For newcomers, three more items from the archives:  

Militantly Nude.  

A San Francisco “nude-in” reveals more than intended.

Some of you may register a whiff of disingenuousness in exhibitionists accusing their critics of being repressive and stuffy. Exhibitionists may be eager to dispense with clothing in incongruous locations – say, a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection – but they desperately need an audience, preferably a clothed one, and preferably one that’s embarrassed, inconvenienced and unwilling. Those indulging in their kink for being noticed are, in effect, saying: “Hey, you. Look at my bollocks. I SAID, LOOK AT MY BOLLOCKS RIGHT NOW, YOU UPTIGHT CONSERVATIVE PRUDES!” And while I doubt many readers here are prone to fainting at the sight of withered genitals and subsiding buttocks, they may conceivably object to being made an accomplice to someone else’s psychodrama. Imagine you’re in a supermarket queue with a basket of groceries. Is the thought of some old bloke’s tackle hovering near your lettuce or freshly baked baguette a pleasing one? And isn’t that the whole point of “radical” exhibitionism – to shock, to transgress – to make others feel uncomfortable? 

Worth Every Penny. 

Laurie Penny champions Arts Council-funded dirt relocation. It’s vital for “social progress.”

It’s so unexpected. Pretentious taxpayer-funded noodling is vital, says beneficiary of pretentious taxpayer-funded noodling. Because Laurie believes in folly, see, ideally when done at someone else’s expense and regardless of their objections. And because without the Arts Council and its politically generic freeloading caste, all human progress would simply grind to a halt. Besides, grumbling about the extortion and misuse of other people’s money – half a million pounds of it – is, she says, anodyne and inconsequential. Presumably, taxpayers shouldn’t trouble themselves with how their earnings are expropriated and pissed away by their betters. Artists, it seems, are visionaries, not made of mortal flesh, and so sacrifice is necessary – yours, of course, not theirs. Laurie illustrates this point unwittingly and with her usual grandiose sorrow: “Is this what human progress has come to? Fighting over the scraps of money left as the markets crumble?” Oh, the indignity of not being given all the money you want just because you want it.

It’s Cool When it’s Done to Other People. 

The public funding of vandalism? The Guardian approves. 

The millionaire “anti-capitalist” Banksy would have us believe that “crime against property is not real crime,” though residents and business owners whose property has been defaced and who’ve been left with the cost of cleaning and repair may take a rather different, less sophisticated view. Especially given that such crime tends to affect people who earn considerably less than Banksy. Lest we forget, graffiti, like broken windows, can act as a signal to other vandals and predators. And the residents of graffiti-blighted neighbourhoods, which can subsequently become blighted by other forms of crime, may find little comfort in the notion that their own taxes could soon be funding and legitimising more of the same.

Slip into something comfortable and peruse the greatest hits. 

It’s really about sensing and knowing that a system is no longer right or just or fair and no longer [being] willing to be an exploited member of that system… Occupy Wall Street is now having, and will continue to have, a profound impact on the status quo.

Alexander Penley, Occupier. Quoted in the Guardian, October 2011. 

According to police, the men were part of a larger pack of 25 people who tried to use eight-foot-long galvanised metal pipes to break the windows of the coffee shop. Terrified patrons hid under the tables, scared that glass would fall in on them… Penley, 41, was arrested and charged with assault and inciting a riot after Saturday’s incident.

Alexander Penley, smashing stuff for kicks – sorry, for “social justice.” Metro, April 2012.

Update:

As so often, the mismatch of rhetoric and behaviour is almost funny. Prior to smashing windows and hitting police officers with 8 foot long steel pipes, the Occupiers had gathered at an anarchist book fair, where leaflets and workshops promised a softer, fairer, fluffier world. (“Indigenous solidarity event with Native Resistance Network.” “Equal rights for all species.” “Children welcome!”) In this temple of warrior poets and ostentatious empathy, the “activist and educator” Cindy Milstein cooed over Occupy’s “direct democracy and cooperation”: “This compelling and quirky, beautiful and at times messy experimentation has cracked open a window on history, affording us a rare chance to grow these uprisings into the new landscape of a caring, ecological, and egalitarian society.” Occupy, says Milstein, is all about “facilitating a conversation in hopes of better strategizing toward increasingly expansive forms of freedom.” Its participants, we learn, are “non-hierarchical and anti-oppression.”

See, it’s all fluff and twinkles. It’s just that some of the twinklers like to wear masks and balaclavas – the universal symbol of friendliness and caring - while trying to shatter glass onto Starbucks customers.

Yes, it’s almost funny. But then you wonder what kind of mind doesn’t register the dissonance. And then you realise that the minds in question are probably like this one here and the minds of these caring, egalitarian people. Our purveyors of radical compassion are, it seems, much too entranced by a cartoon version of the world – and a cartoon version of themselves – to notice their own dishonesty and fundamental contradictions. Behold our betters, the titans of tomorrow.

Via Brain-Terminal.

It’s about antagonising people and slapping them around a little bit and waking them up to reality.

So says Kalle Lasn, editor of the anti-capitalist magazine Adbusters and inspiration for Occupy Wall Street. He and his OccupodPeople are slapping us around for our own good. It’s altruism, see – because they care – and it’s the only way we’ll learn.

Mr Lasn also shares his views on Christmas, the build-up to which he hopes to disrupt with a mix of flashmobs, “rabble-rousing,” sit-ins and other yuletide obstruction:

[Christmas] has been an empty, soulless kind of ritual that very, very few people  enjoy.

He’s therefore giving us “a new way of thinking about the holidays.” He, or rather his minions, will “occupy the paradigm” and “occupy our minds.” Yes, they will save us from Christmas. With sit-ins and mobs in shops. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, here’s a video of an attempted flashmob “occupation” from earlier this year, in which protestors, some of whom were masked, invaded and eventually shut down a Boots store in Oxford Street. One protestor was arrested for suspected criminal damage, at which point other protestors tried to overpower the arresting female officer in an attempt to prevent the arrest. Despite repeated instructions to step back, a scuffle ensued, during which at least three protestors ended up with CS spray in their faces. The protestors inevitably accused the police of being “violent,” “heavy-handed” and “disproportionate.” The views of the store’s owner and customers were, sadly, unclear:  

Via EBD, meet Daniel Johnson, Saskatchewan Green Party candidate and full-time OccupodPerson: “Occupy has no leaders. We run on a consensus based thing, though there are kind of… certain people whose ideas get followed more than others.”

Spare a moment too for this union liaison and Portland Occupodder who wants to “see human beings come together” and “interact with one another.” You see, he’s “tired of differentialities.” However, this touchy-feely soul “couldn’t care two fucks about what happens if, you know, we have another Great Depression.” So his requests for more intimate interaction may not appeal to everyone:

Another one for the pile marked passive-aggressive, from Occupy Portland. It’s a long clip but instructive, and as things progress, unpleasantly tense. I can’t help thinking it captures the, er, flavour of so much of what we’ve seen. There’s something for everyone. An ineffectual pacifist who arrives too late, fails to calm the situation then walks away; vacant stoners; and a belligerent onlooker who also wants to play the passive-aggressive game. Note how Masked Raving Guy says, “We are the 99% and we don’t want you in our society!” (That’s because he’s “trying to bring back democracy,” see?) Masked Raving Guy is ostensibly angry about how his fellow protestors have been depicted, i.e., as incoherent and aggressive. “We don’t want any violence,” screams he, while going out of his way to be provocative and physically intimidating.

I’m guessing his reflection doesn’t please him.

Update: