00:03
first of all
00:03
uh you know black block which is sort of
00:06
the
00:07
a good number of the people that you
00:09
know meet in parks at night at eight
00:11
o’clock you don’t know what park it’s
00:12
going to be if you’re a citizen unless
00:13
you’re like
00:14
watching you know the certain groups
00:15
that announce it earlier in the day
00:17
and they have their little they get
00:19
together they do a little shield
00:20
practice and then they
00:21
they go out and they attack whatever
00:23
they’re going to attack whether it’s you
00:24
know the portland police union or
00:25
the ice headquarters or a police station
00:29
and they uh they have and i i think
00:32
you’ve probably seen this
00:33
uh they have dozens and dozens of people
00:36
running around that says
00:37
press right little a little on their hat
00:40
or on their shirt now
00:41
obviously as a real press person i’ve
00:43
never done that in my entire life but
00:45
they do this for several reasons one is
00:47
because uh
00:48
in portland you’re not allowed to
00:49
interfere with the press the press must
00:51
be allowed to observe
00:52
but they also film incessantly first of
00:55
all they’re of the filming generation
00:57
right everything
00:58
is filmed and then they edit it very
01:00
carefully
01:01
so that you see that they are always
01:04
sort of victimized by the police or
01:07
you know by a citizen that’s yelling at
01:09
them meanwhile
01:10
um if you are just trying to film
01:12
because that’s your job
01:14
uh they will just shout in your face
01:16
over and over and over you’re not
01:17
allowed to film you’re not allowed to
01:18
film it’s like excuse me who
01:20
who in the world said this you could
01:21
tell me that but it’s not true
01:23
i had my phone stolen i luckily got it
01:26
back
01:26
um because i was filming um but they are
01:29
creating the narrative that seeps out
01:32
into the media
01:34
uh one thing i noticed too that they do
01:36
um they they have these shields right
01:38
that they build and has the anarchist
01:40
system where it doesn’t and they go out
01:42
and they
01:42
kind of like set up they’re gonna
01:44
they’re gonna defend themselves from the
01:46
police
01:47
but i don’t think that’s what it’s about
01:48
at all it’s all about getting the
01:50
picture
01:50
of the police that cuts through these
01:53
shields like a hot knife through butter
01:55
because these kids
01:55
are they are sort of ungainly for the
01:59
most part
02:00
and it’s basically to get another shot
02:02
of them being
02:03
victimized by the brutal gestapo that
02:07
are the police
02:08
that they are out to uh get rid of
02:11
uh they’re not doing a terribly bad job
02:14
of of
02:14
making uh the police look bad if you
02:18
want to believe their narrative
02:20
yeah i i agree and it’s um it’s actu
02:23
it’s absolutely terrifying
02:24
to watch how the press handles what’s
02:27
going on
02:28
it doesn’t make the least effort to
02:30
report what’s
02:31
actually taking place in essence what
02:33
happens is
02:35
um you know actually there’s a have you
02:38
seen a film
02:39
i think it’s called a film unfinished
02:43
yeah what it is is the nazis set out to
02:47
make a propaganda film in the warsaw
02:49
ghetto
02:50
and they never finished it and a modern
02:53
director
02:54
took the footage and reassembled it so
02:58
you could see what the nazis were up to
03:00
right and it was like take after
03:03
take of some situation that made the
03:07
jews and the ghetto
03:08
look awful but it was like they would do
03:10
the same scene
03:11
you know 20 times right with the intent
03:14
to get the one that looked worse
03:16
and that the only thing you needed to
03:18
see in order to understand what was
03:19
really going on was that you know the 20
03:21
takes
03:22
you know where it was like action you
03:24
know um
03:26
and so this is it has the same flavor
03:29
where it’s like okay
03:30
you’re going to have hour after hour of
03:32
interaction
03:33
between the police and the rioters
03:37
and they’re going to cut to the 15
03:39
seconds that if you just don’t see what
03:41
happened right before and right after
03:43
you’ll take this to be the police
03:45
aggressing
03:46
against the rioters and the fact is the
03:49
other story is
03:50
right there ready to be reported but
03:52
what i i don’t see
03:53
is the national press anywhere no well
03:57
you know it that’s interesting i didn’t
03:59
see much national press uh when i was in
04:01
the ground either in the federal in
04:02
front of the federal building or when i
04:04
was going out last week with them on the
04:05
ground
04:06
um you know there’s a lot of news going
04:08
on in the country obviously
04:10
uh portland is a story um but a lot of
04:13
people i think
04:14
are you know just relying on you know
04:16
