Michael Moore: If You See Someone Trying to Incite Violence-Assume They're NOT Part of Movement

Michael Moore to #OWS Protesters: If You See Someone Trying to Incite Violence, Assume They're Not Part of the Movement

MOORE: Well, yes and no. Everyone I've spoken to is committed 100 percent to non-violence, that this is the only way that this is going to work. In fact we don't need violence because we're not in the minority here. This is the majority. This is a majority movement. If this country is of, by and for the people if it's to run by the will of the majority, there's no need for violence, because the majority have already said, “We're sick and tired of this and we expect some changes.”

I think in Oakland there's a very specific, in terms of the violence there, Oakland has a long history of police abuse, of how the black community has been treated... they just have one of the worst... I mean, literally, it's almost in the DNA of how Oakland is structured in their City Hall and their police and it doesn't seem to matter who the mayor is, they just can't deal with its basic problems. I think that has a lot to do with it.

But you're also going to have groups who come in wanting to co-opt this movement, whether it's slick politicians that want the endorsement of what they think is a liberal “tea party”, or anarchists or others who don't like the non-violence approach and want some form or violence. But my experience, and I've been around since the anti-Vietnam War days, is that generally... and I told the crowd this over at Denver here just an hour ago... if you see someone trying to incite violence, start with the assumption that that person is an undercover Homeland Security or cop or whatever, because this is the history of America where those in charge have tried to ignite people, incite them to commit acts of violence; and I tell them, don't be incited. Just assume right away that person is not part of the Occupied movement if that's what they're calling on people to do.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/michael-moore-ows-protesters-if-you-see-so

also. Anyone acting violently does not belong to this movement and they should get that message out, even if they have to take out full page ads in the major newspapers.

Assume they are undercover criminals.

starting the trouble.

A vicious circle.

First; There is no 'other side'. There are only a bunch of brainwashed fools that don't know who the enemy is.

Second; The dynamic you allude to results in a 'stalemate', not a 'vicious cycle'.

Third; The point of Moore's condemnation was to foil infiltration by agents provacateur.

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Completely isolate them. Film it if you've got the means. Eventually, these creeps will be identified and every bit helps. The right wing agents provocateurs can't stay anonymous forever. Eventually the mask slips, someone recognizes a walk, a voice, or pattern of movements.

Since OWS has been so steadfastly nonviolent, the right is sending in the brownshirts to discredit them.

...and give this evidence to the police.

It sure ain't Chess.
That we police our own must be so thematic that the world sees it is crucial to the cause.
Our opponents are playing Chess. Agents Provacateur are a poison dart that can be dealt with only IF their position is used against them. The effort can be absolutely neutralized so long as the legitimate protestors are willing to cause them some 'menial discomfort' compared to the damage they'd wreak.
They can't press charges at all under such circumstances. That's Chess.

Exactly.

That's very sad.

99% of us are sick of playing your little games.

the OWS movement will have lost the battle.

Anyone trying to incite violence within the movement should get a face full of pepper spray or at the very least be grabbed and subdued by the protestors. Make 'citizen's arrests', do anything to stop these people.

All it takes is just ONE asshole throwing a rock to get dozens or even hundreds of peaceful protestors put in jail or the hospital.

That is the PTB's #1 tactic for stomping out the protests. The police don't give a crap if everyone screams 'They're not one of us!'. That'll just get a laugh out of them as they storm in and beat anyone they want to. All they need is an excuse, something they can tell the press with even the tiniest grain of truth.

That's exactly what happened in Oakland and anywhere it happens will give the city an excuse to have negative tolerance for even peaceful protests.

I also have listened to them describe the fun they had during a riot beating the crap out of demonstrators.

They are thugs with a badge.

they felt free to have a little "fun" for a change.

Are they police or a 'roided out football team?
They get no pass on this.

As I said, I know quite a few.

What I may have heard during the discussion of the riot might have been merely the aftereffects of the adrenaline flow that would be similar to what happens when soldiers go into combat. The cops were badly outnumbered and the riot was fairly violent. The officers probably had times when they feared for their lives during the riot. Only one cop was shot. It could have easily been far worse.

To be fair to the cops it was a FAR different situation than what we have seen during the different OWS riots.

