BroadSnark

Picture an anarchist in your head.  What do you see?

For most people the image is of a black clad, pubescent boy throwing rocks through a store window or spray painting an anarchist symbol.  People with a better sense of history might picture a slightly older, wild-bearded man making assassination plans.

And it is true that those images have some reality behind them.

There have been anarchists who have participated in violence.  Anarchists fought in the Spanish civil war.  Anarchists have claimed responsibility for political assassinations and other “propaganda of the deed.”  And there are certainly anarchists who have participated in symbolic acts of property destruction.

But does that make anarchists especially violent?

How many philosophies have not been used as an excuse for violence?  We fight wars in the name of democracy.  Assassinations are committed in the name of democracy.  Entire cities have been leveled in the name of democracy.  And yet few supporters of democracy believe their philosophy is particularly violent.

It makes little sense that a few violent acts and some (arguably) violent property destruction warrant anarchists getting such a bad rap.

Then, of course, there are the many anarchists who are/were also pacifists.  Some, like Tolstoy, derived their pacifist anarchism from Christianity.  Gandhi, who was inspired by Tolstoy, meshed his philosophical anarchism with Hinduism.  Anarchists from Howard Zinn to Alex Comfort were pacifists.  Even Emma Goldman, who once supported “propaganda of the deed,” changed her mind after seeing the effects of violence.

Clearly, we have a case of selective, collective memory.  How did that happen? Why are people only associating anarchists with violence?

Perhaps it has something to do with the way media selectively covers anarchism.  The coverage of Howard Zinn’s death is instructive.  An Associated Press story picked up by the New York Times and Washington Post says that Howard Zinn wrote about anarchist Emma Goldman, but doesn’t describe Howard Zinn as an anarchist.  Bob Herbert’s New York Times op-ed doesn’t mention “anarchist” once.  In article after article he is referred to as “left” or “radical,” but not as an anarchist.

Lest you get the idea that the media are loathe to use the word anarchist or anarchy, just try to search news coverage with those words.  The New York Times is happy to associate anarchists with al-Qaida or with Lenin.  Even if no anarchist claims responsibility for a bombing, they are almost certain to get credit for it.   And that doesn’t even begin to cover the times that newspapers try to scare the crap out of their readers by labeling catastrophes as scary anarchy.

Newspapers like the Times and Post are staunch defenders of the establishment.  And the establishment has every reason to try and make anarchists look bad.  As Howard Zinn said,

No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them, yes.

That doesn’t mean that every lowly reporter is consciously trying to to vilify us.  As a former media person told me, “they have a script” and they are playing it out.  They are writing the narrative that they have been brought up to write, the narrative that will get them promoted, even if that means conjuring up imaginary conflicts while ignoring real ones.

So the question is, what can we do to make it more difficult for the media to vilify us?

It seems like I have spent my entire life trying to fight off the irrational fears that people have tried to instill in me.

I was advised not to ride the bus in Ft. Lauderdale or I’d get robbed. I was told if I went to Liberty City, I would get beat up. Before I went to Mexico, Estadounidenses told me it was too dangerous. When I was in Playa Chacala, they told me I would be mugged in Guadalajara. When I was in Guadalajara, they told me I would get mugged in Mexico City. In Mexico City, they told me I’d never survive Guatemala.

If I let myself be afraid every time someone told me horrible things about a place or a people, I would never go anywhere or talk to anyone.

The people who were trying to make me afraid weren’t fearful from experience or reliable knowledge.  It was all just rumor, sensationalist news reports, and general fear of the OTHER – especially if that other was poor and black or brown.  People are so ready to believe negative things about poor people of color that you have to assume they want to believe those things, need to believe those things.

Why?

What if that fear went away tomorrow?  What if we all assumed, just for a day, that everyone was doing the best they could to get by.  What if we assumed, just for a day, that poor people aren’t poor because they are less worthy, less smart, less hard-working, or just plain less?  Where would that leave us?

It would leave us with a lot of questions.  It would leave us asking how things got to be this way and what forces are at work keeping them this way.  It would leave us wondering about how those inequities relate to accidents of geography, skin color, and birth.  It would leave us wondering if those inequities aren’t accidental at all.  And it would leave us asking who benefits from us distrusting each other so much.

