren't interested in the consensus-based decision-making that involved the women? That's crazy, Margaret. That's never happened. I know, but these are radicals, so I must have been misreading it. I bet the men participated equally in making sure the logistics like bathrooms and food and water were handled as well. Well, those actually just take care of themselves. That's right, especially if you don't go to the Women's Caucus where they meet about it.

Nothing's changed. I was in diapers when that zine got written and nothing has changed. Nope. Nope. So they talk about the structure in this. It's not just a like complaining about the following. They talk about the structure. A block of any size is built from affinity groups. An affinity group is basically a very small organizing body. One that might easily be understood as you and your few friends who make decisions together.

affinity groups generally operate on consensus rather than voting what to do. The group does what everyone in the group agrees they want to do together, which makes a lot of sense like for crime, right? If you're four or five friends... I was going to say, this sounds like a conspiracy. Yeah. Well, if you're hanging out with your friends and you're all out to eat and you're like, what do you want to do? You want to go to the beach or do you want to go set that building on fire?

You can't vote that one, right? Everyone has to be down for the crime. If it's like, you know, four to one, we have a majority, we're going to do the crime. The guy who wanted to go to the beach, like...

Should probably be able to leave and go to the beach. Yeah, he should leave. Yeah. This is not a democracy. Yeah, exactly. It's a consensus. It's a, we all want to agree to do this or not. And so that's like how you build a larger group that is made up of people operating on consensus, but not consensus of the larger group necessarily, but the individuals involved are organized into smaller groups.

And it also makes it really funny when they're like, who's the leader of this? And you're like, you fucking morons. Is this your first day at work? Who's in charge of Antifa? Yeah, yeah. So you have three to 15 people or so who agree to go to a demonstration to have each other's backs, to go where the others go and to not get broken up. These affinity groups then coordinate with the other affinity groups on the street.

And clearly by the fact that they caucuses and stuff, they also sometimes will have like representatives from affinity groups come and talk about what they might want to do, which really does sound like conspiracy. I actually don't think that that's the way these are organized anymore. Like really and genuinely, I don't think that this is time capsule shit. I was going to say this is a relic of things past. I mean, I've heard of things like this, but like,

In my understanding of this level of organization, those group representatives aren't coming together to then form consensus. They're just like letting y'all know, this is our hard line. Yeah, totally. This is like kind of direction we're thinking about taking things. Where's everyone else feeling? Yeah. And one demonstration with a black block, the 1999 Carnival Against Capital in London.

9,000 masks were distributed ahead of time. That's some infrastructure. And it had a theme. And the masks had printed inside each one a message.

And that message, quote,

That's a long message to be on the inside of the mask. There's also multiple ellipses in the version I found. I suspect it was longer. Was this like a piece of paper tucked inside? Or was it like sewn in? I need the logistics here. Like what was the manufacturing process for 9,000 masks with a whole paragraph inside? The most Molly question ever. The way it was described, it was like printed inside. I'm like, was it like, are they printing with like a Thermaprint where you can print onto the... With a tag? Yeah.

Well, I was thinking like almost the equivalent of silkscreen, you know, like a way to print onto fabric. It could have been a... Somebody would have to be like manually turning these inside out to get the message. Like, this is a process. Yes. I've never met an anarchist who could have pulled this off. I'm so sorry. Late 90s, built different into weird projects. Magpie just said, fuck them kids. Yeah.

At least a dozen people had to have the same idea that they remained committed to without disagreeing for like several weeks. That's true. I will say, one, I've been to a demonstration where people took their school's resources to make thermoplastic clear riot shields to make hundreds of them by using like industrial manufacturing processes. And there's also just the fact that like on some level,

Like some people are actually just like working class and work at factories and shit, you know? That's true. But like usually when you work at a factory, you don't have access to just like using the factory. That's true. I'm just really enjoying all the side comments in this episode. I need to see a picture of this. Is there a picture of it? Not that I have found. There might be one. Please, if you are a 60-year-old punk, show it to me, please. I also think the Occam's razor here is even though it says printed on the inside, it's

It might be that there is a piece of paper inside. Right. There was like a little hand bill that was handed to everyone as well. That's fair. That is the most likely situation. And that's still very impressive that they were able to do this. I'm still very impressed, but I have questions. Yeah. Fair enough.

And also to walk back my kids these days. The way that we're built different now is substantially more confrontational and interesting to me. The 2020 uprising was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. I don't want the anarchists to think I'm making fun of them. I am making fun of them. No, you can make fun of them. It's fine. We're having a good time, though. It's out of love, like I said. Oh, no, I'm just afraid of being like the old grouchy person. We were better in the anti-globalization era. Things were just different. Things were just different now. Yeah. And do you know what?

