WU MING. "Non criminalizziamo il Black Bloc!"

Black Bloc Genoa (Italy)

Please understand: we are not criminalizing the Black Bloc or accusing anarchists. What happened in Genoa has very little to do with the tactics of the B.B. and there is EVIDENCE (video footage, hundreds of oral testimonies) that the top trashers were carabinieri in disguise.
I was in Genoa, I came back worn out, angry, disappointed and feverish, with the ligaments of my knees destroyed and completely out of voice, and I say: do not go hunting anarchists, do not criminalize the international Black Bloc. It is our duty to draw distinctions between the Black Bloc and what happened in Genoa. It is our duty not to charge with being a carabiniere in disguise anyone who took direct action in Genoa. Pogroms and paranoid conspiracy theories do not belong to our culture.
Last friday in Genoa were some German anarchists of the Schwartze Block. They hit such precise targets as banks and big corporate offices. They had no intention to attack other demonstrators. On Saturday a Dutch journalist of Vrij Neederland magazine met them while they were packing and maybe going back to Germany. They told him they were pissed-off because of what other "men in black" had done. In fact what went on Saturday had very little to do with the BB’s modus operandi: the BB has a method. One may disagree with them, and yet they have a method and go their own way without interfering with other forms of action. On the contrary, in Genoa the carabinieri escorted the trashers all day long, and never charged them, not because they were too fast and informal, as someone commented. No, they had all the time to go inside banks, trash them accurately and set them on fire, an operation which requires more than a quarter of an hour. In the meanwhile, the carabinieri hanged on in the street, _waiting for them_. When the trashers went out, the magical mystery tour went on. The carabinieri quietly accompanied the trashers to the places where many other people (belonging to the GSF) were demonstrating in other ways, as if they were walking their dogs. There are hundreds of testimonies. All along the path the men in black attacked small shops, set fire to cars that certainly didn’t belong to millionaires, destroyed very little gas stations and so on. Then they were unchained in the square where hundreds of members of the Lilliput network were doing a sit-in. The carabinieri followed them and beat up women and children, boy scouts, peaceful demonstrators.