Egyptian Anarchist Movement Emerges with Wave of Firebombings and Street Fights

[Sasha]

Egyptian Anarchist Movement Emerges with Wave of Firebombings and Street Fights

In Uncategorized (http://voiceshakes.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/) on January 24, 2013 at 1:41 pm
http://voiceshakes.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/egyptbb3.jpg?w=240&h=135 (http://voiceshakes.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/egyptbb3.jpg)

A black bloc marches in Cairo tonight, preparing for confrontations with security forces near Tahrir Square on the even of the second anniversary of the revolution.
Also see: “Revolution, Elections, and Betrayal: Hard Lessons from Egypt (http://voiceshakes.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/revolution-elections-and-betrayal-hard-lessons-from-egypt/)“
Anarchists have been present in Egypt before, during, and after the revolution, but until today, they have yet to organize a mass grouping under the banner of anarchism. The Ultras of Egypt’s football clubs have for years been associated with anarchist ideas and actions, and they are widely credited with having initiated the level militancy that brought down the Mubarak government in February of 2011.
Last night, anarchism left the graffitied walls, small conversations, and online forums of Egypt, and came to life in Cairo, declaring itself a new force in the ongoing social revolution sparked two years ago with multiple firebombings against Muslim Brotherhood offices. Later, the government shutdown the “Black Blocairo” and “Egyptian Black Bloc” Facebook pages, but they were soon re-launched (http://www.facebook.com/blackblocairo2).
“Wait for our next attacks as we respond to the closing of our official page…” they posted in a statement posted online this morning (translated below).
Today, the black bloc made its first mass-appearance in Tahrir Square, and, shortly after, firebombed the Shura Council (Egyptian Parliament), tore down a section of the protest-barrier walls leading from Tahrir Square, and, with others, engaged in fighting against security forces.
These statements and actions are in preparation for tomorrow’s second anniversary of the revolution, and for what some are calling “a whole new level” or protest in Egypt.
Anarchism and the black bloc concept has grown in recent months across Egypt, Stemming from various anarchist grouping/circles that coalesced during the revolutionary period. A massive distrust among the youth of all political parties, a sharp critique of the role of religion within governance, and the inspiration of anarchist resistance around the world (largely symbolized by the late-2008 revolt in Greece) have helped it catalyze.
d
Below is the statement of Black Blocairo in regards to the removal of their websites, their firebombing attacks against government offices, and their calls for revolt:
“Yesterday and after we finished our event, we met some of the revolutionary movements and we decided to unite together in our next attacks, hence we did our first two attacks, as we told you yesterday:
1- Setting fire to Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) online office.
2- Setting fire in the Ikhwan office in Al-Manial street in Cairo.
And we announced our revolution since today in Al-Tahrir Square untill Egypt and it’s people get their rights back! Life, Freedom and social justice!
Black Blocairo, The Hooligans
Wait for our next attacks as we respond to the closing of our official page…”
f
EGYPTIAN ANARCHIST LINKS:
Revolution Black Bloc (http://www.facebook.com/blackblocegy) (Egyptian anarchist page)
Black Blocairo (http://www.facebook.com/blackblocairo2) (Black Blocairo’s new page)
Black Bloc Egypt (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-bloc-egypt-%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%83%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9/105067083006633)
d
OTHER ARAB ANARCHIST LINKS:
Anarchists of Arabs (http://www.facebook.com/AnarchistsOfArabs?ref=stream) (Arab anarchist page)
Moroccan Black Bloc (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Moroccan-Black-Bloc-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%BA%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%A9/225914084209342)
Anarchists in Lebanon (http://www.facebook.com/AnarchistsLebanon?ref=stream)
Tunisian Anarchist Movement (http://www.facebook.com/TnAnarMov?ref=stream)
Tunisian Anarchist Organization (http://www.facebook.com/disobey.tn?ref=stream)
Tunisian Anarchist (http://www.facebook.com/pages/tunisian-anarchist-respect-existence-or-expect-resistance-/165215710234445?ref=stream)
Syrian Anarcha Feminist Movement (http://www.facebook.com/SYR.A.F.M?ref=stream)
Syrian Anarchists (http://www.facebook.com/syrian.anarchists?ref=stream)
Tahrir ICN (http://www.facebook.com/TahrirIcn?ref=stream) (English European solidarity page)



source; http://voiceshakes.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/egyptian-anarchist-movement-emerges-with-wave-of-firebombings-and-street-fights/


:ninja:

[l'Enfermé]

Eh. We'll be impressed if they burn some MBs instead. The only thing funner than self-immolation is plain old immolation :cool:

[Sasha]

i think its interesting though, sure its still in big part crude aesthetic fetishising (like happened in the west after/around Seattle etc and sure they will meet their Genua as well sooner than later) but the mere entry of the word anarchism creates a possibility for those militants who fought at the front of the uprising but now feel not-represented by any official faction that emerged. And their apparent deep connection to the hooligan firms (a big deal among egyptian urban youth) is certainly promising.

[ellipsis]

i was gonna post this, but you beat me to it. Promising indeed. I hope the continue to be around in some form for a long time.

[Sasha]

seems there where pretty severe clashes all over egypt today on the 2nd aniversery of the uprising, lots of MB offices got torched etc.
now just hope that they can keep the momentum going.

[Sasha]

A ‘Black Bloc’ Emerges in Egypt

By COLIN MOYNIHAN (http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/author/colin-moynihan/)Last Updated, Saturday, 10:17 a.m. While using Twitter to narrate events in Tahrir Square on Friday, people in Egypt described tires burning in the street, protesters blocking traffic and hurling rocks, and police officers launching tear gas in an effort to break up crowds that had gathered to protest against the Muslim Brotherhood and the country’s new Islamist president.
Many of the actions described on Friday appeared to hew to a script that has become familiar over the past two years, but some in the crowds of protesters appeared to be using new tactics, dressing from head to toe in black, covering their faces with bandannas or kerchiefs and brandishing black flags as they skirmished with security forces.

“Asked one of them who they are they said we don’t talk to media but we are black bloc,” wrote ‏the British-Egyptian journalist Sarah Carr, adding that a member of the group had “mentioned anarchism.”
An article filed on Thursday by The Associated Press reported (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gm_Ypfbr66lm4zkdLPGddsEiy7vw?docId=d125abecd 84f42c3bcd617af006fa040) the presence of a “previously unknown group calling itself the black block.” The article continued, “Wearing black masks and waving black banners, it warned the Muslim Brotherhood of using its ‘military wing’ to put down protests.”
Although largely new in Cairo, the term “black bloc” has been used for years in the United States and Europe to describe a tactic commonly used by anarchists and anticapitalists during large-scale political demonstrations that occasionally devolve into street fights with the authorities.
Participants in the bloc typically dress in black to foster a sense of unity and to make it difficult for witnesses to differentiate between individuals. Members of the bloc often blend in with larger groups of protesters, then break away, linking arms as they rush down streets.
In the United States, at least, black bloc members usually eschew violence against people but have few compunctions about damaging property.
The tactic received attention during the 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization, when youths dressed in black broke windows and spray-painted graffiti on buildings.
In St. Paul, during the 2008 Republican National Convention, black bloc members roamed through the city smashing bank windows and using hammers to batter a police car.
It is unclear whether there are any connections between American and Egyptian black bloc participants, but the site anarchistnews.org (http://anarchistnews.org/content/egyptian-anarchist-movement-emerges-wave-firebombings-and-street-fights) posted a message about occurrences in Cairo, quoting the blog Even If Your Voice Shakes (http://voiceshakes.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/egyptian-anarchist-movement-emerges-with-wave-of-firebombings-and-street-fights/).

Last night, anarchism left the graffitied walls, small conversations, and online forums of Egypt, and came to life in Cairo, declaring itself a new force in the ongoing social revolution sparked two years ago with multiple firebombings against Muslim Brotherhood offices. Later, the government shutdown the “Black Blocairo” and “Egyptian Black Bloc” Facebook pages, but they were soon re-launched.
The site went on to say that Egyptian anarchists had firebombed the Shura Council.
As my colleague Robert Mackey reports (http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/street-level-views-of-protests-in-cairo-to-mark-two-years-of-revolution/), an Egyptian journalist, Sarah El Sirgany, wrote on Twitter, “Vendors tell me it was the Black Block group that attempted to storm the Ikhwan Online building sparking the fight.”
Later, she added, “Now those who had continued the fight are heading to Tahrir, flag of Black Block flying high.”
This week, a video was uploaded to an Egyptian YouTube channel titled “Black Bloc Egypt (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8IyRkEKywY).” Accompanied by driving music the video shows masked people marching while holding aloft black banners, a black flag with an anarchy symbol and an Egyptian flag.
Egyptian journalists and bloggers wondered what to make of the black bloc in Egypt. In a place where sexual assaults and gropings remain common, one journalist, Ghazala Irshad, reported from Cairo that the “self-proclaimed” anti-Muslim-Brotherhood militia “has female members.”
The activist bloggers Gigi Ibrahim, Adel Abdel Ghafar, Bassem Sabry and Egyptocracy wrote that they were troubled by the development.
This post was revised after publication to reflect comments on Twitter by the journalist Ghazala Irshad, who asked us to clarify that she was merely reporting on the presence of the Black Bloc, not admiring them as we first reported.
Additional reporting was contributed by Robert Mackey.



source inc missing twitter quotes and pictures; http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/a-black-bloc-emerges-in-egypt/

[Os Cangaceiros]

Suprised that the NYT reported on this...

[Rafiq]

Suprised that the NYT reported on this...

Must be quite significant.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Well, even though I'm not an anarchist I've got to wish them good luck, better them than, well any other party on the ground. Especially those good awful socialist parties they have that are the puppet of the SWP

[Grigori]

What side have the anarchist ultras taken in the current Port Said fiasco?

[Sasha]

What side have the anarchist ultras taken in the current Port Said fiasco?

I believe they opposed the deathpenalty as they lay blame primarily at the state not the portsaid hooligans, but its a delicate situation as the blackblock is mostly connected to the Cairo firm while the port said firm is dominated by former Mubarak loyalists.
This might be by far the main thread to trigger inter civilian violence, way more so than the Copt vs Islamists that was so long the most feared in the wester media.

[Overture]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold your jets there, folks. So before anyone starts throwing around their artificial, pseudo-"solidarity", there is something you should see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8IyRkEKywY&t=1m10s
This is the "Black Bloc". There are 15 to 20 people at most here. They are not really holding up anything that has to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. They have black flags and ACAB signs. That's right folks, it's dress-up night in Cairo.
Also, some of the Twitter comments on the NYTimes article seem to be right on..

Shubra march is full of young men wearing wrestling masks.
Black Bloc: anarchist revolutionaries or 18 year olds who live with their moms & wear black masks thinking life is a video game ? #egypt
Black Bloc might have started by youth trying to fight the unjust regime, but they could easily be infiltrated and tarnished. #Egypt

[ellipsis]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold your jets there, folks. So before anyone starts throwing around their artificial, pseudo-"solidarity", there is something you should see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8IyRkEKywY&t=1m10s
This is the "Black Bloc". There are 15 to 20 people at most here. They are not really holding up anything that has to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. They have black flags and ACAB signs. That's right folks, it's dress-up night in Cairo.
Also, some of the Twitter comments on the NYTimes article seem to be right on..

Yawn... this nay saying tripe again? tell it to chris hedges.

[Sasha]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold your jets there, folks. So before anyone starts throwing around their artificial, pseudo-"solidarity", there is something you should see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8IyRkEKywY&t=1m10s
This is the "Black Bloc". There are 15 to 20 people at most here. They are not really holding up anything that has to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. They have black flags and ACAB signs. That's right folks, it's dress-up night in Cairo.
Also, some of the Twitter comments on the NYTimes article seem to be right on..


Around 9pm on the second anniversary of the Egyptian uprising, a group of men used flamethrowers, knives, and clubs to protect a group of women, including prominent public figure Gameela Ismail, from a mob assault on the edge of Tahrir Square. The men also rescued at least four other women from the mob, one of whom had been stripped naked. The women rescued from the mob were part of the Egyptian Women for Change group and had just led a march into the square.

Among the men protecting the women were members of the Dostour Party and the 'Black Bloc,' who jumped the fence with knives and clubs to come to the women's aid

your turn again....

[Sasha]

Black Bloc must die, say Jihad and Jama'a al-Islamiya

The Islamist party of the Jihad Organization and Jama'a al-Islamiyahas said the ways of dealing with banditry specified in the Quran must be applied to Black Bloc members, which means theymust be killed.

“God orders us to kill, crucify or cut off the hands and feet of those who spread mischief on earth,” said Jama'a al-Islamiya Mufti Abdel Akhar Hammad, citing a verse from the Quran. “The president must give that order.”