I don't have an ad transition for. It's ads. I hope that this ad is for some kind of home screen printing setup where I could make 9000 masks with a weird poem inside. Hell yeah. What poem would you pick? Well, I don't know. That has sort of a poem energy to it. That like the message, the little sort of V for Vendetta sort of situation.

It does have a very V for Vendetta vibe. Although before the movie came out, I would do the Andor speech of Saw Gerrera being like, we are the thing that explodes when there's too much friction in the air. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, I hope it's an advertisement for something I can use to make 9,000 masks. Yeah. And here's that ad. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left.

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onto masks mine would be from this pub that i just googled that is called i like dogs i like dogs big dogs little dogs old dogs puppy dogs a dog that is barking over the hill a dog that is dreaming very still a dog that is running whenever he will

I like dogs. And it's by a person called Margaret Wise Brown, who I have no idea who they are and if they're good or not. You don't know who Margaret Wise Brown is? No. Am I supposed to? Oh my God. Sophie. Am I supposed to? Like, goodnight moon? Little Red Dog? Oh. That makes sense. You know, I do know who this person is. You're right. I'm not good at remembering names unless it's basketball players.

I don't know if she hooped. Yeah. But the poem about it would be pretty cool. I like that her name was Margaret and the poem was about dogs. Yeah. Also, anybody who has a dog that dreams still, not mine. Oh, my dog dreams. My dog dreams, not still. I'm sorry, it's Big Red Barn, not Little Red Barn. What am I fucking thinking? Yeah, Jesus, Molly. Fucking fake fan.

Yeah, I know. I got fully shamed you're out here not knowing your facts. Okay. Yeah. When I was five, me and my sister, we got cats for Christmas from the shelter. And so I got to name my own cat. I'm five years old. Like, what am I going to name this cat? And I decided to name her after my favorite page from my favorite book from when I was little. You know, I was five years old. I was a big girl. I didn't love Good Night Moon. I was too big for that. But it was my favorite book when I was little. So I named my cat

Like the entire phrase, goodnight kittens. That's pretty good. From goodnight moon because goodnight kittens, goodnight mittens, you know, goodnight bowl of mush, etc.,

So for 15 years, we just had a full grown cat whose name was kittens. Plural. So in 1999, we're the world trade organization. Yeah. That's what we're talking about next. Yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Although we're not going to do the deep dive on it. Cause that's a future series of episodes. We're going to Seattle, baby. Yeah. This person is like a good person. Will somebody message me and let me know? Because I've seen fabulous pictures of her with a dog. Yeah.

And I would like to know if this is a person I should like. Is this the poet? Yes, I would like to know if this is a person I should like or if this is a problematic person which I should hate. And I refuse to do my own research because I'm really, really, really tired. I'll just do an episode on it. So November 1999, the black block hit the mainstream in a way that it never had in the U.S. and probably hadn't anywhere in the world, even though it's a substantially smaller black block than the ones in Europe.

because it participated in dramatic rioting against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, the famed Battle of Seattle. And we're going to talk about the actual ultra-globalization protests soon, so I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow of the Battle of Seattle. But the core of why the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, another one of these neoliberal organizations, the reason these protests were so effective, they successfully shut down the meeting of the World Trade Organization,

was not because a few hundred people wearing all black broke a bunch of Starbucks windows, but that a coalition of environmentalists and labor, progressive and radical, like used from the bottom and the left tactics and organization, to borrow a phrase from the Zapatistas, this idea of from the bottom and the left. It means like the bottom a little bit class-wise, but it means like organizing from the bottom up instead of from the top down.

They coordinated mass direct action to shut down downtown Seattle and shut down these protests. It was a movement of movements, and it brought together all sorts of different people to fight alongside one another.

And if you're thinking, Molly, I know Sophie's thinking this, that feels like when the free peoples of Middle Earth banded together at the end of the Third Age in the Battle of the Ring to defeat Sauron. That's exactly what I was thinking. Oh, I was just thinking that, like, to be honest, one of the only things I know about the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization protests. So when I'm writing about a weird little guy, I...

I write like a full timeline of his life, like every detail I can find about just like, I don't even use 90% of it, but I make this like full, robust timeline of a person's life. So the only thing I know about the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization protest is that a guy who was convicted of a federal crime for lying on his background check form when he joined the military was

His parents met there because his mom was making soup. She was like a Food Not Bombs girl. Oh, that's so heartbreaking. I know. And his parents met there and then he was conceived shortly thereafter and he is a Nazi. Oh my God. We're not our parents, you know? No. The apple was caught by the wind and taken to the Nazi grove. Fell far from the tree. That's so sad. I know. I mean, also people who...

George Orwell has this great piece on nationalism where he, like everyone, redefines words whenever he feels like it. And he talks about it as like an allegiance to the idea of being very about something. And he uses it to talk about how many leftists became Nazis because so many leftists became Nazis. You know, sometimes you see a guy and you think, oh, one of these days we're going to be on opposite sides of the line, aren't we? Yeah. Anyway.

