Guardian: G20 protest videos: Growing catalogue of evidence against police

international | anti-capitalism | other press

Thursday April 16, 2009 13:33

by Peter Sutherland's Nemesis - -

Many predicted a few years ago that non-for-profit citizen-controlled media, using electronic tools and wesbites such as Indymedia, would have a positive influence on mainstream for-the-adverts media.

It has. And this link to a story in today's Guardian shows it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/15/g20-protest-po...logue

Corporate media a few years ago had very little or no interest in the predictable response from the state to protesters who questioned the nature of the system and questioned capitalism. At this link the Guardian has a pile of videos showing police brutality against London 2009 G20 protesters. It’s fairly tame stuff for anyone who has been with a few metres of the riot squad really going for it, but none the less it is shocking stuff for most Guardian readers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/15/g20-protest-po...logue

The state uses terror and violence on people who have the sense and the organisational capacity to get out on the streets and complain about capitalism. Protesting about this or that specific policy by this or that sectional interest group is fine. It does not draw the physical wrath of police, undercovers and riot squad battering all around them and terrorising people who don’t normally go on protests into staying away.

Some progressive media activists predicted years ago that by showing images and telling stories of the truth, of the organised and often casual physical violence of the state against anti-capitalist protesters, online, via citizen no-advert websites, that it would force advert-reliant media products aimed at the middle and upper middle classes to up their game. i.e. If average €50-grand-plus a-year salary man sees stuff online that is ignored by his favourite ‘mainstream’ media, if average middle class Jonathan sees state brutality online that is nowhere to be seen in his favourite ‘mainstream’ media, well then the media has ceased to serve its mediating and ameliorating functions in consumer capital democracies. i.e. average middle class Johanne, has to some degree, a veil pulled from her eyes where she can see that the particular ideological approach taken by the mainstream media and its employees means that they tend to ignore stories of the brutalising of anti-capitalist protesters.

Have the likes of Indymedia forced the likes of the Guardian to run with these videos in order to maintain credibility among their readers who can see similar material elsewhere on non-commercial sites?

Is it just that it’s cheep media, provided for free to them by non-professionals?

Or is it a sensible commercial decision to run these images because the public mood is moving away from believing it’s cool be to be a greedy back-stabbing sqillionaire tax-dodger scumbag banker? Or: the general mood of consumers (citizens / subjects?!) is moving away from capitalism. eg: 30% of Germans in a poll last (I think it was November) by the Financial Times blamed “capitalism itself” rather than “poor regulation” for the economic crisis.

I don’t know.
But it’s worth a look at the vid’s though.

;-)
- Peter Sutherland’s Nemesis.

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Guardian: G20 protest videos: Growing catalogue of evidence against police