Debunking the Myth that Medea Benjamin “Demanded the Arrest of Anarchists” at the WTO Summit in 1999 and the Myth’s Negative Impact on Strategic Nonviolence and Anarchism:
I have little regard for Medea Benjamin, mainstay of the putatively “antiwar” and “anti-imperialist” organization, Code Pink and cofounder of Global Exchange. In reality, while Code Pink[1] was once (theoretically, at least), one of many antiwar organizations and groups that coalesced in response to the so-called “War on Terror” (in response to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon) initiated by the George W Bush-Dick Cheney Administration (which was really a thinly-disguised campaign of neoconservative US imperialism conducted against “Muslim” nations throughout the so-called “Middle East”, conducted for a variety of dubious power- and profit-mongering motivations), Code Pink has since degenerated into a campist shill for Vladimir Putin’s Russian imperialism (and possibly Chinese imperialism as well).
Many anarchists (and I consider myself to be one) would be forgiven in thinking that such an orientation is entirely consistent for someone who once supposedly called for their arrest (in response to the insurrectionist tactics of the Black Bloc in the so-called “Battle of Seattle” against the WTO ministerial on November 30, 1999) but as I will elaborate, that never actually happened.
I won’t waste time trying to prove my case about Benjamin’s or Code Pink’s fall into the red-brown Campist rabbit hole, since I and others have covered this in detail elsewhere. The point of this essay is to address a widely believed bit of misinformation that Benjamin’s detractors often repeat in context with their criticisms of her more recent actions.
The Myth:
Some historical background of the event is useful. In late 1999, the World Trade Organization held a ministerial summit in Seattle to develop a neoliberal capitalist trade agreement that would’ve been similar to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), albeit with a much wider scope.
After the deleterious effects of NAFTA (planned as early as the late 1980s under Presidents Regan and Bush Sr, successively, and ultimately enacted under their successor, Bill Clinton—even though he was a Democrat, rather than a Republican, at least in theory!) became widely apparent to much of the political left, and widespread disillusionment of so-called “free trade” spread among the working class, a wide, albeit lose coalition of leftist activists planned a grassroots counter summit to the planned WTO meeting to take place at the end of November 1999.
The counter summit’s organizers came from a variety of movements and organizations, including radical environmentalists (such as Earth First!, Rainforest Action Network, and the Ruckus Society among others), anti-systemic movements, anarchists, socialists, labor militants, Wobblies, anti-militarists, indigenous groups, social justice movements, and others. Such a coalition among in the very politically siloed left during the early post-Cold War years was relatively unheard of, but this one was actually the culmination of several past attempts (including, in no small measure, the efforts of Judi Bari in the late 1980s and early 1990s).
There were debates and differences of opinion among some of the groups, movements, and organizations that planned the counter summit. While it was widely agreed that direct action against the capitalist meeting would occur, there were wild disagreements over tactics.
History (including, unfortunately, movement history) tends to paint the picture that two divergent factions of demonstrators mobilized anti-WTO actions on November 30, 1999: the first being a group of affinity groups engaged in “mostly symbolic and performative” nonviolent actions, led by a group known as the “Direct Action Network” (DAN), led (among others) by Medea Benjamin; and the second being a group of black clad “anarchists” who engaged in property destruction (against some of the corporate targets represented at the summit) and violent confrontations with the police.
While the two groups demonstrated separately, somehow they wound up in the same location (near the capitalist summit meeting location, thus preventing the meeting from occurring), the police overreacted, tear-gassed the demonstrators, and the widespread negative reaction from the public, many political leaders, and some of the summit attendees (combined with the costs of the property destruction) caused the WTO meeting to collapse.
It certainly didn’t hurt the anti-WTO demonstrators’ cause that the police riot was captured by the mainstream media, and the footage of (mostly nonviolent) activists being violently assaulted by cops in riot gear didn’t do the capitalists any favors in manufacturing consent for their already flailing narrative. Unfortunately, the media also captured the black bloc vandalizing (by breaking windows and graffitiing) various nearby retail businesses as well as quoting Medea Benjamin (allegedly) “calling for the police to arrest the anarchists” (or so many people seem to think or recall).
