Insurgent City

Who were th terrible black block that constituted, at least for the media, the other side of the police violence, if no its improbable justification? The considerations on the secret services and infiltrators are of little use just as has sense to try to push beyond ritual taking of distance from the maddened or extreme fringe of the movement. For sure on the 20th there were groups bent of finding confrontation. This was widely foreseen, there were differences in the degree of confrontation, different the orientations of the protagonist groups of what had been the first day to propose again the question of violnce that was not mimed, not ritualised, but haked and crude. An enormous question that is unsolvable in the abstract, which only the future developments of the movement will be able o give a sensible response, according o the scenarios which present themselves. But the split inside the groups that pressed upo the walled city was more apparent than real, and their action was shared/divided on more levels, that wewre however involuntarily intercommunicating. he violation of the red zone, symbolic or real, the practices of the squares peaceful or less, spke of forces nonetheless with common objectives.

What interests me more however is that which happened the day after, the 21st, on a day in which the representations and the self-representations of the differing positions on the square had already happened, and some of the protagonists, for the better and worse, of that day had already, to a large degree, gone home. The incidents and the riots of the 21 revealed another face of the events. often SOTTACIUTA, but that will be weighed up/evaluated for what it is. The desire to avenge the death of Carlo in combination with the mediated fascination of the day before made it so hat the spirit of the riots was not the exotic black-clad fighters, as much as a significant slice of Genovese marginal youth. A day of revolt furious and partially ou of place, certianly ill-timed, even if understandable, that saw among the players the youth of the defeated districts, the younger brothers of the generation that died silently on heroin. Genoa is no novice to these impromptu summer explosions, it is a city accustomed to cloaking its own illness and to await, sometimes for years the occaion of a day of fire. A small riot of the losers, a parenthesis to the football stadium guerilla, inside a violnce distinct and differently organised.

The placing of the emphsis as in the main did the media and local politicaians on that violence coming from outside is only a means of exorcising the internal violence, that which has grown for almost twenty years amongst the long-term unemployed, in the suburbs of permanent exclusion, in te "worlds apart", as urbanists have defined the "social housing cities" buiòlt out of the popular construction, in which smoulders a rage that found, perhaps already on the 20th, but especially on the 21st an occasion to express itself fully. But with difficulty will one try to underdstand this violenc or prevent it... we will probably have to expect further manifestations, to await the wriing of other heavy chapters in this "cold civil war".

p.36 Agostino Petrillo Genova la settimana della meraviglie Derive Approdi 21, March 2002

“La différence la plus frappante entre les sophistes antiques et les sophistes modernes est que les anciens se contentaient d’une victoire fugitive dans la discussion, aux dépens de la vérité, tandis que les modernes veulent une victoire plus durable, aux dépens de la réalité. En d’autres termes, les premiers détruisaient la dignité de la pensée humaine, tandis que les seconds détruisent la dignité de l’action humaine. Dans l’Antiquité, les manipulateurs de la logique embarrassaient le philosophe, tandis que les manipulateurs de faits, à notre époque, gênent l’historien.” Hannah Arendt, in Les origines du totalitarisme

Ce qui c’est passé à Gêne c’est que la logique de l’offensive et de l’autonomie de classe a entraîné une fraction non négligeable des prolétaires présents et que pendant que les chefaillons magouillent avec les Bové, les Aguiton et les Chevènement, ceux de la base se radicalisent et tissent des liens sans eux et contre eux. C’est ça qui leur est insupportable, c’est contre ça qu’ils inventent la fiction de la manipulation qui occulte tout le reste... L’action violente ne peut être que le fait de l’Etat ou du Parti, ne pas suivre un chef c’est se faire manipuler, comme les staliniens l’ont dit systématiquement avant eux. Le plus étonnant c’est qu’après Orwell, il se trouve encore des nigauds pour croire à de telles balivernes. (A ce propos, une petite anecdote : lorsqu’à la fête de l’Huma 2001, le sieur Agnoletto c’était vu prendre à parti par plus de la moitié de l’assistance, exigeant de lui qu’il exhibe au moins une preuve de la manipulation, il ne s’était vu défendre que par une poignée de vieux stalinien, citant l’exemple “historiquement prouvé” des “gauchistes Marcelin” en mai 68).

