Pathologizing and Privatizing Occupy | Nicholas Mirzoeff

This week we’ve seen a very public attempt to pathologize Occupy and purported violence within the movement, even as I happened to see a very private closure of an Occupy in Pittsburgh. I’ve been reading Elisabeth Roudinesco’s history of the committed French intellectual, Philosophy in Troubled Times. She begins with Georges Canguilhem, Foucault’s adviser and the author of the classic The Normal and the Pathological. Canguilhem had to abandon the pacifism he adopted in the aftermath of World War 1 when confronted with fascism. In 1943, he defended his thesis defining the modern formation of the normal as that which was not pathological, while active in the Resistance. My point is not that these were real choices compared to ours but that it was every bit as difficult to make them, even though they now seem so clear.

In Pittsburgh, there was a privatized eviction of Occupy Pittsburgh by BNY Mellon. In New York, the NYPD cleared Zuccotti for Brookfield who now place rent-a-cops in the space. In Pittsburgh, the bank did it. Here’s the sign they posted:

Evicting Occupy Pittsburgh

It is now the bank that occupies the park and anyone else who might remain is a trespasser. As befits this activism, BNY Mellon has a Political Action Committee:

Our PAC makes contributions to U.S. federal candidates, a limited number of state and local candidates, and campaign committees and other PACs. When making specific contribution decisions, the PAC considers a number of factors, including the candidates’ positions on issues related to our business, their leadership positions, legislative committees and communities they represent.

According to their filing with the Federal Elections Commission, BNY Mellon raised about $112,000 in the second half of 2011. None was spent on any specific election and will presumably be used this year, for which data is not yet available. Any wild guesses as to how it might be spent? All such information is, under current law, private.

In public, some leading figures in Occupy have decided to attack each other rather than engage with these or similar actions. Financial journalist Chris Hedges, who might have been able to shed light on the matter, this week decided instead to pronounce that the so-called “black bloc” are a “cancer in the Occupy movement.”  Hedges, who has covered Occupy widely, published a long, rather rambling attack on the anarchist “black bloc” as being a direct attack on the “organized left.”

via www.nicholasmirzoeff.com

Comments

[Noelle]

Hedges is not a financial journalist. He was a war correspondent. I may not agree fully with his critique, but I observe the MSM turning against Occupy, especially in Oakland. Perception is everything now. It doesn't matter if OO is violent or not... I heard on a public radio station there are supposedly counter-demonstrators from Oakland neighborhood groups. Cops insinuate that serious crimes are not being investigating since cops are at Occupy protests instead. Mainstream people don't like that and they will not continue to support Occupy, which the power elite are happy to exploit.