Hatred of the rich is back in fashion

06 June 2007

Ross Clark says that the anti-globalisation rioters protesting at the G8 summit in Germany and Labour’s deputy leadership contenders are part of a new and dangerous trend towards wealth-bashing

At Heiligendamm, too, eager members of the ‘Black Bloc’ were expected — another German-born-and-bred anarchist outfit which was active in Genoa five years ago and which has its roots in the Baader-Meinhof/Red Army Faction era. Unlike the Dissent Network, the Black Bloc doesn’t have a website proclaiming what trouble it intends to cause at G8. Neither does it have a press spokesman. But to give us a flavour of its ideology, one of its top brass, calling herself ‘Mary Black’, posted the following on the internet:

It is not just that police abuse their power, we believe that the existence of the police is an abuse of power ...many of us believe in revolution and within that context, attacking the cops doesn’t seem out of place.

In other words, not much point in sending Commander Brian Paddock out to Heiligendamm to advise on community policing techniques: as far as the Black Bloc is concerned, cops are there to be beaten up and that is that. It isn’t just the cops, either. Mary Black goes on to offer her thoughts on capitalist enterprise:

‘I believe that using the word violent to describe breaking the window of a Nike store takes meaning away from the word.... It is true that some underpaid Nike employee will have to clean up the mess, which is unfortunate, but a local glass installer will get a little extra income.’

The vacuity of Ms Black’s self-justification defies belief. How does she know that Nike is going to employ a local glass installer, rather than give the work to a hated multinational construction outfit? And if Nike is going to employ the small man, what on earth is Ms Black moaning about anyway? Presumably, if there is any consistency in her philosophy, she ought to be praising a company which smiles upon the small man, not breaking its windows.