I stumbled upon this article written in 2012 by Naomi Wolf, whose perspective was keen regarding the scamdemic, but not so much when it comes to Zionism.
In any event, here's an excerpt: "The FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country..."
"Why the huge push for counterterrorism "fusion centers", the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about "the terrorists". It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you."
Yeah, this is why I'm spending so much time on Occupy. It's now regarded by activists as a flash in the pan, but it was an important historic event.
I think anarchists are embarrassed about it, to be honest. They'd like to blame liberals or reformists or tankies or someone... but there's no plausible case to be made.
But we can still blame the system for creating the conditions in which so many homeless drug addicts are in need of a safe and welcoming place to be human!
But that problem mostly set it after Occupy had already started sputtering.
In retrospect the window of possibility was only open for about a month.
Soon, anarchists everywhere were opposed to the idea of making demands. If you weren't making demands, then what was the use of marching on wall street?
Protests always need demands, or a reason to be.
On one hand, he says that making demands of those in power legitimizes their power. Reality states that someone must be in power. If nobody is in power, why march and make demands? Even if it's soft power, like wall street bankers or stock markets, somebody is in power.
United America was a travesty that should have never happened.
I remember the politicians beings super happy about it, that corporations could be counted as people and donate to candidates. They said, "A corporation is a living being. It buys, it sells, it consumes, it spends money." to which I would always say, "True, but you can't kill a corporation like you can a person. corporations don't face the death penalty. Show me a corporation that can die, and I will think you're right."
Trickle down economics doesn't work. If you want to see the economy really take off, drop the draconian tax code, let us keep the money we earn by our hard work. Watch what happens when we are able to use our money the way we want to. It might surprise you.
If people weren't taxed so highly, you'd see people racing to buy an battery charged vehicle. You'd see people spending money on clothes, electronics, books, food, automobiles, and vacations.
That would stimulate the economy.
In a well ordered "Empire," we'd bring the best products from other countries, and send them our best products. We'd try to lift the rest of the world up to our level.
Even the Romans didn't try to bankrupt their vassal states, they traded with them, while providing police and military assistance.
I love reading these posts. Graeber is brilliant, and I agree with him like maybe 70-80% of the time, give or take, but sometimes he can be kind of reductive and/or impractical. Of the pieces I've read that you've posted so far, this is definitely the one which I disagree with the most, which I suppose isn't that surprising. It's definitely interesting to wonder how the movement would've been different if any of the demands you mentioned had been given. I wasn't really active in it, though I did participate in the zombie march on the strip that happened before Occupy Las Vegas fell apart, but I had just gotten my first permanent, full-time job after finishing my undergrad at the end of '08, and couldn't afford to lose it. Also hadn't quit drinking and shit yet, which left significantly less free time to get involved when I wasn't at work. OLV was kind of a mess, though, or at least it seemed that way from the outside and from what I heard from people I knew who were more involved. I can't help but imagine that the amorphous nature was at least partly to blame. I mean if you aren't defining the movement and building a narrative around it, then you're letting other people, especially your opposition, do it for you. I'll probably bring up a similar point when I get around to commenting on the B. Traven/ Chris Hedges debate.
I know I complained about Graeber being reductive at the beginning of this comment and then ended up suggesting something that's inherently reductive (defining the movement) at the end, but I suppose that's why I went back and added impractical to my complaint. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with impracticality either. I'm sure if we were to advocate for a jubilee, which I wholeheartedly support, we would be told that it would be impractical or whatever too, so maybe that isn't the best word for describing my complaint. I suppose part of the reason I don't really call myself an anarchist anymore, despite still mostly holding the same ideals, is that I don't want to be rigid in my ideology. Don't get me wrong, I respect that rigidity to a certain extent, especially when it comes to Graeber and anarchy, like I'd much rather see that than see somebody fall down the right wing rabbit hole like Naomi Wolf did, but I still think part of what it will take to realize the dream of an imagined better future is a flexibility and a willingness to create a better system. I don't mean flexible like in a way that would violate Graeber's 'rape, murder, torture' maxim or anything, but I think more in what we're willing to try to build. I know even the idea of building something large-scale is probably anathema to some, but if you look at something like Occupy, it's a good example of why it's so important to put forth an alternative.
I don't know exactly what system that alternative should be, but I'd sure like it to be better than the system we have now, and that means, at minimum, making sure there are support systems in place for the people that need them and that those support systems are spread throughout the movement. I sometimes wonder if something like AA would've worked or could work in the future, only without all of the shitty parts associated with 12-step support systems. I don't know. This comment is already way longer than I intended, sorry about that. Thank you for posting what you do!
It wouldn't have mattered. Ask nicely, demand, just gripe about it, ...the result is the same; they do what they do for their reasons. Everyone else lives with it or else.
