After reading A Few Words Against Rats, we wanted to address a point that is not specifically mentioned: anarchist or anarchist-adjacent journalists. No one should be filming or photographing riotous moments, no matter who is holding the camera, without exception.
‘A Few Words’ links to the text “In Defense of Smashing Cameras”, which makes an exception for photographers who are “trusted”, and provides some very inadequate guidelines that do not address the fundamental problem – that footage is being recorded in the first place. It isn’t possible for all participants in a riot to trust a certain individual, such guidelines would only be relevant for an affinity-based action where all involved can actually have input in the process.
It should go without saying that a photographer can be arrested and their footage seized before they have an opportunity to blur the contents. This is what happened at the J20 demo back in 2016, where one of the arrestees handed over massive quantities of material that were then used in the investigation. Even if footage is published with lots of blurring, however, it’s impossible to blur enough to avoid contributing to an investigative effort. After the riotous and brave actions of 3/05, SubMedia published a video with countless moments that will undoubtedly be used to identify individuals from their (poorly masked or unmasked) faces, their identifying clothing characteristics that can be matched up with other footage, or with the clothing found in the possession of arrestees. This footage also gives the state less concrete information that is nonetheless useful to their investigation – people’s gait, their body shape, how many individuals participated in which moments of action. If a rioter is ultimately identified, footage like this also allows feds to reconstruct who was doing what, when (even if only by the abundant clothing characteristics that are left unblurred). Unicorn Riot’s coverage is also replete with treasures for the investigation, like an unblurred high definition photo of the entire crowd that they posted to their social media.
Why didn’t these two projects just blur everything that could potentially be useful to our enemies? Because then the video wouldn’t be watchable, and spectators wouldn’t be able to gawk at the ninja heroes lighting shit on fire. Videos or photos are ALWAYS a problem in a demonstration that might involve riotous activity, and the spectacularization of revolt doesn’t actually contribute to the revolt. It is sufficient for people to find out about what happened through report-backs. There is no other way that doesn’t endanger anyone.
Quick tips: spraying the lens of a camera with spraypaint (using a fat cap) can be much faster and less involved than smashing it. This flyer can be distributed before a demonstration starts to serve as a warning to all camera holders, without needing to get bogged down confronting each one.
The blurry lines created by ‘acceptable guidelines for trusted journalists’ endanger everyone. No recording device is acceptable, regardless of trust, intentions, or promised editing practices. Sexy riot porn, or a social media post, are not worth risking the freedom of those who are putting everything on the line.
Submitted anonymously over email