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Title: Among the Thugs
Author: David Graeber
Date: Sept. 3rd 2001
Language: en
Topics: Italy, police, Genoa 2001
Source: 9/30/22 from https://inthesetimes.com/article/among-the-thugs

David Graeber

Among the Thugs

SEPTEMBER 3, 2001

Compare two abandoned streets in Genoa during the weekend of the

G8summit, immediately after confrontations between protesters and

police. The first, a mile-long stretch along Via Tolemaide overlooking a

train yard where Ya Basta! had faced off against riot cops on July 20,

was scattered with oddly whimsical debris: slabs of rubber padding, bits

of mock-Roman foam armor, balloons and abandoned plexiglas shields with

inscriptions like “Yuri Gagarin Memorial Space Brigade.”

The other, along Corso Marconi (one of the city’s main thoroughfares)

the next day, was the sort of scene one might see in the aftermath of a

riot almost anywhere: shattered glass from storefront windows, charred

automobile parts, and, everywhere, spent tear-gas canisters and jagged

rocks. It was the first kind of confrontation, not the second, that was

anathema to the Italian police. The carabinieri set out to create a

riot, and that was exactly what they managed to produce.

A word of background: Ya Basta! is an Italian social movement most

famous for their tutti bianci, or “white overalls,” a kind of nonviolent

army who gear up in elaborate forms of padding, ranging from foam armor

to inner tubes to rubber-ducky flotation devices, helmets and their

signature chemical-proof white jumpsuits to create what Italian

activists like to call a “new language” of direct action. Where once the

only choice seemed to be between the Gandhian approach or outright

insurrection – either Martin Luther King Jr. or Watts, with nothing in

between – Ya Basta! has been trying to invent a completely new

territory. The tutti bianci completely eschew any action that would

cause harm to people or even property (usually), but at the same time do

everything possible to avoid arrest or injury.

Ya Basta! – which began as a Zapatista solidarity group but has since

evolved into a political network linking dozens of squats and social

centers in major Italian cities – combines innovative tactics and an

increasingly broad and sophisticated set of demands. To the usual calls

for direct democracy, the leitmotif of the “anti-globalization” movement

everywhere, they’ve made three major additions: A principle of global

citizenship, the elimination of all controls over freedom of movement in

the world (Ya Basta! especially has targeted immigration detention

facilities); a universally guaranteed “basic income” to replace programs

like welfare and unemployment (originally derived from the French MAUSS

group); and free access to new technologies – in effect, extreme limits

to the enforcement of intellectual property rights. (Most Americans

assume these ideas derive from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book

Empire. They don’t. They got them from Ya Basta!) As an idea, Ya Basta!

has been expanding rapidly: there are already offshoots in England (the

Wombles), Australia (the Wombats), Spain, Finland and many U.S. cities

such as New York and Cincinnati.

After the June 15 demonstrations in Gothenburg, Sweden, in which three

activists were shot with live ammunition, Ya Basta! became seriously

worried about what might happen in Genoa. The organization made an offer

to the police: They would guarantee no aggressive behavior of any kind

toward persons or property, if the police would use only non-lethal arms

– rubber bullets but not real guns. The police reply amounted to a snort

of contempt: Not only would they be carrying guns, they were already

ordering body bags.

Nonetheless the first day of protests, on Thursday, July 19, began

auspiciously enough, and very much in the Ya Basta! spirit with a march

in favor of “freedom of movement” – an estimated 60,000 people led by

pop star Manu Chao and representatives of Genoa’s immigrant communities.

Despite occasional attempts at police provocation, the march was

entirely peaceful.“It was the first time,” a young Irish participant

told me, watching lin PUBLISHED IN

e after line of marchers – Italian communists, Swiss syndicalists,

Danish pacifists, all calling for Europe to open its borders – “that I

actually felt proud to be a European.”

