Thursday, June 18, 2020

Those Green-Streaked Men in the Parks are Strangers

Verified

Library of Congress



The first thing I ever wrote for The Washington Post was a little chapter about statues in a 1975 guidebook to D.C. that is now long out of print, and subsequent editions dropped my contributions. But given the current debate about monuments and protests in Lafayette Park, these pages may be of interest, or even amusement.












Tuesday, June 02, 2020

Antifa, 'Casseurs,' Anarchists, Neo-Nazis Hijacking Peaceful Demos? We Saw a Lot of That in Paris in 2018 and 2019


Beginning in November 2018 and well into 2019, virtually every weekend protests taking place in the name of the gilets jaunes were staged around the country and, especially in Paris, turned into violent confrontations with the police by groups that identified themselves as anarchists and, yes, "Antifa." The graffiti slogans they left behind make that clear. 

On December 1, 2018, presumed members of this group broke into the Arc de Triomphe and destroyed or defaced important artifacts. Others burned banks and cafés and cars. I posted several photographs of the rioting and the police response immediately after the initial violence. Those can be found here. These I selected mainly for the graffiti, which speaks for itself.

ANTIFA=GILETS JAUNES scrawled on Arc de Triomphe Dec 1, 2018
CLASS against Class .... GILETS JAUNES=ANTIFA - Graffiti on Arc de Triomphe  from Dec. 1, 2018
----UTION, What else? - in English on fallen sign. French and Palestinian flag in background. March 2019


Trashed and looted boutique, March 2019


French pun: No quarter (Cartier) for the bourgeois

Child looking at paving stone projectile at closed entrance to the Arc. Circled A is for Anarchist.

MAKE IT BURN and SWEPT AWAY BY A REVOLUTIONARY WAVE on torched Belle Époque mansion at the Étoile. December 2018

Liberty defaced. Inside the Arc during repairs after Black Bloc vandalism.



VICTORY THROUGH CHAOS

The Black Blocs trashed Fouquet's, and the gilets jaunes amused themselves.


Torched news stand, March 2019





Borrowing a line from the U.S. 

Dec. 1, 2018: "THE YELLOW VESTS WILL TRIUMPH" written on Arch of Triumph.

December 2019. "WE'LL BE BACK" with Anarchist symbol. And they certainly were.