What does ILWG do when they come across a “groan, this is horrible” article?
We turn it into a SNARKIE!

As soon as we read this piece from Homeland Security Today, we knew right away that we had to rip it to shreds.

Meet the Snarkers:

Ryan is writing in blue
Heather is writing in purple
And Peter who is writing in blood red

And so without further ado we give you:

The Occupy Movement: Rising Anarchy
April 03, 2012
By: Ian Oxnevad
The Occupy movement presents a challenge to police and policymakers both in the United States and abroad. Occupy, the now-worldwide movement spawned by Occupy Wall Street, serves as a 21st century anarchist movement the likes of which has not been seen since WWI.

So far, Occupy protests in the United States exhibit a mostly peaceful nature. However, certain elements within Occupy that have been seen both here and abroad have the potential to inflict major damage to governments, people and the private sector. If not carefully monitored and mitigated, these elements pose a significant threat to modern democracies. Why exactly are they so threatened?  I thought we were just a bunch of loser hippies with no jobs.  If we’re a threat to modern democracy, god help us all.  Or are we really revealing a weakness in the system?  

Modern anarchism traces back to mid-19th century leftist groups in Europe. Anarchists differ from Marxists in that Marxists believe the state must be seized and then used as a tool to achieve a “free” society -Unlike our free society where we get to choose between two corporate-owned parties. Conversely, anarchists believe that the “system,” including the state, must be dismantled entirely. After a complete systemic collapse, anarchists believe that a just and free society will organically emerge out of the chaos. -So is this dude saying that it’s more reasonable to expect a just and free society to arise out of tight government control?The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Immediately after its formation as an ideology, historical anarchists targeted a number of individuals and organizations both in the Americas and Europe. Anarchist tactics included the assassination of government officials, bombing police stations, public venues, mob violence and poisonings.  Did he forgot to mention that during the anarchist movement humble beginnings, people were getting shot in the streets for demanding humane working conditions and voting rights? I guess scuffles like the Haymarket Massacre, the Homestead Strike, or the Battle of Blair Mountain are superfluous knowledge when writing a treatise on anarchy.

The most significant anarchist attack occurred in 1914 when the anarchist group, the Black Hand, murdered Archduke Ferdinand of the Austrian Empire. -Ya know I think my tenth grade history teacher said the Black Hand were Serbian nationalists backed by the Serbian Army.  I guess that makes them the only anarchists in history who had government support. This attack sparked WWI, causing millions of deaths.-And the rampant arms races, colonial wars, and brinksmanship of Europe’s Great Powers had NOTHING to do with it.  Total coincidence! In today’s politically unstable environment around the world, anarchist groups have the potential to cause a chain of events leading to similar carnage.-Show me your video footage of gun-toting Occupiers and then I’ll stop laughing at your conflating Occupiers and anarchists.Now now. Some of us are anarchists.  This article fails to recognize though that some of us are also quite conservative and could fit comfortably within the Tea Party.  And never mind the diversity among the anarchists themselves.   That’s WAY too subtle for this guy.

Today’s Occupy, with Occupy Wall Street as the informal flagship of the overall movement, has its intellectual origins in small groups of left-leaning academics and publications.-Heavens forbid that the writer acknowledge Occupy ideas might be held by people who aren’t part of the ivory tower! Economically inspired protests around the world brought together a number of professors and other academics that hold an anarchist philosophy.-Funny, I thought these protests were mainly driven by ordinary folks tired of getting shafted by continual government austerity programs.In late 2011, a number of anarchist intellectuals and academics from the fields of sociology and anthropology joined the pre-existing protest movements from 2010. -I wonder if this is the course the author is referring to.  I guess anyone to the right of Rush Limbaugh is an anarchist! I think he’s referring to people like David Graeber.  Because anthropologists who have trouble holding down a job herald the death of democracy.  

Prior to the arrival of the anarchist academics-Oh, the clever alliteration, the global protests often had specific demands, revolved around single issues and targeted specific businesses and government agencies. Upon getting involved in the protests movements, academics and theorists began breathing anarchist philosophy-Anarchism CPR?  That’s a new one!into the protests and moving them towards a less specific leftist phenomenon-Oh we musn’t give unhappy people any idea that the whole economic system may be screwed up, no no no!  Masses of ordinary people awakened to the fact that we are all screwed?  Nah, never.  Must have been led by the evil academics in the ivory tower.

Occupy Wall Street, while not the leadership group of the global Occupy movement, came into being through a caballingIs “caballing” a weird type of political sex act? together of anarchist thinkers. Many of the Anarchist academics that now dominate the character of the Occupy movement also enjoy support from a number of left-leaning publications and magazines.-The author’s sense of academic rigor obviously arose from the Allen West school of political thinking.Since the economic crash of 2008, many Leftist and Marxist periodicals began to call for action against banks, mortgage firms and governments. -Anarchy!  It’s Reds Under the Beds 2.0, upgraded for the new millenium to keep people afraid!  Buy now!

But rather than propose economically practical solutions,-Newspeak Translation: solutions which preserve the primacy of corporate capitalism these leftist publications catered to the most extreme fringe elements. These publications, combined with active involvement from anarchist academics, provided the perfect storm for creating the current Occupy movement.

