Police are getting more violent, but black bloc tactics make things worse
The sound of an exploding flashbang grenade is hard to describe; the noise thunders through your skull and leaves you disoriented. They are violent, dangerous and potentially lethal devices, designed for use as part of military and armed police operations. Yet they are now being deployed regularly on the streets of Melbourne as a tool of protest management. So too is OC spray, a chemical weapon that’s banned from warfare due to its indiscriminate and potentially deadly impact. Then there are the batons, horses, water cannons, bird-shot rounds and rubber-coated steel bullets.
The growing militarisation of police forces around the world is well documented. It is one reflection of the growing disconnect between capitalist governments and the mass of people they supposedly represent and who are increasingly expressing their opposition to genocide, economic inequality, climate inaction, racism and other injustices in significant numbers. Lacking positive reform proposals to address these concerns or improve people’s lives, the state is increasingly responding with brute force, as well as legal restrictions on the right to organise and demonstrate both at work and on the streets.
This tendency towards repression and violence is a serious threat to left-wing organising. It is an attempt to make disrupting the status quo harder, and it often succeeds. Anti-union laws, for instance, have played a role in taming the workers’ movement and reducing strike activity. The NSW police successfully used the courts to stop a recent pro-Palestine demonstration from occupying the Opera House shore, and regularly deny all sorts of campaign groups the right to march. And most states have introduced laws that specifically target climate activists who dare to disrupt business as usual.
It is possible to push back against these encroachments on our rights, and effective tactics that can be employed to do it. The most obvious is to mobilise significant numbers of people so that crude repression becomes significantly harder. Unfortunately, however, this is not always possible.
When our numbers are smaller, it still matters what tactics we adopt. Tactics have to have the aim of making the action meaningful to those involved, helping encourage passive sympathisers to get more involved and being defensible to those not already invested in the issue. To do this, our message needs to be clear and our tactics must seem reasonable and effective. When mobilisations have a comprehensible message and approach, it makes it easier to win wider support to the cause. This doesn’t necessarily prevent repression, but it makes the political cost to the authorities much higher.
Not every person and group involved in protesting the far right subscribes to this approach. The “black bloc”, in particular, does not, and its tactics are worth addressing.
The black bloc is known for turning up to demonstrations as a distinct contingent wearing uniforms (black outfits, black hoods/helmets etc) designed to hide their identities and shield them from police attack, and with the aim of carrying out anonymous acts of violence. Sometimes this violence is targeted against police, as at the anti-fascist demonstration on 19 October in Melbourne and the attempted blockade of the Land Forces arms fair in Melbourne last year. At other times it has involved fairly random attacks on businesses and property along the path of broader demonstrations.
These activities are justified by black bloc supporters as attacks against authority, fascism, capitalism or whatever the issue of the day may be. And unlike the regular “sheeple” who attend conventional demonstrations, creating “banal spectacles” within the rules, the black bloc sees itself as striking more serious blows against the system. But the truth is they do nothing to challenge the establishment, and often help strengthen it.
Only a mass movement of the working class can seriously challenge capitalism. The same is true of the far right, which is now an entrenched part of politics in almost every country on Earth and in charge of the US military empire. While we’re not quite there yet in Australia, with Pauline Hanson polling at 15 percent nationally, and repeated street demonstrations numbering in the thousands, it feels like we’re catching up. In this context, thinking seriously about how we can build an anti-capitalist movement based in the working class is vital, even if it is a medium- to long-term prospect. Bashing a few fascists or throwing stones at police is the very definition of performative. It is pure street theatre, a chance for small groups to feel tough and radical by acting out their pseudo-revolutionary fantasies.
Worse, these black bloc tactics expose the broader movement to violence at the hands of police and slander from the media and the political class, and give the state an excuse to further erode the right to protest. Sometimes such attacks can’t be avoided regardless of our tactics, but to provoke them for no strategic purpose is hugely damaging and irresponsible.
Such tactics undermine our capacity to mobilise our existing supporters. Only the most committed activists will continually show up to events that end in widespread police brutality. This is especially so when the state then seizes the moment to introduce new repressive measures, as are now being floated in Victoria, confirming yet again to potential supporters that anti-fascism is an extreme sport better left to the experts.
The scandals that follow black bloc actions also end up distracting from the actual issue being addressed by the protest, giving the media a free pass to jump instead to the predictably reactionary terrain of protester conduct and law and order. This then tends to isolate the movement from the wider public who might otherwise have been sympathetic or open to joining.
In the current moment, this is particularly disastrous given that the key task the left faces is to convince larger numbers of people to take the far-right threat seriously, and to turn up when the call goes out. Currently, there are thousands of fascist and far-right scum mobilising on our streets every few weeks. They’re gaining strength inside the Liberals and Nationals, and One Nation has doubled its membership since the election. If the anti-fascist left is to get to the point where we can challenge and reverse these dynamics, we need massively more numbers.
Sometimes the black bloc is defended on the grounds that a “diversity of tactics” is needed to maintain left unity. And in most movements, there is room for different approaches: fundraising, public forums, public postering, street art and so on are all useful activities with different audiences and rationales. But the black bloc is not some complementary part of a wide-ranging effort: its tactics are inherently counter-posed to it.
Perhaps the worst aspect of the black bloc approach is how it relies on the very mass movement its adherents dismiss as not radical enough for cover and protection. If a group of masked militants were to attack a fascist event alone, they would easily be crushed by the state. But by deploying their violence within or around broader crowds, the black bloc make themselves safer by using the rest of us as shields when the police reaction inevitably comes—the very definition of parasitic.
This behaviour is also profoundly undemocratic, in that it imposes the consequences of the block’s tactic—the state’s violent response—on others who did not necessarily support, agree to or carry out the tactic and could not reasonably be prepared for it.
None of this is to excuse the state’s brutality. But knowing that the capitalists and their political lackeys are violent, anti-democratic scum doesn’t absolve us of agency and responsibility for our actions. Quite the opposite. Any serious approach to building a movement must take into account the way the capitalist system defends the status quo and organise in ways that can overcome it. As long as it has existed, the black bloc has been a barrier to doing that. It’s time for the left to draw a line in the sand and make it clear the black bloc is not welcome at our actions.