I would have hated to be a cop in such a situation.

Do you have a link?

Look, I know several cops myself, and there is still no excuse for their unprofessional conduct in Oakland.
The police instigating violence makes no one safe.

I have no problem with most cops. Hell, even when I've had mugshots taken (it was mistaken identity), I've joked with them. For the most part, they're all just folk like anyone else.

But the few assholes? They need to be expelled from authority.

But too many become animals with badges when in that situation.

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All it takes is for one or two assholes in the crowd to get everybody else jacked up and rarin' to go, if one gets the drift.

That's all.

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A 'couple' of people are not going to get the protestors 'jacked up and rearing to go' as we have already seen protestors do their best to put down violence and vandalism.

We can 'agree to disagree' if you'd like, but disagreement with reality is a severe disadvantage.

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By all means, feel free to post where and when these snowball events were not deliberately foiled by the majority of protestors. So far, I've only seen and heard that the protestors were doing an excellent job of self-policing rather than allowing themselves to be seduced by the enticement to violence by a 'minority' trying to stir them up.

We've seen people attempt to incite violence, but where have they succeeded in 'inciting more unstable people "in their flanks" (ranks?) to join in'?

I'm sure you have examples, right?

Or do you just not know anything about the character of the OWS movement?

It's one of the two. That couldn't be more obvious at this point. Making an assumption of your own that this could happen is at best unfounded conjecture. To spread the notion that 'a few bad apples' could 'rile up the rest' and cause a potentially destructive result seems to be painting peaceful folks in an otherwise potentially bad light... wouldn't you say?

So what do you really think the chances of a few dipshits (Or Cops) getting everyone to go rabid really are?

If the anarchists themselves were pepper-spraying undercover cops in their midst
and getting arrested for it, I think you'd see the flaws in this line of thinking.

On Edit: Of course, calling out cops is something anyone can do. One of the
things is that sensible radicals who are involved in OWS are mostly involved
thru Anonymous, which means that they aren't masking up, they're not separating
themselves out from the rest of the group.

It would be different if this were a Seattle style thing where they were literally
trying to shut down and prevent something (the WTO treaty) from happening, and the
concern wasn't so much about unity and harmony.

So they were arrested. Got it.

What were they charged with?

They are the trouble-makers.

All too often the guy with the bullhorn shouting for the crowd to emulate him with "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, the Vietcong are going to win" had raggedey clothes just like us college kids, but the shoes were spanking new and cost a lot of money.

The FBI may have gotten smarter over the decades, but I will be looking at shoes when I attend the rallies.

:kick:

There may be a few undercover provocateurs, but suggesting that they outnumber genuine black bloc times - let alone that they are 100% of them - strikes me as wishful thinking.

They are an independently violent movement that leeches onto other protests endangering everyone around them.

OWS doesn't have membership cards; if you're there and protesting you're part of it, even if everyone else there wishes you weren't, I'd say.

The anarchists are the Anon's participating in General Meetings and helping organize Occupy's around the country.

if someone is inciting violence, to scream "put the rock down COP!!!" "take off your mask COP!!!" would have the effect of intimidating them more than the violence they are after.

When I saw the images of 'rioters' in Oakland, my first thought was that the cops were trying a different tactic to discredit the OWS movement.
Funny how the cops were nowhere to be found. They were too busy attacking Veterans for Peace I guess.

...people among those with OWS who, while accepting non-violence for now, would not prefer to 'step it up' in some way.

That is in response to a couple of people in the thread who are talking that kind of lunacy. It's probably not a prevalent attitude, but to think it can not exist is foolishness.

If the so-called Tea Party had made a statement, and in that statement said 'If you see anyone acting racist, assume they're just not one of us', we'd have laughed them out of the room -- and rightfully so!. Oh, I'm quite sure that there are Agents Provocateur mixed in, hell we have evidence of the guy from the museum at the very least. But it's a very far -- and dangerous -- leap to assume that anyone who possibly believes different is automatically an AgProv.

the other side has more force. It will get you know where, but the movement discredited. This is what they want.

It has to be non-violent, 100%. Like Ghandi. Like MLK.