Victory and Fallout
Whatever the case, the WTO summit collapse was (at least temporarily) a huge victory for the cause anti-capitalism (in the sense that it prevented an expansion—at least temporarily—of neoliberalism at the time and helped turn the tide of public opinion against it, finally), albeit one with complications and downsides (the widespread perception that the “anarchists” were “violent vandalizing thugs”—a perception that could be blamed on both the insurrectionists’ actions as well as the (perception of) Benjamin’s statements—didn’t help advance the cause of anarchism in the minds of the public).
In the aftermath of the summit, partisans of the two factions battled back-and-forth (rhetorically) over who deserved the credit for the anti-capitalist victory. Unfortunately, rather than try and organize a meeting composed of delegates from the two factions to hold a thorough and honest debriefing and strategic assessment of the counter-summit following the event, partisans of both factions doubled down on their rhetoric and finger pointing. Worse still, assuming that both of their respective “sides” were right, and the other “side” wrong, the two factions would continue to organize separate mobilizations at most of the successive following neoliberal capitalist trade summits for the next few years, until the 9/11 attacks and the reaction that followed derailed much of the anti-WTO organizing until the Occupy movement revived it.
To this day, the acrimony between the two approaches continues to plague the movement.
Partisan adherents of strategic nonviolence tend to hold negative views of (what they perceive as) anarchism and (what they believe to be) anarchist tactics, particularly where properly destruction is involved. There continues to be an all-too quick rush to judgment on the part of this faction that assumes that the insurrectionist tactics result from government infiltrators looking to manipulate the unwitting anarchists into engaging in counterproductive tactics in order to discredit progressive (or even revolutionary) movements. Sometimes, this leads these partisans to engage in what’s known as “bad-jacketing”, i.e. labeling specific individuals as being government or capitalist infiltrators, an action which is ultimately counterproductive, because it sows fear and paranoia among activists with differences of opinion (particularly over tactics and strategy). This unwittingly does exactly the work that the supposed “infiltrators” are supposedly guilty of doing!
Meanwhile, the insurrectionist partisans often scoff at the adherents of strategic nonviolence as being “ineffectual”, “reformist”, and/or “liberal”, and will frequently denounce them as such. The anarchists among them will often claim to be the “true”, or at least “truest” representatives of anarchism (even though there are many anarchists who question the efficacy of insurrectionist or confrontational tactics (at least in some contexts)). They will (rightly) cite examples of instances where black bloc tactics and/or militant confrontations with armed police are the most effective tactic (and there are indeed, at least, some), but they’ll (wrongly) argue that such tactics are always (or at least, most often) the most or only effective response in any given situation (more often than not, they’re actually not). They also tend to support the argument that strategic nonviolence is merely a form of disarmament and capitulation to the forces of the state, and they’ll often cite Medea Benjamin’s alleged call for the arrest of anarchists as proof.
The Truth (and yes, it’s complicated)
Much of the prevailing narratives (among activists, at least) about what went down on November 30, 1999 in Seattle, as well as all of the aforementioned reactions to it, substantially gloss over the complex history of the Seattle uprising, leave out crucial details, and overlook substantial amounts of important context. These omissions are frequently honest mistakes made by those who were present (who couldn’t possibly be expected to see everything happening within the whirlwind in which they found themselves immersed) or observers from afar (who didn’t have a thorough compendium of accounts from various sources), but others result from tunnel vision induced by ideological blinders or just plain bad faith arguments. Those missing details make all the difference in the world, however.
