A Communique To Journalists
Dec. 12th, 2010 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knoxTo all of you journalists out there using the Newspeak language of faux outrage to paint protesters, Wikileaks, students and benefit claimants as terrorists and threats to society, thereby doing this corrupt government's bidding, I have something to say to you all.
When you're actually questioning the student protest organisers after the fact, what would you like them to say about the troublemakers who come along and spoil it all?
Cast your mind back to when you were twelve. Your thirteenth birthday is just twenty four hours away, you're so excited, and you want everyone in your circle of friends to know that they're all invited to the party - a party you and your folks have organised for days.
So you tell everyone you know. It's gonna be great.
But halfway through, your party is ruined by some older guys who just happened to have heard, and who turn up unannounced. And perhaps they turned up because someone else had the malicious intent to spoil the party, and "invited" the gatecrashers along knowing full well that they would do just that.
When it comes to making a protest, you have to allow that gatecrashers are going to come along, uninvited, just to stir up trouble. You can't just stop having parties, or protests, just in case this is going to happen.
Same goes for the police. The vast press of them are there to do one job: to keep the peace. But there's a small knot of them who are there to do what it takes to stop the protests from being seen and heard by the media.
They will try cavalry charges with horses. They will plant barricades agross protest routes which have been agreed upon well in advance. They will create bottlenecks and flashpoints, and when that happens they go in and start kettling, putting people into back alleys to keep the media from seeing exactly how many people have actually come to protest. If it looks like only a few hundred turned up, they can call it "a minor protest which passed without incident."
And then there's a very small minority of coppers who aren't there to join in with the others. They're not even there to take part in the truth suppression. They only want to go there because they get off on beating up kids and making them bleed into their brains.
And you know what? You're going to have to curb that crowd. Because each protester they put into the hospital or the morgue has a name. And that name gets spread about far and wide. Those protesters who get beaten up like that ... they become martyrs.
And you can't stop a movement that has martyrs.
So when you start harping on about snooker balls and sticks and blather on about people coming along tooled up for aggro as if it was the intent of the organisers, remember this.
One day, you're going to see a wrinkle on your face, or a grey hair - and when you do, you'll be lucky to find a job scrubbing the tables in the commissary. The media are brutal when it comes to judging by appearances. So one day, you'll be "retired" - that is to say, thrown out on your ear. Quite possibly you'll be jobless and looking for work like everybody else.
We're doing what we do - sending out protest emails, attending these marches, attending the gatherings - to protect your right to claim unemployment benefit yourselves.
It might never happen. Congratulations if it never does. But just because you may never need it, doesn't mean to say the government has the right to quietly take that right away from you.
Or from anybody else, for that matter.
When you're actually questioning the student protest organisers after the fact, what would you like them to say about the troublemakers who come along and spoil it all?
Cast your mind back to when you were twelve. Your thirteenth birthday is just twenty four hours away, you're so excited, and you want everyone in your circle of friends to know that they're all invited to the party - a party you and your folks have organised for days.
So you tell everyone you know. It's gonna be great.
But halfway through, your party is ruined by some older guys who just happened to have heard, and who turn up unannounced. And perhaps they turned up because someone else had the malicious intent to spoil the party, and "invited" the gatecrashers along knowing full well that they would do just that.
When it comes to making a protest, you have to allow that gatecrashers are going to come along, uninvited, just to stir up trouble. You can't just stop having parties, or protests, just in case this is going to happen.
Same goes for the police. The vast press of them are there to do one job: to keep the peace. But there's a small knot of them who are there to do what it takes to stop the protests from being seen and heard by the media.
They will try cavalry charges with horses. They will plant barricades agross protest routes which have been agreed upon well in advance. They will create bottlenecks and flashpoints, and when that happens they go in and start kettling, putting people into back alleys to keep the media from seeing exactly how many people have actually come to protest. If it looks like only a few hundred turned up, they can call it "a minor protest which passed without incident."
And then there's a very small minority of coppers who aren't there to join in with the others. They're not even there to take part in the truth suppression. They only want to go there because they get off on beating up kids and making them bleed into their brains.
And you know what? You're going to have to curb that crowd. Because each protester they put into the hospital or the morgue has a name. And that name gets spread about far and wide. Those protesters who get beaten up like that ... they become martyrs.
And you can't stop a movement that has martyrs.
So when you start harping on about snooker balls and sticks and blather on about people coming along tooled up for aggro as if it was the intent of the organisers, remember this.
One day, you're going to see a wrinkle on your face, or a grey hair - and when you do, you'll be lucky to find a job scrubbing the tables in the commissary. The media are brutal when it comes to judging by appearances. So one day, you'll be "retired" - that is to say, thrown out on your ear. Quite possibly you'll be jobless and looking for work like everybody else.
We're doing what we do - sending out protest emails, attending these marches, attending the gatherings - to protect your right to claim unemployment benefit yourselves.
It might never happen. Congratulations if it never does. But just because you may never need it, doesn't mean to say the government has the right to quietly take that right away from you.
Or from anybody else, for that matter.
