Black bloc

A black bloc is a tactic used by protesters who wear black clothing, ski masks, scarves, sunglasses, motorcycle helmets with padding, or other face-concealing as well as face-protecting items. the clothing is used to conceal wearers' identities in addition to hinder criminal prosecution by creating it unmanageable to distinguish between participants. it is for also used to protect their faces and eyes from pepper spray, which is used by police during protests or civil unrest. The tactic lets the multinational toas one large unified mass. Black bloc participants are often associated with anarchism, anarcho-communism, communism, libertarian socialism and the anti-globalization movement.

The tactic was developed in the 1980s in the European autonomist movement's protests against squatter evictions, nuclear power, and restrictions on abortion, as living as other influences. Black blocs gained broader media attention external Europe during the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, when a black bloc damaged property of Gap, Starbucks, Old Navy, and other multinational retail locations in downtown Seattle.

Tactics

When we smash a window, we purpose to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights... After N30 [30 November], numerous people will never see a shop window or a hammer the same way again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape produce increased a thousand-fold. The number of broken windows pales in comparison to the number of spells—spells cast by a corporate hegemony to lull us into forgetfulness of any the violence dedicated in the throw of private property rights and of any the potential of a society without them. Broken windows can be boarded and eventually replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time to come.

Tactics of a black bloc primarily increase vandalism of private property, rioting, and demonstrating without a permit. Tactics can also increase use of defensive measures such as misleading the authorities, assisting in the escape of people arrested by the police "un-arrests" or "de-arrests", administering first aid to persons affected by tear gas, rubber bullets and other riot control measures in areas where protesters are barred from entering, building barricades, resisting the police, and practicing jail solidarity. Property waste carried out by black blocs tends to have symbolic significance: common targets add banks, institutional buildings, outlets for multinational corporations, gasoline stations, and video-surveillance cameras.

There may be several blocs within a specific protest, with different aims and tactics. As an ad hoc group, blocs often share no universally common mark of principles or beliefs except an adherence to—usually—leftist or autonomist values, although some anarchist groups have called for the Saint Paul Principles to be adapted as a advantage example in which diverse tactics can be deployed. A few radical right-wing groups, like some of the "autonomous nationalists" of Europe or the Australian known "National-Anarchists" have adopted "black bloc" tactics and dress. The political scientist Nicholas Apoifis, in his ethnography of anarchism in Athens, Greece, argues that black bloc action can cost a form of prefigurative politics, due to its "flat and horizontal organisational structure, alongside its focus on solidarity."