"The Empire Strikes Back"--A Snapshot of Neoliberal Repression 1999-2000

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Nov 28, 2009 at 15:30


This past Monday, a $13 million settlement was announced in a lawsuit over illegal arrests at protests in Washington DC in 2000 against the World Bank and the IMF meetings. But this description vastly understates the scope of repression of basic democratic rights that were involved, as do the very short news briefs from AP and By Agence France-Presse.  The AFP story gives a hint of what was involved, stating:

"We think it's an historic settlement. It's the largest settlement for a protest case in Washington D.C. and we believe in the country," Partnership for Civil Justice, which filed the class action lawsuit, said in a statement.

The settlement after nine years of legal action was signed Monday and needs to be confirmed by the courts in the coming months, Partnership spokeswoman Mara Verheyden-Hilliard told AFP on Tuesday.

Around 680 demonstrators and some unsuspecting tourists and reporters were arrested in April 2000 during World Bank and IMF meetings in the US capital. The marches followed similar protests during a World Trade Organization meeting months earlier in Seattle, Washington state.

"Some of them were held on a bus with their hands tied behind their back for up to 12 hours. They were denied food, water, people were not allowed to go to the bathroom. People on the bus would be forced to urinate on themselves," the spokeswoman said.

None of the people arrested were charged. Verheyden-Hilliard said the police action as a "mass false arrest."

But it wasn't just a mass false arrest.  It was a mass false following weeks of pre-emptive harassment and disruption of people intent on exercising their First Amendment rights.  And the pre-emptive attacks on people's First Amendment rights had evolved over a period of months as a coordinated government practice--under President Bill Clinton--to stifle protests against global neoliberalism.  These protests were part of series of related protests with a long history outside of the United States, but which had only become established here a few months earlier with the so-called "Battle In Seattle" which occurred in November, 1999, the 10th Anniversary of which is this coming Monday.

The "Battle in Seattle" touched off a series of protests against corporate globalization and neoliberal ideology which meet with intense levels of political repression, police violence and massive media disinformation--all of which was seemingly quite at odds with the neoliberal mythology that "free trade" was, in fact, an expression of "freedom" that purportedly abhored the sort of paramilitary force displayed and the arbitrary suspension of basic democratic rights, which were, in fact, necessary in order to defend the actually existing nature of neoliberal "freedom."  It would be years before Naomi Klein would detail the contradictions involved in her book, The Shock Doctrine, but the stark contradiction of police repression in defense of "free trade" was fully visible in police repression of a series of major demonstrations in Canada and Europe as well as America over a period of almost two years.

The wave of protests touched off in Seattle would not subside until the terrorist attacks of 9/11 provided a pretext for the much more hardline repression of neoconservatism to take over from its neoliberal predecessors. However, the nature of the repressive tactics seen before 9/11 is but one of several lines of evidence that strongly suggests that there is much more in common between neoconservtism and neoliberalism than there is that divides them, despite the purported differences in their ideological justifications.  This, in turn, may help to explain why the presidency of Barack Obama has begun to show much more striking signs of continuity with the Bush regime than the promised "change you can believe in" that Obama campaigned on.

While I will deal some of those continuities elsewhere this weekend (already begun with "Afghanistan: Obama vs. Martin Luther King "), in this diary, and two others to follow tomorrow, I will retell some of the story of what happened at Seattle and thereafter which shows the development of a repressive police/political/media apparatus during the last year of Bill Clinton's presidency, at a period of time when the neocons were nowhere close to controlling the levers of power.  I will be reprinting portions of a document I wrote for LA Independent Media Center in August 2000, just prior to the protests at the Democratic National Convention in LA, "The Empire Strikes Back: Police Repression of Protest From Seattle To L.A."  Despite the subtitle, my concern was not solely police repression, but rather the way that it was deployed as part of a larger political plan to suppress basic democratic rights, in tandem with justifications and biased, even delusional reporting by the corporate media.  The media coverage played an invaluable role in enabling the continuation, and even escalation of the political repression and police violence that was only cut off by the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which opened the door for much higher level of political repression on a what appeared to be a completely different basis.

Now, just over a year after the election of Barack Obama put an end to the neoconservative dominance--at least for now--it's a particularly apt moment to look back 10 years and see just what the neoliberal style of repression was like, and how it responded to a diverse coalition of actors calling for global justice--a call that's re-emerging now in another form, the call for climate justice in dealing with global warming in a way that doesn't punish the poor people of the global South for the irresponsible development practices of the global north.  The kind of repression seen back then may help people newly activated in political struggle to better make sense of the perplexing continuities between the Bush and Obama eras.  This diary begings I am posting a series of three diaries based largely on excepts from "The Empire Strikes Back," this first one containing the entire introduction, a second one dealing with Battle in Seattle, and a third one dealing the DC World Bank/IMF protests that were the occasions for the arrests that resulted in the $13 million settlement announced on Monday.

Paul Rosenberg :: "The Empire Strikes Back"--A Snapshot of Neoliberal Repression 1999-2000
Introduction

The new wave of high profile protests that began in Seattle has been met by a rapidly-evolving police response that combines repression of basic democratic rights with manipulative, propagandistic media relations. An overview of this evolving response is crucial for understanding the kinds of police actions that are likely to occur during the Democratic Convention, and the kinds of spin, distortion and outright lies that might be expected from the police and the corporate media which largely accept the police view as the only view.

Protester's complaints about violations of fundamental rights are deadly serious. The strongest evidence of this is a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government and the District of Columbia growing out of the A-16 protests last April. The lawsuit charges these governments designed and executed an illegal, unconstitutional plan to disrupt and suppress peaceful protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (INF). It was filed by the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild and Partnership for Civil Justice on behalf of organizations and individuals involved in the protests, including Fifty Years is Enough, the International Action Center, and the Mobilization for Global Justice.

The 10-count lawsuit charges a wide range of violations, all of which served the overall purpose of suppressing fundamental First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly for thousands of protesters. The lawsuit itself tells a chilling story of police-state-style repression, but the events it covers are unfortunately not an aberration. They're the most complete and extreme example of a ongoing pattern of repression dating back at least as far as the anti-WTO protests in Seattle last year. Similar tactics of disruption have been used in Canada as well in early June, during the OAS meetings in Windsor, Ontario and the World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, Alberta, with the most twists added in Philadelphia.

What's involved here is not simply legitimate police action to preserve the peace and arrest lawbreakers.

Rather, it's yet another chapter in the long history of using state power to suppress political dissent.

In all five cases we've seen police actions designed to stifle political expression, and disrupt political organizing. Tactics have included:

  • widespread police brutality
  • mass false arrest
  • brutal treatment after arrest
  • broad zones--up to 50 city blocks--declared off-limits for free speech
  • literature and political artwork confiscated and destroyed
  • police raids against organizing centers to intimidate participants, confiscate property, and shut down operations
  • personal property stolen and destroyed
  • peaceful protests deliberately misrepresented as violent and terroristic in order to discredit them and discourage others from participating
  • false claims misrepresenting innocent objects as weapons or bombs
  • harassment and intimidation of activists during pre-demonstration organizing
  • detention, jailing and/or deportation of targeted individual activists while engaged in no overt political action
  • charging extraordinary high bails--up to $1,000,000 for 7 misdemeanors for Ruckus Society executive director John Sellars in Philadelphia.
  • filing absurd charges--in Philadelphia, 70+ people arrested inside a puppet-making warehouse space were charged with obstructing traffic.
  • using sealed indictments, to hide their dirty war on the Constitution from public view and legal challenge.

Throughout all this, the corporate media has been broadly complicit in stifling and misrepresenting dissent, further discouraging people from exercising their constitutional rights, and providing cover for further police repression. This wholesale attack on First and Fourth

Amendment rights is perhaps the number one under-reported story of the past 9 months. These tactics weren't employed all at once. Some were present from the beginning, but others developed over time, as local police departments, state and federal agencies strategized together-- and in combination with foreign counterparts. Because of the length of this report, it is broken down into separate documents dealing with different events.

The earlier events, which others have systematically examined, are dealt with more compactly and analytically. The more recent events are dealt with in greater descriptive detail, with attention give to the development of police rationales and media reports.

This assault on political expression is carried out by the police, but it is not simply a police action. It is also political theater. The manipulation of media to suppress dissent is clearly part of the plan, as we shall see below. Most of this manipulation is outside the scope of this report, but is discussed in other articles on this site or linked to from this site.