hi roberto by bah 1:17pm Mon Aug 12 '02

The unwillingness to believe your claims about the scale of infiltration might derive from the fact that for substantiation, you used an article from the XIX Secolo stating not only that there were going to be hundreds of fascists but '500 british members of the black block(!)' on their way to Genoa as well. The apparent falsehood of the latter makes me doubt the veracity of the former.

Anyway, it's too easy to reduce what went wrong at the G8 to a simple problem of infiltration.

What about....? by Wu Ming 1 3:19pm Mon Aug 12 '02

Of course infiltration (but I'd rather use the term "imitation") of the BB and other radical fringes of Genoa demonstrators is only one of the issues which deserve further investigation, and I never said I agreed with any of the things printed in that Secolo XIX article, and yet the piece was interesting and worth translating, I wouldn't dismiss it this way, because there are some matters of facts: - in the past twelve months nobody has been able to disavow the things former chief-of-police Colucci admitted in his hearings: about 600 far-right activists appeared to be on the scene in Genoa. - about 40 of the rioters whose names are going to be in the list of defendants are reported to be Genoa-based petty criminals and far-right football supporters. - there have been several eye-witness accounts of strange "talks" between rioters and carabinieri. - The trashing in Genoa was indiscriminated, it didn't destroyed just banks and corporation seats, but anything that stood in the way, including working class cars, small shops etc. Some German Black Blockers were interviewed by Dutch weekly magazine Vrij Nederlaand and kept their distance from indiscriminated trashing. Would it hurt too much to know the truth? >:-) - a 25-year-old British nazi called Liam "Doggy" Stevens (from Birmingham, if I remember well) was among the rioters in via Canaregis on July 20th 2002. His name came out immediately and was posted on this very newswire the day after. How come the people who immediately dismissed any allegation on infiltrators haven't made an investigation to see whether this guy exists or not, instead of complaining about "reformists" who slander anarchists?

at http://www.newbrainframes.org or http://www.informationguerrilla.org http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=10553

"Vengo da Birmingham e sono un nazi mi hanno invitato i fratelli italiani"

GENOVA - "Sono qui per spaccare tutto. Non m'interessano né il G8 né le cazzate dell'antiglobalizzazione. I fratelli italiani mi hanno invitato, mi hanno garantito che non avremmo avuto noie dalla polizia e che ci avrebbero lasciato fare tutto quel che volevamo". E' felice Liam "Doggy" Stevens, 26 anni, di Birmingham. "Sono un nazi, non un anarchico." E' seduto per terra in via Casaregis, mentre a pochi passi infuria la guerriglia, sul viso una bandiera inglese e addosso una felpa con un cane inferocito. "E' il simbolo del gruppo, i Black Dogs". La sua ragazza lo chiama: "Doggy, non parlare con i giornalisti"; lui s'allontana tra i fumogeni."

"I COME FROM BIRMINGHAM AND I'M A NAZI. THE ITALIAN BROTHERS INVITED ME.

GENOVA - "I'm here to destroy everything. I don't care about the G8 or anti-globalization bullshit. The Italian brothers invited me, they told me we wouldn't have troubles with the police, that they would allow us to do all we wanted". Liam "Doggy" Stevens, a 26-year-old from Birmingham, is happy. "I'm a Nazi, not an anarchist". He sits on the ground in via Casaregis, riots go on a few metres away. His face is covered by a Union Jack, he has a foaming dog on the sweatshirt. "It is the symbol of my group, the Black Dogs." His girlfriend calls him: "Doggy, don't talk to journalists!". He gets up and vanishes in the tear gas.