During these protests, before they fucked and made Nazis, some of the anarchists, not all the anarchists, got together to form a black bloc to attack symbols of neoliberalism and capitalism, like the aforementioned Starbucks windows, sort of the most famous part of this. God, I forgot Starbucks was that old. Starbucks is super old. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, breaking Starbucks windows was like, that was like the thing. There's an Against Me song about throwing bricks through Starbucks windows that's about Seattle. Yes, because it started in Seattle. Yeah. Wow.

Which you can't go into Seattle without somebody telling you that. Yeah, totally. And these protests, the destructive part of the protests, which is a smaller portion of it, but got a lot of media attention.

It directly and materially contributed to the escalation of the conflict which was likely necessary for the tactical victory of shutting down the protests, is my argument. If things hadn't gotten spicy, they probably would not have caused enough chaos to stop the meeting from being able to happen. It was also pretty much the reason why the press was unable to downplay the demonstrations like they've been doing to every demonstration they could find for so long.

And the reason that these protests got so much press, almost all of which was negative. All press is good press, maybe? Hard to say. And it also sparked a debate that goes on in radical movements to this day about the appropriateness of Black Bloc and the appropriateness of property destruction demonstrations. The Black Bloc makes for a powerful media image, one that is regularly villainized by both the press and by some advocates for strict nonviolence policies.

This powerful image is a double-edged sword. Protests that would have scarcely made the news at all get a ton more attention when things are on fire or broken. Militant action is always polarizing, and maybe it always will be. But there are people who are turned off by this. It is worth remembering that in 2020, when someone burned down the third police precinct in Minneapolis in response to the police murder of George Floyd...

A Monmouth University survey revealed that 54% of Americans supported the arson of the police station, which means burn the fucking cop shops down, pulled higher than either presidential candidate at that time. And don't let Atlantic Magazine tell you fucking otherwise. I know, because this one, the source for that in this is Newsweek. That's like... That's a conservative publication. Yeah. Yeah.

Direct action, including militant direct action, is actually apparently less polarizing than electoral candidates are. That's my spiciest take of the day. And you know, you may not, I don't know, you may not like the look of a broken window, but do you like it more or less than you like looking at a four-year-old child crying as she's being snatched from the arms of her mother? Right. And you could say to yourself, why are they related? And then you have to say, well, even if they aren't.

Is one person against that and another person doing it? You know, is one person trying to stop that by a means that they consider appropriate? In which case your problem is not ethical, it's strategic. And people get really hung up on that difference and think that strategy is ethics and it's not. I got wild eyed and glad there's an audio medium, but. But you're right. Thank you. Thank you. You know, I personally, I'm not going to break a window.

But I'm not going to take a picture of it when someone else does. Yeah. And the same people who are doing that are often the same people who will physically stop the police from being...

beating people and grabbing people who are trying to do things. I'm not going to tell you to break the window. I'm not going to tell you to not break the window. But if you break the window and you get arrested, I will wait in the parking lot for you to get out. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, totally. Because when we do jail support, it doesn't matter what you did. We're just waiting here in the parking lot for you to get out. So this is not an endorsement of the window breaking. I'm just saying we'll be out here with snacks. Yeah. There was people waiting outside with snacks after I got out of jail when I got arrested wearing all black. Yeah.

Yeah, me too. The WTO protests got negative press attention, but this didn't stop any activists partly because I think this is an interesting tangent about media. The argument during the ultra-globalization era was that mainstream media is structurally part of the state apparatus of control.

that to paraphrase Noam Chomsky, the state isn't powerful enough to control everyone with an iron fist. Like, we're seeing this now, right? Like, we're actually literally more of us than there are of them. Because the run-of-the-mill conservative voter is not willing to get out on the streets to protect ICE. Imagine getting up off your couch to protect the police. I know. Because the police aren't powerful enough to control everything with an iron fist, they use media apparatus to manufacture the consent of the governed. This is the argument. And it's

I'm going to explore that tangent in more depth one day, but the anarchist Noam Chomsky saying this about the manufacturing of consent in 1989 was part of what led the ultra-globalization movement to develop its own media infrastructure, much of which was built around a brand new idea, a decentralized way for people to post news, indie media, which more or less invented citizen journalism in the internet era.

and is a direct precursor to Twitter, which is, of course, not specifically a leftist project, but it was at least interesting until that was captured by fascism and rebranded as X, which is to say capitalism can fucking recuperate anything, and it's a nightmare. But I find that through line very interesting that

radicals critical of the coverage of these sorts of things invented a worldwide infrastructure of direct communication. Sometimes, you know, in my research into sort of fascist movements of this era of the, you know, the seventies, eighties and nineties come across old primary source leftist and anarchist media, right? So like old Marxist newspapers, old anarchist zines, and sort of capturing these moments in time. And it is striking, right?

