With Occupy Wall Street protesters kettled on the Brooklyn Bridge this weekend, we look at how kettling was used on protesters during the London riots earlier this year....
This has a very physical manifestation-- in the suffocating of peaceful protest through a technique that has become known as "kettling," in which protestors are contained for five, seven or 10 hours without food, water, toilets, or hope of release....
The kettle is neoliberalism's most apt strategic deployment -- and as a public order policing tactic, it is as risky as its philosophical underpinning. The intent is to suffocate protest with 'containment', to stifle the swarming dissemination of dissent, territorialising with hard lines; but in fact it agitates and intensifies: it pushes the dilettante protester into becoming a hard-liner, a kind of unwitting agent provocateur.
It is interesting to me that the Tea Party "protests" were attended mainly by middle-aged to seniors and were addressed by members of Congress, some quite prominent, urging the protestors on, while these protest are treated exactly opposite. I wonder why that this.
From the sociological work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of The Fourth Turning, it would appear that suppression of dissent simply radicalizes a generation and shapes history in terms of these searing experiences, which is not easily forgotten or erased.
No comments:
Post a Comment