On Friday, however, more than 100,000 people were preparing to march

from half a dozen different locations to the “red zone,” that section of

the city surrounding the old Ducal Palace where the G8 leaders were

meeting. The marchers ranged from radical labor unions and reformist

groups like the French ATTAC to pagans and a theatrical “pink bloc.” Ya

Basta! itself had marshaled a column perhaps 10,000 strong. Some were

simply intending to march up to the wall, others to blockade the

entrances. Still others were determined to get past the elaborate

fortifications. By the end of the day, every single group had been

assaulted by the police. The police strategy was clearly planned well in

advance. What made this situation distinctly abnormal was that this

time, the police had provided a “Black Bloc” of their own. Over and

over, on Saturday came reports of a mysterious group of 30 to

40“anarchists” whom nobody else had ever seen before; huge guys, for the

most part, and extraordinarily violent – willing, even, to physically

assault other (real) anarchists who tried to stop them from attacking

small shops and setting fire to cars.

By the end of the day, after countless sightings of these “Black

Blockers” emerging from police stations, hobnobbing with carabinieri or

assisting with arrests, the only question left in anyone’s mind was

whether one was dealing with undercover cops or fascist vigilantes

working with the police. (The tendency of carabinieri stations to sport

portraits of Mussolini and fascist insignia inside suggested this might

have been a somewhat blurry distinction.)

The phony bloc would suddenly appear, smashing windows and overturning

dumpsters, right next to each column the cops wanted to attack; the

police themselves would show up a few minutes afterward and proceed to

lob massive amounts of high-intensity tear gas and pepper spray into the

area just after the phony bloc left; this would be followed by baton

charges meant to break bones and splatter blood. Pacifists were charged

while holding out palms painted white; a women’s march was attacked

after performing a spiral dance ceremony. Ya Basta!, who came in a

column headed by giant eight-foot plexiglas shields borne by padded

youths in motorcycle helmets, was entirely unprepared for the intensity

of the chemical warfare – much worse than anything used in Italy before.

They arrived with musicians and even padded dogs, aiming simply to march

up to the red zone and perhaps push at the barricades once they got

there.

Under past, Social Democratic regimes, the police often seemed rather

bemused by such games; under newly elected President Silvio Berlusconi,

however, the attitude was completely different. Police cut off the march

before they reached Bringole Station and started a major gas attack,

lobbing shells like mortar fire well behind the front lines; people

started collapsing and vomiting behind their shields; at the front,

police were firing gas canisters like bullets directly at people’s heads

and, eventually, shooting live ammunition.

With the march stopped in its tracks, many people (myself included)

started exploring side streets looking for a way around; carabinieri

helicopters were dropping tear gas canisters like bombs overhead, but

their numbers on the ground, in those twisty streets and tiny piazzas,

were much smaller. Angry protesters, and even angrier local residents

who did not appreciate the massive use of chemical weapons on their

apartments, started throwing stones; on several streets, the police had

to beat a hasty retreat; in others, there was veritable hand-to-hand

combat. It was in the ensuing chaos that Carlo Giuliani, a local kid,

was shot and killed.

As soon as they heard that someone had died, Ya Basta! pulled their

people out. This was not the sort of battle they had come for. But

battles continued to rage for the rest of that day and into the next.

Near the convergence center at Kennedy Plaza, people started setting

fire to banks; what was supposed to be a peaceful march on Saturday

ended in a pitched battle where hundreds of people threw rocks and

bottles at the carabinieri, who could only dislodge them by bringing up

a tank. That evening ended with a midnight raid on the Independent Media

Center, in which the police’s fascist auxiliaries were unleashed on

sleeping activists.