how different the coverage is. Because I mean, some of them are fairly professionalized, these like little newspapers that came out quarterly or this or that or the other. It's real journalism. It's a real newspaper, but it's so different. You can read coverage of the same protests from an old New York Times archive and then from the anarchist newspaper. And it is, it's a different story. It's a different reality that people are creating and both are biased. And these histories get buried and lost. Yeah. And that's,

Yeah. I mean, that's like literally what keeps me going with doing the show constantly, that and my desire to feed my dog on a regular basis. Keep those histories alive. And yeah, sure. Of course, they're all both biased. The anarchist newspaper and the New York Times are both. But if you read both, and that's a lot of what I do, right, is you sort of read these primary sources that were written by Nazis, right? So you can't take them at face value. You're not reading them for truth. But you can piece together what the truth probably is. Yeah. And I have found that the leftist and anarchist newspapers are closer to it.

I have largely found that to be the case. It's also, it's more transparent when they go into their like, now I'm soapboxing mode, which any listener of this show is fully aware of. I try to get all the facts right and I digress and my opinions are very clear, you know? But there's an interesting thing. I think the idea that mainstream media is inherently pro-status quo is an outmoded idea. And maybe I say this because I produce a podcast for iHeartMedia. I try not to think about it.

I was like, huh, sounds familiar. To be fair, I've never even met anyone who works for iHeartMedia except for Sophie. And I don't claim them. Well, that's the thing is, I am a freelance contractor and they put ads into the content that I make and they don't control that content. And

So I say what I believe and they can make money from me doing that. And I bank on the fact that they just don't listen to my show. Yeah, that's pretty much what I count on. Yep. All the time. I'm like the less people that know we exist, but keep signing our checks like the better. Yeah. Yeah. It's not listening to our shows. No, but I think that a thing that has happened and I'm using us and a lot of my friends who work in media as an example and also like shows like Andor where I

There's a generation of people that are genuinely anti-capitalist, largely anti-authoritarian, that has become media professionals. The fact that some of the best labor reporting consistently is from Teen Vogue, right? And often they're doing it actually with more nuance than some of old papers, like old leftist papers and stuff. Anyway, this is like a thing that I think about a lot is the way that

Our relationship to media has shifted dramatically over the decades. And I think it's something really important, going back to what you're talking about with the manufacturing consent, it is important to interrogate the viewpoint of the author of the publication. Totally. Because like you said, burning the precinct pulled higher than the president. And that's not what the newspaper tells me. Yeah, totally. Because...

You're like, oh, we want to show both sides. So you're like, well, they don't show the pro-burning side usually. Anyway. Oh, no, it's ads. Oh, God. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left.

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Bye.

Fighting Words with George M. Johnson. My book was read at a Senate Judiciary hearing. Wow, we both did read on the Congress floor. And a special shout out from comedian Lisa Lepinelli and her podcast, Shrink This.

Happy Pride for all who celebrate and who doesn't. Let's live loud and proud, y'all. Have a happy Pride and listen to all the outspoken shows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey.

You know who it is, Brandon Kyle Goodman. But this Pride Month, call me Messy Mother. On my podcast, Tell Me Something Messy, I'm diving into all the juicy stories and sizzling hot tea that'll make you want to live your life liberated and free. Nothing is off the table for our messy geekies. Be it cringy dates, best sex practices, family drama, or coaxing,

cultivating self-love. Plus, I'll be joined by star-studded guests like T.S. Madison. How can we not judge ourselves? You just gotta tell yourself, like, girl, how old are you, bitch? And I love me a lot because... Oh, you do? Bitch, I love these motherfucking bag rolls. What are these for? Bag rolls? Bag rolls?

And dragging messy stories out of guests like the one and only Katya. I also got into the habit of wearing butt plugs to the gym. Tell me about this. And I also work out with butt plugs in quite a bit because like... Tell me, tell me everything. Well, it's just at first it feels good. Yes. And then second, it's like my little secret. TMI, please tell me more. Every week we'll create a compassionate space to share the fullness of who we are.

I can't wait to get messy with you. Listen to Tell Me Something Messy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You've heard the name Marsha P. Johnson, trans icon, revolutionary, saint. They call me a legend in my own time. But who was she, really? She's strutting up there, waving to the policemen in the cars, pay it no mind.

I'm a woman, a real woman. Marsha also survived homelessness, sex work, and police violence. And in 1992, her body was found in the Hudson River. Her death remains unsolved. Marsha was pulled out of the water, right over the edge here. Afterlives is a podcast about how trans lives we've lost have reshaped our world.

Marsha will tell us who she was in her own words. You're going to be gagging. Just get your heart ready for heart failure. At a time when trans rights are under attack, her story is more urgent than ever. Listen to Afterlives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So media presented a certain image of the Black Bloc, and it was not a sympathetic one. Black Blocers only care about destruction and have nothing to offer the movement. Just purely negative.

