Abstract

Lying in Wait

The author claims that reports of violence and rioting by anti-globalization demonstrators are myths used to turn the public against the protesters and their message. It is a little-known fact that no one at an anti-globalization protest in the United States has ever thrown a Molotov cocktail. Nor is there reason to believe global justice activists have planted bombs, pelted cops with bags of excrement or ripped up sidewalks to pummel them with chunks of concrete, thrown acid in policemen's faces or shot at them with wrist-rockets or water pistols full of urine or bleach. Yet somehow, every time there is a major mobilization, police and government officials begin warning the public that this is exactly what they should expect. Every one of these claims was broached in discussions of the protests against the Summit of the Americas in Miami in November and used to justify extreme police tactics, and we can expect to be hearing them again in the months before the Republican convention protests in New York. Such claims have an interesting history. While it is possible that we are dealing with a remarkable series of honest mistakes, this looks more like a series of attacks on the materials activists were intending to use to get their message out to the public. Some police officials have become notorious among activists for their Gothic imaginations.