In contrast to TV coverage, talk radio, columnists and op-ed writers, it will be seen that a number of print reporters working for corporate media are doing a fairly decent job of balanced reporting on the limited subject of specific police/protester conflicts, and their reporting will be specifically referenced.

However, there are severe limits to the concept of "balance" when one doesn't question fundamental assumptions. If, as has happened, those in power repeatedly make patently ridiculous claims which are treated with respect, then "balanced" reporting serves to reinforce these claims, simply by making them known without being subject to scrutiny. At the same time, counter-claims by activists, their attorneys and others, however reasonable, and well-grounded in law and fact, are inherently more subject to doubt, simply because they don't come from "authorities."

Furthermore, the best print coverage is easily overwhelmed by sensationalized TV coverage, where vivid, but unrepresentative images of property destruction easily create false impressions among many that this is all and everything that the protests are about. But even viewers who also read the most fair and balanced print reportage, will have their natural bias to trust authorities reinforced by the misleading negative impressions of protesters they've seen on TV. Consequently, even the most "fair" and "balanced" print reporting cannot help but inadvertently contribute to further distorted impressions, which in turn help police justify and carry out their continued suppression of political expression. This is why such reporting should be carefully examined for assumptions, implications, and impressions conveyed, even while it is used to establish certain facts.  

It's the purpose of this report to recount what's happened, to offer critiques along the way and to stimulate thinking about how to continue to respond to this remarkable war against free political expression that's being waged largely without notice in the midst of the so-called "information age."

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"The Empire Strikes Back"--A Snapshot of Neoliberal Repression 1999-2000 | 10 comments
Slavoj Zizek also made the excellent point in Harper's several months (4.00 / 2)
back that these protesters were warning precisely of the "unforeseeable" banking crisis and ensuing economic collapse. But of course they were discounted as a crew of hippie morons. And, naturally, the wider media has failed to acknowledge this. How many times have heard Roubini, whose perspective I very much value and am not denigrating, referred to absurdly in the MSM as the sole forecaster of crisis?
No End Of Bald-Faced Lies Were Told (4.00 / 1)
about the anti-corporate globalization protesters, and virtually nothing of what they actually said was reported.

It didn't take a great deal of prescience to see where we were headed.

The main thing it took was a lack of blinders.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Indeed, official claims of violent anarchy always precede these events (4.00 / 1)
... so low-information voters won't mind when the brutality is unleashed. So far, it's worked nicely.

"Well, they certainly had it coming to them, didn't they?"

It's important to keep the subject of this post in mind, since this is ultimately where the neo-liberal rubber meets the democratic road. Milton Friedman, erstwhile Godfather of neo-liberalism (note that he didn't have a liberal bone in his desiccated body), knew very well bloody violence would be necessary to enforce the changes he called for. That's exactly what he told the Pinochet regime in Chile, not to mention every American of import during the 70s, 80s and 90s.

For Republican neo-liberals, all they have to do is label certain people "communists" whilst swinging batons, so that's easy enough. For Democratic neo-liberals, they just try to act like they don't know what's being done and waffle out of the question on the rare occasion someone bothers to bring it up.

But ultimately, the Patriot Act, warrant-less spying, data-minin, absurd devotion to State Secrets, detention without charges and militarization of our police forces is all about neo-liberal repression of ordinary Americans, which is why they often refer to "fighting extremism," as opposed to something specific.

It's odd though, that somehow right-wing extremism doesn't fit into their enemies list. And not for the press corpse either. Hmmm.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law", 1850

[ Parent ]
The WTO Protests (4.00 / 4)
were a proud event in my city, and a watershed moment for progressives, and hopefully the country at large.

I remember seeing people with welts and bruises on the street & on the bus, in coffee shops & in the grocery store. I remember people passing around souvenir rubber bullets and wooden pellets. On the other hand, I also remember the Christmas carousel at Westlake center being smothered in graffiti, and the neigbhorhood cop I see every summer at the Seafair parade now wrestle with how to deal with a crowd that would not recognize his authority unless it had a baton behind it.

The point is this: there is certainly a story about police repression in DC and other subsequent protests. And there was obviously widespread vandalism and small bursts of rioting in Seattle. But none of that was the main story...