The details often missed are these:
- The so-called “Black Bloc” was actually tiny, numbering no more than four dozen at best;
- There were a far greater number (several thousand, at least) organized within the Direct-Action Network affinity groups, including a sizable portion of anarchists (far more so than the Black Bloc);
- The DAN’s tactics were nonviolent, but substantially militant, involving lockdowns and blockades of crucial access points to the convention site, which disrupted the event;
- There were apolitical vandals, with no direct connection to the protests, who took advantage of all of the confusion caused mostly by the police riots, and (to a much smaller degree) the black bloc’s vandalism, who proceeded to loot and pillage some of the vandalized businesses. These vandals’ actions were wrongly associated with the Black Bloc (including by some of their critics in the broader movement);
- There was, at least, one additional group of demonstrators not directly aligned from the other two: a large contingent of labor unions, albeit mostly there in a reformist capacity (the AFL-CIO officialdom was meekly begging for “a seat at the (capitalist) table”, no doubt trying to continue in their role as “junior partners” in the capitalist order);
- Unlike the DAN, the official union presence was largely intended to be performative and symbolic;
- However, there were many rank and file union activists who sought to push the union officialdom into a more militant, oppositional stance;
- There were radical union members (including, but not limited to IWW members) among the DAN who were in regular contact with militant union members attending the official union event;
- Some of these aforementioned DAN members attended the official union event and successfully induced enough rank-and-file members to push the officialdom in a more militant stance (the police’s heavy handedness helped catalyze this process);
- Two other unintended occurrences made the labor contingent a decisive factor in what unfolded: first, the presence of the mainstream media (which sought to paint the unions as the “left” edge of “acceptable opposition”—i.e. far more palatable than the actual radical opposition, which the media planned to ignore and render invisible). Second, after the DAN had successfully nonviolently blockaded the neighborhood containing the convention site, the desperate police managed to steer the labor march into the neighborhood, hoping that it would sweep up the DAN blockades and dissipate the blockades; the plan backfired hugely;
- The strategic nonviolence was neither intended to be purely performative nor was it not intended to disrupt the summit. On the contrary: it was hoped that it’d be both disruptive and directly impactful on the WTO meetings (it was), although few among the demonstrators actually believed in advance that they’d actually successfully shut it down. The intended goal was to turn public sentiment away from the neoliberal agenda (that also succeeded, at least temporarily);
- The Black Bloc had little or no obvious or direct connection or coordination with either the labor movement (including the militants) or the strategic nonviolence demonstrations. There’s some evidence that their ultimate destination was a lucky coincidence. Had it not been for the media distraction and convenient scapegoat they provided by their ill-conceived actions (made far worse by unaligned, opportunistic vandals), they might have been quietly forgotten, but fate had other plans.
Much of this is much more thoroughly documented in Paul de Armond’s excellent history, Black Flag Over Seattle) featured in the February 29, 2000 Albion Monitor.
The Direct Action Network was following on the successes of earlier strategic nonviolence campaigns (including, but not limited to Redwood Summer, the Earth Action Network, and many similar affinity group based mobilizations). Much of what they did was carefully planned in advance using horizontal, democratic, consensus-based decision-making processes, all of which are consistent with anarchism. There were many anarchists involved in those efforts. Medea Benjamin (who was one of many “leaders”) knew this and almost certainly welcomed it. There’s absolutely zero evidence that she opposed their involvement, let alone called for the expulsion or arrest of any of them.
By contrast, not everyone in the tiny Black Bloc insurrectionary group were necessarily anarchists. That’s not to suggest they were government or capitalist infiltrators. Some may well have been, and some of them might have been especially detrimental or steered others towards detrimental actions, but that’s also just as much a possibility among the Direct Action Network as well. There’s no solid evidence to prove or disprove the presence, role, or ultimate effect of intentional undercover disruptors in either group. What is known is that the police did largely ignore them (though that may have as much to do with the fact that they were tiny in number, and the police had already been substantially overwhelmed by the time they appeared), and didn’t seem particularly interested in “unmasking” them.
What has also been conclusively proven is that there have been documented cases of FBI-COINTELPRO infiltration and disruptions into Earth First! and other leftist and/or anarchist oriented groups, organizations, and movements, in spite of the latter’s commitment to nonviolence. A common thread among these infiltrations is a concerted effort to convince the genuine activists within these groups to agree to engaging in violent tactics, actions, and/or campaigns with the goal of entrapment of the groups’, organizations’, or movements’ assumed “leaders” or to incite infighting within them or among rival factions or organizations in order to distract and disrupt them from their intended goals. Almost never do such disruptions attempt to steer would-be violent tactics, actions, or campaigns towards strategic nonviolent alternatives (though it’s possible there might be attempts to steer the would-be violent participants towards absolute passivity instead, which is entirely different than strategic nonviolence).
Such historical knowledge was already well known by November 1999, and it was quite common within direct action-oriented movements to provide an overview of this history to newcomers in efforts to inoculate them against disruptive behavior to avoid the pitfalls suffered by those who’d suffered at the hands of COINTELPRO before. For example, Northern California Earth First! groups made it standard practice to insist that new participants undergo a nonviolence training before plugging into any possible direct actions that might occur (I speak from direct experience, having attended several of them myself). Much of these trainings were developed from the trainers’ own experiences (including Judi Bari, whose experiences with being targeted by COINTELPRO disruption are now established facts). There is absolutely no doubt that Medea Benjamin and others involved in the Direct Action Network learned this history as well.