grabbing these clips from online and
04:18
and most of it will grab the narrative
04:21
that it’s like you know the
04:22
the evil feds and the evil police and
04:25
then of course
04:25
unfortunately you have on the other side
04:27
which they just grab the
04:29
the absolutely worst thing that some
04:31
protesters are
04:32
demonstrated i’m calling them
04:33
demonstrators now because if you call
04:35
them protesters people are like are you
04:37
kidding
04:37
you’re gonna still run with that line if
04:39
you call them rioters then you get
04:41
they’re just out there peaceful
04:42
protesting so i’m settling on
04:43
demonstrators right now
04:45
i want to come back to that but i
04:46
finished your life and i want to okay
04:48
i’m just saying you’ve got the other
04:49
side of the press that goes too far
04:51
i think sometimes which is like savage
04:54
is coming to your city
04:56
and it’s like okay guys you know the
04:58
story you have this on outside like
05:00
the story’s in the middle to them for
05:03
the most part
05:04
so that’s that’s been the story i’ve
05:05
been trying to tell it anyway
05:06
demonstrators go for it
05:08
well first of all i’m not so sure the
05:10
story is in the middle
05:12
um okay the story is not the version
05:16
that either of the two now discontinuous
05:19
elements of the press are reporting so i
05:22
guess maybe technically it’s between
05:24
them
05:25
you have a really inconvenient video for
05:28
their narrative right right now it’s not
05:31
hard to catch an inconvenient video
05:33
of their narrative because they’re
05:35
constantly doing things to provoke and
05:37
if you catch the provocation
05:38
then the whole thing is over so what
05:41
happens well
05:43
they will demonize you they will
05:45
demonize your publication
05:48
and if all else fails they will just
05:51
flat out lie about the nature of
05:54
whatever it is
05:55
you have produced and the point is it is
05:58
not
05:59
going to i call it implausible
06:01
deniability
06:02
and the idea is it’s constructed for
06:05
people
06:06
who want something to say and the point
06:08
is it doesn’t matter how low grade it is
06:10
they’ll give you the best thing they can
06:12
give you to dismiss anything you want to
06:13
dismiss
06:14
right up you know through a lie if they
06:16
have to
06:17
and the point is if you’re msnbc and
06:20
you’re trying to construct a story of
06:22
peaceful protesters
06:24
who are being attacked by trump’s feds
06:27
yada yada
06:28
then you just go through the thing and
06:30
basically the point is you have an
06:31
excuse for everything you don’t want to
06:33
report
06:34
and then you have a list of things that
06:36
you want to amplify and you’ve created
06:38
total fiction out of a kind of
06:43
pre-rationalized editable content
06:46
and we can’t live this way the fact is
06:48
to be
06:49
a an entity of the press to be
06:53
journalistic you have to report things
06:56
that are not consistent with the
06:58
overarching story you’re telling
07:00
when they happen and in this case um if
07:02
you don’t do that what you get is a
07:03
totally
07:04
phony story right a totally phony story
07:06
that’s very compelling
07:08
because it’s made of video you can’t
07:11
can’t walk in with your uh with your
07:14
your your end like knowing oh i know how
07:16
the story’s gonna you gotta let the
07:17
story tell itself to you
07:19
i think two things i think it’s ex i i i
07:23
not only think
07:24
it’s extremely irresponsible for any
07:26
news organization
07:28
or any entity at all to not report what
07:31
they see
07:32
to you know to trim the facts to fit the
07:34
theory
07:35
i think it’s extremely dangerous i i i
07:39
know it’s extremely dangerous
07:40
and it’s equally dangerous to to pacify
07:44
the story
07:45
to play down what’s happening it’s like
07:48
and i
07:48
you know you get this has sort of been a
07:50
little like an insider baseball thing
07:52
lately it’s like what’s the journalist
07:54
responsibility
07:55
is it to you know fight power is it to
07:57
speak truth to power the journalist’s
07:58
responsibility
07:59
is to report what you see okay yeah
08:02
we’re all going to have our little
08:03
blinders
08:04
i get it i get it you know but you
08:07
should and that is something that
08:09
i think has been in short supply in
08:11
portland in my experience
08:13
oh it’s been it’s been absent
08:16
the danger couldn’t be greater i mean
08:19
and i say this is somebody who’s
08:21
now living in portland i’m watching the
08:24
police
08:25
um dwindle i’m watching them
08:28
hamstrung i’m watching them fatigue i
08:31
mean they are
08:32
literally being attacked up in seattle
08:35
you know it’s a
08:36
different version of the same phenomenon
08:39
we had an incident
08:40
where quick drying cement of some kind
08:44
was used to attempt to lock police into