Mohamed Samra of the Jihad Organization said that the Black Blocgroup is financed from abroad and must be killed, and that the National Salvation Front members must be arrested and charged with incitement to riot.

Last week, Cairo witnessed the first appearance groups describing themselves as the Black Bloc. Decked in black and wearing masks, they clashed with police forces at Qasr al-Aini StreetonThursday. They said they would fight with the police if it targeted protesters. Previously unknown, the Black Bloc's goals remain unclear and its members generally avoid media contact.

Officials from the Muslim Brotherhood and state-run media have accused the group of violence, including attemptingtosetthe presidentialpalace on fire, attacking the Brotherhood's headquarters, looting government institutions, blocking the railways and exchanging fire with security forces.

However, it is still unclear to what extent the Black Bloc has played a role in any of the violent incidents reported over the past few days, or if theyare actually armed. The group is a largely unknown one whose motives remain unclear, and its members generally refuse to speak to the media.

Earlier on Tuesday, Prosecutor General Talaat Abdallah ordered police and deputized members of the Armed Forces to arrest all suspected members of the Black Bloc.

State-run news agency MENA reported that Hassan Yassin, the headof the Public Prosecution's technical office and the prosecution's spokesperson, is claiming that the prosecution has proof that the Black Bloc is carryingout terrorist activities.

No further information was available as to the nature of this evidence or the alleged terrorist activities.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

black bloc - revolution anniversary clashes

Source; http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/black-bloc-must-die-say-jihad-and-jama-al-islamiya

[freepalestine]

Egypt police arrest anarchist "Black Bloc" members
http://www.revleft.com/vb/picture.php?albumid=583&pictureid=10093


Egyptian riot policemen stand guard during a demonstration outside the high court in central Cairo on January 30, 2013. Egyptian authorities detained suspected "Black Bloc" members as they protested an order by the public prosecutor to arrest anyone from the shadowy opposition group, an AFP journalist said. Presenting themselves as the defenders of protesters opposed to President Mohamed Mursi's rule, the Black Bloc reportedly models itself on anarchist groups of the same name in Europe and the United States. (Photo: AFP - Khaled Desouki)





Published Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Egyptian authorities on Wednesday detained suspected "Black Bloc" members as they protested an order by the public prosecutor to arrest anyone from the shadowy opposition group, an AFP journalist said.

Presenting themselves as the defenders of protesters opposed to Mursi's rule, the Black Bloc reportedly models itself on anarchist groups of the same name in Europe and the United States.

Riot police took into custody at least four protesters, who were wearing black masks, outside the public prosecutor's office in central Cairo, the journalist reported.

Dozens of unmasked protesters had gathered outside prosecutor Talaat Ibrahim's office, chanting slogans hostile to Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.



On Tuesday, Ibrahim's office said: "Inquiries have shown that the Black Bloc is an organised group which carries out terrorist actions."

The prosecutor urged "citizens to arrest anyone suspected of membership in this group and hand them over" to the army or the police.

In a video posted on YouTube, the militants say they want to "confront the regime of the fascist tyrants" -- a reference to the Muslim Brotherhood of which Mursi hails.

Two Islamist groups, the Jama’a al-Islamiyya and the Islamist party of the Jihad Organization, called on the government to “kill” Black Bloc members.

“God orders us to kill, crucify or cut off the hands and feet of those who spread mischief on earth,” Al-Masry al-Youm quoted Jama'a al-Islamiya Mufti Abdel Akhar Hammad, citing a verse from the Quran. “The president must give that order.”

Photographs showed the Black Bloc celebrating around a police armoured vehicle in flames in the middle of Tahrir Square this week, waving V-for-victory signs.

The origins and leadership of the group is shrouded in mystery and the extent of its membership unknown.

At least 54 people have died in the latest wave of violence, which first erupted on Thursday.

Egypt's liberal opposition leader on Wednesday called for a broad national dialogue with the rival Islamist government, ultraconservative Salafis and the powerful military, aimed at ending the country's eruption of political violence that has left more than 60 dead the past week.

Mohamed ElBaradei's appeal for a dialogue — and his inclusion of the military generals in the call — appeared to be an attempt to build pressure on Mursi a day after the head of the armed forces warned that Egypt could collapse unless the country's feuding political factions reconcile.

The warning by Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was to both sides but was seen as an implicit criticism of Mursi, who has been unable to contain the unrest through an attempted firm hand. Mursi's declaration of a month-long state of emergency and a curfew in three of the cities hardest hit by unrest has been overtly defied by the cities' residents.

ElBaradei's call also comes as cracks began to appear among Mursi's Islamist allies.

The ultraconservative Salafi al-Nour Party put forward its own initiative for resolving the crisis, and its leader held talks Wednesday with the rival liberal opposition National Salvation Front, headed by ElBaradei. The two agreed to push Mursi to create a national unity government — effectively eroding the Muslim Brotherhood's grip on decision-making — and commit to rewriting parts of the controversial constitution.

Al-Nour leader Younis Makhyoun told reporters after the meeting that Egypt must not be ruled "by a single faction... but there must be a real partnership in decision-making and administration."

"We are considered Islamists, and we are from the Islamic current but when we work for the sake of national reconciliation, we have to be neutral," he said. "Egypt for all Egyptians."

(AFP, AP, Al-Akhbar)

[Sasha]

‘Black Bloc’ revolutionaries baffle Egyptians

http://www.france24.com/en/files/imagecache/france24_169_large/article/image/black-bloc_0.jpg

Everyone in Egypt is talking about them but no one really knows who they are. Calling themselves “Black Bloc,” these new masked opponents of President Mohammed Morsi's regime are set to defend street protesters—by force if necessary.

By Moïna FAUCHIER DELAVIGNE (http://www.france24.com/en/category/tags-auteurs/moina-fauchier-delavigne) (text)

Clad in black, their faces shrouded by balaclavas, they have staged an ominous appearance on the streets of major Egyptian cities and on social network sites over the past few days.
Inspired by the Western anti-establishment and autonomist movements of the 1980s, the mysterious new "Black Bloc" began appearing at demonstrations making the second anniversary of the January 25 revolution last week.
Proudly proclaiming their willingness to use force, the group is vehemently opposed to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi's regime and its members say they want to defend demonstrators from the onslaught of the Islamists as well as the state security forces.
On January 24 - the eve of the second anniversary of the start of the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak - the movement announced its presence with an “official video” posted on YouTube.
The nearly four-minute clip, shot at night in Alexandria and set to a pounding hard-rock audio track, shows masked youths storming into town with a mission, they say, to fight "against the fascist regime [the Muslim Brotherhood] and their armed wing."
OFFICIAL BLACK BLOC VIDEO


Wearing masks to make themselves less identifiable to police, Black Bloc members joined the demonstrations last week in a number of Egyptian cities including Cairo, Alexandria and Mansoura, a northern Nile Delta city.
At a January 25 demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, some Black Bloc members were heard telling protesters, "We are here to protect you. We do not want to attack anyone.”
When questioned about their political affiliations, the masked youth maintained that they did not belong to any group or political party. But they refused to provide further details, telling a British-Egyptian journalis (http://www.salon.com/2013/01/29/we_dont_talk_to_media_but_we_are_black_bloc/)t, “We don’t talk to media, but we are Black Bloc.”
The appearance of the masked men on the streets - many of them flashing “V” for victory signs - injected a foreboding new element into Egypt’s political scene, which has been an explosive mix ever since the 2011 fall of Mubarak and the deeply contested political rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.
‘The reaction of civilians overwhelmed by violence’
For Sarah Othman, an Egyptian activist, the emergence of Black Bloc is directly linked to civilians feeling overwhelmed by the violence to which they have been subjected, especially after the December 2012 attack on peaceful demonstrators at Cairo’s presidential palace. Seven people were killed in the violence, which many believe was unleashed by "thugs" sent by the Muslim Brotherhood to clash with opponents of the regime.



http://www.france24.com/en/files/imagecache/france24_special_169_medium/article/image/egypt-opposition-m_0.jpg (http://www.france24.com/en/20121207-egypt-opposition-islamist-winter-unite-liberal-spring-elbaradei-morsi)
EGYPT
Can Egypt’s Islamist Winter give way to a Liberal Spring? (http://www.france24.com/en/20121207-egypt-opposition-islamist-winter-unite-liberal-spring-elbaradei-morsi)














Following the clashes at the presidential palace, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Salafist groups were involved in several violent incidents - including the burning of the headquarters of the opposition al-Wafd party in Cairo.
None of the violent, pro-regime demonstrators have been arrested.
During the second anniversary demonstrations last week, old slogans such as, "Selmia, Selmia" (peaceful, peaceful) chanted during the anti-Mubarak demonstrations were not heard.
With the unprecedented levels of violence, many demonstrators began to doubt the effectiveness of a peaceful opposition. "They do not want to sit idly by," said Othman.
The Egyptian police force has long been accused of systemic violence and abusing human rights, a record that has not changed since the fall of Mubarak.
In a report released earlier this week, Amnesty International (http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/egypt-uprising-commemoration-unleashes-death-and-destruction-2013-01-28) documented witness accounts of “the unnecessary use of lethal force by security forces” even when “it was not strictly necessary to protect life, including when protestors did not pose an imminent threat”.
For Nagad el-Borai, a lawyer and political activist, the sudden emergence of Black Bloc is therefore "not bizarre”. In an interview with the private Egyptian station CBC-TV, el-Borai said that the group’s motivation was born out of frustration with the current system, which has become a 'religious dictatorship' much like the old Mubarak regime”.
Unlike al-Borai, Samir Shehata, professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University, said he was surprised by the sudden appearance of Black Bloc youth on the streets of Egypt’s main cities.
Shehata believes the masked youth are most the radical elements among the revolutionaries that sparked the 2011 uprising.
In an interview with FRANCE 24, Said al-Lawindi, an expert at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, called Black Bloc "a consequence of the lack of political awareness in Egypt, particularly among the youth”.
Al-Lawindi worried that the sort of violence the group propagates could obstruct the possibility of a national dialogue in a deeply divided country.
Staging a presence on Facebook and Twitter
The streets are not the only platform used by Black Bloc. The group has at least two Facebook pages (here (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Bloc-Egypt/319861301448616) and here (https://www.facebook.com/blackblocegy?ref=ts&fref=ts)) that attracted over 35,000 fans in a matter of days. Featuring slogans such as "chaos against injustice," the Facebook pages have regular posts urging people to support them.
On Twitter, the handle @ bbbegypt (https://twitter.com/search?q=bbbegypt&src=typd) has more than 20,000 followers and provides live news events from across the country.
Many pictures and videos featuring young men defending protesters and clashing with police officials have also been posted and widely circulated.
Anarchists or Israeli stooges?
Confronted with a new genre of protesters, the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-Islamist media have been quick to denounce the group as everything from violent anarchists to Israeli stooges.

http://www.france24.com/en/files/element_multimedia/image/Tahrir_diapo_sonore_zone2_e.jpg (http://graphics.france24.com/pictures-arab-spring-revolution-egypt-tahrir/index.html)


On Thursday, the official MENA news agency reported that Egyptian authorities detained (http://www.france24.com/en/20130131-egypt-holds-black-bloc-member-over-israeli-sabotage-plan) a Black Bloc member suspected of attempting to carry out “Israeli plans to target petrol companies and vital installations.”
Israel has categorically denied any involvement in any such plot, with Israeli Foreign Minister Yigal Palmor dismissing the report as “utter nonsense”.
Seventeen other suspects accused of belonging to the group were also arrested on Thursday. According to AFP, citing a source close to the security services, around 170 protesters dressed in black have been arrested since Saturday, although it is not certain whether they all belong to Black Bloc.
On Tuesday, Egypt’s Attorney General Talaat Ibrahim ordered "the arrest of anyone suspected of belonging" to Black Bloc, which he described as “an organized group that carries out terrorist actions”.
It is still not clear if the group is formally organised or merely a loose movement influenced by anarchist groups that have used violent protest tactics in Europe and the US.
Discrediting legitimate anti-government protests?
Whatever their level of organisation, many Egyptians fear that the appearance of the new group could increase the spiral of violence in Egypt.
On their Facebook pages, a number of Egyptian revolutionary groups have warned their supporters not to join Black Bloc. Some liberal revolutionary activists believe the new group is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood designed to sabotage anti-government protests. "Do not start using violence; we must find an end to it,” warned Othman.
Shehata worries that the phenomenon “could be used by the powers that be to discredit anti-government protesters and their demands, which are completely legitimate.”
For popular Egyptian blogger Mahmoud Salem (aka @ Sandmonkey), the emergence of Black Bloc benefits the regime. “They delegitimise all the peaceful protesters,” writes Salem (http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/01/28/blockheads/), before going on to add, “They also end any possibility for a political solution for the crisis, since the Bloc are not represented by anyone in the realm of political parties and movements.”
But Salem is not unduly worried about the new group. “Luckily, we don’t have to worry about Black Bloc’s negative effect for long,” he maintained. “Since anyone can be a Blockhead by virtue of having three friends who will join him in wearing black masks or their mum’s black nylon stockings, and since there are no real rules or structure to the group, offshoots and splinter groups will start forming immediately.”






source; http://www.france24.com/en/20130131-egypt-black-bloc-morsi-demonstrators-twitter-facebook

[Os Cangaceiros]

OK, does the Egyptian "black bloc" refer to just protestors who engage in the tactic, or does it also refer to some urban guerrilla firebomb-MB-and-take-potshots-at-security-forces shit? Or both? This is what's confusing me...