It’s easier not to think about those things.  Thinking about those things, for many of us, leads to questioning our privileges, our world views, our lives.  And we would rather not do that.  So we just live in fear and try to avoid looking at the everyday tragedies.

But every once in a while, a tragedy unfolds that is so catastrophic that we cannot ignore it.  So Katrina hits New Orleans or an earthquake hits Haiti and willful ignorance becomes impossible.  That’s when our schizophrenia takes hold.

We watch the tragedy unfold on the television and our hearts break.  We imagine the horror that those people are going through.  We send millions of dollars to relief organizations and stay glued to the news reports.  We ask ourselves, why?  How could something so horrible happen?  And we want to know if it could have been prevented.  Most importantly, we want to know if it could happen to us.

Before long, the news reports turn from rescue to rioting.  A little scuffle over some desperately needed food is played on a continuous loop.  Report after report conflates appropriation of the means to survival with, not just theft, but violence.

And all these scary reports happen just in the nick of time.  Some part of the back of our brains had begun to wonder if there was more to the story than just an “act of god.” Perhaps someone mentioned how poor Haiti was and we wondered for a moment why.  But before we had to take any trouble looking into it, those “journalists” showed us what dangerous people we were dealing with, incapable of organization or development.

So you see, this couldn’t happen to us.  We can rest assured that we deserve our privilege.  No need to examine history or economic systems.  No need to wonder why these “acts of god” are so much more destructive when they happen to poor people.  Just pat ourselves on the back for our generosity and move on.

And when the United Nations and the U.S. government prioritize “security” over medical supplies, leaving doctors to find saws in hardware stores in order to perform amputations, there is no need to question that decision.  These are dangerous people.  You are sure of it.  You’ve been told over and over your entire life.

There is no need to read about the history of Haiti.  There is no need to seek out journalists who are actually talking to the people we are supposed to be so afraid of.  There is no need to listen to people on the ground who tell us over and over and over and over and over again that the reports of violence are a lie.

Ignorance is bliss.

I’m not saying that there is no real danger in the world.  I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer to drive a bus through Zona 18 in Guatemala.  But isn’t it time we were a little more skeptical about the daily vilification of poor people of color?  Why is it that so many people found my blog looking for information about which non-profits are trustworthy; yet so few people show anything like that kind of skepticism when it comes to news reports making survivors out to be criminals?

So long as we allow fear to substitute for fact, the status quo will go unchallenged.  And that suits some people just fine.

Many people believe that some injustices are so heinous that violence is not only necessary, it is obligatory.  But they rarely take the next step.  They rarely imagine what would happen after the violence stops, assuming it can be stopped.  Who among them is going to create a better, more just world?  A soldier?

A soldier is not trained to create.  He is trained to destroy.  Military training is about smashing a person’s ego until they are willing to obey without question.  It is about instilling hierarchy.  It is about learning to dehumanize the “enemy.”  It is about suppressing pangs of conscience.  It is about becoming a killer.

When the soldier returns from whatever horrors he has to see and participate in, he brings the horrors back with him.  Returning soldiers have mental health problems.  They are more likely to have drug and alcohol problems.  Many are suicidal.  Some are homicidal.  Is that soldier, with all his problems, the person who will be able to create a better way of life?

Contrast the training of a soldier with the training of a non-violent resister.

Imagine the inner strength, patience, and command over your own emotions it takes to face down dogs without responding with violence?  Imagine the vision that comes from that kind of discipline and self awareness.  How could that not be better preparation for building a more just world?

When James Baldwin and Malcolm X debated each other (recordings below), Malcolm X asserted his right to defend himself.  He claimed that the black man’s freedom rested on his willingness to do “the same thing that Patrick Henry did to make this country what it was for white people.”  And in doing so, he called out the hypocrisy of idolizing the actions of one person and vilifying those same actions when another claims the right to them.

That hypocrisy is indisputable.  So is the fact that Americans idolize violence and violent heroes.  But while Baldwin did not dispute Malcolm X’s facts, he did dispute his conclusions.

“Patrick Henry is not one of my heroes…I don’t see any reason for me, at this late date, to begin modeling myself on an image which I’ve always found frankly to be mediocre and not a standard to which I myself could repair…the only thing that really arms anybody when the chips are down is how closely, how thoroughly, he can relate to himself and deal with the world…I don’t think that a warrior is necessarily a man…It is very difficult to be a man…What it involves, for me anyway, is an ability to look at the world, to look at whatever it is and to say what it is and to deal with it and to face it.