And they are the ones responsible for the violence of the police, which is always an amazing thing. Like the headlines are like, the violence started after someone threw a water bottle. And you're like, seems like an unnecessary escalation. Yes. The violence was when people started hurting people, which was the police hurting people. Or like the violence started when people yelled at the police. You're like, no, it was again. It was when they hit people with sticks.

And, yeah, somehow police hospitalizing people is the responsibility of an angry kid wearing all black. I think The Onion nailed this the other day with the headline, Protesters urge not to give Trump administration pretext for what it's already doing. Right, because, like, oh, don't give them an excuse. They don't need an excuse. Plus, it's already happening. It's already happening. That's great. Well done, The Onion. I would never be able to write Onion headlines because...

I don't grammatically understand why headlines will say things like, for what it already doing instead of for what it is already doing. I don't understand. I think it's a way that headlines are written. It is a way that headlines are written. And I think that The Onion is always satirizing headlines. So they're going to like play into sort of an old-timey journalist-y narrative.

Well, I didn't go to journalism school. No, neither did I. I mean, I'm totally professional. Oh, wait, I'm not even pretending to be a professional journalist. I do pop history. So. No, I've been pepper sprayed by enough cops in enough situations to know it was always their fault. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Even when cops get pepper sprayed, it's their fault because it's them doing it to them. They love doing it to themselves. I know.

Within the movement of movements, opinions about block were a lot more nuanced. And you saw a rise of what I might call the heroic black block, where black blockers work in solidarity with people with other tactics and outfits. And actually, I mean, that's kind of how it started, right? It was like as a spiky exterior to a larger march. But people realized if you're aware of how your presence attracts police attention, and if you ever want police attention at a protest, wear black block. The police will pay attention to you.

And you're good at staying mobile in this situation, right? And so rather than smashing bank windows near people doing nonviolent civil disobedience in the middle of an intersection, like people like locking the lockboxes in the middle of intersection, you don't run up and break the window right near them and then leave. That's a dick move. You just go somewhere else. Right. And then you're actually helping because the police are now drawn away from your allies and you are much better equipped to fight back and to get away than other people might be.

And because of that, and because of interpersonal relationships, and years of intense organizing, and we talked about this at the opening, bonds of solidarity arose between the Bloc and other groups. And during the entire ultra-globalization movement, the Black Bloc continued. And so did the discourse.

The discourse was actually fairly nuanced. It wasn't like, is everyone doing this tactic evil or good, right? It was like, hey, in what context is this appropriate? How much are we simply acting out our pre-assigned role within the same story over and over again, right? You kind of like fetishize a tactic and then you're like, we're just going to do it. And you're like, is it the right one?

Do the cops know you're going to do it? Because if the cops know you're going to do it, it's not what you should do. Like overall, you know? Well, and the president said that all those people have to go to prison. Oh, yeah. An anonymous zine from the time, from 2002, I think, had a really good title, if you ask me. The Black Block, A Disposable Tactic. I like that.

And that piece describes the state's way of responding to anarchists in the block during the ultra-globalization movement. It talks at length about how the state's strategy is to criminalize all the militant protesters as terrorists. It's the same shit, right? Like Trump is different, but Bush did this too, right?

And especially in the wake of 9-11, everyone's a terrorist now. And specifically, the state strategy at the time, at least according to this analysis, and I fully agree with it, was to try to convince the rest of the movement to distance themselves from the bloc. Bingo. And...

People started moving away from black bloc tactics, or rather diversifying into different types of blocs within radical mass mobilizations. We'll talk more about this one soon because I really like it, so I have to throw it in. Have you ever heard of the padded bloc? No. No. It comes from these Italian tutte blanche white overalls movement, I think is how you say it. That sounds cute. Yeah, they start off being like, we're going to wear white overalls to protest. Yeah.

And if I get this history wrong, sorry, later they will be the subjects of a thing. But then they started wearing padding. And specifically, they turned a block style formation into a purely defensive thing where you would be silly as hell covered in like pillows and pool floaties and like helmets. And you would just be like the Michelin man, like

lumbering up to the cops and you'd have hundreds of people doing this. And you would literally just push the police out of the way. I need to see this with my eyes. This there is a video of. There's so much good riot porn from, this has mostly happened in Europe in like 99, or I guess mostly 2000, 2001. Yeah, I'm looking this up immediately after we're done. Yeah. No, the padded block is fucking amazing. They'll hit cops with pool noodles and shit. An American

An American cop would just shoot you if you hit them with anything. I know. It's like one of those things where it's like, like there's that footage of some protesters recently in California where the cops are trying to evict, I think, a Palestine occupation at a campus. And someone is just like bonks the cop with an empty five gallon water drum. And you can hear the bonk noise. Oh, God. Yeah, that was. I recall. There was a music video. Somebody made a song. I hope that person is free is all I feel. But yeah, I just feel like, I don't know, maybe the European cop.