[Sasha]

not urban guerrilla but a little more than just a tactic, the groups roots lie seemingly in the anti-authoritarian football ultra's who where a significant force in the streetfighting during the uprising against Mubarak, apparently they got inspired and now politicized by the greek december riots making connections with domestic and international insurrectionary and syndicalist anarchists.
now they seemingly act as an tactic to physically protect secular demonstrations and more importantly the females who participate.
sure their politics seem still a bit crude/copycat-image, but the fact that they refuse to talk to the media and manage to enforce that shows they are in someway organized and made some pretty indept study of tactics beyond watching riot-porn on youtube.

[The Intransigent Faction]

not urban guerrilla but a little more than just a tactic, the groups roots lie seemingly in the anti-authoritarian football ultra's who where a significant force in the streetfighting during the uprising against Mubarak, apparently they got inspired and now politicized by the greek december riots making connections with domestic and international insurrectionary and syndicalist anarchists.
now they seemingly act as an tactic to physically protect secular demonstrations and more importantly the females who participate.
sure their politics seem still a bit crude/copycat-image, but the fact that they refuse to talk to the media and manage to enforce that shows they are in someway organized and made some pretty indept study of tactics beyond watching riot-porn on youtube.

Here's an interesting article:
http://www.vice.com/read/we-met-some-members-of-egypts-black-bloc Not great, but it at least gives some insight into the makeup of the Egyptian black bloc.

[Mather]

Anarchists or Israeli stooges?

Confronted with a new genre of protesters, the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-Islamist media have been quick to denounce the group as everything from violent anarchists to Israeli stooges. On Thursday, the official MENA news agency reported that Egyptian authorities detained (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.france24.com/en/20130131-egypt-holds-black-bloc-member-over-israeli-sabotage-plan) a Black Bloc member suspected of attempting to carry out “Israeli plans to target petrol companies and vital installations.” Israel has categorically denied any involvement in any such plot, with Israeli Foreign Minister Yigal Palmor dismissing the report as “utter nonsense”.

Seventeen other suspects accused of belonging to the group were also arrested on Thursday. According to AFP, citing a source close to the security services, around 170 protesters dressed in black have been arrested since Saturday, although it is not certain whether they all belong to Black Bloc. On Tuesday, Egypt’s Attorney General Talaat Ibrahim ordered "the arrest of anyone suspected of belonging" to Black Bloc, which he described as “an organized group that carries out terrorist actions”.
It is still not clear if the group is formally organised or merely a loose movement influenced by anarchist groups that have used violent protest tactics in Europe and the US.

Discrediting legitimate anti-government protests?

Whatever their level of organisation, many Egyptians fear that the appearance of the new group could increase the spiral of violence in Egypt. On their Facebook pages, a number of Egyptian revolutionary groups have warned their supporters not to join Black Bloc. Some liberal revolutionary activists believe the new group is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood designed to sabotage anti-government protests. "Do not start using violence; we must find an end to it,” warned Othman.
Shehata worries that the phenomenon “could be used by the powers that be to discredit anti-government protesters and their demands, which are completely legitimate.”

For popular Egyptian blogger Mahmoud Salem (aka @ Sandmonkey), the emergence of Black Bloc benefits the regime. “They delegitimise all the peaceful protesters,” writes Salem (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/01/28/blockheads/), before going on to add, “They also end any possibility for a political solution for the crisis, since the Bloc are not represented by anyone in the realm of political parties and movements.” But Salem is not unduly worried about the new group. “Luckily, we don’t have to worry about Black Bloc’s negative effect for long,” he maintained. “Since anyone can be a Blockhead by virtue of having three friends who will join him in wearing black masks or their mum’s black nylon stockings, and since there are no real rules or structure to the group, offshoots and splinter groups will start forming immediately.”

Hating anarchists becomes the one thing that unites islamists and liberals.:rolleyes:

If the Egyptian black bloc are genuine anarchists and they start gaining support from the working class, all the reactionary political forces (MB, salafists, liberals, Mubarak supporters) will do their best to oppose them and destroy them.

[Le Socialiste]

Within the wider context of what is most certainly an ongoing transformation of Egyptian civil society, the emergence of 'black bloc' types is an important - and welcome - development. These specific movements are best utilized and put to the test, I think, in the kind of situation or period Egypt is going through. All of this to say: it's an encouraging development to see.

Now, we must wait and observe how this relatively 'new' movement interacts with other revolutionary layers and organizations within the broader movement. I'm not without any critiques of 'black bloc'-style activism, and it will be important to note how they and others within that tendency relate with the rest of the radical left.

[Mather]

Most of this thread has focused on the tactics of the black bloc but I would like to know if anyone has any information on their actual politics?

Do the black bloc organise on the basis of class politics?

I would appreciate it if someone could provide me with a link to the black bloc's actual programme or any stuff they have published that deals with their politics.

[Sasha]

I have seen pictures of them with anarcho-syndicalist flags but just as much with "anonymous" guy fawks imagery. They are def in contact with the expanding anarcho scene but also seem to work with radical secular liberals connected with the party/front of el baradei.

[Mather]

but also seem to work with radical secular liberals connected with the party/front of el baradei.

A dangerous move if the comments made by liberals on that France24 article you posted are anything to go by.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I have seen pictures of them with anarcho-syndicalist flags but just as much with "anonymous" guy fawks imagery. They are def in contact with the expanding anarcho scene but also seem to work with radical secular liberals connected with the party/front of el baradei.

Those masks look a lot better in black, IMO

http://s9.postimage.org/g0nn3fclr/blackblocanon.jpg

Goes along well with the rest of the black clothes...

[Let's Get Free]

Judging from their aesthetics, this is a legit group

[Art Vandelay]

I'll never understand why leftists have been appropriating the aesthetic of a long dead religious reactionary.

[Sasha]

I'll never understand why leftists have been appropriating the aesthetic of a long dead religious reactionary.

It's more a case of apropiating the comic and movie "V for vendetta", written by anarchist Allan Moore who chose the image of guy fawkes because it tied in with the plot and because it looked bad ass.
But its unmustakenly also so that it says something about that one persons terrorist can be someone else's freedom fighter.
And Guy Fawkes and the rest of the catholics had def legitimate beef with the British government.
Even the exhibition in the tower of London a few years ago made that connection.
You only have to look at Fawkes "confession" that he could hardly sign anymore thanks to the horrible torture he was subjected too. And if you then realise that people are still burning effigies of the man centuries later one understands that history is indeed written by the victors.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

This is pretty confusing, these are supposedly anarchists yet one of the people behind one of the facebook groups is a supporter of el baradei? If I remember correctly that was basically the guy the U.S. and the West would have loved to see take office.

Is black bloc a tactic or an organized political group? Also the whole "We're here to protect you" doesn't sit very well with me. Is black bloc even a good tactic in this situation? As the Vice article pointed out, people have been covering up since the beginning, this is just putting a different face to the protesters, an "anarchist" face when apparently some of them aren't even anarchists but supportive of liberals. It seems unnecessary.

[bcbm]

the revolution, back in black (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/201322103219816676.html) good history and analysis here i think

[Mather]

Judging from their aesthetics, this is a legit group

Aesthetics bear no relation as to whether a particular group is anarchist or not. If the Egyptian black bloc copies the aesthetics of the black bloc but is otherwise politically liberal, then they are liberals. However, I really hope that they are not liberals and that what we are now seeing is the birth of a working class anarchist movement in Egypt.

[Sasha]

the revolution, back in black (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/201322103219816676.html) good history and analysis here i think
thanx, i was just going to post that, here it is in full before it gets lost somewhere;


The revolution, back in black


The black bloc must provide Egyptians with a positive vision if they want their struggle to succeed.

Last Modified: 02 Feb 2013 14:05



http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/images/2013/2/2//20132212245816734_20.jpg The black bloc in Egypt say they are the defenders of protesters opposed to President Mohamed Morsi's rule [AFP]


The last time kids in black caused this much trouble in Egypt, it was Satan's fault. Well, at least that's what the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mubarak government claimed during the infamous "Satanic metal affair" of 1997, when over 100 metalheads - musicians and fans - were arrested and threatened with prosecution and even death simply because they dressed in black and liked extreme music.
The persecution of Egypt's metalheads, or "metaliens" as many called themselves, drove the burgeoning scene underground for much of the next decade. It did not begin to resurface until the mid-2000s, at the same time as political movements like Kefaaya emerged, and the strikes in the industrial centre of Mahallah occurred. This period saw a renewed, if still sporadic, militancy that would coalesce into the revolutionary surge of late 2010 and early 2011.
It didn't surprise me, then, to see that some of the key organisers of the 18 days of protest were old friends from the country's metal scene. The seemingly sudden reemergence of black among Egypt's remaining revolutionaries, specifically the visual markers of the black bloc - which despite being described as a group by the media (http://www1.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=922759&SecID=97) [AR], commentators and government (http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/public-prosecution-orders-arrest-all-black-bloc-members), is more accurately understood as a tactic and strategy - thus brings back vivid memories, of both the sounds of Egyptian metal and the anarchistic heart beat of the original Tahrir protests. Metal and anarchy - as Egypt's political and religious authorities have argued with great ferver - have always gone together quite naturally.
Indeed, there was a clear if little remarked upon anarchist presence in Tahrir during the original 18 Day uprising; anarchist books can in fact be found in stalls along Talat Harb Street on the way to the Square where the group held a public march and prayer. And Tahrir itself remains in many ways the epitome of the ideas of horizontalism (horizontalidad) and self-organisation (autogestion) that are at the core of modern anarchist theory and practice.
Anarchism's Egyptian roots
In fact, anarchism actually has a long history in Egypt and the Levant more broadly. As the research of Edinburgh University Professor Anthony Gorman has demonstrated, it stretches back to the 1860s when Italian political refugees first made their way to the more hospitable surrounding of Alexandria and other Egyptian cities, where they inspired the foundation of the "Free Popular University" in 1901.
Egypt in this period was in the midst of an unprecedented and increasingly desperate state-driven modernisation campaign that increased its integration into the global economy during the first and in some ways still most intense phase of globalisation. The constant movement of northern Mediterranean communities to and through its eastern and southern shores going back centuries - as merchants, slaves, pirates, workers and activists - is a seminal lesson in how integrated the Mediterranean has traditionally been, and hopefully will again be.