Oh, and move your money. Peaceful, something all can do. I did it 2 years ago.

agents who're paid by the US government to act as provocateurs and a certain number of hotheads affiliated with the movement itself.

every protester will heed Moore's warning, rabble rousers are out there waiting for opportunities to make OWS look bad, especially when a camera is around. Look out for James O'Keefe, Breibart's prankster!

It would actually go a long way toward gaining credibility if OWS protestors were to acknowledge the possibility of some bad actors who were either originally part of the movement or infiltrators who take the side of OWS. To claim purity is counterproductive and naive.
When the TP claimed that there were no racists, it appeared that they were defending and covering for the members who are active hateful racists.

The movement will attract those who believe violence is the only way, even if only a small percentage. It needs to be acknowledged and dealt with. A few incidents is enough for the media to exploit and create a negative view in the general public's eyes.

As I pointed out on another post regarding this subject, whether the provocateur(s) are agents that're paid by the US government to infiltrate the movement and act as provocateurs to deligitimize it, or more hot-headed, violence-prone people who are part of the movement, the bad actors in the crowd don't have to be in the majority to get everybody else jacked up and raring to go, if one gets the drift.

... and those supposed "anarchists" were definitely fifth column because that was totally counter-productive to the movement's goals. Any anarchist worth his/her weight in gold would not be detrimental to a social justice movement. That's not what anarchy is about.

"Anarchy is order!" ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The Occupy movement CAN NOT, under almost ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, resort to violence.

I sincerely believe that someone wearing a mask over their face should set off alarm bells. I don't care if it is part of a getup for the so-called "Black Block" anarchists. If you are not prepared to show your face and stand up as a citizen to openly add yourself to the 99%, then you don't deserve to protest. Either you are ashamed to show your face or you are up to cause trouble. Exceptions could be made for larger than life artful constructions and costumes made up to make a point , but it seems like a no-brainer that individuals that are not in any kind of costume that wander around with a handkerchief over their faces should be surrounded and asked to remove their face covering or leave the protest.

Not only could these covered cowards be simply angry misguided anarchist youth bent on smashing windows for fun, but they could also be police provocateurs, which is a well known police tactic for triggering violence in order to "force" the police to attack.

Oh yes, The Sons of Liberty were cowards.

That's just the frat boys from certain dark corners of the Internet who want to be part of Anonymous by wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. But from what I've read, active Anon's are promoting the notion that for Operation 99% (or whatever they are calling their share of the protest) it makes no sense to wear a mask, as that simply singles you out as a member of Anonymous and separates them from the rest of the 99%, defeating the purpose. As one Anon put it, a face in the crowd is anonymous and hence part of a larger group, a costume is not.

Of course, they still wear masks in their endorsement videos (which were featured on the official protest websites) but that is a media thing since obviously the person making the video wishes to be Anonymous.

By the logic of my previous post, most of the people wearing Guy Fawkes masks (for example) are casual protestors.

The origin of the bandanna face masks (prior to the existence of Anonymous) was because Police used to photograph protestors engaged in civil disobedience and use that info to collect data on them for future protests, often resulting in individuals getting preemptively arrested for setting foot in another city on the eve of a protest... or rounding up protestors en masse without charges, as was common in the last 10 years, and putting them in a troublemaker database. They would also use our wonderfully impartial media to share information with the police (going back to the Sixties).

In a movement as large as OWS, if it is not localized and not confined to groups who the public view as acceptable to infiltrate and harass, especially in a climate where angry dissatisfaction is not confined to a single half of the electorate and thus the protestors are not a minority of a minority, but are instead a minority of the majority (the 99%), the idea of masking up becomes pointless.

Most protestors you used to see with a bandanna are probably hoping it will guard against tear gas (it probably won't) and again, the messaging of expecting tear gas sends the wrong signal given the goals and aims of the Occupy movement are to hold a space and not get tear gassed.

So the majority of the people who are going BB are probably uninformed kids who are being led by provocateurs, since they're either unaware or not in solidarity with the Occupy movement, which means they are either vampire protestors piggybacking on someone else's movement or they aren't well informed, since there's certainly no lack of avenues for radicals (or tea partiers, if it come to that) to participate within the Occupy movement without disrupting it.

But that doesn't mean everyone you see wearing black wants to vandalize something.

Most of them, like Justice pony here, want to build things, not destroy.