A soldier will have a very hard time looking at the world and seeing it for what it is.  A soldier has to lie to himself.  How could a soldier stand not to?  You can’t make a better world by creating people who can’t look into their own hearts, who have to live in denial of their actions.

We all have the right to defend ourselves, but we also have the obligation to examine what we will become by exercising that right.  If, in the process of becoming the victor, you have to also become a monster, what have you really won?

Monica at TransGriot explains the history of the Transgender Day of Remembrance here.

For a powerful and amazing spoken word performance that really gets to the heart of how our society fears and terrorizes transgender people, check out this video of Julia Serano

I find myself in a rather awkward position.  I’m about to (sort of) defend the “gun nuts.”  It freaks me out too, but what can I do.

It started when I noticed Senate bill 1317.  The bill got my attention because it mentioned terrorists.  And whenever a bill mentions terrorists, I start wondering what new civil liberty someone is trying to take away from us.  I think of illegal spying and an end to habeas corpus.  The bill says it is meant

S. 1317
To increase public safety by permitting the Attorney General to deny the transfer of firearms or the issuance of firearms and explosives licenses to known or suspected dangerous terrorists.

Now that sound reasonable. No sane person wants terrorists to get their hands on weapons.  There is that word “suspected” though.  We all know what happens when “suspected” is sufficient to take away someone’s rights.

In a nutshell, this hinges on how much you trust the Attorney General’s idea of “reasonable belief.”  For me, the verdict is not yet in on this particular attorney general.  I can say with certainty that the last couple did not have an idea of “reasonable belief” that came even close to mine.  Who knows about the next ones.  And let me remind you that our government already has a history of labeling innocuous student groups as terrorists.

Now, you may say “So what. People shouldn’t have guns anyway.”  I understand that sentiment.  I’m not a fan of guns.  I am a pacifist after all.   But the truth is that most gun owners aren’t out killing people or joining racist militias.  And given what our food industry does to animals, hunters are often a hell of a lot more humane than the people who put our meat in pretty little packages.

All of the above made me think about the two essential claims that the “gun nuts” make.  The first is that the right to bear arms is in the constitution.  The second is that there are people (democrats mostly) who want to take their guns away.  I have to admit that both of those claims are true.  I happen to be one of the people who has wanted to take their guns away.

I won’t pretend to understand gun owners love of their guns.  And I think the idea that having a rifle will protect you from your government is a bit insane at this point.  The government has bombers and nukes.  Shooting your gun up at a bomber might make a good scene in the new Red Dawn remake, but it ain’t going to do a whole lot to protect you.  Then again, those Iraqis had a pretty low tech arsenal and managed to kick our asses, so…

Much as I hate to come out on the side of the gun lobby, here I am. Do we want to give the DOJ the power to start designating people as “suspected terrorists” and then assigning their rights (or lack thereof) based on that designation?

If people are plotting to use those weapons to commit crimes, we need to investigate.  We have RICO statutes and criminal conspiracy charges that can be brought against them. We have an imperfect, but functioning, judicial system where they should be tried.

There may be people who don’t think there should be a right to bear arms.  That’s a perfectly legitimate opinion.  They should be honest about it and say that they want to amend the constitution.

(Note: I’m going to relate much of the storyline in this post.  While I don’t think that really spoils the movie, if you haven’t seen it yet you might want to wait to read this.)

Quentin Tarantino makes films about film.  He examines, exaggerates, and worships our most iconic film genres.  And in doing so, he examines us.  There is no genre more central to the American mythology than the war movie, particularly the World War II movie.  All the cliches are present.

There is a small band of elite fighters led by a sexy leading man.  There are victims to be saved.  There are beautiful women in danger.  There are good guys and there are bad guys and we all know who is who and who we are supposed to cheer for.

It is a Tarantino movie and so it is, of course, violent and funny.  There are beautifully shot scenes and there is intense dialogue.  But what makes the movie truly interesting are the ways in which Tarantino challenges the genre and the American mythology that goes with it.