Clashes outside presidential palace in Cairo Italians and Greeks, who by the fin de siècle had established vibrant communities tens of thousands strong in the major cities of the Mediterranean's southern and eastern rims, were increasingly enmeshed in the politics of the indigenous labour movements, and brought a strong dose of anarchism, including anarco-syndicalism, which specifically focused on labour struggles through self-organisation. Anarchist-agitated strikes were being staged and arrests being made for illegal organising by the 1890s, if not before.
Anarchism, along with any other political ideology that would compete with Nasserism, was sidelined during the heyday of pan-Arabism in the 1950s and 60s. But at least some contemporary Egyptian anarchists trace their roots to local anarchist activity in the 1940s (http://www.elwatannews.com/news/details/120977) [AR].
The rise of the anti-corporate globalisation movement
Anarchism's appearance in Egypt in the 19th century provides the historical context for understanding its reappearance today, during the next great struggle age of global integration within a Western-led (but no longer dominated) global neoliberal system. Since Sadat's initiation of the infitah, or opening in the 1970s, Egypt has been as deeply - and unfavourably - incorporated into this system through its dependent relationship with the US, and with the IMF and World Bank as it was into the 19th century European dominated global economy.
Mubarak, father and even more so son, tried to use neoliberal policies (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201122414315249621.html)to strengthen the power elite's economic position within Egypt and globally. Policies of privatisation and liberalisation offered unprecedented potential for the elite to strengthen its control over the economy. The problem was, and remains, that the greater concentration of wealth can only come at the cost of a far more precarious economic position for the vast majority of the population. This demanded not just increased repression but also the cooptation of new actors into the power elite, whether the emerging bourgeoisie of the 1990s (epitomised by Gamal Mubarak) or the Brotherhood elite in the last decade.
From Morocco to Syria the struggles for "freedom", "social justice", "democracy", "bread" and particularly "dignity" - which has been a key word for struggles against neoliberalism at least since the Zapatista movement made it a centrepiece of its discourse (http://www.telefonica.net/web2/eladoquin/manifiestozapa.html) in the early 1990s - are quintessentially anti-neoliberal struggles. In this regard, they are the natural continuation of the struggles of the anti-corporate globalisation movements in Latin and North America and then Europe of the 1990s and early 2000s (as epitomised by Buenos Aires, London, Seattle, Prague and Genoa), which then morphed into the anti-war movement that emerged around the US invasion of Iraq.
Theatres of violence
Many of the anarchist organising principles which Egyptian black bloc activists have adopted as their own - such as self-democracy and decentralised organisation, as well as militant and often violent confrontations with security forces and symbols of systemic power - were deployed by the first generation of black bloc activists in the anti-corporate globalisation movement. These activists emerged not just out of anarchist circles but also groups like Ya Basta!, Tutte Bianche and Attac (which actually had branches in some Arab countries).
They in turn were powerfully impacted by Latin American grass roots struggles epitomised by the Zapatistas in Mexico, whose movement, I argued already in 2005 in my book Why They Don't Hate Us (http://www.amazon.com/Why-They-Dont-Hate-Us/dp/1851683658), constituted the best model for then inchoate politicised youth movements to emulate. Indeed, the US government-sponsored think tank RAND warned (http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/1998/MR994.pdf) [PDF] that the Zapatista uprising "demonstrated (http://global-discourse.com/contents/anarchism-the-zapatistas-and-the-global-solidarity-movement-by-roy-kr%C3%B8vel/) how new technology made it possible for 'swarms' of 'flies' to overrun governments", precisely the kind of tactics that defined the Tahrir phase of the Egyptian revolution.


Inside Story
Demanding 'economic justice' It could be argued that the anti-WTO "Battle of Seattle" of late 1999, which first put the movement on the media and activist map, would have never received the attention it did had it not been for the violence against property deployed by protesters, which was and remains a rare phenomenon in the US outside of "riots" in poor minority communities.
However, it was also clear by the anti-IMF Prague protest of September 2000 that the use of violence, however theatrical and limited to property and aggressive security forces, was becoming counter productive. The police used the threat of such violence to deploy ever larger and overzealous forces who arrested (often violently) peaceful activists and helped disrupt, as well as infiltrating them with greater frequency. The nadir was reached with the killing of Italian activist Carlo Giuliano at the Group of 8 summit in Genoa in July, 2001, just two months before September 11 completely delegitimised any kind of violence by protesters in the US and Europe for the next half decade.
Simply put, routinised violence against property cost the anti-corporate globalisation movement significant support in the US and Europe precisely because the the vast majority of people in these countries were not suffering enough under the existing system to support the level of chaos and disruption such violence was intended to generate. Anarchists and hard-core anti-corporate globalisation activists might have wanted the "fall of the system", as Egyptians have chanted since the eruption of the revolution (and in fact, before), but most everyone else was only looking for a far less painful process of reform.
Militant oppositional politics became even more difficult during the Bush War on Terror years, both because there was less public tolerance for them and because governments used anti-terror laws to increase surveillance, infiltration and prosecution of militant activists. It has reappeared with the rise of the Occupy movements globally, especially in Greece, Spain and to some degree the United States. But even in the midst of the worst economic period since the Great Depression, black bloc tactics alienated at least as many potential supporters of the movement as they attracted, leading normally sober observers like Chris Hedges to label the tactic (in fact, like so many others, he erroneously labeled it a movement) the "cancer of the Occupy movement (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/)".
Globalisation on steroids in the Arab world
The Arab and broader Muslim world constitute a very different environment for struggles against neoliberalism and the various policies it involves than did the advanced capitalist West. Unprecedented petroleum rents allowed for rapid development of the smaller Gulf countries in the last two decades, but for the economic and political situation of the vast majority of the region's peoples has become more bleak (http://middleeastvoices.voanews.com/2013/01/insight-arab-economies-in-transition-limited-room-for-optimism-87341/) during the last generation. This at the same time that their ability to connect with and become culturally - if not economically and politically - integrated with global movements and ideas increased at an unprecedented rate.
In a lecture-hall filled with 500 people at the Prague anti-IMF protests of September 2000, not a single audience member raised their hand when I asked if anyone was from the Muslim world. Within a few years, however, activists from the Middle East and North Africa were becoming an increasing presence in the global peace and justice movement, while at the same time taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to them by Western governments and NGOs to network with their peers (and especially each other) in the mushrooming number of "civil society"-related workshops and conferences of the post-US Iraq invasion period.
The internet, of course, made it that much easier to learn about tactics - such as that of the black bloc's - and allowed various groups both in and outside the region who shared similar goals and attitudes to become acquainted. At the same time, the growth of the now (in)famous Ultra movement, clearly inspired by similar movements of football fans in Europe, provided the perfect laboratory for experimenting and perfecting the kinds of aggressive and even violent confrontations with security forces and regime thugs that between January 28 and February 4, 2011 literally saved the revolution.
It is not surprising that as their ability to shape the political situation has lessened in the two years since the initial uprising, the Ultras and sympathetic fellow-travellers among Egypt's revolutionary movements would search out new strategies, tactics and symbols to reshift the momentum, and as important, the national narrative, towards more favourable terrain. Members of the Revolutionary Socialists, the most sympathetic group to anarchists in terms of strategies and political goals (and who've consequently been attacked with them (http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/30787/Egypt/Politics-/Solidarity-protests-held-for-Revolutionary-Sociali.aspx)by SCAF and the Brotherhood) have from the start of the Revolution repeatedly told me that the key to its success will be constantly learning from and teaching ever widening circles of people. The explosion of talk about the black bloc in Egypt - even more so among the government, its supporters and the Egyptian and Arabic-language media than in Western media - is evidence of just how successful their strategy has been.
From an examination of the proliferation of Egyptian black bloc websites (including here (http://www.facebook.com/pages/??????-???????-??-??????-Black-Bloc-ELMahalla/409131762496052?ref=stream), here (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Bloc-Egypt/319861301448616?ref=stream), here (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002555996445&fref=ts), and here (http://www.facebook.com/AlktlhAlswdaBalmnswrhBlackBlock?fref=ts)), video pronouncements (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vniZuUREBCA&feature=youtu.be) of activists (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvCWQ1gYuyQ), (see also here (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=478869105502823)), twitter feeds (https://twitter.com/search?q=????%20????%20%20egypt#&src=typd), and the use of black bloc description and logos, and discussions with friends in the broader Ultra movement and others who've followed recent changes in strategies, it's clear that while the adoption of black bloc tactics is centred around the Ultras, it's not limited to them, since not all activists who've donned the balaclava or black hoodie are members of one of the main Ultra clubs, such as Zemalek or Ahly.
It's also clear that while the activists who came up with the idea to publicly identify themselves with the tactic are familiar with its recent history, it would be a mistake to assume they share (or even spend time debating over) a coherent anarchist political agenda or philosophy, or are all equally grounded in the larger anarchist-influenced discourses that have shaped the broader global Occupy movement - which, let us remember, was directly inspired by and even born out of Tahrir's historic 18 days of anarchist-style self-organisation. On the other hand, some of the self-identified Egyptian black bloc activists list their "university" on their facebook page as "UNAM", the National Autonomous University of Mexico, which has a long history of affiliation with the Zapatistas, while a return to some of the analysis of black bloc tactics written during the pre-2001 period reveal similar debates and challenges (http://www.aljazeera.com/www.revleft.com/vb/black-bloc-and-t64598/index.html) facing the movement (http://www.ainfos.ca/01/jun/ainfos00170.html) in the West then and in Egypt today.
Revolution as creative destruction

In the wake of the Brotherhood/FJP's electoral victories, the anemic performance of the official "opposition" represented by the "National Salvation Front" and a population desperate for some sort of economic recovery, revolutionary forces were on the defensive in the last few months. But the mass protests and then violence surrounding the Port Said verdict and the second anniversary of the start of the uprising on January 25 has generated a recalibration of the political scales. The black bloc has become a public (and even more so media and government) symbol of the militant opposition that is quite literally on the march against the still unstable emerging order.
It's hard to overstate the dangers a well- yet self-organised and decentralised protest movement could present to Egypt's power elite. The country's military chief, Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, is not exaggerating when he says ongoing protests threaten a "collapse of the state (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egypts-military-chief-says-clashes-threaten-the-state/2013/01/29/8a8ee7ae-6a1b-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_story.html)"; nor are prosecutors wrong in considering those deploying black bloc tactics as "terrorists (http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/63579/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-prosecutorgeneral-orders-arrest-of-Black-Blo.aspx)". For what is the goal of revolution if not the collapse of the existing state, and how can protests aimed at that end not terrorise those presently in power?
All true revolutions involve a supreme act of creative destruction - an anarchic and ordering impulse that both destroys the old order while creating something new to take its place. The reason most revolutions either fizzle out or are hijacked or taken over by forces other than and often opposed to those who first led them lies precisely in the failure to move successfully from the destructive to the creative phase and discourse. This is as true of the axial religious revolutions, including the Abrahamic faiths, as well as for modern political revolutions in Mexico, Russia, China, or Iran.
It's anarchic impulse stems directly from the fact it is directly taking on the existing system. But if one state - that is, arrangement and network of power relations - is to be replaced by another one, a new system has to replace the one that disintegrates. Similarly, every true revolution is a powerful combination of what the sociologist Manuel Castells calls "resistance" and "project" identities; the former being narrow, closed and hostile to outsiders, the latter open, inviting and future-oriented.
You can't bring about the "downfall of the system" and the creation of one in its place without both. As important, you can't in the long term keep tens of millions of people supporting destruction if the positive vision of the future is not there for them to see. The problem is that while the two halves of the creative destruction equation naturally overlap for much of a revolutionary period, at some point the destruction has to subside and the creation has to become the dominant process, otherwise the revolution becomes either self-destructive and nihilistic, coopted, or redirected (often by the military, as epitomised by the phenomena of Bonapartism or Caesarism). In such a situation, one time supporters will turn against it in favour of the stability of a restored if changed ancien regime (if in new clothes).
What made Tahrir truly revolutionary during the 18 days, but sadly too few days since, was that in the Square you could see, feel, the possibility of a new Egypt, a different Egypt, an Egypt that could fulfill the dreams of the majority of its inhabitants. Young and old, rich and poor, Muslim and Copt, metalhead and Sufi, everyone radiated "silmiyya" - peacefulness - even as they screamed at the top of their lungs for days on end.
It was clearly a liminal, paradoxical experience, and one which, as Georgetown professor and Jadaliyya co-editor Adel Iskandar reminded me in a recent conversation on the present situation, was itself a two-part phenomenon: "the one from January 25 to February 4 which was violent, confrontational and black bloc-esque... and the Tahrir of the Utopian imaginary that dominated between February 4 to 11... The two continue to exist and manifest with oscillating frequency."
The key question is, of course, how to control the oscillation, particularly when you can't really tell either when the tipping point has arrived and which way it is tipping. For two years now the Egyptian "state" has been in this liminal state; the structure at its core - that is, the deep state of power holders through whom the vast majority of the networks of power and wealth flow in Egypt - has remained seemingly stable, and is enlarging a bit as the Brotherhood and its own networks of power and patronage are, with some difficulty, absorbed into this elite. But the state remains gelatinous and porous outside of the core nucleus, and if the opposition can siphon enough power and legitimacy away, the system could, as General al-Sissi warns, move towards collapse.
Millions, if not tens of millions of Egyptians understand that if the state structure rehardens or concretises in the shape it's apparently taken, they will be either frozen into pretty much the same place they were under Mubarak, or pushed even closer to the margins or completely outside the state. Indeed, the "state of emergency" once again declared, now by a democratically elected President, and the organised attacks on women by forces clearly aligned with the existing power regime, reflects this desperate need to clear as many people away from the power networks as possible before the new system hardens.

