Since Seattle, global financial and trade organizations have been honing up
their media image. To get us to bargain with them they have tried to look
sympathetic and concerned. The meeting in Prague was full of talk about
poverty. During the meeting in Prague a World Bank ad said "the purpose of
the World Bank has always been fighting poverty". Another mentions "justice
for all". The World Bank seems to have learned from the media master Bill
Clinton--how to create a compassionate image. In Seattle Clinton said, "I
sympathize with the protestors." Then Tony Blair (a man famous for copying
Clinton's tricks) made a similar statement during the oil price/tax road
blockades in September

Since Seattle, global financial and trade organizations have been honing up
their media image. To get us to bargain with them they have tried to look
sympathetic and concerned. The meeting in Prague was full of talk about
poverty. During the meeting in Prague a World Bank ad said "the purpose of
the World Bank has always been fighting poverty." Another mentions "justice
for all". The World Bank seems to have learned from the media master "Bill
Clinton--how to create a compassionate image. In Seattle Clinton said, "I
sympathize with the protestors." Then Tony Blair (a man famous for copying
Clinton's tricks) made a similar statement during the oil price/tax road
blockades in September. He expressed sympathy but said in his public-school
accent that he disagrees with their methods and that "they are not going
through the proper channels". As if he would have conceded to their demands
if they had been more polite. A week later in Prague we hear the same
Clintonesque bullshit, a World Bank representative said: "We sympathize with
the questions the protestors are proposing but we disagree with their
methods. "We think they are going about this in the wrong way. We want
dialogue not force." Then, another World Bank representative said: "These
are important meetings, about ending AIDS and poverty; what we want is
dialogue not diatribes. We want a globalization that will benefit
everybody." And to top it off, James Wolfenson, President of the World Bank
said: "Poverty is in our neighborhood wherever we live." I'd love to be
the poor person that lives in his neighborhood.

The fact that the World Bank wants dialogue is a measure of our success in
the streets. They are desperate for us to choose dialogue over direct action
because they know that dialogue with them would be ineffective, that they
could never really concede to our demands. They can listen to us, politely
respond, even make minor adjustments, but they all eventually go home to a
gated community of oblivion and have a martini. This is why they want to
channel the force of our direct action into appeals, petitions and attempts
to manipulate the mainstream media. The first step in this process is sorting
out who should be represented; to let us fight amongst ourselves for who gets
the best media representation. Even the BBC recognized the recent rise of
Direct Action as a tactic in an article about Prague and the September road
blockades; of course, they think this is a bad thing. Our enemies recognize
the power of our direct action and are taking counter measures. The fact that
they beg for dialogue exposes their fear and thus our power. The scraps
handed down to us in order to appease us and divert us must be refused.
Compromise with any transcendent institution (the State, WTO, WB, IMF, the
Party etc.) is always the alienation of our power to the very institutions we
supposedly wish to destroy; this sort of compromise results in the forfeiture
of our power to act decisively, to make decisions and actions in the time we
choose. As such, compromise only makes the state and capital stronger.

These image games are smoke signals sent to lure us into the media den, a
place where ideas become opinion that is endlessly produced and reproduced
and nothing is actually done. The media den is a place where thought becomes
inept; thought is divorced from action when it becomes merely choice of
position. To defer action in hope that such representation will lead to a
change in WB or IMF policy for example is to give up our own capacity to act
when and where action is necessary: to leave the decision to others and
resign one's own power. If one opposes capitalism as a whole then such a
tactic is especially absurd: the WB or IMF would never dismantle itself. The
media den is the master of manipulation, it intoxicates us until we are
satisfied to leave matters in other hands. Meanwhile, we lose our most
effective weapon, our capacity to act. In acting we create social relations;
in practice the struggling multitude self-organizes. But organization always
poses the danger of limiting our active power.

On the internet and in several publications some people have begun to call on
the direct action milieu to move away from confrontation. This points to
what is perhaps the biggest danger to the continuing struggle against
capitalism, the danger posed by those within the movement who are waiting
for a chance to represent the movement in a dialogue with the institutions of
capital and with the state, those willing to compromise, to end the deadlock, to petition for a scrap. Such compromisers usually work within
various permanent organizations that have grown up within the movement whose
prime focus is the media. But the work of these organizations aims at
affecting public opinion and getting a back seat at the table of power,
and involves a complex process of managing the image of the multitude that
rises up against the institutions of capital. Within their heads, these
organizers chant the mantra "only that which appears in the media exists",
as they frantically go from one interview to the next, for in the end they
are more interested in what is on TV than what is going on in the streets, in
the woods, in the night. This involves two steps. First, such organizations
attempt to organize and discipline the multitude of active individuals
involved in the struggle. Second, they attempt to manage the representation
of the action in the media.

The first step involves taking a multitude, an undisciplined conglomeration
of individuals and groups with different desires, and shaping them as best as
possible into a mass of disciplined bodies. Foremost, this means separating
decision from the necessity of its moment and setting rules of behavior that
stand above all the participants. This has even meant physically stopping
people from acting and turning people into police. The organizers are willing
to sacrifice the most active in order to get a seat at the table of power.
This attempt to contain the action is usually only partially successful and
the media organizations mill us down in their image-factories to produce
material for constructing a proper representation, cutting off the pieces
that don't conform to their bland tastes. They become the spokespeople,
eagerly offering themselves up to the media in easily digestible bite size
morsels. The spin-doctors speak for the movement, naming it in their image,
always hoping for a bigger slice of the evening, half-hour pie. But those who
wish to fight on the terrain of image, base their strategic decisions on an
idealized notion of political discourse. In fact, this notion of political
discourse is no different from the story that the media and democracy tells
about itself. Can the organizers be so naïve?

Of course, contrary to the dominant notion of political discourse to which
the organizers subscribe, there is no open terrain of political exchange and
participation; what we have is a spectacular apparatus of images that produce
and regulate public opinion. Public opinion is not something that is
first found among the public in general and then afterwards replayed through
the media, as a simple reporting of the public mood. An opinion is produced
by the media itself; it is a flattened, uniformed idea devoid of all life and
connection with desire that is reproduced a million fold through the media.
Public opinion is offered up to the passive consumer as one more commodity,
as a simple choice: are you for globalization or for national protection? Are
you for third-world debt relief or should they pay what they owe? No thinking
necessary; we fall right into place, or we are supposed to. Opinions are
massified ideas, and offer no hope of communicating our desires for a
qualitatively different world. Can the organizers be so naïve? The
question that the media organizations constantly pose to us is, should we
follow Tony Blair and the World Bank's advice and leadership and join in a
dialogue with power? Should we forgo our active powers and move the struggle
from direct action and attack into the struggle over image? Our very strength
is the creative use of our active powers of attack; their greatest strength
is their control over the technologies of image reproduction, the media. If
we want to completely destroy the present order, we can't win by fighting on
TV.

Points of discussion on organization to avoid defeat through compromise:

1. The lowest level of organization that works in a given situation is the
best: look at the ELF.

2. Autonomy in action is the only way to maintain the strength of our attack.
Decision should always remain with those who are doing an action.

3. Communication, critical and revolutionary solidarity, and mutual aid are
the best ways for groups to link up their struggles; large scale and
permanent organizations bury and crush the active powers of individual
members.

4. Compromise with imposed decision is always defeat: we remain in permanent
conflict with the institutions of capital and the state.