...the main story was that it was a watershed moment into a post-68'er era, the main story was people's visceral reaction to a business elite that was actively taking away our democracy and right to self-determination...that was bent on wiping out or controlling every institution in society, until money and the market infiltrated and defined every aspect of who we are, as individuals and as a people. The main story was about the unprecedented coming together of labor, environment, and international human rights groups, and their resolve and fortitude in attacking right at the heart of the system.

So yes! The subsequent crackdown on civil liberties warrants attention. But please, let's not accidentally allow that to become the main story.

It's Just That The Civil Liberties Story Guts The Central Rationale (4.00 / 1)
Not to mention the suit just being settled makes it timely.

I don't disagree with your point.  But I do want to explain why I'm posting this, and why it was written in the first place.

In inverse order:

This was a report written for the benefit of folks coming to LA in late August 2000 for the Democratic National Convention.  It was intended to tell them as much as possible about the background sitaution, so they could judge for themselves what to expect from the authorities and the media, and why.  The folks it was intended for didn't need to know more about the substantive issues--there were all sorts of people writing  about that.  But there was no coherent narrative about the nature of the repression of activism and suppression of truth, and that's what I sought to provide.

I'm reposting it now, because it seems increasingly obvious that neoliberalism is coming to the fore again, as neoconservatism receedes, with very little operational difference between them, particularly where basic democratic rights are concerned.  This flashback helps to underscore the restrictions that were already in place pre-9/11 and pre-Bush, which in turn is meant to help folks piece together a better framework for understanding what the operating principles may be.

Of course, there's a whole lot more that happened back then than just this, and I'm happy that you spoke up to talk about it.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Understood (0.00 / 0)
And you make a great point: that as neo-liberalism comes back to the forefront, it has a lot more tools at its disposal than it did in 1999-2000, thanks to Bush's War On Terrorism.

Is this why the new administration has done nothing to roll back Bush's assault on civil liberties? Maybe it's part of it...

[ Parent ]
I Strongly Suspect It Is (4.00 / 1)
Though maybe not on a conscious level.  They probably just really don't see the point in "tying their own hands."

Which is why we're supposed to have separation of powers in the first place, come to think of it!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Bingo! (4.00 / 1)
I prefer to look at the two neos as operational cousins, if not direct siblings, in that they share more commonality than they have differences. One is merely more viciously Stalinist than the other. Did I avoid Godwin? ;^)

Generally, both "neos" could be viewed as "antis". Neo-Liberalism is genuinely anti-liberal. Neo-Conservatism is genuinely anti-conservative, in terms of traditional American conservatism. Paleo-conservatism isn't inherently anti-liberal (just against change and progress without eons passing in the interim). Indeed, more traditionally, US conservatives were simply Classical Liberals resisting socio-political progress. That's why they were able to relent in the face of the civil rights movement, but their more nasty successors will only settle for a return to legal slavery....

Put both of these on two sides of the same index card and you have a working center-right authoritarian, anti-democratic ruling coalition. One which likes Blue Dogs and wingtard Republicans and hates progressives/liberals or anyone else of similar ilk.

They both wish to destroy the Social Contract and all of the New Deal, which is to say anything resembling a social safety net that isn't for the rich. Both sides despise honest public debate of anything. Both sides are inveterate liars as a result. Both sides want to privatize the commons and are quite willing to use state violence to make sure uppity citizens are "put in their place." Both sides prefer crony corporate government, of the rich, by the rich and for the rich... at everyone else's expense.

Both sides put the interests of multi-national corporations at the heart of US foreign and military policy, essentially whoring out these institutions to be used as mercenaries for the aforementioned. Both sides want a state of permanent warfare. Both sides despise human rights en toto and as a matter of "principle." After all, people with rights are harder to keep down than those without said rights.

The only real differences between their respective administrations are ones of style, not substance. The goals remain essentially the same, but they have slightly different ways of getting there. Dems want to at least appear to care about the nation, whereas the GOP doesn't have that little problem.

This is why the Obama Administration will only continue to shred the constitution and any vestige of human and civil rights remaining here and around the world.

There's a word for this type of government. It's..... it's.... it's right there on the tip of my tongue, damnit!.....



When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law", 1850

[ Parent ]
"The Empire Strikes Back"--A Snapshot of Neoliberal Repression 1999-2000 | 10 comments





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