The most important point—one that is all too often lost on the part of the insurrectionist true believers—is that almost never do mass actions, including mass direct actions, ultimately wind up achieving the ultimate goal of revolution. They’re always, with about 99.9999…% certainty, merely steps along the way to a larger goal of fundamentally transforming society by removing support for the status quo by weakening the levers of power that hold it up. It practically never happens that a mass direct action wins every goal once and forever. Nor do such actions ever really inspire the mass of humanity to join in a mass riot instigated by 0.0000001% (if they’re even that lucky) of the world’s population.
Transformation is almost always a long, drawn-out process, one that requires winning over a sizable fraction of the population. Historically speaking—and plenty of evidence backs this up—violent actions succeed in achieving this far less often than strategic nonviolent tactics do.
The anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle were not an exception to this rule; in fact, they were a textbook example of it. The summit didn’t collapse solely because of the strategic nonviolent actions on the part of the Direct Action Network, and the certainly didn’t due to the Black Bloc (indeed, the role of the latter was—at best—nominal). Let’s be real here: the capitalists could’ve simply reconvened after all of the hubbub had died down, which is essentially what they did with future summit meetings.
What caused the summit (in Seattle) to collapse was, instead, the massive public backlash to the heavy-handedness and violence on the part of the police combined with the public visibility of the anti-neoliberal trade perspective getting public attention. After almost three decades of manufacturing public consent for neoliberal economic policy, the anti-WTO uprising managed to turn the tide against it. That opposition continued to grow—at least slowly—until the events of 9/11 hijacked public attention (among other things), and caused a reactionary backlash, thus derailing the anti-neoliberal movement (for a time).
Does This Justify Medea Benjamin’s Behavior?
In short: no. While she didn’t actually call upon the Seattle Police Department to arrest “anarchists”, her actions were equally—if not more—damaging on several fronts:
- Her comments, even if intended as a rhetorical question to illustrate a point (i.e. that the cops were protecting “provocateurs”, or at least being oddly selective in whom they chose to arrest), are no less divisive and self-owning;
- At best, they betray an incredible degree of (middle class, white) naïveté on Benjamin’s part: any experienced radical knows full well that strategic nonviolence isn’t a magic shield that precludes a violent response by the state, capitalists, or violent reactionaries. What it does usually do is turn public support against the violent attackers;
- Furthermore, Benjamin’s naïveté provides a convenient foil for dogmatic opponents of strategic nonviolence, because her reaction reinforces all of the negative stereotypes of that strategy (i.e. that it’s the province of “privileged, white, middle-class liberals”), and it’s very tempting paint anyone who associates with Benjamin with the same brush;
- At worst, Benjamin’s statement—though it didn’t actually call for anarchists to get arrested—engages in “bad jacketing”, and in doing so, it sows suspicion and division among the movement that are just as damaging as any paid infiltrators might have done. It’s perfectly legitimate to honestly disagree with the tactics in a principled manner; it’s utterly unacceptable and irresponsible to cast aspersions (without any evidence) that they’re bad faith actors (even if the possibility exists that some of them are);
- While it’s definitely the case that (some) defenders of the insurrectionary anarchists’ actions in Seattle perpetuated (and possibly even created) the erroneous myth that Benjamin did call upon the Seattle Police to arrest the insurrectionists, Benjamin’s actions made that possible in the first place.
Strictly speaking, the police focus on the nonviolent demonstrators is suspicious, though that could simply be a case of their collective incompetence. Another possibility (and a sinister one, to be sure) is that they deliberately chose not to target the insurrectionists, not because they had any knowledge of any false flag covert operatives within the Black Bloc, but simply because they calculated that the actions of this latter group would make the rest of the (mostly nonviolent) demonstrators look bad (though, fortunately, even if that was intentional, the effort partially failed).
Why be concerned with what Medea Benjamin actually said then?