And that's where anarchist and black bloc tactics come in, as they constitute one of the most imaginative and creative responses to the hardening process (it's also why those commentators who have dismissed them as "pretty silly (http://www.arabist.net/blog/2013/1/29/the-black-bloc.html)" have little understanding of the history of such tactics or their proven utility in revolutionary Egypt). The question is how the majority of Egyptians who are not directly involved in this struggle (but directly affected by it) will understand this dynamic. How will they respond to the kind of tactical violence epitomised by black bloc tactics and anarchist principles if it continues and the government responds with more violence?
Will they see the creative and project aspect of the protests, and accept them as the only means not merely to finish the job of taking down the system but of building a truly new political and social economy for Egypt? Or will they focus mostly on the destructive and resistance element of it - as a one way path towards social, political and economic disintegration and chaos against which a religio-authoritarian system, however unpalatable in principle, seems the better choice?
However we might want to judge their tactics more broadly, their commitment and loyalty to other protesters are hard to question. When women were being brutally attacked in Tahrir Square last week, beyond the ability of groups like Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment (https://twitter.com/OpAntiSH) to protect them, black block activists have literally appeared (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/27/egypt-trapped-terrified-tahrir) out of nowhere (http://www.demotix.com/news/1750555/flamethrowers-used-protect-women-tahrir-mob-assault#media-1752911) to take on the often armed groups of attackers and protect the women and other activists.
Limited success, broader future?
It's worth noting that the success of Zapatismo has in fact been fairly limited on the ground. The Zapatistas have managed to carve out a relatively - and constantly threatened - autonomous zone for indigenous Mexicans living in the Chiapas region. It has not fundamentally changed the broader political economy of Mexico, never mind defeated or even seriously challenged "global neoliberalism", against which the movement launched its war on January 1 over 19 years ago (although Subcommandante Marcos' words to disappointed tourists hoping to visit the local Mayan ruins the day the revolution was launched - "I'm sorry. This is a revolution" - was surely repeated to scores of disappointed tourists unable to visit the Antiquities Museum at Tahrir Square during the revolution).
While holding off the brutal march of neoliberalism into the Lacondan mountains of Chiapas is certainly a victory, the Egyptian revolution cannot succeed if it's limited to one geographic region or social group; its initial success and ultimate victory depend precisely on its spread throughout society and across the country. There is no partial victory, and small "liberated" spaces, such as Tahrir, cannot survive surrounded by an ocean of Brotherhood-cum-military neoliberal authoritarianism.
It's clear that black bloc tactics and the militant revolutionaries deploying them will not on their own carry Egypt further than the Zapatistas have pushed Chiapas (which, interestingly, has a Human Development Index ranking of .646, almost identical to Egypt's .644), never mind Mexico as a whole. But if they succeed in throwing the country's power-holders off-balance and reinvigorating the youth led-opposition, and can provide a creative and ultimately positive vision and strategies for continuing the revolution into its third year and convincing increasing numbers of ordinary Egyptians to keep up he struggle for real freedom, dignity and social justice, they will have played an important role in Egypt's tortured transition from an authoritarian to truly democratic system.
Mark LeVine is professor of Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine, and distinguished visiting professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden and the author of the forthcoming book about the revolutions in the Arab world, The Five Year Old Who Toppled a Pharaoh.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

[Sasha]

Letter to the Egyptian Black Bloc (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2013/02/09/letter-to-the-egyptian-black-bloc/)

http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptletter1a.jpg (http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptletter1b.jpg) Feb 9th, 2013
by pfm (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/author/pfm/)
Read All About It (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/category/read-all-about-it/)
http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/images/readability.gif http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/images/f_logo.gif (http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://cwc.im/lettertoegypt)
1 Comment
(http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2013/02/09/letter-to-the-egyptian-black-bloc/#comments)
We present here, in Arabic and in English, an open letter from participants in black bloc (http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/pastfeatures/blocs.php) actions in the United States to participants in the Egyptian black bloc (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/201322103219816676.html), aimed at initiating a dialogue beyond the exchange of youtube videos. This is of interest to everyone around the world struggling for liberation, so please print and distribute widely:
http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptdownloada.jpg (http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptdownloadb.jpg)
Printable PDF in English [3.5 MB] (http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/pdfs/egyptblackbloc_english_imposed.pdf) Printable PDF in Arabic [3.7 MB] (http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/pdfs/egyptblackbloc_arabic_imposed.pdf)
The emergence of the black bloc in Egypt at this time should not surprise us as much as it surprises pacifists and authoritarians. The struggles of the 21st century will not be limited to nonviolent civil disobedience, nor to reformism; they are bound to involve open conflict with the state. Moreover, they will be increasingly international in scope and character. Whenever anyone anywhere around the world stands up for herself or himself—however awkwardly, however humbly—it sets a precedent for the next generation of resistance. Let’s rise to the occasion.

“Black Anger” by MC Sayed appeared on the two-year anniversary of the Egyptian uprising (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2011/02/02/egypt-today-tomorrow-the-world/). These clumsy subtitles are part of our effort to facilitate intercontinental communication.

The criticisms of the black bloc in Egypt are all too familiar. Those who have more privilege and power than you accuse you of being spoiled rich kids. Those who are not willing to run the same risks accuse you of cowardice. Those who have different goals than you complain that you are not strategic. Those for whom democracy means the amplification of their own voices insist that you should submit to majority rule in order to silence you. Those who depend on foreign military aid, who bow to foreign political pressure in selling out the people of Egypt, accuse you of importing foreign tactics. You are blamed for the violence of the police, when the police are always precisely as violent as they have to be to maintain their supremacy, and their ongoing violence is only visible because you resist it. Above all, authorities of all kinds do everything they can to isolate you from others who might resist.


To the Egyptian Black Bloc

from “black bloc anarchists” in the US
You strike the note—it sounds in us.
It is an honor to address you on account of your courage in the struggle still unfolding in Egypt.
For a decade and a half, we have participated in black bloc actions in the US and elsewhere around the world. Of course, we do not represent anyone or anything; the black bloc is a tactic, not a group—that is what makes it so frightening to our rulers. But on the basis of our experience with this tactic, we would like to share some of our perspectives in hopes of establishing a more explicit intercontinental dialogue.
We have already been in a kind of dialogue with you, exchanging signals of revolt across the ocean. We’ve circulated reports of your struggle here, and now we are seeing photos and videos of our actions appear in youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR_ZRGN0Cq0) collages from Egypt. But we want more dialogue than youtube collages allow. We want to be able to discuss strategy as well as tactics, and goals as well as strategy.
First and foremost: you are not alone. You are part of a struggle against oppressive power that is taking place all over the world. The same economy that is plundering Egypt wrecks our lives and land here in the US; the same networks of armed force that tear-gas you in Cairo maintain “order” in New York City. If we are to win anything in this struggle, we can only do so internationally.
It is embarrassing that it took us so long to address you in Arabic (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2013/02/09/letter-to-the-egyptian-black-bloc/#arabic)—that shows how unprepared we are for the opportunities history is offering. But that may change quickly in the coming years. It will have to.
We have gained our experience with black bloc tactics under what you might call adverse conditions—as a small minority acting against a stable power structure, without much support from the rest of society. The black bloc evolved in that context, and it is interesting to see it appear in a situation of more generalized revolt.
Indeed, the longevity of the black bloc surprises everyone; over and over it has been pronounced dead, yet it keeps coming back. This is because, like Anonymous, it expresses the spirit of our times (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2012/02/20/black-bloc-confidential/). In an era when tremendous disparities are maintained by surveillance and policing, any meaningful movement is bound to involve anonymity and clashes with the authorities.
The black bloc is important because it gives that anonymity and antagonism a political content: it ties specific struggles against oppression to the possibility of a generalized struggle against all oppressive power. It is a coup to “brand” anonymous collective confrontation with the authorities as anarchist—this means that everyone who stands up for himself against the authorities must ask, sooner or later, what his relationship to others’ struggles is.
It is fitting that the black bloc emerged in Egypt on the two-year anniversary of an uprising that only replaced one tyranny with another. The problems caused by capitalism and government cannot be solved by a mere change of regimes. It will take a struggle from the ground up—the emergence of social formations that can defend themselves against government and capitalism. This is not a matter of addressing demands to those in power, and it is not something that can be won simply by attacking presidential palaces. It requires us to oppose the structures of domination everywhere they appear, shifting our strategy from mere protest to the assertion of another way of life.
The criticisms of the black bloc in Egypt are all too familiar to us—we have watched reactionaries read from this same script since 1999. You are blamed for the violence of the police, when the police are always precisely as violent as they have to be to maintain their supremacy, and their ongoing violence is only visible because you resist it. Those who have more privilege and power than you accuse you of being spoiled rich kids. Those who are not willing to run the same risks accuse you of cowardice. Those who have different goals than you complain that you are not strategic. Those for whom democracy means the amplification of their own voices insist that you should submit to majority rule in order to silence you. Those who depend on foreign military aid, who bow to foreign political pressure in selling out the people of Egypt, accuse you of importing foreign tactics. Above all, authorities of all kinds do everything they can to isolate you from others who might resist.
Indeed, in our experience, this is the greatest risk in using the black bloc tactic: in giving an identity to anonymity and struggle, it offers the authorities an opportunity to make an “other” (http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/violence.php) out of us, to quarantine our revolt and our ideas. It is a mistake to view ourselves as separate from the rest of society. The black bloc is powerful and dangerous only so long as it remains a space of revolt that anyone can flow into—the tip of the iceberg of something much broader. Our rulers do not fear anarchists—they fear that anarchist values and practices will spread.
It is important not to impose a dichotomy between being honest about our goals and participating in movements larger than us. On one hand, we must be clear that we reject all forms of domination; if we do not, everyone will have to learn again and again how little police and the poverty they impose change from one government to the next. This is why we should not hide our values under the same vague banner of “democracy” (http://www.crimethinc.com/tools/vote/) that disguises others’ hunger for power: doing so only legitimizes the structures that will be used against us later. But at the same time, we have to maintain the openness that enables tactics and ideas to circulate. Anarchism is not an identity, it has no meaning in isolation; it is a relationship that must spread.
In the United States, anarchists have erred on both sides of this dichotomy. Often, we have served as shock troops and free labor for liberal causes, taking great risks to advance their agendas while failing to act on our own analysis. We hoped this would connect us to the rest of society, but connections that depend on us hiding our values are meaningless.
Other times, anarchists have acted as though we could accomplish our goals on our own, winding up in a private grudge match with the state that everyone else assumed had nothing to do with them. Certainly, we can’t wait for mass consensus to begin our project of revolt; we can only find others in revolt by rising up ourselves—but the point is to find others. Over and over, we’ve thought our own dreams too wild to propose, only to see other people enacting them spontaneously. In fact, the time is ripe for us to advance our proposals: capitalism is in crisis around the world, and soon billions will have to choose between totalitarianism and the kind of freedom no government can provide.
If it is true that the state cannot solve our problems, all who wish to wield its authority will discredit themselves once they assume power. The sooner all the Muslim Brotherhoods of the world associate themselves with the state the better: this will clarify things for those who do not yet understand why anyone would be an anarchist. When the opposition parties join the rulers in telling everyone to get out of the street and the streets remain full, this suggests that people are catching on. In this situation, anarchists could help turn regime change into social revolution, a full-scale transformation of everyday life.
The US government needs Egypt to have a government with whom to coordinate the resource extraction necessary for global capitalism. The black bloc scares them because it is not legible in their conception of politics—it offers no one to negotiate with. They want to bring all the political parties into “dialogue” in order to map everything in their structures of power; we want to take the struggle out of the hands of political parties entirely, establishing dialogue among people rather than with parties or governments. We seek to spread struggles in which we communicate with and inspire others directly, as you have inspired us.
We will continue this dialogue in the most meaningful way we can—by continuing to challenge the power structures here in the United States, which underpin those in Egypt and elsewhere around the world. But if any of you can send us reports from your struggles, or translate materials between English and Arabic, we would be glad to hear from you. May we meet in the streets of a stateless world.
rollingthunder @ crimethinc.com
Further Reading
10 Points on the Black Bloc (http://riselikelions.net/pamphlets/14/10-points-on-the-black-bloc) [Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6MxpsdXfrE)]
Introduction to the Black Bloc (http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/pastfeatures/blocs.php)
Black Bloc Safety and Fashion Guide (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2008/10/11/fashion-tips-for-the-brave/)
Debate about Black Bloc Tactics (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2012/09/17/post-debate-debrief-video-and-libretto/)
http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptletter2a.jpg

