The American Prospect, “The Long Arc of Protest”
Unlike social movements in the past, she argues, today’s fast-forming, fast-dissolving movements are liable to “tactical freeze,” in which they fail to develop the internal deliberative capacity to shift tactics in response to changing circumstances. She illustrates this possibility with examples from the Turkish protests in Gezi Park and the Occupy movement, both of which […]
The Atlantic, “The Rise of the Violent Left”
Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists, its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism. They prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and […]
The Washington Post, “Activists, wary of health-care bill pause, plan more protests against proposal”
The alliance between elected Democrats and protest groups, fragile just a few months ago, has strengthened even as protests have become more disruptive. In Georgia’s special House election, Republican groups spent millions of dollars linking the Democratic candidate to “the resistance,” with images of Women’s March protesters seeping into footage of anarchists smashing windows. Continue […]
KALW 97.1 San Francisco, “Your Call: Media coverage of white nationalists in the US & the firing of Bill O’Reilly”
We’ll also talk about last weekend’s violent street clashes between white-nationalists, anarchists, and local activists in Berkeley. How did the media frame the protest and why has Berkeley become a magnet for white nationalists? Continue Reading
Washington Examiner, “UC-Berkeley: The place where free speech ends and violence begins”
When the smoke cleared, approximately 1,500 Berkley students, self-named Antifa “activists” (short for Anti-Fascists – yes, more irony) and “Black Bloc” anarchists were blamed for more than $100,000 in damage done to the school and community – all because they didn’t want someone with differing opinions to have a platform on their turf. Continue Reading
SF Gate, “Arrests made as protesters clash at pro-Trump rally in Berkeley”
Trump protesters and anarchists waving red-and-black flags, marched around the park, periodically stopping to clash with the Trump supporters. Continue Reading
Pacific Standard Magazine, “Tactical Lessons From the Civil Rights Movement”
Property destruction — anarchists sometimes jokingly call it “smashy smashy” — gets media attention and can shut down a fascist recruiting party, but broken glass and fire sometimes scare the wrong people too. Even though we all agree on stopping Trump, can the resistance work together if we can’t decide on how to resist? Continue Reading
Golden Gate Xpress, “Black bloc tactics become prevalent in Bay Area protests”
Antifa, a play on the word anti-fascist, is a mindset based in anti-racism and against extreme right-wing politics. Black bloc is a protest strategy, often associated with anarchism. The tactic is rooted in 1980s West Germany where it was used to combat the rise of police crackdowns. The tactics include direct confrontation, defense and vandalizing […]
Foreign Policy, “From Mother Jones to Middlebury: The Problem and Promise of Political Violence in Trump’s America”
Anarchists burn limos because limo owners burn the planet. The miners strike because the company robs and breaks them. The streets of Ferguson explode because the city of Ferguson loots and kills the streets. Continue Reading
Cosmopolitan, “Let the Hatemongers Speak”
When anarchist “black bloc” agitators showed up at Berkeley to protest Yiannopoulos, they set fires, hurled rocks at police, broke windows, and did $100,000 worth of damage. They did get Yiannopoulos’s speech canceled — but they also made headlines across the country, spreading Yiannopoulos’s ideas much further than they would have been disseminated had most […]