Masking Up And The Black Bloc: A Pre-Seattle History

At the WTO protests in Seattle last year, somewhere from 100 to 300 anarchists and others dressed up in black and systematically trashed the storefronts of odious multinational corporations. Since then the tactic of the "Black Bloc" has been getting quite a bit of attention from different people concerned with social change. All sorts of upper middle class, trust-fund progressives and liberals have prattled on moralistically to great length about how there is no room for such behavior in their movement. At the same time, the Black Bloc in Seattle inspired a renewed interest in militant protest tactics which do not placate authority or bow to its power. The N30 Black Bloc, along with many other aspects of the events in Seattle, has also inspired radical anarchists to stop hiding out inside liberal activist groups with reformist agendas, and start being more vocal in their demands for revolution and total social change. Besides the rapid proliferation of anarchist publications and organizations, clear evidence of this resurgence of anarchism in the United States can be seen in the large Black Blocs which were present on April 16th in Washington D.C., at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions this summer, and at many other marches, protests and actions from sea to shining sea. For good or ill, it seems that in the last year the Black Bloc has become an American tradition, and it all started with those brave kids back in Seattle.

Or did it? In fact, November 30th was far from the first time that a large group of radicals dressed up in black with black masks in order to engage in militant protest in anonymity and solidarity. The Black Bloc as an agreed upon protest tactic may be as much as 20 years old. Its origins in fact lie with the European Autonomen or autonomists, a radical social movement that didn't even necessarily proclaim itself anarchist, though many of its tactics and ideas have become widely appreciated and adopted by self-proclaimed anarchists.

About Autonomy

Autonomia, Autonomen, or autonomists have been the names used for various popular social change and countercultural movements in Italy, Germany, Denmark, Holland and other parts of Europe in the last 3 decades. All these different movements have sought to radically oppose authority, domination and violence anywhere that they exist in contemporary life (which is pretty much everywhere). Autonomy in this case does not mean some kind of regional superiority complex or isolationism, as with statist nationalism, nor does it mean individual autonomy at the expense of the majority, as is the the basis of capitalism. What autonomists value and desire is the freedom for individuals to choose others with whom they share an affinity, and band together with them to survive and fulfill all of their needs and desires collectively, without interference from greedy, violent individuals or huge inhuman bureaucracies.

The first so-called autonomists were those individuals involved in the Italian Autonomia movement that got its start during the Hot Autumn of 1969, a time of intense social unrest. Throughout the 1970s in Italy a widespread movement for total social change was initiated by autonomous groups of factory workers, women and students. Capitalists, labor unions and the statist Communist Party bureaucracy had nothing to do with this movement, and in fact worked hard to repress and stop it. Yet the power structure was often at a loss with how to deal with the near complete refusal of large areas of the population to obey the rules and orders of authority.

Despite the rapid proliferation of direct action, strikes, rent strikes, mass squats, streetfighting, university occupations and other popularly supported radical actions during the 1970s, the Italian movement eventually subsided. This was partly due to violent attacks, imprisonment and murders of radicals by the police and the Communist party-controlled central government. At the same time the response to this escalation of state violence was often an escalation of terrorism by elite radical urban guerilla groups. This self-defensive terrorism often served to turn people away from a large scale, public social change movement. Some chose to become more militant and secretive, while others abandoned politics all together for a seemingly more peaceful life of obedience to authority.

Building Revolutionary Dual Power -- The Culture of the Autonomen

Though the revolutionary potential of the Italian Autonomia in the 1970s died down, their vibrance, confidence and empowerment was an inspiration to young people in West Germany in the 1980s. Inspired also by the Amsterdam squatters' movements and youth organization in Switzerland, young Germans in Berlin, Hamburg and other major cities began building their own autonomous culture and social groups based upon radical resistance and alternative ways of life.

The direction and composition of radical organization in West Germany in the 1980s was partly determined by the reigning economic recession and the forms it took. Because of the well established connections between industrial unions and the German government, the effects of this recession were felt not so much by blue collar workers, but by young people who found it increasingly impossible to secure jobs and housing and thereby move out of their parents' home and become socially and financially independent. Therefore points for autonomous youth mobilization included the stifling conformity of rural German society and the nuclear family, serious housing shortages, high unemployment--as well as the continued illegal status of abortion and government plans for a massive expansion of nuclear power.

