If 'everybody' is rioting, there is an obvious
political burden on the authorities (distinct
from the security burden) because there is a
failure of policy. It becomes clear that
something is wrong.
If a few isolated goofballs are rioting, that
has the opposite effect, or no effect. Days
of Rage in Chicago is a good example.
It could be argued that anarchists
are seen as part of the spectrum of protest,
and therefore elevate the profile of the
entire affair when they break things.
But it's possible to overdo it and make
the rioting the center of the story,
instead of the teaser. Gang assaults
on police in broad daylight, with media
coverage, are more interesting than oh,
100,000 people marching peacefully.
mbs
The "protestors" are of course much more than a "travelling circus of
anarchists", but they may not have a fully rational strategy for dealing
with state power internationally. The movement can still go on even if no
one has. The problems will be resolved in the course of practice.
But these violent disturbances inevitably fill a social and political role,
even if you do not entirely agree with them. Like the riot in Brixton,
south London, last night by 40-100 protestors after a protest against the
police shooting a black man a few days ago who had an imitation gun on him
as a cigarette lighter. Windows were smashed.
The jacquerie at the time of the French revolution, going back to the
peasant uprisings in mediaeval France. The Gordon riots in 18th century
London.
VViolent crowd behaviour may be stereotyped as mindless but it plays a
social role. It challenges the existing state structures and forces those
who support some sort of state structure to argue which reforms are
necessary to reestablish some sort of social order.
If militant anti-capitalist protestors make it virtually impossible for the
capitalist leaders of the rich world to meet for their conferences in
publically accessible places, then these leaders radically lack global
legitimacy however many votes they have won in bourgeois democratic
elections in their own countries (dominated by the capitalist media).
The state is a compromise between bodies of armed men to uphold it, and a
measure of ideology and ideological state structures to smooth over the
class and other contradictions.
These battles therefore are about what compromises must be made to
establish some form of accepted world government.
Chris Burford