Has a sense of humor, but the American cop does not. I will say there is a moment of some European cops being real uncool about some stuff. I mean, there's still cops. Yeah. And and the padlock is a great media image and it can be just as radical, especially when your goal is storm the hotel of world leaders. It's a fairly effective way to move through a police line. It's not good for causing havoc in rich shopping districts, but that's not that's not always the goal. Right. And to quote author Mark Levine about this.

Quote, simply put, routinized violence against property cost the anti-corporate globalization movement significant support in the U.S. and Europe precisely because the vast majority of people in these countries were not suffering enough under the existing system to support the level of chaos and disruption such violence was intended to generate. I know it's a mouthful, but it's basically, it's like, look, people's lives aren't hard enough that like most people suffer.

aren't necessarily going to look at a smash-up shopping district and be like, hooray, tech capitalism. No, because they have the crumbs and they went home. Right. And I don't think that's a universally applicable thing. I'm not just meaning it as a condemnation of property destruction in all contexts. But it was a way in which people saw that that was happening within the movement and started shifting. It's interesting to think about in the present moment, right? Like, have things shifted enough where there is enough visible suffering happening?

The balance has changed. I agree. People are not going to look at that property damage the same way they would have 10 years ago. Right. Like if you read anti-capitalist stuff from the late 90s, like Adbusters magazine, the problem that they present that their reader might have is that they're bored. Like Fight Club is a movie about being bored by capitalism and problems dealing with homosexuality and pent-up male anger. But people's problems isn't that they're bored anymore. Right.

You know, the cost of food is getting out of control. Like there's going to be a breaking point. Yeah. And not that everyone was having a good time in the 90s, but it was a substantially more up and coming time. And when you look at the larger picture of the economy, it's just a very different time.

Well, an intense thing that happened in July 2001, the group of eight, which is a neoliberal decision-making body of the leaders of the eight richest countries. I think it's the eight richest countries plus Russia. I don't remember off the top of my head. It was like Russia, you have nukes. So you're like in, even though you're not like next, you know, I think that's it. I might be wrong, whatever. I'm never going to find out. I used to know all of this. I used to write zines about it, like talk to people at demonstrations about it. I just like don't remember all the stuff on my head.

In 2001, the group of eight, the G8, was meeting in Genoa, Italy, and the police shot and killed a 23-year-old anarchist named Carlo Giuliani. Carlo at the time was armed with a fire extinguisher when cops fired live rounds at him and then ran him over, and his death has been filmed. And it was very impactful on the movement. A few months later...

planes hit the World Trade Center. I don't know if you knew that this happened. Oh, tell me more about that. What is that? I can't remember. I lived in New York City at the time. I will absolutely remember. It is scarred on my brain. Never forget. All of us traumatized. Yes. Yeah, totally. Except Garrison, who wasn't born. So real. The U.S. mobilized for war and it started rounding up Muslim men without due process. And suddenly everyone was a terrorist.

Supposedly, at this point, the ultra-globalization movement fell apart. That's always the version of the story, including within the movement. I joined the movement months later, in February 2002, at protests in Manhattan. And I did not feel like I was joining a failing movement. I felt more alive than I ever have in my life by that point. The movement did indeed still exist. And I came up in the middle of the movement awash in Zine's self-critique about everything we did wrong.

You know, we were like, oh, our movement fell apart. Why? And it just turned into this like discourse hell. And what I think we did wrong was assume that winning is a static thing. We accomplished an amazing amount of things. We thought that smash neoliberalism was a like static thing, like done. You beat the boss. A little cheering music happens. And then it's never over. Yeah, it's never over. And that's beautiful.

The ultra-globalization movement ended eventually, and in the U.S., the anti-war movement began, which imported tactics, if not activists, directly from the previous movement. By 2008, a lot of the discourse around the black bloc and diverse tactics within protest movements felt settled. Because it didn't stay settled, but it should have been. And everyone, this is my opinion, I'm now in a soapbox. Because...

In 2008, when people agreed to disrupt the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, they got together all these different movements. How are we going to do this? We all have different ideas about how we should do this. And they came up with a four-point program called the St. Paul Principles. You heard these? Oh, we still use those. Cool. The St. Paul Principles are, one, our solidarity will be based on a respect for diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups.

Two, the actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space. Three, any debates or criticism will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists or events.

Four, we oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption, and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others. Good rules. Yeah. Rules to live by. Yeah. People are going to do this shit in different ways. No one way is right. Make sure we don't step on each other's toes directly. It's never going to be perfect.

And try to keep a united front against the enemy and the press alike, especially once we step on each other's toes, which we will. Like whatever disagreements you have within the movement, it's not worth getting the cops involved. It's not worth letting the cops in. Yeah, because your problem is with other people who share your goals and not your tactics. And so talk about that amongst each other, not with people who have completely different goals that are counter to yours.