من “الأناركيين البلاك بلوك” في الولايات المتحدة

تدقون النغمة – فيتردد صداها فينا



إنه لشرف لنا أن نخاطبكم نظرا لشجاعتكم في النضال الذي مازال مفتوحا في مصر.
لقد شاركنا لمدة عِقد ونصف في أعمال البلاك بلوك في الولايات المتحدة وفي غيرها من البلدان حول العالم. بالطبع نحن لا نمثل أحدا ما أو جهة ما؛ فالبلاك بلوك طريقة وليست جماعة – وهذا ما يجعلها مخيفة جدا لحكامنا. لكن بناء على خبرتنا مع هذه الطريقة، نود أن نشارككم بعضا من وجهات نظرنا على أمل تأسيس حوار أكثر وضوحا ما بين القارات.
لقد كنا بالفعل في نوع من الحوار معكم؛ متبادلين إشارات الثورة عبر المحيط. لقد وزعنا تقارير عن نضالكم هنا، والآن نرى صورا وفيديوهات لأعمالنا تظهر في مقاطع على اليوتيوب من مصر. لكننا نريد حوارا أكثر مما تسمح به مقاطع اليوتيوب. إننا نريد أن نتمكن من مناقشة الاستراتيجية بنفس القدر الذي نريد أن نناقش به التكتيكات، وأن نناقش الأهداف بنفس القدر الذي نناقش به الاستراتيجية.
أولا وأخيرا : أنتم لستم وحدكم. أنتم جزء من نضال ضد القوى القمعية يحدث في كل أنحاء العالم. فالاقتصاد الذي ينهب مصر يدمر حياتنا وأرضنا هنا في الولايات المتحدة، ونفس شبكات القوات المسلحة التي تلقي عليكم بقنابل الغاز المسيل للدموع في القاهرة هي التي تحفظ “النظام” في مدينة نيويورك. إذا كان لنا أن نفوز بأي شيء في هذا النضال، فلن يمكننا أن نفعل ذلك إلا دوليا.
إنه لشيء مخجل أن استغرقنا كل هذا الوقت الطويل لمخاطبتكم بالعربية؛ وهو الأمر الذي يكشف كم أننا غير مستعدين للفرص التي يقدمها لنا التاريخ. لكن من المحتمل أن يتغير هذا بسرعة في السنوات القادمة. لابد وأن يحدث هذا.
لقد اكتسبنا خبرتنا بتكتيكات البلاك بلوك تحت ما يمكن أن تسموه بالظروف المعاكسة؛ باعتبارنا أقلية صغيرة تعمل ضد بنية قوة مستقرة، ودون دعم كبير من بقية المجتمع. تطورت البلاك بلوك في هذا السياق، ومن المثير رؤيتها تظهر في موقف ثوري أكثر عمومية.
بالفعل يدهش طول عمر البلاك بلوك الجميع؛ فمرة بعد أخرى يتم الإعلان عن وفاتها، لكنها تستمر في العودة من جديد. ذلك لأنها – مثل مجموعة أنونيموس (المجهولون : وهم مجموعة مستقلة عبر الإنترنت تناضل عبر الاختراق البرامجي) – تعبر عن روح زماننا. في عصر يتم الحفاظ فيه على الفوارق الهائلة عن طريق المراقبة والشرطة، تكون أي حركة لها معنى مضطرة إلى التزام إخفاء الهوية والصدامات مع السلطات.
البلاك بلوك مهمة لأنها تعطي لهذه المجهولية والعداء محتوى سياسيا : فهي تربط نضالات معينة ضد القمع بإمكانية نضال عام ضد كل القوى القمعية. إنها ضربة موفقة أن “نَسِمَ” المواجهة الجماعية مجهولة الأسماء مع السلطات بالأناركية – فهذا يعني أن كل من يقف لمصلحة ذاته ضد السلطات يجب أن يتساءل – عاجلا أو آجلا – ما هي علاقته بنضالات الآخرين.
إنه من المناسب أن ظهرت حركة البلاك بلوك في مصر في الذكرى الثانية لثورة استبدلت فقط حكما استبداديا بآخر. إن المشكلات التي سببتها الرأسمالية والحكومة لا يمكن أن يحلها مجرد تغيير للأنظمة. سيتطلب الأمر نضالا من أسفل إلى أعلى – بظهور تشكيلات اجتماعية يمكنها الدفاع عن نفسها ضد الحكومة والرأسمالية. الأمر ليس له علاقة بتوجيه طلبات لمن هم في السلطة، ولا هو شيء يمكن الفوز به ببساطة عن طريق مهاجمة القصور الرئاسية. يتطلب الأمر منا مقاومة كل كيانات الهيمنة في كل مكان تظهر فيه، وتغيير استراتيجيتنا من مجرد احتجاج إلى تأكيد شكل آخر للحياة.
إن الانتقادات التي توجه إلى البلاك بلوك في مصر مألوفة بشكل زائد عن اللزوم لنا – لقد شاهدنا رجعيين يقرؤون من نفس السيناريو منذ عام 1999. أنتم تُلامون على عنف الشرطة، في الوقت الذي يكون فيه رجال الشرطة عنيفين كما يجب أن يكونوا بالضبط ليحافظوا على تفوقهم، وعنفهم المستمر يظهر للعيان فقط لأنكم تقاومونه. هؤلاء الذين يملكون امتيازات وقوة أكثر منكم يتهمونكم بأنكم عيال أثرياء مدللون. هؤلاء الذين هم غير راغبين في التعرض لنفس المخاطرات يتهمونكم بالجبن. هؤلاء الذين لديهم أهداف مختلفة عنكم يشتكون من أنكم غير استراتيجيين. هؤلاء الذين تعني الديمقراطية لهم تضخيم أصواتهم يصرون على أنكم يجب أن تخضعوا لحكم الأغلبية لكي يسكتوكم. هؤلاء الذين يعتمدون على المساعدات العسكرية الأجنبية، والذين ينحنون أمام الضغوط السياسية الأجنبية لبيع شعب مصر، يتهمونكم باستيراد تكتيكات أجنبية. قبل كل شيء، تفعل السلطات من كل نوع كل ما يمكنها فعله لعزلكم عن الآخرين الذين من المحتمل أن يشتركوا في المقاومة.
في الحقيقة ومن خلال خبرتنا، تلك هي المخاطرة الأكبر في استخدام تكتيك البلاك بلوك : أي في إعطاء هوية للمجهولية والنضال، فهذا يقدم للسلطات فرصة أن يجعلوا منا “آخر”، أن يحجروا على ثورتنا وأفكارنا. إنه لمن الخطأ أن نرى أنفسنا كجزء منفصل عن بقية المجتمع. تظل البلاك بلوك قوية وخطيرة طالما ظلت مساحة للثورة يمكن لأي شخص أن يدخل في غمارها – قمة جبل الجليد لشيء أكثر اتساعا بكثير. إن حكامنا لا يخافون الأناركيين – إنهم يخافون من أن تنتشر القيم والممارسات الأناركية.
من المهم ألا نفرض انقساما بين كوننا صادقين مع أهدافنا وبين المشاركة في حركات أكبر منا. من ناحية يجب أن نكون واضحين بشأن رفضنا لكل أشكال الهيمنة، إذا لم نفعل ذلك سيضطر الجميع لأن يتعلموا مرة بعد أخرى كيف أن الشرطة والفقر الذي تفرضه نادرا ما يتغيران من حكومة إلى الحكومة التي تليها. هذا هو السبب في أننا لا ينبغي أن نخفي قيمنا تحت نفس لافتة “الديمقراطية” المبهمة التي يتنكر وراءها جوع الآخرين للسلطة؛ فلن يؤدي هذا إلا إلى إضفاء الشرعية على الهياكل التي ستُستخدم ضدنا فيما بعد. لكن في نفس الوقت يجب أن نحافظ على الانفتاح الذي سيمكِّن تكتيكاتنا وأفكارنا من أن تنتشر. الأناركية ليست هوية، وليس لها معنى في حالة العزلة، إنها علاقة يجب أن تنتشر.
لقد أخطأ الأناركيون في الولايات المتحدة على كلا الناحيتين لهذا الانقسام. لقد عملنا كثيرا كقوات صدامية وعمال مجانيين للقضايا الليبرالية، وخضنا مخاطر هائلة للدفع بأجنداتهم قدما مع فشلنا في العمل وفقا لتحليلاتنا الخاصة. كنا نأمل أن يؤدي هذا إلى ربطنا ببقية المجتمع، لكن الروابط التي تعتمد على كوننا نخفي قيمنا هي روابط بلا معنى.
في أوقات أخرى عمل الأناركيون كما لو كان بإمكاننا أن نحقق أهدافنا بالاعتماد على أنفسنا فقط، وانتهى الأمر بنا إلى مباراة خاصة في الضغينة مع الدولة رأى كل من هم خارجها أن لا شأن لهم بها. بالتأكيد لا يمكننا انتظار الإجماع الجماهيري حتى نبدأ مشروع ثورتنا، فلا يمكننا أن نجد آخرين في الثورة معنا إلا بأن نثور بأنفسنا – لكن المهم هو أن نجد آخرين. لقد اعتقدنا مرارا وتكرارا أن أحلامنا أكثر جرأة من أن نعرضها، فقط لنرى أناسا آخرين يفعلونها بشكل عفوي. في الحقيقة لقد حان الوقت لنا كي نقدم مقترحاتنا : إن الرأسمالية في أزمة في كل أنحاء العالم، وقريبا سيضطر المليارات من البشر للاختيار ما بين الشمولية وما بين ذلك النوع من الحرية الذي لا تستطيع أي حكومة أن تقدمه.
إذا كان صحيحا أن الدولة لا تستطيع أن تحل مشاكلنا، فإن كل من يتمنون ممارسة سلطتها سيفقدون مصداقيتهم بمجرد أن يتولوا هذه السلطة. كلما أسرع جميع الإخوان المسلمين في العالم نحو ربط أنفسهم بالدولة كلما كان ذلك أفضل : سيوضح هذا الأمور لهؤلاء الذين لم يفهموا بعد لماذا يصبح المرء أناركيا. عندما تنضم أحزاب المعارضة إلى الحكام في دعوة الجميع لمغادرة الشارع وتظل الشوارع مملوءة فهذا يشير إلى أن الناس بدأوا يدركون الفكرة. في هذا الموقف يمكن للأناركيين أن يسهموا في تحويل تغير النظام إلى ثورة اجتماعية، إلى تحول كامل في الحياة اليومية.
تحتاج حكومة الولايات المتحدة إلى أن تكون لدى مصر حكومة تنسق معها استخراج الموارد الضرورية للرأسمالية العالمية. وتخيفهم البلاك بلوك لأنها ليست واضحة في مفهومهم عن السياسة – فهي لا تقدم أحدا يمكن التفاوض معه. إنهم يريدون أن يجمعوا كل الأحزاب السياسية في “حوار” لكي يرسموا خريطة تفصيلية لكل شيء في هياكل سطوتهم؛ إننا نريد أن ننتزع النضال من أيدي الأحزاب السياسية بشكل كامل، مؤسسين لحوار بين الناس بدلا من الحوار مع الأحزاب أو الحكومات. نحن نسعى لنشر نضالات نتواصل فيها مع الآخرين ونلهمهم بشكل مباشر، مثلما ألهمتمونا أنتم.
سنتابع هذا الحوار بأكثر طريقة لها معنى يمكننا إياها؛ وذلك بالاستمرار في تحدي هياكل القوة هنا في الولايات المتحدة، والتي تدعم مثيلتها في مصر وفي أماكن أخرى حول العالم. لكن إذا كان يمكن لأي أحد منكم أن يرسل إلينا تقارير من نضالاتكم، أو يترجم موادا بين الإنجليزية والعربية، فسيسعدنا أن نتواصل معكم. على أمل بأن نلتقي في شوارع عالم بلا دولة. نسخة من هذا المقال جاهزة للطباعة على هذا الرابط pdf
www.crimethinc.com/lettertoegypt





source: http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2013/02/09/letter-to-the-egyptian-black-bloc/

[Sasha]

Letter to the Egyptian Black Bloc (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2013/02/09/letter-to-the-egyptian-black-bloc/)

http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptletter1a.jpg (http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptletter1b.jpg) Feb 9th, 2013
by pfm (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/author/pfm/)
Read All About It (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/category/read-all-about-it/)
http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/images/readability.gif http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/images/f_logo.gif (http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://cwc.im/lettertoegypt)
1 Comment
(http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2013/02/09/letter-to-the-egyptian-black-bloc/#comments)
We present here, in Arabic and in English, an open letter from participants in black bloc (http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/pastfeatures/blocs.php) actions in the United States to participants in the Egyptian black bloc (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/201322103219816676.html), aimed at initiating a dialogue beyond the exchange of youtube videos. This is of interest to everyone around the world struggling for liberation, so please print and distribute widely:
http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptdownloada.jpg (http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptdownloadb.jpg)
Printable PDF in English [3.5 MB] (http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/pdfs/egyptblackbloc_english_imposed.pdf) Printable PDF in Arabic [3.7 MB] (http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/pdfs/egyptblackbloc_arabic_imposed.pdf)
The emergence of the black bloc in Egypt at this time should not surprise us as much as it surprises pacifists and authoritarians. The struggles of the 21st century will not be limited to nonviolent civil disobedience, nor to reformism; they are bound to involve open conflict with the state. Moreover, they will be increasingly international in scope and character. Whenever anyone anywhere around the world stands up for herself or himself—however awkwardly, however humbly—it sets a precedent for the next generation of resistance. Let’s rise to the occasion.

