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Black Bloc, White Knights — on Antifa and Rioting

Will Shetterly
3 min readSep 7, 2020

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Andrea Satta / CC BY

Antifa loves riots so much it has a beloved term for provoking them: black bloc tactics. The rest of the left agrees with Martin Luther King:

“Riots are socially destructive and self-defeating.” — Martin Luther King

King famously said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Riot fans quote that out of context, so they can’t see that that was an explanation, not a recommendation. The civil rights workers were so committed to peaceful protest that they did workshops before protests so everyone on their side would stay cool and the only images of violence would be of police violence.

My favorite criticism of riot tactics came from Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party in 1969, when the Weathermen rioted during the Days of Rage.

“We believe that the Weatherman action is anarchistic, opportunistic, individualistic. It’s chauvinistic, it’s Custeristic. And that’s the bad part about it. It’s Custeristic in that its leaders take people into situations where the people can be massacred — and they call that a revolution. It’s…

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Will Shetterly
Will Shetterly

Written by Will Shetterly

If you’re losing an argument with me and are too proud to admit defeat, please feel free to insult me instead.

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