Jews are Made Fully (In)human

The movie begins with a beautifully shot scene in the French countryside.  A dairy farmer (brilliantly played by Denis Menochet) and his gorgeous daughters are visited by the Nazis.  As the scene rolls on we discover that the dairy farmer is hiding Jews from his village.  These are the Jews we are expecting, victims hiding in a cellar.

Every war movie needs an elite group of soldiers to follow and this movie is no different.  Except in this movie the elite group is made up of Jews.  The actors who play these soldiers look more like rabbinical school students than warriors who are going to scalp Nazis.  Tarantino’s Jews are heroes, but they are sick, murderous, psychopaths and terrorists as well.

During the holocaust, it was the Nazis who marked Jews so that they could more easily pick them out for destruction.  But I don’t recall seeing a single yellow star in this movie.  In Tarantino’s world, it is the heroes who mark people.

Women Are Smart and Men are Destroyed by Their  Sexism

Like all war movies, most of the central characters are men. Unlike most war movies, the two central women characters are the ones who engineer the ultimate destruction of the bad guys. Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) and Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) both design separate and eventually interconnecting plots to destroy a movie theater filled with Nazis.

Most interestingly, it is men’s continual underestimation of women that causes their own destruction.  The main Nazi villain, Colonol Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) lets Shosanna get away once.  He doesn’t do it out of compassion.  (He has none).  She just isn’t important enough to go after.

Colonol Landa prides himself on being able to read people, break people, and hunt down Jews.  Yet, when he questions Shosanna, he reads nothing.  He does not see that she is a Jew.  He does not see that she is terrified and full of rage.  He just orders the adorable blonde girl some strudel and milk.  And that same blonde girl will engineer the destruction of his people.

When things go wrong for Bridget, there is a stand-off.  The stand-off is between a Nazi soldier and our hero, Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt).  The Nazi must decide whether or not to trust Raine (who wants to rescue the injured Bridget).  It never enters the Nazi’s mind that the danger could come from the woman.  He does not live to regret it.

And then there is the scene where Tarantino turns the story of Cinderella on its head.  The man who is coming to find you with that shoe is not a prince, but a psycho.  Sexism destroys the men, but the men still destroy the women.

The Bad Guys are More Human than the Good Guys

We see Nazis playing drinking games and celebrating the birth of a young soldier’s first child.  Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) is a Nazi hero who single-handedly killed hundreds of the enemy and who stars in a movie about his exploits. Yet he is humble and charming. And he is conflicted about having killed so many people.

Our hero, on the other hand, is not conflicted at all.  Raine has completely dehumanized the enemy.  His only mission is to kill Nazis.  He sees the world in black and white, good vs. Nazi.  He doesn’t care for rules.  He experiences no remorse.  He has no desire for diplomacy.  We  never see him being kind.  We hear nothing of his family.  There is nothing to humanize him.  Tarantino relies solely on the likability of Brad Pitt and our willingness to see the world in the same good vs. Nazi terms he does.

The Audience is Put Under the Microscope

Tarantino rubs our willingness to overlook people’s humanity in our faces.  A theater full of Nazis watch their hero as he kills person after person.  The audience cheers and laughs at the carnage.  We are disgusted by them.  And while they sit in the theater cheering, we do the same.

We cheer our heroes as they execute a terrorist plot to kill a theater full of people, not just soldiers but wives and girlfriends and anyone else.  Not only are we, the audience, laughing at merciless violence, we are rooting for men with bombs strapped to their bodies.  We are rooting for suicide bombers.

And when Shosanna shows a moment of empathy, when she recognizes the anguish of her enemy, it is a fatal mistake.  We accept, even expect, that the people who show the least amount of humanity survive, while those who show a moment of it perish.

It Asks Important Questions

It would be a mistake to read too much into the movie.  We won’t ever know what the maker’s intent was.  Still, the movie left me asking questions:

• Why do we accept simplistic answers?
• Why is it so easy to dehumanize people?
• Why do we accept the idea that recognizing others humanity is dangerous?
• Is it better to become a monster and live or keep your humanity and die?
• Why do the most peace loving of us cheer violence?
• Are any group of people more or less capable of violence?
• Does “terrorism” depend on which side you’re on?
• If we had been in Germany, would we have cheered on the soldier?  (Well, I would have been in a concentration camp, but those of you who aren’t Jewish, Gay, Black, Gypsy, disabled….  Do I know anyone who isn’t Jewish, Gay, Black, Gypsy, disabled…?)
• How much of our support for the Israeli government depends on the myth that Jews aren’t capable of grotesque violence?