In my firm opinion, while Medea Benjamin acted carelessly and thoughtlessly in response to the Seattle Police’s selective heavy-handedness, no matter what her intent, it’s nevertheless important to be as historically accurate as possible. Regardless of whether or not Benjamin “showed her ass”, so-to-speak, there are strategic miscalculations or just plain bad faith intent behind carelessly (or deliberately) misrepresenting what she said and why.
There are certainly principled critiques of the strategic nonviolence theory of political action (I happen to vehemently disagree with much of them, but this doesn’t delegitimize the principles of those who make those arguments if done so in good faith), but, unfortunately, there are many that are unprincipled or made in bad faith. Repeating the myth that Medea Benjamin called for the arrest of anarchists implies that she (and, by extension, the majority of those who advocate strategic nonviolence) are ultimately blind adherents to statism or even that strategic nonviolence ultimately (re)cedes power to the state. Those beliefs—in my firm opinion—are mistaken.
Yes, many (but not all) adherents of strategic nonviolence pragmatically accept some role for the state (even if in a transitional stage to a stateless society), and those views may be naive, but the intent of these adherents of strategic nonviolence isn’t to demobilize people (there are also believers in violent tactics who do envision a positive role for the state, and historically such believers have demobilized nonviolent movements in order to consolidate their newfound power). On the contrary, strategic nonviolence theory at its core is based on the idea that power flows from the bottom-up, not the reverse. There are debates among its adherents on how feasible it is, and on what timeframe, the role of the state can be minimized or eliminated (in favor of more libertarian and socialist alternatives), but few—if any—of them have a totalitarian police state as their ultimate goal.
In other words, there are those who oppose nonviolence (or at least strict adherence to it), who desire to use a misquoted statement by Medea Benjamin (who is certainly not a paragon of virtue or solidarity) as a proxy (no irony intended) as an argument against it, but doing so is a bad faith argument.
Speaking personally, I am not an advocate of strict adherence to nonviolence, but I am thoroughly convinced that nonviolent methods are far more effective than violent ones. One can argue—and I somewhat agree, at least in various particular contexts—that militant confrontations with overly aggressive police, black bloc formations, and vandalism of private property (particularly that “owned” by the multinational capitalist corporations) aren’t themselves necessarily violent (especially because no violence towards living beings is intended), but rarely are such tactics useful or advantageous strategically. In the case of the black bloc in Seattle, their actions were not particularly helpful. Whether or not Benjamin’s reaction to them was helpful (it clearly wasn’t), doesn’t change that fact, and one shouldn’t mangle historical fact to try and prove otherwise.
Why does this matter?
As is the case with many historical uprisings against entrenched authoritarian regimes, the history of the Seattle Anti-WTO Protests of 1999 has been romanticized, revisioned, misunderstood, and misinterpreted. The division wasn’t “violence” (i.e. the insurrectionary “Black Bloc”) versus “timid nonviolence” (i.e. the DAN). On the contrary it was a division between militant, anticapitalist, strategic nonviolence (the DAN) vs timid, collaborationist, reformist trade unionism (the AFL-CIO officialdom). The nonviolent tactics of the DAN were decisive and successful. The insurrectionary vandalism of the Black Bloc in this particular case was greatly exaggerated, wrongly romanticized, and, at best, ineffectual, but quite likely detrimental to the anti-capitalist movement.
Similar attempts to control the narrative have polluted history in revolutions past, including the Paris May Day uprising in 1968, the Spanish Revolution of 1936, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Haymarket Demonstration. Different factions, each with their own political axe to grind, try to control the narrative in order to gain the upper hand in the proverbial “battle of ideas”.
I’ve my own axe, certainly, but I’m also stubbornly committed to historical accuracy. I was marginally involved in the so-called “Battle of Seattle”. I didn’t participate directly, but I was involved in the organizing that ultimately went into the DAN’s direct actions. I also facilitated communication between the IWW and the ILWU, particularly around a port blockade in solidarity with striking Kaiser Aluminum workers, represented by the United Steelworkers (who, at the time, had forged an alliance with Earth First! due to both having a common adversary in MAXXAM CEO Charles Hurwitz), and I don’t particularly like it when the organizing efforts I’m involved in get disrupted by foolhardy ultra left dimwits or misrepresented by dishonest ideologues.
