AstroFreddy

How afraid are you of Nate Silver posting an article showing your analysis is way off-base?

Black Bloc. The protest tactic where all / most of the participation wear all black and work together as a group. (It helps to conceal participants as well as form a recognizable contingency). Depending on the situation this can mean a lot of things. Sometimes they put themselves between the police and other protesters (cops are notoriously violent to protesters in many cases). Most famously, but actually a minority of the time, participants in a Bloc will cause property destruction as an expression of anti-capitalist ideology.

There was a famous thread where Chris Hedges calls the Black Bloc the cancer of Occupy Wall Street. Graeber replied with an open letter but Hedges refused to respond.

His argument really boils down to: "If we don't use Black Bloc tactics, it'll invite in the white bourgeoisie liberals". For the most part, the BB tactics weren't used and the liberals still didn't come. So what's that say about Hedges' argument?

Additionally, why should the OWS crowd focus on attracting the white bourgeoisie liberals? They aren't the ones who suffer most under the capitalist conditions that OWS rails against.

Dr. Graeber, I have a couple of questions about sources you mentioned in two of your talks:

[1] I really enjoyed this talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QgSJkk1tng you gave on technology and "the future". What were some of your primary sources? I'm particularly interested in the statistic you cited, something like 70% of all computational research is done for the Pentagon? Additionally, you spoke about bureaucratic technologies as arising almost as a feature of late-era Capital. Where did you get this insight? Is there some recourse you see to reduce their impact on our lives through your own anarchist-tendencies?

[2] In this talk on Charlie Rose http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVDkkOAOtV0, you mentioned the Founding Fathers being explicitly against true democracy to protect land-rights for the wealthy. I can't find any original documents where they said so. Can you help?

One final question: Do you subscribe to a particular school of anarchism? If so, why and if not, why not?

Edit: Can't seem to get the video link formatting correct. Apologies redditors.

Thanks for your reply.