The Truth About Today’s Anarchists

Jeremy Lee Quinn has spent the past four months marching and documenting “black bloc” anarchists in half a dozen cities across the country.

via The New York Times

The Truth About Today’s Anarchists

“Insurrectionary anarchists” have been protesting for racial justice all summer. Some Black leaders wish they would go home.

By Farah Stockman

On the last Sunday in May, Jeremy Lee Quinn, a furloughed photographer in Santa Monica, Calif., was snapping photos of suburban moms kneeling at a Black Lives Matter protest when a friend alerted him to a more dramatic subject: looting at a shoe store about a mile away.

He arrived to find young people pouring out of the store, shoeboxes under their arms. But there was something odd about the scene. A group of men, dressed entirely in black, milled around nearby, like supervisors. One wore a creepy rubber Halloween mask.

The next day, Mr. Quinn took pictures of another store being looted. Again, he noticed something strange. A white man, clad in black, had broken the window with a crowbar, but walked away without taking a thing.

Mr. Quinn began studying footage of looting from around the country and saw the same black outfits and, in some cases, the same masks. He decided to go to a protest dressed like that himself, to figure out what was really going on. He expected to find white supremacists who wanted to help re-elect President Trump by stoking fear of Black people. What he discovered instead were true believers in “insurrectionary anarchism.”

To better understand them, Mr. Quinn, a 40-something theater student who worked at Univision until the pandemic, has spent the past four months marching with “black bloc” anarchists in half a dozen cities across the country, chronicling the experience on his website, Public Report.

He says he respects the idealistic goal of a hierarchy-free society that anarchists embrace, but grew increasingly uncomfortable with the tactics used by some anarchists, which he feared would set off a backlash that could help get President Trump re-elected. In Portland, Ore., he marched with people who shot fireworks at the federal court building. In Washington, he marched with protesters who harassed diners.

Mr. Quinn discovered a thorny truth about the mayhem that unfolded in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis. It wasn’t mayhem at all.

While talking heads on television routinely described it as a spontaneous eruption of anger at racial injustice, it was strategically planned, facilitated and advertised on social media by anarchists who believed that their actions advanced the cause of racial justice. In some cities, they were a fringe element, quickly expelled by peaceful organizers. But in Washington, Portland and Seattle they have attracted a “cultlike energy,” Mr. Quinn told me.

Don’t take just Mr. Quinn’s word for it. Take the word of the anarchists themselves, who lay out the strategy in Crimethinc, an anarchist publication: Black-clad figures break windows, set fires, vandalize police cars, then melt back into the crowd of peaceful protesters. When the police respond by brutalizing innocent demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and rough arrests, the public’s disdain for law enforcement grows. It’s Asymmetric Warfare 101.

An anarchist podcast called “The Ex-Worker” explains that while some anarchists believe in pacifist civil disobedience inspired by Mohandas Gandhi, others advocate using crimes like arson and shoplifting to wear down the capitalist system. According to “The Ex-Worker,” the term “insurrectionary anarchist” dates back at least to the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, when opponents of the fascist leader Francisco Franco took “direct action” against his regime, including assassinating policemen and robbing banks.

If that is not enough to convince you that there’s a method to the madness, check out the new report by Rutgers researchers that documents the “systematic, online mobilization of violence that was planned, coordinated (in real time) and celebrated by explicitly violent anarcho-socialist networks that rode on the coattails of peaceful protest,” according to its co-author Pamela Paresky. She said some anarchist social media accounts had grown 300-fold since May, to hundreds of thousands of followers.

“The ability to continue to spread and to eventually bring more violence, including a violent insurgency, relies on the ability to hide in plain sight — to be confused with legitimate protests, and for media and the public to minimize the threat,” Dr. Paresky told me.

Her report will almost certainly catch the attention of conservative media and William Barr’s Department of Justice, which recently declared New York, Portland and Seattle “anarchist jurisdictions,” a widely mocked designation accompanied by the threat of withholding federal funds.

There’s an even thornier truth that few people seem to want to talk about: Anarchy got results.