“Black Anger” by MC Sayed appeared on the two-year anniversary of the Egyptian uprising (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2011/02/02/egypt-today-tomorrow-the-world/). These clumsy subtitles are part of our effort to facilitate intercontinental communication.

The criticisms of the black bloc in Egypt are all too familiar. Those who have more privilege and power than you accuse you of being spoiled rich kids. Those who are not willing to run the same risks accuse you of cowardice. Those who have different goals than you complain that you are not strategic. Those for whom democracy means the amplification of their own voices insist that you should submit to majority rule in order to silence you. Those who depend on foreign military aid, who bow to foreign political pressure in selling out the people of Egypt, accuse you of importing foreign tactics. You are blamed for the violence of the police, when the police are always precisely as violent as they have to be to maintain their supremacy, and their ongoing violence is only visible because you resist it. Above all, authorities of all kinds do everything they can to isolate you from others who might resist.


To the Egyptian Black Bloc

from “black bloc anarchists” in the US
You strike the note—it sounds in us.
It is an honor to address you on account of your courage in the struggle still unfolding in Egypt.
For a decade and a half, we have participated in black bloc actions in the US and elsewhere around the world. Of course, we do not represent anyone or anything; the black bloc is a tactic, not a group—that is what makes it so frightening to our rulers. But on the basis of our experience with this tactic, we would like to share some of our perspectives in hopes of establishing a more explicit intercontinental dialogue.
We have already been in a kind of dialogue with you, exchanging signals of revolt across the ocean. We’ve circulated reports of your struggle here, and now we are seeing photos and videos of our actions appear in youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR_ZRGN0Cq0) collages from Egypt. But we want more dialogue than youtube collages allow. We want to be able to discuss strategy as well as tactics, and goals as well as strategy.
First and foremost: you are not alone. You are part of a struggle against oppressive power that is taking place all over the world. The same economy that is plundering Egypt wrecks our lives and land here in the US; the same networks of armed force that tear-gas you in Cairo maintain “order” in New York City. If we are to win anything in this struggle, we can only do so internationally.
It is embarrassing that it took us so long to address you in Arabic (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2013/02/09/letter-to-the-egyptian-black-bloc/#arabic)—that shows how unprepared we are for the opportunities history is offering. But that may change quickly in the coming years. It will have to.
We have gained our experience with black bloc tactics under what you might call adverse conditions—as a small minority acting against a stable power structure, without much support from the rest of society. The black bloc evolved in that context, and it is interesting to see it appear in a situation of more generalized revolt.
Indeed, the longevity of the black bloc surprises everyone; over and over it has been pronounced dead, yet it keeps coming back. This is because, like Anonymous, it expresses the spirit of our times (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2012/02/20/black-bloc-confidential/). In an era when tremendous disparities are maintained by surveillance and policing, any meaningful movement is bound to involve anonymity and clashes with the authorities.
The black bloc is important because it gives that anonymity and antagonism a political content: it ties specific struggles against oppression to the possibility of a generalized struggle against all oppressive power. It is a coup to “brand” anonymous collective confrontation with the authorities as anarchist—this means that everyone who stands up for himself against the authorities must ask, sooner or later, what his relationship to others’ struggles is.
It is fitting that the black bloc emerged in Egypt on the two-year anniversary of an uprising that only replaced one tyranny with another. The problems caused by capitalism and government cannot be solved by a mere change of regimes. It will take a struggle from the ground up—the emergence of social formations that can defend themselves against government and capitalism. This is not a matter of addressing demands to those in power, and it is not something that can be won simply by attacking presidential palaces. It requires us to oppose the structures of domination everywhere they appear, shifting our strategy from mere protest to the assertion of another way of life.
The criticisms of the black bloc in Egypt are all too familiar to us—we have watched reactionaries read from this same script since 1999. You are blamed for the violence of the police, when the police are always precisely as violent as they have to be to maintain their supremacy, and their ongoing violence is only visible because you resist it. Those who have more privilege and power than you accuse you of being spoiled rich kids. Those who are not willing to run the same risks accuse you of cowardice. Those who have different goals than you complain that you are not strategic. Those for whom democracy means the amplification of their own voices insist that you should submit to majority rule in order to silence you. Those who depend on foreign military aid, who bow to foreign political pressure in selling out the people of Egypt, accuse you of importing foreign tactics. Above all, authorities of all kinds do everything they can to isolate you from others who might resist.
Indeed, in our experience, this is the greatest risk in using the black bloc tactic: in giving an identity to anonymity and struggle, it offers the authorities an opportunity to make an “other” (http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/violence.php) out of us, to quarantine our revolt and our ideas. It is a mistake to view ourselves as separate from the rest of society. The black bloc is powerful and dangerous only so long as it remains a space of revolt that anyone can flow into—the tip of the iceberg of something much broader. Our rulers do not fear anarchists—they fear that anarchist values and practices will spread.
It is important not to impose a dichotomy between being honest about our goals and participating in movements larger than us. On one hand, we must be clear that we reject all forms of domination; if we do not, everyone will have to learn again and again how little police and the poverty they impose change from one government to the next. This is why we should not hide our values under the same vague banner of “democracy” (http://www.crimethinc.com/tools/vote/) that disguises others’ hunger for power: doing so only legitimizes the structures that will be used against us later. But at the same time, we have to maintain the openness that enables tactics and ideas to circulate. Anarchism is not an identity, it has no meaning in isolation; it is a relationship that must spread.
In the United States, anarchists have erred on both sides of this dichotomy. Often, we have served as shock troops and free labor for liberal causes, taking great risks to advance their agendas while failing to act on our own analysis. We hoped this would connect us to the rest of society, but connections that depend on us hiding our values are meaningless.
Other times, anarchists have acted as though we could accomplish our goals on our own, winding up in a private grudge match with the state that everyone else assumed had nothing to do with them. Certainly, we can’t wait for mass consensus to begin our project of revolt; we can only find others in revolt by rising up ourselves—but the point is to find others. Over and over, we’ve thought our own dreams too wild to propose, only to see other people enacting them spontaneously. In fact, the time is ripe for us to advance our proposals: capitalism is in crisis around the world, and soon billions will have to choose between totalitarianism and the kind of freedom no government can provide.
If it is true that the state cannot solve our problems, all who wish to wield its authority will discredit themselves once they assume power. The sooner all the Muslim Brotherhoods of the world associate themselves with the state the better: this will clarify things for those who do not yet understand why anyone would be an anarchist. When the opposition parties join the rulers in telling everyone to get out of the street and the streets remain full, this suggests that people are catching on. In this situation, anarchists could help turn regime change into social revolution, a full-scale transformation of everyday life.
The US government needs Egypt to have a government with whom to coordinate the resource extraction necessary for global capitalism. The black bloc scares them because it is not legible in their conception of politics—it offers no one to negotiate with. They want to bring all the political parties into “dialogue” in order to map everything in their structures of power; we want to take the struggle out of the hands of political parties entirely, establishing dialogue among people rather than with parties or governments. We seek to spread struggles in which we communicate with and inspire others directly, as you have inspired us.
We will continue this dialogue in the most meaningful way we can—by continuing to challenge the power structures here in the United States, which underpin those in Egypt and elsewhere around the world. But if any of you can send us reports from your struggles, or translate materials between English and Arabic, we would be glad to hear from you. May we meet in the streets of a stateless world.
rollingthunder @ crimethinc.com
Further Reading
10 Points on the Black Bloc (http://riselikelions.net/pamphlets/14/10-points-on-the-black-bloc) [Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6MxpsdXfrE)]
Introduction to the Black Bloc (http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/pastfeatures/blocs.php)
Black Bloc Safety and Fashion Guide (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2008/10/11/fashion-tips-for-the-brave/)
Debate about Black Bloc Tactics (http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2012/09/17/post-debate-debrief-video-and-libretto/)
http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/egyptletter2a.jpg