No one is quite sure why the Italian police raided the IMC. It might

have been a sheer act of terrorism. It might have been because they were

aware that videographers inside had compiled a good deal of compromising

footage of the phony Black Bloc working with police. The latter would

explain why, once inside, they put so much energy into appropriating

every video cassette in sight. (If so, it was all to no avail – footage

of “anarchists” emerging from a police station appeared on the nightly

news in Italy a few days later.) The IMC itself was a five-story

building – donated, oddly enough, by the city government – which

contained a clinic, space for press conferences, radio stations, offices

for writers, film editing, and one suite being used by the Genoa Social

Forum, an umbrella group that coordinated arrangements for the protests,

and which had mainly concerned itself with managing a nearby welcoming

center and sponsoring an ongoing five-day lecture series about

democratic alternatives to corporate globalization.

There, the amount of damage the police could do was limited by the

fortuitous presence of a Minister of the European Parliament. (“When she

held out her identity card,” one eyewitness reported, “it was like

holding up a cross to vampires.”) They still held everyone in detention

for most of an hour while they appropriated films and documents. Across

the street, however, was a “safe space,” an unused schoolhouse in which

at least a hundred activists were sleeping and preparing food; there,

the police allowed their allies to take off their black sweatshirts

(revealing “polizia”T-shirts) and go on a total rampage, beating

sleeping teen-agers, leaving shattered bodies, broken bones and pools of

blood.

Everyone inside was arrested, many carried out in stretchers (according

to unconfirmed reports, at the time of writing 18 activists are still

unaccounted for). Like almost everyone arrested in Genoa (many of them

actually removed from hospital beds and carried off to jail), they

returned to their own countries reporting systematic torture. The police

justified it all by saying they were raiding the offices of the Genoa

Social Forum, nerve center of the violent Black Bloc activity. And sure

enough, the next day Reuters headlines affirmed: “Genoa Police Raid

Headquarters of Violent Protesters.”

The very existence of something called the IMC was not even mentioned in

any mainstream American reporting that I have seen so far. All of this

is in accord with common journalistic standards, whereby the word

“violent” can be attributed, generically, to protesters on the slightest

provocation, but never, under any circumstances, to forces authorized by

the state. But it is a matter of no little irony that even in Italy,

where much of the press is actually owned by Berlusconi, the coverage

was far more skeptical of the official version than in the U.S. media.

What is called the anti-globalization movement (increasingly, people

within it are just calling it the “globalization movement”) is trying to

change the direction of history – ultimately, the very structure of

society – without resort to weapons. What makes this feasible is

globalization itself: the increasing speed with which it is possible to

move people, possessions and ideas around.

What politicians and the corporate press call “globalization,” of

course, is really the creation and maintenance of institutions (the WTO,

G8 summits, the IMF) meant to limit and control that process so as to

guarantee it produces nothing that would discomfit a tiny governing

elite: Tariffs can be lowered, but immigration restrictions have to be

increased; large corporations are free to take profits wherever and

however they like, but any ideas about forms of economic organization

that would not look like large profit-seeking corporations must be

strictly censored, etc. The threat of real global democracy is probably

their greatest fear, and the unprecedented growth of the movement –

Seattle was considered huge at 50,000 protesters; Genoa, a year and a

half later, drew perhaps 200,000 – must seem utterly terrifying.

This is why the battle of images is so strategic. Ya Basta! understands

that “protection” for activists can never consist primarily of foam

rubber padding. When the state really wishes to take off the gloves, it

can. Violence is something states do very well. If their hands are tied,

it is because centuries of political struggle have produced a situation

in which politicians and police have to be at least minimally responsive

to a public that has come to believe that living in a civilized society

means living in one in which young idealists cannot, in fact, be

murdered in their beds. It is precisely this kind of padding that the

rulers of our world are now frantically trying to strip away.

Will it succeed? This remains to be seen. Signs in Europe are actually

rather hopeful. The media have begun to tell the real story of what

happened. The governments of France and Germany are putting intense

pressure on the Italian government to explain what happened to their

nationals in Italian jails; huge marches have occurred in every major

Italian city. It is a bit sobering, however, to observe that the U.S.

media ultimately proved far more willing to defend fascist thuggery than

their counterparts in the actual lands once governed by Petain, Hitler

and Mussolini.