When I tell people that I am an anarchist, that I imagine a world without hierarchy, they often dismiss me as naive. They cannot imagine how government would function without a dude in charge. They seem to find it even harder to imagine workplaces functioning without hierarchy.

If the skeptics provide any reasons, they generally point out conflicts that we currently resolve through coercion. Two people have a dispute at work, the boss makes a determination and coerces the parties to comply. Two countries have a dispute, and the more powerful country coerces the other.

The essential obstacle to a society based on cooperation is not that people have disputes, it is that we have so few tools to resolve our disputes peacefully. It isn’t entirely our fault. And it isn’t some malfunctioning human gene. It is that we have no training in dispute resolution or peaceful conflict management.

Amazingly, it is only in the last fifty years that conflict resolution has been brought into schools. And it is only since the 1980s that organizations like Educators for Social Responsibility have been promoting conflict resolution as core curriculum.

Despite the fact that conflict resolution has been shown to increase academic achievement and cooperation and to decrease violence and drop-out rates, too few schools have implemented conflict resolution into their programs.

Imagine if every school child (from kindergarden forward) had problem solving and peaceful conflict resolution as core curriculum. Imagine if it were given the importance of math and language. How much better equipped would we be for our relationships later in life?

It isn’t that people are hopelessly unable to resolve conflicts without violence or coersion. It is that we are not learning the skills we need.

Some time ago, a friend of mine told me about an interview she listened to where a Muslim American was talking about integrating into U.S. society. He said that Jews were a model of how a group can overcome the prejudices against them and integrate.

My friend thought it was interesting given the animosity between Jews and Muslims. I thought it was interesting because I don’t believe Jews necessarily represent a model of integration that new immigrants should follow.

I thought about that interview after I watched Joseph Dana and Max Blumenthal’s appalling video of white supremacist American Jews in Jerusalem. (Warning: This video is offensive in the extreme and not work safe.)

I was shocked when I watched the video, not because I deceived myself into thinking there were no racist Jews. I’ve certainly met some. I was shocked because the young adults in the video so willingly and brazenly adopted the stereotypes, language, and threats of white supremacists (with the ubiquitous appropriated blackness of American youth to boot).

Had I exhibited this KKK-like behavior, my father would have kicked my ass. It isn’t so much because he thought racism was wrong (although he did). It would have been more because of his sense of self. I don’t believe he thought of himself as white, at least not completely. Most Jews of his era didn’t.

He was born in 1929. He was 29 when the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple was bombed by white separatists. He was 35 when Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were found dead. He may not have been marching with Martin Luther King or identifying with the people who did, but he certainly wasn’t identifying with white supremacists either.

So what happened?

The people in that video clearly spent much of their lives in the United States, Somewhere along the way they became white. They embraced the worst aspects of the United States – the racism, the hatred, the violence.

The video was posted on many websites. Granted, many of the websites were focused on Israeli issues, but these kids clearly had many years in the states. People commented on what the video meant about Israel. Almost nobody commented on what the video meant about the United States.

One commenter on the Atlantic did get to the heart of the matter:

This is not really about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is about American bigotry, for us Americans to think about and deal with. While these Jews too often move to Israel and contribute to the problems there, it’s a fundamentally American problem that needs to be thought about and dealt with by Americans. What about America is making this happen? How is the rubric of classic American racism changing? How do we deal with it differently? What does it mean when a historically marginalized group produces bigots who migrate to the right wing?”

What it means is, they assimilated.

This week a violent anti-semitic and racist walked into the Washington DC holocaust museum and killed an African American security guard. Does anyone believe the shooter cared whether or not he was shooting a Jew or a black person?

So sadly ironic for that act of terrorism to happen the same week as this video of white supremacist Jews shows up on the internet. So sadly ironic for that act of terrorism to happen the same week as responses to that video like this one from 50 cent’s website:

where were good all days when hitler ruled the world all theses pig jews should b dead now

That is assimilation we do not need.

Another thing we do not need is low expectations. So many of the comments to the video were along the lines of “that’s how drunk kids act” or some such bullshit.

No.