As a result of economic recession and flight to the suburbs, at the end of the 1970s huge tracts of buildings in different German inner cities, especially West Berlin, lay abandoned by developers or government agencies. Squatting these buildings was a viable option for impoverished young people looking for independence from the nuclear family home. Vibrant squatters' communities grew up in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin, the Haffenstrasse squats of Hamburg and in other concentration points. The cornerstone of these communities was communal living, and the creation of radical social centers: infoshops, bookstores, coffeehouses, meeting halls, bars, concert halls, art galleries, and other multi-use spaces where grassroots political, artistic and social culture were developed as an alternative to nuclear family life, TV dreams and mass-produced pop culture.

From these safe social spaces grew major grassroots initiatives to fight nuclear power; to break down patriarchy and gender roles; to show solidarity with oppressed people throughout the world by attacking the European-based multinational corporations or financial institutions like the World Bank; and after German reunification, to fight the rising tide of conservative neo-Nazism.

Similar initiatives for alternative living as resistance were percolating in the 1980s (and in some places much earlier) in Holland, Denmark and elsewhere throughout northern Europe. Eventually all of these northern Europeans living in decentralized social groups dedicated to creating a non-coercive, non-hierarchical society became collectively labeled as "Autonomen." Over time the autonomists' ideas and tactics also migrated throughout the reunited post-Iron Curtain Europe. I personally have visited radical autonomous social centers in England, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.

Hardline Oppression, Militant Resistance, And the Origins of the Black Bloc

From the beginning the West German state did not take kindly to young Autonomen, whether they were occupying nuclear power plant building sites or unused apartment buildings. In the winter of 1980 the Berlin city government decided to take a hardline against the thousands of young people living in squats throughout the city: they decided to criminalize, attack and evict them into the cold winter streets. This was a much more shocking and unusual action in Germany than it would be in the U.S., and created much popular disgust and condemnation of the police and government.

From December 1980 on there was an escalating cycle of mass arrests, street fighting, and new squatting in Berlin and throughout Germany. The Autonomen were not to be cowed, and each eviction was responded to with several new building occupations. When squatters in the south German city of Freiburg were mass arrested, rallies and demonstrations supporting them and condemning the police state's eviction policy took place in every major city in Germany. In Berlin on that day, later dubbed "Black Friday," upwards of 15,000 to 20,000 people took to the streets and destroyed an upper class shopping area.⁽¹⁾

This was the seething cauldron of oppression and resistance from which the Black Bloc was birthed. In late 1981 the German government began legalizing certain squats in an attempt to divide the counterculture and marginalize more radical segments. But these tactics were slow to pacify the popular radical movement--especially since the period of 1980-81 had seen not only a brutal treatment of squatters but also the largest police mobilization in Germany since the reign of the third Reich in order to attack non-violent, sitting protesters at the "Free Republic of Wendland," an encampment of 5000 activists blocking the construction of the Gorleben nuclear waste dump.⁽²⁾ Even formerly ardent pacifists had been radicalized by the experience of sustained, violent police oppression against diverse squats and activist occupations.

In response to violent state oppression radical activists developed the tactic of the Black Bloc: they went to protests and marches wearing black motorcycle helmets and ski masks and dressing in uniform black clothing (or, for the most prepared, wearing padding and steel-toed boots and bringing their own shields and truncheons). In Black Bloc, autonomen and other radicals could more effectively fend off police attacks, without being singled out as individuals for arrest and harassment later on. And, as everyone quickly figured out, having a massive group of people all dressed the same with their faces covered not only helps in defending against the police, but also makes it easier for saboteurs to take the offensive against storefronts, banks and any other material symbols and power centers of capitalism and the state. Masking up as a Black Bloc encouraged popular participation in public property destruction and violence against the state and capitalism. In this way the Black Bloc is a form of militance that mitigates the problematic dichotomy between popularly executed non-violent civil disobedience and elite, secretive guerilla terrorism and sabotage.

Autonomen Black Bloc Accomplishments

Black Blocs, Autonomen militance, and popular resistance to the police-state and the New World Order spread among European youth in the 1980s.

