I think a lot of us on #Mastodon watched the #G20 'riots' in Hamburg #Germany in the past days with amazement – it has been a few years since a large scale Anti-Capitalism Left wing protest resulted in massive and organised battles with the police.
Most Left discussions about this kind of political violence result in predictable circular debates about 'Gandhians' vs 'Red Army Faction', or whatever.
I suggest that for this #MondayAnarchy we watch this 1min #video of #SreckoHorvat from the #G20. While Srećko is not an anarchist (I don't think) he does have many deep thoughts.
Is it correct to always point to the greater state violence (wars) when explaining away political street violence like at the #G20? Is he explaining the protest or evading answering about it?
click the video to watch....
@jd
I don't believe that violence is justifing violence, but it's impotant to understand the causes of the violence and explain those.
I wouldn't point away from one violence, as I wouldn't turn away from a child that's crying and throuing things after being beaten.
Explaining this ppl might understand blackboc at one point.
Otherwise ppl will always defend police violence against blackbloc, as most see them just as dangerous vandals
@paulfree14 @jd I always find myself immensely frustrated at times like this by the lack of distinction between voilence against people vs the destruction of objects. Property damage is nothing compared to harming human beings. Cars and windows are just things but capitalism and its apologists care more about those things than about desperate people fleeing injury and death.
Bringing up the mass-scale horror that the world's "leaders" and their governments are inflicting on the daily is 100% relevant and necessary context beside the images of destruction resulting from these protests.
@paulfree14 @jd it has been called to my attention that @rechelon 's essay You Are Not the Target Audience addresses this subject excellently, and says pretty much exactly what I want to say - https://humaniterations.net/2012/02/29/you-are-not-the-target-audience/
I'll just add that clarifying the distinction between violence against people and destruction of property should be a top rhetorical priority.
@jd @yams_gamgee
...same here. Especially I'm frustrated by all the progressives and leftist who just jumped on the train of calling out 'bad protesters' while defending with arguments the police.
Most of my discussions within mastodon was about ppl reflecting to my #noG20 toots with 'but all the vandals, this poor police',
And just didn't even border to check what happend all along before.
also.just made this 2 toots: https://todon.nl/@paulfree14/429282