Like the state is not a mediator here. They just want you both to die. Yeah, totally. I do love that, you know, it's St. Paul because of like St. Paul, Minnesota, but it makes it sound so religious. Gives it like a biblical heft. Oh, yeah. This is from the Bible. Yeah. I was reading this, like, I hate the St. Paul's principle piece the other day. And it was like St. Paul.

Paul, what is this Catholicism telling us what we have to do? And I love they use anti-authoritarianism to justify authoritarianism, you know, because they're like many such cases within anarchism. Well, this person wasn't an anarchist. I think this person was I'm rudely assuming that this person was a Marxist Leninist. OK, that's fair. I'm just saying there are more authoritarians in a room full of anarchists. It's true.

than you would want them to be, yeah. Yeah, than you would ever suspect. Yeah. Consensus-based decision-making means we're going to sit here until you all agree with me. Okay.

Oh, God. I am kind of glad that we learned that not everything needs to be consensus decision making. I'm talking a lot of shit for someone who doesn't leave her house. Don't listen to me. Oh, that's the other thing that every now and then people are like, come give talks about organizing. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to take a time machine back to when I knew what was happening. I read history and talk about pop history. For my safety and the safety of others, I'm not in those rooms. I haven't been in years. Yeah. So real. So real. Then...

During a series of global uprisings started in 2011 with Arab Spring, the Black Bloc found a new and maybe more fertile ground. Places where people had been suffering enough with the existing system to be down with a more destructive method of confronting that system. And you get a really major Black Bloc movement in Egypt. And again, it was a way to have these huge, spicy protests without turning to actual armed urban guerrilla clandestinity.

The protests around Tahrir Square in Egypt made extensive use of black bloc tactics, largely introduced through soccer hooliganism. I mean, they're already organized, you know, they have matching outfits. Yeah, and they like fighting. They love fighting. Yeah. God, we were just, those horrible videos coming out of LA of the police horses trampling people, right? Yeah. We're looking at those, and my husband was reminding me of...

the interior square, there is that moment where you can see the idea occur to a man that you can, if you walk up from behind or the side, like when the cavalry is in a dense crowd,

you can just pull him backwards off the horse and there's nothing he can fucking do about it. I just want to point out that Anderson fucking hated those police cop horse things. Like, cavalry is frightening when it's facing you. Yeah. But you can pull him down. Yeah. They used to just, like, prance around in Hollywood near where the old IHART office was. And when Anderson was out doing her concrete shit, which is what I used to call it, because Anderson's like, I'll drop heat anywhere. I'm,

from Los Angeles and so we'd be doing the concrete shit dance sorry Anderson I'm really like outing your life really putting her on blast really putting her on blast no I'm proud of that okay my dog could shit on concrete thank you very much my dog cannot shit on concrete

My other dog, absolutely not. She loves having her little en suite bathroom at my house. Anyways, we would see those exact horse cops and Anderson would let them know. Yeah. Like, we include you in ACAB, horsey horse. Like, fuck this. Look, as a former horse girl, I'm looking at their form

They're not stable on those horses. They're not stable. No, no. They are at risk. Also, former horse girl, I have questions. This is great. Yes. The deep lore. Yeah, I love this. We did upset Anderson. She did leave the room when we started talking about it. Oh, no.

Yeah, there's some incredible, incredible videos from Tahrir Square. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you're just like interested in what you should do if there was mounted cavalry. Yeah. Yeah. Continue magpie, please. Yeah, yeah. No. And one of the things I really like, because I really like when everything is connected globally and...

A lot of the Black Bloc activists in Egypt, or presumably their supporters as well, would change their Facebook pages to list their university background as UNAM, which is the National Autonomous University of Mexico. It's a way of saying we're related with the Zapatistas. And I think that's cool. That is cool. Black Bloc was also contentiously part of Occupy Wall Street and the broader Occupy movements. Once again, people presenting an almost amusing ignorance on the part of some of the critics where they're like,

Where do these anarchists come ruin everything at Occupy Wall Street? Occupy Wall Street was built by ultra-globalization veterans, including the late anarchist author David Graeber and many other people. Not just anarchists, but very heavily. And soon those ideas generalized across the country and people would get involved without knowing the origins of them. Like you show up late to the party and you're mad that the host is there. Yeah, exactly. Grow up. Exactly. Exactly.

movements come and go, but discourse is forever, which is why I want to remember always the litany against discourse, which is me rewriting the litany against fear, which is a piece by Frank Herbert. It's a way to remind yourself not to discourse. I must not discourse. Discourse is the mind killer. Discourse is the little death that brings total obliteration.