Don’t get me wrong. My heart broke for the people in Minneapolis who lost buildings to arson and looting. Migizi, a Native American nonprofit in Minneapolis, raised more than $1 million to buy and renovate a place where Native American teenagers could learn about their culture — only to watch it go up in flames, alongside dozens of others, including a police station. It can take years to build a building — and only one night to burn it down.

And yet, I had to admit that the scale of destruction caught the media’s attention in a way that peaceful protests hadn’t. How many articles would I have written about a peaceful march? How many months would Mr. Quinn have spent investigating suburban moms kneeling? That’s on us.

While I feared that the looting and arson would derail the urgent demands for racial justice and bring condemnation, I was wrong, at least in the short term. Support for Black Lives Matter soared. Corporations opened their wallets. It was as if the nation rallied behind peaceful Black organizers after it saw the alternative, like whites who flocked to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after they got a glimpse of Malcolm X.

But as the protests continue, support has flagged. The percentage of people who say they support the Black Lives Matter movement has dropped from 67 percent in June to 55 percent, according to a recent Pew poll.

“Insurrectionary anarchy” brings diminishing returns, especially as anarchists complicate life for those working within the system to halt police violence.

In Louisville, Ky., Attica Scott, a Black state representative who sponsored a police reform bill, was arrested last week and charged with felony rioting after someone threw a road flare inside a library.

In Portland, Jo Ann Hardesty, an activist turned city councilor, has pushed for the creation of a pilot program of unarmed street responders to handle mental illness and homelessness, a practical step to help protect populations that experience violence at the hands of police. Yet Ms. Hardesty is shouted down at protests by anarchists who want to abolish the police, not merely reform or defund them.

“As a Black woman who has been working on this for 30 years, to have young white activists who have just discovered that Black lives matter yelling at me that I’m not doing enough for Black people — it’s kind of ironic, is what it is,” Ms. Hardesty told me.

In Seattle, Andrè Taylor, a Black man who lost his brother to police violence in 2016, helped change state law that made it nearly impossible to prosecute officers for killing civilians. But he has been branded a “pig cop” by young anarchists because his nonprofit organization receives funds from the city, and because he cooperates with the police.

“When they say, ‘You are working with the police,’ I say, ‘I have worked with police and I will continue to work for reform,’” Mr. Taylor told me. “Remember, I lost a brother.”

Black people get shot for doing ordinary law-abiding things. They don’t have the luxury of anarchy, he told me.

That’s the thing about “insurrectionary anarchists.” They make fickle allies. If they help you get into power, they will try to oust you the following day, since power is what they are against. Many of them don’t even vote. They are experts at unraveling an old order but considerably less skilled at building a new one. That’s why, even after more than 100 days of protest in Portland, activists do not agree on a set of common policy goals.

Even some anarchists admit as much.

“We are not sure if the socialist, communist, democratic or even anarchist utopia is possible,” a voice on “The Ex-Worker” podcast intones. “Rather, some insurrectionary anarchists believe that the meaning of being an anarchist lies in the struggle itself and what that struggle reveals.”

In other words, it’s not really about George Floyd or Black lives, but insurrection for insurrection’s sake.

There are 17 Comments

"Many of them don't even vote" oh no, say it ain't so!!!

Lol, hard to know where to begin with this since it is all wrong but with a patina of truth. As if it is that hard to find someone from any demographic to say the exact thing to confirm ones conformation bias.

Protests around the country look similar since we've all been watching the same riot porn for years now. And why don't anarchists loot, because we're good at shoplifting! duh!

Make it stop, indeed.

TLDR; anarchists caused the entire uprising from their computers. They lucked up this year, but they can't keep the ball rolling. Nobody else had anything to do with instigating the mayhem, and Minneapolis didn't want to abolish their police force.

this article is very cringey and biased in many different ways. First of all, the person who wrote this clearly has some of "white"/"black" id-pol fixation. Second of all, and more importantly:

"Mr. Quinn discovered a thorny truth about the mayhem that unfolded in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis. It wasn’t mayhem at all.

