Comments on: The Brooklyn Bridge case: how the police adapts to leaderless resistance https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-brooklyn-bridge-case-how-the-policy-adapts-to-leaderless-resistance/2011/10/11 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:53:30 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: markus petz https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-brooklyn-bridge-case-how-the-policy-adapts-to-leaderless-resistance/2011/10/11/comment-page-1#comment-486512 Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:53:30 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=20028#comment-486512 Hmnn there is a lack of understanding about the origin of these police tactics – there is a much longer history of the German police using them and in response to the Black Block in that country – all the way back to the 1980s.

There is also elements here that were seen in the Battle of Orgreave in the UK in the early 1980s. OK in neither of these cases was it called “kettling”. In the US I don’t know the history so well, but I would be suspicious of any claims that this is something new or that leaderless resistance is really new. For example the book Gangs of New York shows the part that street gangs and “the mob” played in political aspects in New York in the Victorian period – yes there were gang bosses, but it was very much leaderless resistance from certain Districts like 5 Points rather than a co-ordinated struggle.

Aspects are also captured in fiction – for example the film The Warriors.

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