That’s how thoughtless, heartless, little monsters act. And if they are old enough to be out at a bar drinking, they are old enough for us to stop calling them kids and start expecting them to act right.

We don’t need immigrants to assimilate. We don’t need more Americans to identify with the worst aspects of the dominant culture. And we don’t need such low expectations for ourselves that we blow these things off. We need immigrants (and native born) to challenge the dominant culture. We need people who challenge the hierarchy, racism, classism, and violence.

I’ve been thinking a lot about justice lately. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how often people try to convince those seeking justice to set aside that desire. I’ve been thinking about how often we are told that holding people responsible for their actions would cause more suffering.

The economic disaster is a perfect example. Billions of dollars are being lost into the ether as we bail out the scoundrels who got us into this mess. We are told the vacuuming up of our present and future resources is necessary in order to mitigate short-term suffering and instability.

People are less and less inclined to believe bailout justifications, in large part because we see that those responsible are not suffering any consequences for their actions. After reading Matt Taibbi’s recent article, it’s hard not to believe that the bailout is just a scam to transfer our resources into the grubby hands of Goldman Sachs and friends. So long as our government shows no signs of bringing the people who caused this mess to justice, our distrust will grow.

Let’s take this out of a financial context for a minute. This past weekend I watched The Reckoning. The film is about efforts to get the International Criminal Court (ICC) up and running. The film highlighted the situations in Uganda and Sudan, but it could easily apply to hundreds of other situations in the world. Whenever the leaders responsible for genocide, rape, and crimes against humanity faced prosecution; they used the threat of more suffering to defend themselves.

In Uganda, the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) went on a campaign to convince Ugandans that the ICC warrants for LRA leaders’ arrests were an obstacle to the peace process. (Never mind that there was no peace process before the warrants.) The LRA presented the people a choice between peace and justice. When a warrant was issued for the president of Sudan for human rights violations, he retaliated by kicking out humanitarian organizations and putting millions of Sudanese without the assistance they desperately need.

The case of Sudan is clear. There are people who will suffer in the short term because of the warrant issued. It’s possible that the other cases, including our financial disaster, also present a choice between mitigating short term suffering and pursuing justice. But if we keep sacrificing justice for short term needs, won’t we just ensure that we will keep dealing with the same problems over and over? If people without morals see that they can get away with abusing their power, why would they ever stop?

One final observation. When I was in Guatemala I was struck by how defeated the people seemed. Nobody believed in the system. Time and again powerful people got away with outrageous crimes. Military leaders responsible for mass atrocities don’t just walk free, but run for president. Former presidents who absconded with the people’s money live like royalty in other countries. The more people see impunity, the more hopeless the situation seems. The more hopeless the situation seems, the less agency they feel. The less they participate in political life, the more power the abusers have. It is a downward spiral and we can’t afford to allow that to happen to us.

Justice is not an obstacle to stability and peace, it is a prerequisite. People who don’t want to face justice are using our fear – fear of violence, fear of starvation, fear of financial collapse – but it is by caving in that we assure all of those things will go on forever.

There is a fascinating article in the February 28th issue of The Economist. The article describes a research project by Lancaster university social psychologist Mark Levine.

Levine is trying to understand how a crowd may effect whether or not situations become violent. His research has shown that larger crowds actually may decrease the chance of violence. Apparently, the larger the crowd, the more people may intervene to keep the peace.

The article goes on to say

His work could have practical consequences, since police generally aim to break crowds up. If he is right, that approach may unintentionally lead to more fights. It sounds counter-intuitive, but many of the best ideas are.

But is it “counter-intuitive”? Why do we assume that more people means more danger? And why do we assume that the police tactics are meant to decrease violence?

The real issue here is control. When police break up a large group of people it is not about preventing violence, it is about crowd control. Police methods for crowd control are often incredibly violent.

The worst atrocities are not those committed by unruly crowds, but those committed by organized, authoritarian structures. Nazis did what they did under the full force and protection of the law and of German authority, not in a disorganized frenzy.

According to the etymology dictionary, the word mob is “slang shortening of mobile, mobility ‘common people, populace, rabble.’” One of the meanings for mob is still just a group of people, but we most often use it to mean a group that is out of control or violent – a product of certain people associating all of us “common people” with scary chaos.

So who do you trust, your fellow rabble or the people who want to control you?