I will face the discourse. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the discourse has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain. That's beautiful, Margaret. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. You just replaced the word fear and that's the actual thing. I just mind my business. Yeah. I see something I don't like in a protest, I mind my business. Yeah. It's not about me. I mind my business. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I wanted to talk about this today because I don't want people to get caught while they're trying to stop fascism. The Black Block is one way to avoid getting caught or things like it. And it is not just for people who want to commit crimes. It is very good for people who want to make sure that people who do commit crimes are

Rather, that people who do physically interfere with the state apparatus, for example, don't get caught because you are part of a crowd that they can disappear into. You know, even if crime is just totally off the table, like that level of anonymity is useful to you for a variety of reasons. State surveillance, arrest after the fact just for having been there, being doxxed by right-wing groups. Like there's a lot of reasons why maybe you just want to be a little anonymous. Yeah.

Totally. And if somebody wants to break the window, it's not your fucking business, dog. Yeah, that's not you. Oh, and if you were the masked anarchist who grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back because I was looking down at my phone while walking and tweeting into a riot line, thank you.

And so if you want to go to an anime convention dressed in the following style, ways to do it. Just real quick. This is not your actual guide, but I promised you some fashion tips. This is just like a cosplay, yeah? Yeah. You want to cosplay in groups, affinity groups. We discussed them earlier. You put on normal clothes that don't attract police attention. And then you put black block clothes on over that as much as... There's different ways of doing it. This is one way to do it.

And you want that as uniform with your group at the anime convention. So avoid logos, patches, or anything else identifiable unless everyone has the Sailor Moon. Don't put Sailor Moon on it. Be willing to get rid of this clothing, especially if something happens while you're out. And some people like raincoats because they're thin and light and easy to take on and off. You might want to put another layer on on top of this, which is your Get There layer.

A bandana mask is not adequate in the modern era. Do not look at old black blocks and think that is how to do it because they had a different threat model around surveillance. A ski mask or a t-shirt is a much better way at the anime convention to make sure that no one knows that you're secretly – it's the way I go to avoid getting mobbed by crowds at anime conventions. Because you're so famous. Yeah, with anime fans.

Tie a t-shirt mask. The way that you do that is you hold the neck hole over your eyes and then you tie the sleeves around the back. And people like to cover tattoos. Be friendly as hell with the other people at the convention who aren't in block. Your goal is to make their lives better and have a more enjoyable convention experience. And be brave. Courage is instead not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act despite it.

And before you leave the convention, you de-block where others can't see. This can be accomplished by bringing together a large group of people, especially with umbrellas to hide from overhead cameras. But also if you're able to scout the convention area ahead of time, you can figure out

alleys and camera blind spots and such inside the convention center. And ideally talk to people who have experience and go with experienced people. But if that's not possible, read about it. Crimethink.com has a lot of different guides on this matter. Other places do too, I'm sure. And always remember, this is not the best or only way to be militant or radical or whatever. This is one that I find the history fascinating of and wanted to present. It's just one way that you can help

yourself and other people stay safe doing what you might want to do when you're getting those signatures. You can go in the line as many times as you want if you're in block because they're going to be like, I've never seen you before. And you're like, that's right. Please sign a lot of things for me. And then you can sell signed copies of the books. That's what I got. That's the history of the block block. Make your own choices, mind your own business and be brave. Those are some good maxims. Yeah. The Molly maxims.

Well, if people can... Well, you can do your own plug. I don't have to do your plug for you. Oh, gosh, yeah. Listen to my podcast, Weird Little Guys. It's about the opposite of this show. Things that are bummers. Bad people who did bad things. You can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts. As a matter of fact, download several podcasting applications on your phone and download it on all of them. Wow.

What could go wrong? Literally nothing. Nothing will go wrong if you do that. No, I'll get more downloads and Sophie will be proud of me. I'm always proud of you. It's not downloads based. Downloads help. And if you like ad transitions, but not ads, you can and you have an iPhone, you can subscribe to CoolerZone Media and just give us money to do this directly instead of it going through ads instead.

That's the thing you can do. You can also take care of your friends. Shit's hard. Yes, I would like to plug the idea of having solidarity with your friends and neighbors. Yeah.

And remember that community and neighbors doesn't mean the people you like. Like sometimes it's just literally the people who are there. Whether or not you like your neighbors, they should not be disappeared. Well, I actually have no problem with any neighbors who would be in that kind of throat. But like whatever. Like it's not about like just your friends. It is about the people around you and the people who aren't around you but could be around you. Let's just take care of each other. All right. Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye.

Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today.

Have a happy Pride.

and listen to all the outspoken shows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Marsha P. Johnson is the trans icon of the queer movement, and it's time to listen to her. Drag queen.

Today, you can buy T-shirts with her face on them. But her death in 1992 was never solved. I'm dying, dying, dying. Hear how Marsha's life and legacy reshaped our world. Just get your heart ready. Listen to Afterlives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. ♪