08:47
a building that was being set on fire
08:50
that’s i mean
08:53
that’s attempted murder right now i
08:55
don’t know if this was symbolic
08:57
or if they really thought the door was
08:58
going to seal but i want
09:00
people to think about what it is like to
09:02
have a group of people
09:03
demonizing the police as all cops are
09:06
bastards
09:07
as they are actually contemplating
09:10
simulating hinting at uh suggesting
09:14
murder of police right and
09:17
demonstrating that actually you know
09:19
what they were in the commercial
09:21
district they were attacking government
09:23
buildings
09:23
they’re now in neighborhoods they are
09:25
now revealing
09:27
that they view the populace of portland
09:29
as the enemy
09:30
and the fact is there’s no way out based
09:34
on
09:35
courageous leadership our leadership our
09:37
civilian leadership
09:38
in portland is absolutely out to lunch
09:41
it has been coddling this it has created
09:43
the phenomenon
09:44
and there’s no alternative of people who
09:46
are just even sensible
09:48
so where does this go so a couple of
09:51
things in terms of what they’re doing to
09:52
the police i know they’re throwing these
09:54
sort of um
09:55
you know balloons now or paint balloons
09:56
that have um
09:58
grit in it so it’ll actually like damage
10:00
the helmet or damage a windshield so you
10:02
can’t even like
10:03
uh you can’t even clean yourself off to
10:05
see what you need to do
10:06
they also do things that that are so i
10:09
mean you realize sometimes how young
10:11
these people are they they they now
10:14
throw like
10:14
feces i i was there one night and the
10:17
the cop was airing out the lobby of the
10:19
police station because they came in
10:20
through a bucket of
10:21
species and diarrhea i’m like so they
10:24
actually did that like they all [ __ ] in
10:25
a bucket
10:26
like like this is like incredible you
10:29
know that this is what you would think
10:31
is the way we’re going to change the
10:32
world is we’re all going to poop in a
10:34
bucket
10:35
it’s mental patient stuff and to do it
10:38
in the middle of a pandemic yes
10:41
wow well you know they’re invincible
10:43
because they’re 20. but um one thing i
10:45
did want to mention
10:46
i was speaking with someone uh who had
10:49
knew a lot about black bloc and uh she
10:52
was saying
10:53
that because the optics are so important
10:56
um they actually don’t want to kill
10:59
anybody
11:00
like they set the the cop shop the um
11:02
gesture center on fire
11:03
may 29th i wrote a story about a woman
11:05
that was works there’s trapped in the
11:06
basement
11:07
you talk about rubber cementing someone
11:09
in um
11:10
they actually know that killing someone
11:14
is going to be bad optics so they’re
11:15
going to keep that but here’s my
11:17
contention
11:18
and i’ve written about this this
11:20
movement has a glow
11:21
right and it glows and it glows and it
11:24
glows what
11:25
people are attracted to glow it’s not
11:27
always going to be someone that’s in
11:28
your little black block affinity group
11:31
it’s going to be mr bonehead over here
11:33
that is going to be a hero
11:35
or going to like just take it to the
11:36
next level you have no control over that
11:39
right right oh so i don’t accept this uh
11:42
they know
11:43
for exactly the reason you just pointed
11:45
out some of them know
11:47
right but the very nature of this thing
11:49
the cellular nature of black bloc
11:52
and their central dogma
11:55
involves this euphemistically named
11:57
diversity of tactics thing
12:00
and the point is diversity of tactics
12:02
means
12:03
essentially look um we’re going to have
12:06
some
12:07
timid people they’re going to do some
12:08
protest stuff that’ll be good for the
12:10
optics we’re going to have some violent
12:11
people they’re going to do some thuggery
12:13
right and you know innovate something
12:16
and the point is
12:17
look you’re telling people that it’s a
12:20
diversity of tactics
12:21
you’re spray painting the wall with the
12:24
suggestion that police
12:26
deserve to be murdered right if somebody
12:29
takes your goddamn suggestion
12:32
right that’s on you you set this up and
12:34
the fact that you didn’t really
12:36
mean it is nothing right but they’ll
12:39
never but they’ll never
12:41
ever accept that right so okay joe
12:44
bonehead goes and he kills two cops
12:46
right but who’s gonna take
12:48
responsibility for that
12:50
why do we care what they accept
12:54
they are in violation of the law they
12:57
are
12:57
proposing things that are inconsistent
13:00
with the continuing of society
13:02
we have every right to shut this down
13:05
and you know what it’s going to look
13:06
like when it gets shut down
13:07
it’s going to be ugly so be it that’s
13:10
the nature of it
13:20
[Music]
13:20
you