Though Dutch radicals did not begin calling themselves "Autonomen" until around 1986, earlier Dutch counterculture activists shared tactics, organizing structures and militancy with self-proclaimed autonomists. Holland's squatting movement really got started around 1968, and by 1981 more then 10,000 houses and apartments were squatted in Amsterdam, and there were around 15,000 squats in the rest of Holland. Squatted restaurants, bars, cafes, and information centers were commonplace, and the organized squatters (usually referred to as "kraakers") had their own council to plan the movement's direction and their own newsradio station.⁽³⁾

Although some Dutch autonomists rejected wearing ski masks while in Black Bloc⁽⁴⁾, the movement was no less militant. One book about the Dutch squatters movement reports that "Ever since the beginning there had been a 'black helmet brigade' which felt it had joined battle with municipal social democracy."⁽⁵⁾

Battles at the evictions of Amsterdam squats often featured the construction of huge barricades and walled-in squatters tossing furniture and other projectiles of all shapes and sizes out the window at riot police below. In the early years there were certain limits to the violence which Dutch squatters would use to retaliate against police attacks. However in 1985 when a squatter named Hans Kok died in police custody after being arrested during a particularly brutal raid and eviction, the ante was upped. Following the news of his death a night of fiery destruction reigned in Amsterdam, with even police cars set on fire in front of many different precincts. Said one squatter: "Everyone had the idea, now we'll use the ultimate means, just before guns anyway: mollies...Everyone went around with mollies in their pockets, everyone had full gasoline cans...it was the new action method."⁽⁶⁾ Though Hans Kok's death and the fiery retribution that followed had a negative effect on the popular squatters' movement, the new militancy of tactics proved useful in some activist circles. In 1985 the Dutch Anti-Racist Action Group (RARA) mounted a successful campaign to force the Dutch supermarket chain MARKO to divest from South Africa: the campaign was accomplished through a series of extremely expensive and damaging firebombings of MARKO's stores and offices.⁽⁷⁾

In Germany in 1986 mounting police attacks and attempted evictions against a complex of squatted houses in Hamburg called the Haffenstrasse were met with the counteroffensive of a 10,000 person march surrounding at least 1500 people in a Black Bloc, carrying a huge banner that read, "Build Revolutionary Dual Power!" At the march's end, the Black Bloc was able to successfully engage in street fighting that put the police on the retreat. On the following day fires were set in 13 department stores in Hamburg, causing nearly $10 million in damage.⁽⁸⁾

That same year, the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant brought new militance to demonstrations against nuclear power plants under construction in Germany. Once account of these anti-nuclear demonstrations reported, "In scenes resembling 'civil war,' helmeted, leather-clad troops of the anarchist Autonomen armed with slingshots, Molotov cocktails and flare guns clashed brutally with the police, who employed water cannons, helicopters and CS gas (officially banned for use against civilians."⁽⁹⁾

In June of 1987 when Ronald Reagan came to Berlin, around 50,000 people demonstrated in the streets against this Cold War-mongering old man, including a 3000 person Black Bloc.⁽¹⁰⁾ A couple of months later police antagonism against the Haffenstrasse intensified again. In November 1987 residents and thousands of other Autonomen fortified the complex, built barricades in the streets and fought off police for nearly 24 hours. In the end the city chose to legalize the squatters' residence.⁽¹¹⁾

Over ten years before Seattle and the American WTO protests, the Autonomen mobilized a similar event with a greater number of resisters. In September of 1988, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund met in Berlin. Autonomen used this meeting as a focal point for worldwide resistance to global corporate capitalism and government's destruction of grassroots autonomy and community. Thousands of activists from throughout Europe and the U.S. were mobilized, and 80,000 protesters met the bankers (at least 30,000 more than in Seattle).⁽¹²⁾ The totally outnumbered police and private security at the event attempted to maintain order by banning all demonstrations and brutally attacking any public assembly, but riots still ravaged fashionable upper class shopping areas (as was tradition).

Pre-Seattle Black Blocs In the U.S.A.

In November of 1999 the Black Bloc tactic seemed new to many Americans partly because the actions and ideas of the autonomist movement in Europe were mostly blacked out of the American media and have been barely written about at all in English. However, ignorance of the Black Bloc also stems from the fact that most Americans get news of domestic events from a corporate-controlled media that ignores any happenings that don't fit their view and purposes, and which represents every event that takes place as singular spectacle disconnected from past and future, to be forgotten in a blur even when it is only a few months old.

Radicals in the U.S. have never been totally ignorant of the actions and ideas of European autonomists, and the development of the punk rock subculture in the U.S. throughout the 1980s in many ways mirrored that of the autonomists. By the beginning of the 1990's anarchists and other radicals in the U.S. were masking up at marches and protests to build solidarity and create anonymity for militants.