من “الأناركيين البلاك بلوك” في الولايات المتحدة

تدقون النغمة – فيتردد صداها فينا



إنه لشرف لنا أن نخاطبكم نظرا لشجاعتكم في النضال الذي مازال مفتوحا في مصر.
لقد شاركنا لمدة عِقد ونصف في أعمال البلاك بلوك في الولايات المتحدة وفي غيرها من البلدان حول العالم. بالطبع نحن لا نمثل أحدا ما أو جهة ما؛ فالبلاك بلوك طريقة وليست جماعة – وهذا ما يجعلها مخيفة جدا لحكامنا. لكن بناء على خبرتنا مع هذه الطريقة، نود أن نشارككم بعضا من وجهات نظرنا على أمل تأسيس حوار أكثر وضوحا ما بين القارات.
لقد كنا بالفعل في نوع من الحوار معكم؛ متبادلين إشارات الثورة عبر المحيط. لقد وزعنا تقارير عن نضالكم هنا، والآن نرى صورا وفيديوهات لأعمالنا تظهر في مقاطع على اليوتيوب من مصر. لكننا نريد حوارا أكثر مما تسمح به مقاطع اليوتيوب. إننا نريد أن نتمكن من مناقشة الاستراتيجية بنفس القدر الذي نريد أن نناقش به التكتيكات، وأن نناقش الأهداف بنفس القدر الذي نناقش به الاستراتيجية.
أولا وأخيرا : أنتم لستم وحدكم. أنتم جزء من نضال ضد القوى القمعية يحدث في كل أنحاء العالم. فالاقتصاد الذي ينهب مصر يدمر حياتنا وأرضنا هنا في الولايات المتحدة، ونفس شبكات القوات المسلحة التي تلقي عليكم بقنابل الغاز المسيل للدموع في القاهرة هي التي تحفظ “النظام” في مدينة نيويورك. إذا كان لنا أن نفوز بأي شيء في هذا النضال، فلن يمكننا أن نفعل ذلك إلا دوليا.
إنه لشيء مخجل أن استغرقنا كل هذا الوقت الطويل لمخاطبتكم بالعربية؛ وهو الأمر الذي يكشف كم أننا غير مستعدين للفرص التي يقدمها لنا التاريخ. لكن من المحتمل أن يتغير هذا بسرعة في السنوات القادمة. لابد وأن يحدث هذا.
لقد اكتسبنا خبرتنا بتكتيكات البلاك بلوك تحت ما يمكن أن تسموه بالظروف المعاكسة؛ باعتبارنا أقلية صغيرة تعمل ضد بنية قوة مستقرة، ودون دعم كبير من بقية المجتمع. تطورت البلاك بلوك في هذا السياق، ومن المثير رؤيتها تظهر في موقف ثوري أكثر عمومية.
بالفعل يدهش طول عمر البلاك بلوك الجميع؛ فمرة بعد أخرى يتم الإعلان عن وفاتها، لكنها تستمر في العودة من جديد. ذلك لأنها – مثل مجموعة أنونيموس (المجهولون : وهم مجموعة مستقلة عبر الإنترنت تناضل عبر الاختراق البرامجي) – تعبر عن روح زماننا. في عصر يتم الحفاظ فيه على الفوارق الهائلة عن طريق المراقبة والشرطة، تكون أي حركة لها معنى مضطرة إلى التزام إخفاء الهوية والصدامات مع السلطات.
البلاك بلوك مهمة لأنها تعطي لهذه المجهولية والعداء محتوى سياسيا : فهي تربط نضالات معينة ضد القمع بإمكانية نضال عام ضد كل القوى القمعية. إنها ضربة موفقة أن “نَسِمَ” المواجهة الجماعية مجهولة الأسماء مع السلطات بالأناركية – فهذا يعني أن كل من يقف لمصلحة ذاته ضد السلطات يجب أن يتساءل – عاجلا أو آجلا – ما هي علاقته بنضالات الآخرين.
إنه من المناسب أن ظهرت حركة البلاك بلوك في مصر في الذكرى الثانية لثورة استبدلت فقط حكما استبداديا بآخر. إن المشكلات التي سببتها الرأسمالية والحكومة لا يمكن أن يحلها مجرد تغيير للأنظمة. سيتطلب الأمر نضالا من أسفل إلى أعلى – بظهور تشكيلات اجتماعية يمكنها الدفاع عن نفسها ضد الحكومة والرأسمالية. الأمر ليس له علاقة بتوجيه طلبات لمن هم في السلطة، ولا هو شيء يمكن الفوز به ببساطة عن طريق مهاجمة القصور الرئاسية. يتطلب الأمر منا مقاومة كل كيانات الهيمنة في كل مكان تظهر فيه، وتغيير استراتيجيتنا من مجرد احتجاج إلى تأكيد شكل آخر للحياة.
إن الانتقادات التي توجه إلى البلاك بلوك في مصر مألوفة بشكل زائد عن اللزوم لنا – لقد شاهدنا رجعيين يقرؤون من نفس السيناريو منذ عام 1999. أنتم تُلامون على عنف الشرطة، في الوقت الذي يكون فيه رجال الشرطة عنيفين كما يجب أن يكونوا بالضبط ليحافظوا على تفوقهم، وعنفهم المستمر يظهر للعيان فقط لأنكم تقاومونه. هؤلاء الذين يملكون امتيازات وقوة أكثر منكم يتهمونكم بأنكم عيال أثرياء مدللون. هؤلاء الذين هم غير راغبين في التعرض لنفس المخاطرات يتهمونكم بالجبن. هؤلاء الذين لديهم أهداف مختلفة عنكم يشتكون من أنكم غير استراتيجيين. هؤلاء الذين تعني الديمقراطية لهم تضخيم أصواتهم يصرون على أنكم يجب أن تخضعوا لحكم الأغلبية لكي يسكتوكم. هؤلاء الذين يعتمدون على المساعدات العسكرية الأجنبية، والذين ينحنون أمام الضغوط السياسية الأجنبية لبيع شعب مصر، يتهمونكم باستيراد تكتيكات أجنبية. قبل كل شيء، تفعل السلطات من كل نوع كل ما يمكنها فعله لعزلكم عن الآخرين الذين من المحتمل أن يشتركوا في المقاومة.
في الحقيقة ومن خلال خبرتنا، تلك هي المخاطرة الأكبر في استخدام تكتيك البلاك بلوك : أي في إعطاء هوية للمجهولية والنضال، فهذا يقدم للسلطات فرصة أن يجعلوا منا “آخر”، أن يحجروا على ثورتنا وأفكارنا. إنه لمن الخطأ أن نرى أنفسنا كجزء منفصل عن بقية المجتمع. تظل البلاك بلوك قوية وخطيرة طالما ظلت مساحة للثورة يمكن لأي شخص أن يدخل في غمارها – قمة جبل الجليد لشيء أكثر اتساعا بكثير. إن حكامنا لا يخافون الأناركيين – إنهم يخافون من أن تنتشر القيم والممارسات الأناركية.
من المهم ألا نفرض انقساما بين كوننا صادقين مع أهدافنا وبين المشاركة في حركات أكبر منا. من ناحية يجب أن نكون واضحين بشأن رفضنا لكل أشكال الهيمنة، إذا لم نفعل ذلك سيضطر الجميع لأن يتعلموا مرة بعد أخرى كيف أن الشرطة والفقر الذي تفرضه نادرا ما يتغيران من حكومة إلى الحكومة التي تليها. هذا هو السبب في أننا لا ينبغي أن نخفي قيمنا تحت نفس لافتة “الديمقراطية” المبهمة التي يتنكر وراءها جوع الآخرين للسلطة؛ فلن يؤدي هذا إلا إلى إضفاء الشرعية على الهياكل التي ستُستخدم ضدنا فيما بعد. لكن في نفس الوقت يجب أن نحافظ على الانفتاح الذي سيمكِّن تكتيكاتنا وأفكارنا من أن تنتشر. الأناركية ليست هوية، وليس لها معنى في حالة العزلة، إنها علاقة يجب أن تنتشر.
لقد أخطأ الأناركيون في الولايات المتحدة على كلا الناحيتين لهذا الانقسام. لقد عملنا كثيرا كقوات صدامية وعمال مجانيين للقضايا الليبرالية، وخضنا مخاطر هائلة للدفع بأجنداتهم قدما مع فشلنا في العمل وفقا لتحليلاتنا الخاصة. كنا نأمل أن يؤدي هذا إلى ربطنا ببقية المجتمع، لكن الروابط التي تعتمد على كوننا نخفي قيمنا هي روابط بلا معنى.
في أوقات أخرى عمل الأناركيون كما لو كان بإمكاننا أن نحقق أهدافنا بالاعتماد على أنفسنا فقط، وانتهى الأمر بنا إلى مباراة خاصة في الضغينة مع الدولة رأى كل من هم خارجها أن لا شأن لهم بها. بالتأكيد لا يمكننا انتظار الإجماع الجماهيري حتى نبدأ مشروع ثورتنا، فلا يمكننا أن نجد آخرين في الثورة معنا إلا بأن نثور بأنفسنا – لكن المهم هو أن نجد آخرين. لقد اعتقدنا مرارا وتكرارا أن أحلامنا أكثر جرأة من أن نعرضها، فقط لنرى أناسا آخرين يفعلونها بشكل عفوي. في الحقيقة لقد حان الوقت لنا كي نقدم مقترحاتنا : إن الرأسمالية في أزمة في كل أنحاء العالم، وقريبا سيضطر المليارات من البشر للاختيار ما بين الشمولية وما بين ذلك النوع من الحرية الذي لا تستطيع أي حكومة أن تقدمه.
إذا كان صحيحا أن الدولة لا تستطيع أن تحل مشاكلنا، فإن كل من يتمنون ممارسة سلطتها سيفقدون مصداقيتهم بمجرد أن يتولوا هذه السلطة. كلما أسرع جميع الإخوان المسلمين في العالم نحو ربط أنفسهم بالدولة كلما كان ذلك أفضل : سيوضح هذا الأمور لهؤلاء الذين لم يفهموا بعد لماذا يصبح المرء أناركيا. عندما تنضم أحزاب المعارضة إلى الحكام في دعوة الجميع لمغادرة الشارع وتظل الشوارع مملوءة فهذا يشير إلى أن الناس بدأوا يدركون الفكرة. في هذا الموقف يمكن للأناركيين أن يسهموا في تحويل تغير النظام إلى ثورة اجتماعية، إلى تحول كامل في الحياة اليومية.
تحتاج حكومة الولايات المتحدة إلى أن تكون لدى مصر حكومة تنسق معها استخراج الموارد الضرورية للرأسمالية العالمية. وتخيفهم البلاك بلوك لأنها ليست واضحة في مفهومهم عن السياسة – فهي لا تقدم أحدا يمكن التفاوض معه. إنهم يريدون أن يجمعوا كل الأحزاب السياسية في “حوار” لكي يرسموا خريطة تفصيلية لكل شيء في هياكل سطوتهم؛ إننا نريد أن ننتزع النضال من أيدي الأحزاب السياسية بشكل كامل، مؤسسين لحوار بين الناس بدلا من الحوار مع الأحزاب أو الحكومات. نحن نسعى لنشر نضالات نتواصل فيها مع الآخرين ونلهمهم بشكل مباشر، مثلما ألهمتمونا أنتم.
سنتابع هذا الحوار بأكثر طريقة لها معنى يمكننا إياها؛ وذلك بالاستمرار في تحدي هياكل القوة هنا في الولايات المتحدة، والتي تدعم مثيلتها في مصر وفي أماكن أخرى حول العالم. لكن إذا كان يمكن لأي أحد منكم أن يرسل إلينا تقارير من نضالاتكم، أو يترجم موادا بين الإنجليزية والعربية، فسيسعدنا أن نتواصل معكم. على أمل بأن نلتقي في شوارع عالم بلا دولة. نسخة من هذا المقال جاهزة للطباعة على هذا الرابط pdf
www.crimethinc.com/lettertoegypt





source: http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2013/02/09/letter-to-the-egyptian-black-bloc/

[Sasha]

Egypt detains alleged members of ‘Black Bloc’ anti-Mursi group

Sunday, 21 April 2013
http://dam.alarabiya.net/images/a9d85ee8-2bc6-44c2-859b-7e88776681fa/600/338/1?x=0&y=0 Little is known about the group whose first post on its Facebook page was dated Jan. 21 this year, but it has swiftly garnered over 20,000 online followers. (Reuters)








http://assets.pinterest.com/images/pidgets/pin_it_button.png (http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/)

Al Arabiya with Reuters -
Alleged members of an Egyptian black-clad youth group, who stanchly oppose Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, have been detained and banned from travel by Egypt’s state security prosecution on Saturday.
Seven member of the ‘Black Bloc’ were detained on accusations that the group seeks destruction of the country, the state news agency MENA said. They have been detained for 15 days.
Hundreds of apparent supporters of the Black Bloc Egypt emerged in January in the forefront of anti-government protests in Cairo, Alexandria and the Suez Canal cities.

Little is known about the group whose first post on its Facebook page was dated Jan. 21 this year, but it has swiftly garnered over 20,000 online followers, according to Reuters news agency.
Its slogan is “chaos against injustice” and it says it has one enemy only – the Muslim Brotherhood group from which Mursi hails.

The group’s tactics appear to be inspired by Black Bloc protesters in Europe who, dressed in black and covering their faces, have formed a hardcore in anti-globalization protests.

In January, Public Prosecutor Talaat Abdallah ordered police, army officers and the public to arrest anyone suspected of being Black Bloc members and accused them of being an” organized group that participates in terrorist acts.” Last week, Abdallah ordered the arrest of 22 suspected group members.





http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/04/21/Egypt-detains-alleged-members-of-Black-Bloc-anti-Mursi-group.html


Egypt’s prosecutor orders detention of 22 Black Bloc members

Wednesday, 17 April 2013
http://dam.alarabiya.net/images/20990f3e-3990-4fc1-ac87-3105e432079d/600/338/1?x=0&y=0 The black bloc say they are the defenders of protesters opposed to President Mohamed Mursi's rule. (AFP)








http://assets.pinterest.com/images/pidgets/pin_it_button.png (http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/)

Al Arabiya -
Egyptian public prosecutor Talaat Ibrahim ordered on Wednesday the detention of 22 suspected Black Bloc members accused of funding the mysterious group, which has been linked to violent attacks on public and private properties, Egypt Independent reported.
Prosecutor’s office spokesman Mahmoud al-Hefnawy said the 22 Black Bloc suspects are summoned based on investigative reports presented by the country’s National Security apparatus.
The Bloc committed a crime by establishing a violent group to conduct acts of terrorism, robberies, murder, destroy public and private enterprises, in addition to terrifying innocent people, Hefnawy told the newspaper.
“The investigations led by the National Security defined the identities of individuals funding this group to commit the stated crimes, attack individual freedoms and harm social security,” Hefnawy told the newspaper. The defendants will be banned from traveling, he added.
The group of masked young protesters present themselves as the defenders of protesters opposed to President Mohamed Mursi’s rule.
The Bloc says it uses force to fight back against Islamists who have attacked protesters in the past - or against police who crack down on demonstrations.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/04/17/Egypt-s-prosecutor-orders-detention-of-22-Black-Bloc-members-.html

this one is just plainly silly:


Black Bloc member held over ‘Israeli sabotage plan’: report

Thursday, 31 January 2013
http://dam.alarabiya.net/images/a9d85ee8-2bc6-44c2-859b-7e88776681fa/600/338/1?x=0&y=0 One person “belonging to the Black Bloc organization was arrested inside a building overlooking Tahrir Square carrying Israeli plans to target petrol companies MENA reported. (Reuters)








http://assets.pinterest.com/images/pidgets/pin_it_button.png (http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/)

AFP, Cairo -
Egyptian authorities on Thursday detained a member of the Black Bloc militant group suspected of planning to carry out an Israeli-directed sabotage plan, the official MENA news agency said.

One person “belonging to the Black Bloc organization was arrested inside a building overlooking Tahrir Square carrying Israeli plans to target petrol companies and vital installations, maps of these places and instructions on setting fire to some places,” MENA reported.

Israel firmly rejected the notion of its involvement in any such plot.

Egypt’s state security prosecution is currently questioning the suspect who is accused of “belonging to an illegal organization and planning to sabotage private and public property.”

According to MENA, the suspect admitted to belonging to the Black Bloc, a group of masked militants who have appeared among protesters in recent clashes with police.

The suspect was spotted by a security guard in a residential building off Tahrir Square and handed over to police, MENA said.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said he had no idea whether or not the Black Bloc member intended to carry out a plan of sabotage, but the claim of Israeli involvement was “utter nonsense.”

Elsewhere, another suspected Black Bloc member was arrested after placing an order with a clothing factory in the city of Mahalla, north of Cairo, for black masks and outfits for the group, the prosecution said in the report.

The arrests come on the eve of planned protests against President Mohamed Mursi as deadly unrest has swept the country.



http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2013/03/11/Black-Bloc-member-held-over-Israeli-sabotage-plan-report-.html