Still a bit uncertain of how I feel about black bloc tactics (aka smashy smashy), hence the adjective “semi-pacificist.”  Here’s a collection of (not super fine tuned or complete, as I would have liked) thought provoking parts from various articles written in response to the now infamous Chris Hedges article, “The Cancer In Occupy.” 

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“How is it that someone of his stature, influence, and insight has seemingly “drank the Kool-Aid” of divisiveness and internal finger-pointing that the power elite so obviously want to inculcate within our movements?”

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“Anarchists, like many others, believe in a diversity of tactics. It is this diversity that is our strength. We cannot allow slander and fear to separate us; sectarianism is the real cancer of Occupy. The enemies that we face—fascism, authoritarianism, militarism, and the like—are legion in their attacks; our response should be equally multifaceted.

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The abuses of fascist government, capitalist feudalism, and paramilitary police forces have shown us that the system is not broken, but built to serve someone other than us. Hedges was correct when he said they would use fear to keep us passive. We are not afraid anymore.”

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“It’s a lot more violent to foreclose on somebody and throw them out of a house than throw a rock through a window. …

That institutionalized violence against people, especially people in Oakland, is something these critics gloss over. Some in Occupy Oakland call a consistent pacifist protest approach a “position of privilege” - a position taken by those who have not been in a situation where they have needed to defend themselves against violence, be it economic, physical or otherwise. ….

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“Hedges also critiques the black bloc for its supposed “hypermasculinity,” engaging in a gender essentialism that belies his inability to keep up with contemporary radicalism. In Oakland, part of the militant march on Move-In Day was the “Feminist and Queer Bloc.” I’m sure they would be quite surprised to learn that self-defense against violent police thugs and petty vandalism is actually a man’s activity!”

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Of all the anarchists and others who have participated in black blocs in the last decades, green anarchists or anarcho-primitivists have only been one small part. Labor union anarchists, anarcha-feminists, social anarchists, indigenous anarchists, Christian anarchists, as well as plain old, unaffiliated street youth, students, immigrants, parents, and others have participated in black blocs.

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But beneath the black masks, anarchists have been an integral part of the debates, the organizing, the cooking and cleaning in dozens of cities.

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Predictably, Chris Hedges uses the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., to gain legitimacy for his stance, again contradicting his argument that the “corporate state” wants protestors to fight police and destroy property, given that this same corporate state venerates King (or at least a well managed version of King) while demonizing or silencing the equally important Malcolm X or Black Panthers. Just as predictably, Chris Hedges does not mention that King vocally sympathized with the urban youths who rioted, youths whose contemporary equivalent Hedges calls “stupid” and a “cancer.” Ironically, Hedges refers to the famous Birmingham campaign attributed with achieving the end of segregation. What Hedges and pacifist ideologues like him fail to mention is that Birmingham was a repeat of King’s Albany campaign, which ended a total failure, all its participants locked up, and no one slightly moved by the supposed dignity of victimhood. The difference? In Birmingham, the local youths got fed up, rioted and kicked police out of large parts of the city for several days. The authorities chose to negotiate with King and replace de jure segregation with de facto segregation in order to avoid losing control entirely.

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This form of co-optation and manipulation is nothing new for a movement that cynically harvested a few images from Tahrir Square–an unfinished popular uprising in which hundreds of thousands of people defended themselves forcefully from the cops, ultimately torching dozens of police stations–to declare a victory for nonviolence.

Around the world, people are fighting for their freedom and resisting the depredations of the rich and powerful. In the United States, there is plenty of cause to join this fight, but as long as people continue enact a fear-driven, Not-In-My-Backyard pacifism, and to pander to the corporate media as though they would ever show us in a positive light, the rich and the powerful will have nothing to worry about.”