Occupy’s decision-making revolves around the idea of “consensus” as a way of determining what direction the movement should take. Consensus is reached through “general assembly” meetings where there is no official leadership, and rather follows a “horizontal” model as opposed to a “vertical model.” These general assembly meetings determine what actions the specific Occupy movement will take, and include decisions such as when and where marches will occur, and what business or government entity will be targeted.-Hey guys I think he actually did “research” for this part!  Bravo!

So far, most Occupy protests have been peaceful, despite taking a heavy financial toll on the cities where they occur. Let’s gripe about the the grass that costs $500 to replace while spending a ton of cash on cops to help the banks evict grandma and kick her out into the street. However, many Occupy groups have violent sub-groups within them that are responsible for most of the violence that has happened.-Scott Olsen and the students of UC Davis would have something to say about that. These violent sub-groups are called the “Black Bloc.” The Black Bloc originated as a tactic used by anarchist groups in Germany in the early 1980s. Black Bloc members can usually be identified by the way they obscure their faces and the all-black clothing they wear. -Is all the research in this piece from Wikipedia?  They said the same thing.

Serving as the violent DNA inside an otherwise peaceful modern movement, the Black Bloc represents the same violent anarchist ideology that triggered WWI.-I have to give it to this guy, he never passes up the chance to play the Red Scare card.  Black Bloc groups inside Occupy have caused significant damage in cities in Europe.

Greece, for example, which is struggling with crushing debt and a 25 percent unemployment rate, has seen significant violence from Black Bloc members. Of course, never mind the violence of Goldman Sachs taking the entire country and its resources hostage. So far, Greek Black Bloc members have destroyed roughly 100 buildings through arson attacks and have confronted police with sophisticated unit-level tactics involving homemade shields, clubs, molotovs, rocks and the occasional low-grade improvised explosive device (IED).

Greece serves as an interesting example in that their Greek counterparts may have actually trained violent Black Bloc members in Italy-Wow!  Does that mean there are *GASP!* shock Secret Black Bloc training camps?  OOOOOOOH! Yep, didn’t you hear?  They found them in the same place Saddam Hussein hid his WMDs, thus spreading the violence.

The Internet also has allowed for the sharing of ideas-The Internet also allows you to share cute cat pictures, but I don’t see anybody consider that a crimeamong the Occupy groups, and the Black Bloc inside them. Black Bloc members in Occupy Oakland have demonstrated some of the same sophisticated violence against the police that their counterparts used against law enforcement in Greece and Rome.

Organized use of shields, unit tactics -So does that make riot police part of the Black Bloc?  They wear all black, use shields and unit tactics, and wear face-concealing helmets.  -Who comes dressed for a riot?  The cops.and molotovs have allowed the Black Bloc in Oakland to cause considerable damage to Oakland, and serious injuries to officers in the Oakland Police Department (OPD). -When you have an OPD cop who’s gotten a Scott Olsen-level injury, then I’ll feel sorry for them.  Besides, if there really had been serious injuries to any Oakland cops wouldn’t our law enforcement-loving MSM be blaring it out 24/7?   
What is most disturbing is that members from Occupy Oakland have photographed OPD officers, -Nevermind the OPD do the same thing and have arrested people on trumped up felony charges, the evil anarchists might have cameras!Let me guess, photographing OPD officers will reveal that they’re actually werewolf refugees from “Twilight”and compiled enough information on the officers to cause cyberattacks targeting the officers.  -If they weren’t misbehaving without adequate oversight they wouldn’t be targeted for these kinds of attacks.  Occupy and related movements are rising up to fill gaps where the government has failed.      

[Editor’s note: For more on anarchist cyberattacks against law enforcement, see the Homeland Security Today report, Cyberattacks Pose Threat to Law Enforcement Intelligence, Operations and Personnel]

In conclusion, Occupy as a movement poses a number of challenges to law enforcement, local governments and the democratic system as a whole.-Such as offering a democratic system not beholden to a citizen’s net worth.New approaches to confronting the violent elements inside Occupy are needed if the Black Bloc is to be prevented from radicalizing the rest of the movement.-I thought you said, “The Black Bloc originated as a tactic used by anarchist groups in Germany in the early 1980s.”

Approaches more often used by intelligence agencies are needed to confront this threat. The creative use of intelligence officers, either developed internally or borrowed from the private sector, can afford police agencies the speed, knowledge and agility needed to counter these emerging threats and the chaos that they promote.  My, what a self-serving statement!  Could it be that you’re hyping up this “threat” to make more money on the government dime as a DHS contractor?  

Ian Oxnevad is a security and intelligence consultant specializing in the Middle East and Counterterrorism who has both tactical and intelligence training. Oxnevad holds a degree in Arabic and a Master’s Degree in National Security Studies from California State University San Bernardino -Newspeak Translation: I went to school for six years to learn how to scare people.  Homeland Security has been funding “National Security Studies” programs across the country.  Oxenvad acts as if repeating unsubstantiated paranoia makes him a serious scholar.  I’d say this is another waste of DHS money, just like the TSA.  Ironically I think Oxnevad might have better luck understanding social movements if he went back to school and studied Anthropology.  A quick Google search of his name doesn’t pick up any other “security analysis” except for this one article. Who the hell is this guy and why should we care what he says??  Seems like a loser “security pro” trying to drum up business for himself. Contact him at,ian(at)chabotstrategies.com