Discussion
There's a few pictures currently going around of a group of Patriot Front fascist paramilitaries on Washington DC public transport.
A lot of people are worried by this. Some have talked at length about their worries.
As someone who spends a certain amount of time in black bloc, let me talk you through some things I haven't seen said about these pictures but that I think are very relevant.
Firstly and most obviously: the clothes are uniform.
No two people in a black bloc will be wearing the same getup, besides black and a mask. Some wear hoodies, some snoods, some baseball caps. Some wear trainers, some walking boots and some Docs. I often wear hoodies and army boots because it's what I'm comfortable in.
You will frequently see people turn up to black bloc wearing battle jackets, or band hoodies, despite these being a bad idea because they identify you.
These fash are all wearing exactly the same clothes. Exactly. This is a uniform and it means someone bought it for them (edit: or they have a supplier they all buy from, and enough discipline to ensure they all obey.) Either way this means there's organisation and money behind it, and while these fash might be the very visible front line, they're also just part of a larger machine.
@passenger It doesn't mean the uniform was bought from them. They could have each paid for their uniform, which would have been bought from the same supplier.
Yeah, that's a fair point. I don't know how cultlike the Patriot Front are; a lot of groups that try to do what you suggest without being very high-control end up with a lot of people cheating ("I'll buy something that looks the same and is much cheaper, nobody will know") and you end up able to see the slight differences.
Yeah, past Patriot Front leaks and comments from former members have tended to indicate that they're expected to buy their own gear. PF internally issues explicit guidelines about what is and isn't acceptable to wear on marches like these, but there's some leeway (e.g., the pants have to be khaki, but that can mean preppy trousers, Dickies-style work pants, Carhartts, or whatever; by contrast, they have a specific gaiter they all use, but gaiters are cheap anyway, so there isn't much incentive to cheat there).
One of PF's cult-like elements is that members are required to continually buy stickers, patches, etc., from leader Thomas Rousseau, which seems to be pretty much how he makes his living. That mandate causes less internal resentment than I would've thought (almost none) because, unlike black bloc participants, these clowns really believe that a horde of peons supporting the elites is the proper way to organize. Moreover, PF members tend to be bougie as hell. So I don't think it's all that far-fetched to believe that they also spend $100-150 each on uniform attire. (What does produce internal resentment is the *requirement* that they fly all over the US to participate in events like these, even when it really costs them in terms of their personal relationships -- like when Rousseau told one member he had to fly across the country for a march just as his wife was about to go into labor.)
Most of those leaks are several years old now (pre-Trump II) and I haven't really kept up, so things may well have changed. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they were getting serious money these days from some corner of the billionaire class or something, but I haven't actually seen any hard evidence of that. If they are, I'm inclined to suspect that Rousseau and a tiny cadre of insiders would most likely be keeping the vast majority of the money for themselves, rather than subsidizing the grunts: once the peons have shown they're willing to make the sacrifice, why let them off the hook?
(I'm pretty sure the doc explaining the uniform is somewhere in this Unicorn Riot bundle, but I've lost track of where it is specifically:
https://vault.unicornriot.ninja/patriotfrontleaks/ )
Secondly, the clothes fit and they're clean.
Black blocs usually include a fair percentage of squatters, as well as metalheads and other reprobates. Some people clean their clothes, others live with parents or partners who do that for them, but you're never going to get everyone turning up in crisp stuff smelling like it came out of the dryer.
Likewise, a lot of anarchists wear second-hand clothing, either passed around via free shops or by hand, or from charity shops. Clothes stretch over time, and human bodies change. Ill-fitting black hoodies are practically de rigeur. This is reflected in the appearance of the black bloc.
These fash, though? All their stuff fits perfectly. Their patches are all well-sewn. Look at them. Derek Guy might criticise the sizing or the cut, but I am not Derek Guy. To me, this is well-kept clothing carefully sized and washed, and possibly new. This is clothing-as-class-signifier.
What you are seeing is not just a display of racial supremacy, but of class supremacy.
thanks for this thread but also for the chuckle i had at "Ill-fitting black hoodies are practically de rigeur"; speaking as an ethnographer, top-shelf observation 😂
They say that you should never trust descriptions of a group from within that group. I am reassured that you, as my nemesis but as a well-respected authority, tell me from without that my observation is nonetheless valid.
You know how people say that mushrooms are only the most visible part of a much larger and mostly invisible mycellium network?
This is a metaphor.
Uniforms like this are an indicator that when you look at the fascists wearing them, you're seeing the visible part of a much larger and mostly invisible network of logistics, support and money.
You should not trust people who wear uniforms. But you should certainly not trust those who provided them those uniforms.
You know how people say that mushrooms are only the most visible part of a much larger and mostly invisible mycellium network?
This is a metaphor.
Uniforms like this are an indicator that when you look at the fascists wearing them, you're seeing the visible part of a much larger and mostly invisible network of logistics, support and money.
You should not trust people who wear uniforms. But you should certainly not trust those who provided them those uniforms.
Thirdly, because I forgot earlier:
There are more than four hundred Patriot Front members in the US. Of course, not everyone can afford to drop everything and go to DC to parade for a few hours in the sweltering heat. But even so, this is a subset.
Okay, so, which subset?
Look at them. They're all fit and bodily able. There aren't obese people there. There aren't disabled people there. Are there obese and/or disabled fascists? Yes, absolutely. But none showed up here. When we call a black bloc demo we get loads of people with bodies of all shapes and sizes, and this is a good thing - as the saying in the UK goes, "a fat lass with a low centre of gravity is a terror in a melee."
This means they didn't select the subgroup along the lines of "those who can make it to DC today." They were selecting for able-bodied people who are visually physically impressive.
This means that they have a leadership who can say to people "sorry, you're too short, you aren't coming to the big day, we would rather have one fewer person than include you"; they have enough internal discipline that this order is obeyed; and they have the concept that this is a good idea.
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