Black Blocs, like AntiFa, are not organizations, groups, movements, or even specific people. They are a tactic, sometimes even an appropriate or useful one. This was not the case in Seattle. Indeed, they were—if you’ll pardon the irony here—a black mark on what could have been a major victory for anarchism as a popular movement. Had this particular Black Bloc not vacuumed up the lion’s share of the media oxygen, it’s conceivable anarchism would be far more widespread than it is now (and the debate over violence vs nonviolence largely settled in favor of the latter).
Unfortunately, history can be unforgivably cruel, and that’s precisely the case here. Rather than settling the debate, the opposite occurred. While it’s readily obvious that the strategic nonviolent tactics of the DAN were the (positive) decisive factor, and most scholarship of political uprisings arrives at the same overall conclusion (i.e. that strategic nonviolence is far more effective than violent tactics), the debate among anarchists rages on still. To be certain, this is not a recent debate, but in fact, a very old one. Essentially this is the current incarnation of the old “mass movement” versus “propaganda of the deed” approach to radicalism (and not exclusive to anarchism, either).
The most common contemporary framing is that we should welcome what’s called “a diversity of tactics”. This is meant to assert that we should be open to an “all of the above” approach inclusive of both the DAN and Black Bloc as well as others. I actually mostly agree in the broadest sense, but I find that particular analysis relative to the Seattle uprising frustratingly unsatisfying. If anything, it’s a copout, or even a (if you’ll pardon the mutilation of the metaphor here) misguided inept “Solomon”-like attempt to divide the proverbial baby in half. “Diversity of Tactics” is a fine principle, as long as the tactics advance a common strategy. If the tactics serve another purpose, then the principle falls to pieces.
There’s substantial evidence that the DAN and the Black Bloc had divergent strategies, which weren’t entirely mutually exclusive, but were far from mutually inclusive as well. The DAN, in spite of having a predominantly left-wing anarchist orientation, were following a mass movement building strategy, inclusive of both disrupting the WTO through direct action, but also winning over the reformist elements to more radical positions. That approach requires careful strategy and patience. The Seattle 1999 Black Bloc, by contrast, was apparently trying to divide the movement by driving a wedge between the reformists (whom they sought to discredit) and further “radicalize” many of the DAN participants (as if the latter weren’t sufficiently so). Unfortunately, their efforts were apparently, at least partially, successful. After the Seattle uprising, future trade summits met similar opposition, but the latter were substantially undermined by many wrong lessons being learned as my aforementioned accounts have shown. The state repression that followed in the wake of 9/11 made things substantially worse.
It hasn’t helped matters at all that the debate has been muddied by a lot of tangential incidental side arguments. For example, there’s a heated, and admittedly to some extent, cogent debate about whether or not property destruction constitutes “violence” (in my opinion it depends on the situation), rather than whether or not it’s strategically useful (there are some isolated examples where it is, but those are far outnumbered by the cases where it isn’t.) There are also debates over whether nonviolence is a strategy or a moral philosophy. I’m not one who assigns any moral superiority to it—nor, for that matter, were most members of the DAN—but it’s far too easily weaponized by those who oppose it strategically as being so, and that was done by many of those who vehemently defended the Seattle Black Bloc. There are definitely good reasons to be critical of the criticisms of the aforementioned Black Bloc, particularly where badjacketing (as was the case with Benjamin) is involved or blanket generalizations of the tactic itself arise. None of that changes the fact that ultimate results of the Seattle Black Bloc’s actions were utterly disastrous for anarchism generally.
The long-term result of this debate and the rather blunt application of the “Diversity of Tactics” principle (which is more often than not used to silence, rather than encourage, debate over tactics) has been partly responsible for anarchism being relegated to the political fringe again. In a sense, this is intended—though not in the way that the Madea Benjamin mythology would have us think. Instead of a strategic assessment, willingness to support Black Bloc tactics, property destruction, deliberate confrontational approaches to police, insurrectionary measures, and propaganda of the deed are often used as litmus tests to judge the “purity” of one’s anarchism. It’s pretty evident that a lot of anarchists who use such purity tests deliberately want their movement to be tiny and “pure”.
This is the crux of the problem, in my opinion. While setting high standards for “purity” might seem the logical choice for ensuring that the movement isn’t “diluted” by “liberal reformists”, historically this only results in the marginalization of the self-described “radicals”. Effectively this actually cedes political ground to the very “liberal reformists” these radicals decry. This dynamic is currently playing out in the debates over the “No Kings” demonstrations, which I’ve written about in great detail (see No Kings and far too Many Strawmen). Ironically, these same purists seem to imagine that their cadre leadership (and, yes, it does resemble Leninism) will somehow inspire millions of “apolitical” working class masses (who oddly enough have no political alliance with the less-than-pure-and-therefore-“liberal” rank and file “No Kings” marchers who mostly support nonviolence, and yet are somehow ideologically pure) to follow them!
Of course, the Black Bloc partisans aren’t solely responsible for this mess. Medea Benjamin—though it’s not accurate to dismiss her as simply being a “bourgeois liberal” (because her political views weren’t purely liberal nor purely radical, at least before she disappeared down the red-brown rabbit hole)—deserves a good deal of the blame for her inane badjacketing of the Black Bloc. For this she should be roundly denounced, even though her much more careful clarification does more accurately reflect what she meant. If she had led with the more careful statement, i.e. that it’s suspicious that the police focused their attention on the nonviolent demonstrators who didn’t threaten anyone (and kept quiet about the “Black Bloc”), the incident might have been forgotten.
Instead, Benjamin’s careless statement—which was likely an inept attempt to make the framing she should have made in a way that could be packaged as a media friendly sound bite—backfired horribly. Rather than starving the capitalist framing of “anarchists as violent hoodlums”, her carelessness not only bad-jacketed people (as unhelpful as the latter’s actions were), helping to martyr them. Meanwhile, the insurrectionist partisans were given far more oxygen than they deserved, thus allowing them to hijack the debate. Historically it has proven to be a massive own goal by advocates for strategic nonviolence. It has subsequently given undeserved credence to the absurd claim that strategic nonviolence is the exclusive province of ineffectual reformism and liberalism, and that is a huge tragedy. A tragedy that is entirely the product of misinformation.
The most unfortunate result of this mess is that it once again frustratingly demonstrates the old adage, “those that fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.” If one were to carefully read the life history of well-known anarchists, including both Bakunin and Durruti, they’d learn that both went through insurrectionist phases in their more youthful years only to come around to the belief that careful, methodical, strategic, mass working class-based organizing can bring about the revolutionary goals they pursue (and even then, it’s never a guarantee). Both of them, as well as many others, were very harshly critical of their younger, naive selves (I, too, feel similarly about some of my extremely foolhardy—though thankfully, mostly harmless—all-or-nothing attitudes, and the list of apologies I would make to others for my horridly dickish behavior is far too lengthy to publish, honestly, so I hope a blanket apology will do).
Medea Benjamin, to her credit, attempted to clarify what she meant, but the damage to anarchism’s reputation was done, and we must live with the results. It would be a lot more helpful, and a lot less damaging, if dogmatic individuals wouldn’t keep weaponizing them out of ignorance (or, worse still, in bad faith), in a feeble attempt to try and whitewash (or blackwash?) actions that were, at best, no less damaging to anarchism. Our goal should be to win people over to the idea, not push them away, because of a stubborn, self-destructive insistence on ideological purity.
Notes:
[1] The context of the name “Code Pink”, itself was an attempt at simultaneously highlighting the nonviolent tendencies of feminism (as Code Pink was predominantly organized by women) and humorously mocking the Bush Administration’s color coded “terror alert” warning system, which assigned a color ranging from blue to red based on the perceived threat level. Blue signified “no threat”, followed by green, yellow, orange, and finally culminating with red to signify an imminent, immediate, colossal threat.
Many of us who opposed the “War on Terror” for the propagandistic political theater it was suspected, rightly, that the administration would never reduce the level below “yellow” (they didn’t) ever again, since authoritarian governments—and the Bush administration was certainly this—attempt to manufacture consent by creating a climate of fear through manufactured threats that only the authoritarian leadership can address.
As if to prove the point, it was an eerie coincidence that every time (for the first year following the 9/11 attacks) that George W Bush’s approval ratings dipped, the terror alert would be raised from “yellow” to “orange” (with little or no explanation), until an investigative reporter pointed this correlation out in a news story. Once the story went viral, the alert level was never raised again, and the system was then quietly forgotten. Odd, isn’t it?