I stumbled upon this article written in 2012 by Naomi Wolf, whose perspective was keen regarding the scamdemic, but not so much when it comes to Zionism.
In any event, here's an excerpt: "The FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country..."
"Why the huge push for counterterrorism "fusion centers", the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about "the terrorists". It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
Yeah, this is why I'm spending so much time on Occupy. It's now regarded by activists as a flash in the pan, but it was an important historic event.
I think anarchists are embarrassed about it, to be honest. They'd like to blame liberals or reformists or tankies or someone... but there's no plausible case to be made.
But we can still blame the system for creating the conditions in which so many homeless drug addicts are in need of a safe and welcoming place to be human!
But that problem mostly set it after Occupy had already started sputtering.
In retrospect the window of possibility was only open for about a month.
Soon, anarchists everywhere were opposed to the idea of making demands. If you weren't making demands, then what was the use of marching on wall street?
Protests always need demands, or a reason to be.
On one hand, he says that making demands of those in power legitimizes their power. Reality states that someone must be in power. If nobody is in power, why march and make demands? Even if it's soft power, like wall street bankers or stock markets, somebody is in power.
United America was a travesty that should have never happened.
I remember the politicians beings super happy about it, that corporations could be counted as people and donate to candidates. They said, "A corporation is a living being. It buys, it sells, it consumes, it spends money." to which I would always say, "True, but you can't kill a corporation like you can a person. corporations don't face the death penalty. Show me a corporation that can die, and I will think you're right."
Trickle down economics doesn't work. If you want to see the economy really take off, drop the draconian tax code, let us keep the money we earn by our hard work. Watch what happens when we are able to use our money the way we want to. It might surprise you.
If people weren't taxed so highly, you'd see people racing to buy an battery charged vehicle. You'd see people spending money on clothes, electronics, books, food, automobiles, and vacations.
That would stimulate the economy.
In a well ordered "Empire," we'd bring the best products from other countries, and send them our best products. We'd try to lift the rest of the world up to our level.
Even the Romans didn't try to bankrupt their vassal states, they traded with them, while providing police and military assistance.
I love reading these posts. Graeber is brilliant, and I agree with him like maybe 70-80% of the time, give or take, but sometimes he can be kind of reductive and/or impractical. Of the pieces I've read that you've posted so far, this is definitely the one which I disagree with the most, which I suppose isn't that surprising. It's definitely interesting to wonder how the movement would've been different if any of the demands you mentioned had been given. I wasn't really active in it, though I did participate in the zombie march on the strip that happened before Occupy Las Vegas fell apart, but I had just gotten my first permanent, full-time job after finishing my undergrad at the end of '08, and couldn't afford to lose it. Also hadn't quit drinking and shit yet, which left significantly less free time to get involved when I wasn't at work. OLV was kind of a mess, though, or at least it seemed that way from the outside and from what I heard from people I knew who were more involved. I can't help but imagine that the amorphous nature was at least partly to blame. I mean if you aren't defining the movement and building a narrative around it, then you're letting other people, especially your opposition, do it for you. I'll probably bring up a similar point when I get around to commenting on the B. Traven/ Chris Hedges debate.
I know I complained about Graeber being reductive at the beginning of this comment and then ended up suggesting something that's inherently reductive (defining the movement) at the end, but I suppose that's why I went back and added impractical to my complaint. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with impracticality either. I'm sure if we were to advocate for a jubilee, which I wholeheartedly support, we would be told that it would be impractical or whatever too, so maybe that isn't the best word for describing my complaint. I suppose part of the reason I don't really call myself an anarchist anymore, despite still mostly holding the same ideals, is that I don't want to be rigid in my ideology. Don't get me wrong, I respect that rigidity to a certain extent, especially when it comes to Graeber and anarchy, like I'd much rather see that than see somebody fall down the right wing rabbit hole like Naomi Wolf did, but I still think part of what it will take to realize the dream of an imagined better future is a flexibility and a willingness to create a better system. I don't mean flexible like in a way that would violate Graeber's 'rape, murder, torture' maxim or anything, but I think more in what we're willing to try to build. I know even the idea of building something large-scale is probably anathema to some, but if you look at something like Occupy, it's a good example of why it's so important to put forth an alternative.
I don't know exactly what system that alternative should be, but I'd sure like it to be better than the system we have now, and that means, at minimum, making sure there are support systems in place for the people that need them and that those support systems are spread throughout the movement. I sometimes wonder if something like AA would've worked or could work in the future, only without all of the shitty parts associated with 12-step support systems. I don't know. This comment is already way longer than I intended, sorry about that. Thank you for posting what you do!
It wouldn't have mattered. Ask nicely, demand, just gripe about it, ...the result is the same; they do what they do for their reasons. Everyone else lives with it or else.