While talking heads on television routinely described it as a spontaneous eruption of anger at racial injustice, it was strategically planned, facilitated and advertised on social media by anarchists who believed that their actions advanced the cause of racial justice. In some cities, they were a fringe element, quickly expelled by peaceful organizers. But in Washington, Portland and Seattle they have attracted a “cultlike energy,” Mr. Quinn told me.

Don’t take just Mr. Quinn’s word for it. Take the word of the anarchists themselves, who lay out the strategy in Crimethinc, an anarchist publication: Black-clad figures break windows, set fires, vandalize police cars, then melt back into the crowd of peaceful protesters. When the police respond by brutalizing innocent demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and rough arrests, the public’s disdain for law enforcement grows. It’s Asymmetric Warfare 101."

Evidence? So basically , such statements coat things one way or another, in the same way that the right yammers on about "the radical left", my understanding of the George Floyd protests and riots was that there was a large mixture of things going on. I also don't like the particularly cultish anarchists the author describes, but to think they orchestrated all of the civil unrest and illegal activity?! What?!

I mean yeah, sure, i do agree with the opinion that some of the anarchists deserve the negative publicity they get, but this article cherry picks like a mo-fo. This quinn fellow bought into crime thinc's rhetoric, and now sees them everywhere! OHHH!

Yes we will dunk on anyone in power. What bad liberal propaganda. Why u no vote or believe in policy change????? Omg your tactics work but what If we just voted lol.

"And yet, I had to admit that the scale of destruction caught the media’s attention in a way that peaceful protests hadn’t. How many articles would I have written about a peaceful march? How many months would Mr. Quinn have spent investigating suburban moms kneeling? That’s on us."

So i mean, TK admitted that he killed people solely for media attention, what's with all the clamoring for media attention? Evidence that the internet has literally brainwashed everyone. What happened to the good-ol-fashioned numbers games?

wow NYT ... dig the meta on this steaming pile of yellow shit.

Here at the Times, we can't even manage to sound genuine with our pearl clutching liberal outrage anymore, as we outsource the "research" for our race baiting to unemployed, middle-aged, theatre students.

how little of the general population are actually "insurrectionary anarchists", i've personally NEVER met one before, and i've met and spoken to a lot more people who vaguely identify with anarchist ideas in a good faith manner than most people in the united states.

For The New York Times to "educate people" on how manipulative crimethinc is is totally fucking absurd, what the hell?! The New York Times has always been a corporate lap dog with semi-insightful writings occasionally, so who the fuck is manipulating who?

Clearly in this instance, the ones who point the finger at the manipulators...

technically you're talking to a struggle bro insurrecto, right now! lol

anyway, it's the compliment from the enemy. they're acknowledging the existence of the anarchists as they attack with their misinfo.

first they ignore, then they laugh, then they fight you so ... here we can see the corporate democrat establishment acknowledging that they're waiting in the wings to crush uprisings just as hard but like ... more tastefully, with fewer swastikas flapping in the breeze!

another way to look at it though is NYT is just publishing crap that gets people loosen their purse strings, clearly the race baiting works as Trump proved in '16

"They are experts at unraveling an old order but considerably less skilled at building a new one."

1. if there are experts at "unraveling an old order", where the fuck is the evidence of their expertise? i don't see shit unraveling except people's lives. the order is intact as ever. just ask blm.

2. any anarchist that wants to build a new order is no ally of mine.

I guess all you evil anarchists are celebrating Trump getting covid19, but remember this, Sleepy Joe is more likely to die if he also gets it, and that means the election will be postponed, giving the GREAT WHITE DOPE time to regather and win a second term.

Trump deliberately got infected hoping he'd give it to Sleepy Joe during the debate and kill him. Politicians will do anything for power, look at Caligula.

Ass-tute political anal-ysis, both of you above! Good to see NA anarchy is in the right hands with such great anal-ists!

"It's BUTTS, I tell ya!"

you know what they say, a dead politician always smells good!

his opportunity to re-establish neo-conservative order. I tell yeah, the coronavirus is registered republican!

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