When the Gulf War was going one protest in the streets of Washington D.C. included a Black Bloc that smashed in the windows of the World Bank building. That same year on Columbus Day in San Francisco a Black Bloc showed up to help show militant resistance to the continuing genocide of North American domination by Europeans.⁽¹³⁾ Personally, the largest Black Bloc that I've ever seen was at the Millions March For Mumia in Philadelphia in April of 1999. I'd say there were at least 500 dressed in Black, masked up, and carrying banners such as "Vegans For Mumia." Though there was no street fighting and no particularly noticeable property destruction, some kids did manage to get into a parking garage along the march route, climb to the roof and wave the black flag.

The Global Future of the Black Mask

The symbol of the black-masked autonomist militant has spread to the third world as well. As the North American Free Trade Agreement's destructive neo-liberalalizing economic policies took effect on January 1st, 1994, a guerilla uprising took place in Chiapas, a state in southern Mexico. The uprising sought to create space for the development of autonomous social organization among downtrodden Mayan indigenous peoples. The armed wing of this struggle for community autonomy and direct democracy without coercion or hierarchy has been and continues to be the Zapatistas, men and women who wear black balaclavas (similar to ski masks) whenever they appear in public. Many autonomists and anarchists have visited and tried to help them in their struggles with knowledge, money, materials and by building inernational awareness and solidarity of the situation in Chiapas.

Back in Germany, the Autonomen are seeing dark days. It is said that in the past squatters held at least 165 large, five-story apartment buildings in eastern Berlin, but by late 1997 only 3 remained.⁽¹⁴⁾ Legalizing some squats while brutally evicting others has been an effective policy for the police state. Many people living in legalized squats are unwilling to rock the boat by encouraging or expressing solidarity with militant tactics practiced by other squatters, and this marginalization makes it easier for the squatters to lose out in street-fighting against an increasingly militarized police force.

The resurgence of neo-Nazism in what once was East Germany and other areas of the country has meant no end of troubles for German Autonomen. They face violence and death from neo-Nazi attacks, especially in most of eastern Germany which neo-Nazi gangs police as a "no-punk, no-foreigner zone." Massive amounts of Autonomen time and effort goes into organizing to oppose the spread of neo-Nazism, but this means neglecting the tasks of developing new viable alternatives to authoritarian society, one of the main original goals of autonomists. "Antifa" or anti-fascist organizing brings the Autonomen into more and more violent confrontations with the German police, who basically support neo-Nazi groups and their nationalist, racist ideologies--when individual police officers aren't directly involved with fascist groups.

Rumour has it that many militants in areas of northern Europe where the Black Bloc was a common demonstration tactic have been increasingly given it up, as it has ceased to serve its purpose. The forces of state repression have caught on, and use ever greater technological, legal and physical force to observe, isolate, pursue and target those involved in Black Blocs. A similar process is taking place in the U.S., with a resurgence of COINTELPRO-style tactics aimed at radicals who oppose the global capitalist-statist American empire.

Whether the Black Bloc continues as a tactic or is abandoned, it certainly has served its purpose. In certain places and times the Black Bloc effectively empowered people to take action in collective solidarity against the violence of state and capitalism. It is important that we neither cling to it nostalgically as an outdated ritual or tradition, nor reject it wholesale because it sometimes seems inappropriate. Rather we should continue working pragmatically to fulfill our individual needs and desires through various tactics and objectives, as they are appropriate at the specific moment. Masking up in Black Bloc has its time and place, as do other tactics which conflict with it.

1. Katsiaficas, George. The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements And The Decolonization of Everyday Life. New Jersey: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1997, p. 91.

2. Katsiaficas, p. 82

3. Katsiaficas, p. 116

4. Katsiaficas, p. 116.

5. ADILKNO. Cracking The Movement: Squatting Beyond the Media. Trans. Laura Martz. New York: Autonomedia, 1990. p. 25.

6. ADILKNO, 123

7. Katsiaficas, 119.

8. Katsiaficas, 128.

9. Katsiaficas, 211.

10. Katsiaficas, 131.

11. Katsiaficas, 130.

12. Katsiaficas, 131.

13. Mid-Atlantic Infoshop. "Black Bloc For Dummies." <http://www.infoshop.org/blackbloc.html>

14. Thompson, A. Clay. "Street Battles--German Squatters Squeezed to Near Extinction." <http:www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/3.21/971014-squatters.html>