Propagandhi

Cop Car Burned! All Criticisms of Global Capitalism Rendered Moot!

i don’t endorse vio­lence. i don’t think it’s the ide­al way for­ward to a bet­ter soci­ety. i think all sane peo­ple would agree. heck, i don’t even endorse van­dal­ism in the ​“ser­vice” of social change. i’m con­ser­v­a­tive that way. but the dis­pro­por­tion­ate reac­tion (to the dis­pro­por­tion­ate main­stream media cov­er­age) to the image of a burn­ing car and some bro­ken win­dows at the G20 sum­mit in toron­to needs to be put into perspective. 

i won’t both­er with the obvi­ous com­par­a­tive study of the iso­lat­ed ​“vio­lence” of a hand­ful of pro­tes­tors ver­sus the over­whelm­ing vio­lence prac­ticed day in and day out at the expense of mil­lions upon mil­lions of human lives by nation­al states the world over in order to secure their geopo­lit­i­cal inter­ests. too easy. too obvi­ous. too fundamental. 

i will how­ev­er, point out that unless you’ve been in the sit­u­a­tion of being a direct, phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal tar­get of over­whelm­ing and bel­liger­ent street-lev­el force FUND­ED BY YOUR OWN TAX DOL­LARS, it can be hard to under­stand the frus­tra­tion and rage that can build over the course of an after­noon let alone over the course of a lifetime. 

hell, you don’t even have to have expe­ri­enced it direct­ly. just sit­ting on our couch­es in our homes, curs­ing the stink­ing sys­tem, we all know that the state has a monop­oly on ulti­mate vio­lence and total con­trol. oth­er­wise it would­n’t exist as it does, right? things would be dif­fer­ent, cause we would have got­ten up off our couch­es and changed it if we were oper­at­ing on a lev­el play­ing field. but their is no lev­el play­ing field between the state and its sub­jects. cit­i­zens plain­ly have insuf­fi­cient insti­tu­tion­al pow­er to derail the socio­path­ic behav­iour of the pre­vail­ing order. frus­tra­tion and rage is the pre­dictable result. 

that frus­tra­tion and rage is exac­er­bat­ed when you’re pit­ted face to face against a wall of riot cops who are alter­nate­ly cor­ralling and inten­tion­al­ly pro­vok­ing your oth­er­wise peace­ful demon­stra­tion into a cor­ner, fir­ing rub­ber bul­lets at you, detain­ing and search­ing you with no cause, hit­ting you with batons, sin­gling out and abduct­ing orga­niz­ers, imper­son­at­ing pro­test­ers, fir­ing gas can­is­ters inten­tion­al­ly at head lev­el, explod­ing sound grenades by your ears, per­ma­nent­ly dam­ag­ing your body with expo­sure to chem­i­cal bombs (all based on per­son­al expe­ri­ence by the way) and then hav­ing it all por­trayed in the media as if it were YOU that needs to be restrained and pun­ished rather than the mega­lo­ma­ni­acs on the oth­er side of the fence that con­tin­ue to plun­der and pil­lage the plan­et at these obnox­ious pub­licly-fund­ed pri­vate-par­ties of the glob­al elite. 

in these sit­u­a­tions, there is only so much futil­i­ty a per­son can take before their rage can get the best of them and a burn­ing cop car or a smashed bank win­dow starts to look pret­ty appeal­ing. yes, these are futile acts, but what do we expect peo­ple to do when they are treat­ed like shit and the jus­tice sys­tem does noth­ing to inter­vene on their behalf? 

sure, ide­al­ly we could all rise above it and aim for a per­fect, super­hu­man state of restraint. sure. and yes, ide­al­ly i too would pre­fer the demon­stra­tions were strict­ly peace­ful (for strate­gic rea­sons main­ly) and that oth­er, more polar­iz­ing means of demon­stra­tion and protest and dis­rup­tion occurred out­side of these pub­lic gath­er­ings (where they would be more effective). 

but the peo­ple who man­age the secu­ri­ty state won’t let that hap­pen any­ways. they WANT vio­lence. they pro­voke it. why? it jus­ti­fies their absurd bud­gets. it lets them test and refine (and demon­strate to the rest of the pop­u­la­tion) their meth­ods of pop­u­la­tion con­trol in a man­aged set­ting, prepar­ing for the day that the shit real­ly hits the fan and the police state final­ly gets to give up any pre­tense of democ­ra­cy. why else would they have the sum­mit in fuck­ing down­town toron­to, where spir­it­ed protest was absolute­ly cer­tain to occur, rather than on some cruise-ship in the atlantic where it could all be com­plete­ly avoid­ed? these are essen­tial­ly war-games being staged on our nick­el. and we, the peo­ple, are the enemy. 

so let’s just try to keep things in per­spec­tive when cor­po­rate media habit­u­al­ly fails to hold con­cen­tra­tions of glob­al pow­er to any sliv­er of account and instead choos­es to replay footage of a stu­pid burn­ing cop car on a loop for hours on end as their mar­quee story. 

there are plen­ty of exam­ples of inde­pen­dent video footage of cops pro­vok­ing and mis­treat­ing peo­ple at the G20 sum­mit sur­fac­ing on the net. do your­self a favour and check them out and ask your­self how you would feel if you were on the receiv­ing end of it. or if it were a mem­ber of your family. 

that’s all i got to say. 

Potemkin City Limits

well, here’s a seem­ing­ly banal arti­cle with an inter­est­ing end­ing that even I (the guy who wrote the song) did­n’t know about. Fran­cis’ final stand was even sad­der that I imag­ined. as an aside, would peo­ple please stop call­ing us a ​“veg­a­n­ar­chist” band. it’s sil­ly. we pre­fer ​“satan­ic”. thanks. 

Have a safe and pleasant G20 protest in Fortress Toronto.

Present your parade route to the author­i­ties and calm­ly fol­low your face­less, badge-less police escorts through the fortress of fences; exer­cise your free­dom of speech..oh, and cov­er your groin when the cops shoot rub­ber bul­lets into the crowd. They like to aim low.

What's Going On?

This is prob­a­bly the only time we’ll ever be men­tioned in the same breath as Mar­vin Gaye, so you’ll have to excuse us if we draw dis­pro­por­tion­ate atten­tion to it.

Happy World Refugee Day!

Here is a list of World Refugee Cel­e­bra­tions that are hap­pen­ing in Cana­da today. Have a good one!

We in Da Club!

Go here to Dr. Ossi­fy’s web­page and scroll down his media play­er till you a tune called ​“It’s a New Day” fea­tur­ing Gem-In-Eye. See if you rec­og­nize anything.