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Now That Was A Riot!: Social Control in Felonious

Times

Michael Loadenthal

To cite this article: Michael Loadenthal (2019): Now That Was A Riot!: Social Control in Felonious
Times, Global Society, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2019.1670142

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GLOBAL SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2019.1670142

Now That Was A Riot!: Social Control in Felonious Times

Michael Loadenthal
Department of Sociology, Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In early 2017, dozens of US states introduced legislation designed to Received 15 October 2018
further criminalize confrontational protest tactics through Accepted 17 September 2019
expanding the scope of felony prosecutions and summoning the
specter of the “riot” to depoliticize political action; indelibly linking
it to criminal violence. This shift towards felonies and rioters took
the form of legislation, intelligence reports, prosecutions, and
rhetorical attempts at nearly every level of government.
Demonstrations and campaigns were recast as felonious
conspiracies, and the participants, rioters. In doing so,
demonstrators were denied legibility as political actors, and
instead held up in courts and newspapers as anti-social, irrational,
and unruly criminal mobs. These legalistic, rhetorical, and strategic
maneuvers can be critically interpreted through a mixed
methodological approach embedded within Discourse Analysis
and Autoethnography, and interpreted through a genealogical,
social control framework. Through a close reading of these
rhetorical shifts and their implications for policing and political
repression, social movements adopting revolutionary nonviolence
can increase resiliency through focusing on creating power, not
simply challenging it.

Introduction
On 20 January 2017, more than 230 self-identifying anti-fascist and anti-capitalist demon-
strators were kettled in downtown Washington, DC, attacked by less-than-lethal
munitions and batons, and eventually mass arrested. The demonstrators had marched
in the streets, damaged corporate property, and clashed with police in an attempt to
disrupt the Inauguration of President Trump, and months after their arrest, would be col-
lectively charged with dozens of federal felonies. If these defendants had been convicted,
guidelines would have led to life prison sentences—60–100 years for each participant. The
so-called “J20 case”1 received frequent and sustained national and international news cov-
erage2 due to the number of arrestees and the severity of the charges levied. As a Queer,
anti-fascist Jew concerned with the increasing authoritarianism, xenophobia, and nativism
exhibited in the US Executive, I joined the demonstration from its start and was attacked,

CONTACT Michael Loadenthal Loadenthal@protonmail.com Department of Sociology, Miami University, Oxford,

OH, USA
1
In mass protest parlance, action names are derived from month and day—January 20 = J20.
2
701 such articles (1/20/17-7/19/18) is archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20181004143443/http://defendj20re
sistance.org/media.
© 2019 University of Kent
2 M. LOADENTHAL

kettled, and arrested with the help of a massive security apparatus involving 3,000 officers
and 5,000 National Guard soldiers and bussed-in police.3 I was held for two days and
charged with a single count of “Riot Act-Felony”4 which several months later, would be
embellished in a series of superseding indictments. After my release, I endured eighteen
months of prosecution before the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) unceremo-
niously dropped all charges. It would be twenty-six months before the court ruled that
charges could not be re-filed.5
Prior to my 2017 arrest, I have spent the previous fifteen years immersed in con-
frontational social movements in the US and abroad—as both an organizer and a
researcher—seeking to understand how and why political repression operated. I obses-
sively read government documents, troll forums for leaked materials, and carefully
track the rhetorical strategies of politicians in a series of research projects and publi-
cations.6 While there is a great degree of nuance deserving of attention, overall I have
observed the increased use of felony charges and terrorism rhetoric to further crimi-
nalize costly and confrontational forms of social protest, and beginning around the
time of my arrest, the increased reliance on framing demonstrators as rioters in
both rhetorical and legal realms.
What follows is an attempt to make sense of these trends and how they have served
to reconfigure nonviolent forms of revolutionary agitation. Through an Autoethno-
graphic approach embedded within a Discourse and Event Analysis framework, I
seek to answer the question: What has resulted from the increased use of felony
charges and riot-centric rhetoric for social movements, and how has this helped to
reconfigure revolutionary nonviolence? Prior to examining these trends, this proceeding
discussion will examine issues of reflexivity and methodology before presenting my
larger evidence.

Concerning method, “data”, objectivity

In approaching a genealogical account of the contemporary era of political repression I
have taken an interpretive-qualitative approach scaffolded by an analysis of discourse,
rhetoric, and the law. Methodologically, this approach draws from (Open Source) Event
Analysis for the researching of social movements and a Critical Discourse Analysis of gov-
ernment documents and other forms of State speech. This particular examination of felo-
nies and riots has involved interrogating legislation, Congressional reports, intelligence
assessments, court transcripts and expert testimonies, Presidential speeches, and a
3
I have written/spoken about this experience prior, e.g.: Michael Loadenthal, The Riotization of Protest, interview by Riot
Dogg, The Hotwire (ep. 34), August 29, 2018, https://crimethinc.com/podcast/hotwire-34; subMedia, Conspiracy to Riot:
The Case of the J20 Resistance, Streaming video, vol. 16, Trouble (Washington, DC: Submedia.tv, 2018), https://sub.media/
video/trouble-16-conspiracy-to-riot/; Michael Loadenthal, “From Demonstration to Riot-Ization: Social Control in the Era
of Trump”, Juniata Voices, Vol. 18 (2019), pp. 8–32.
4
District of Columbia Vs. LOADENTHAL, MICHAEL, No. 2017 CF2 001246 (District of Columbia Courts January 22, 2017).
5
This article was written June 2017—five months after my arrest—under indictment. My charges were dropped as part of
the final defendant group (July 2017), and the case was dismissed “with prejudice” (March 2019). Although final revisions
to this text were made August 2019, I have not updated the text to reflect this post-indicted reality.
6
E.g. Michael Loadenthal, “Deconstructing ‘Eco-Terrorism’: Rhetoric, Framing and Statecraft as Seen through the Insight
Approach”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Vol. 6, No. 1 (April 2013), pp. 92–117; Michael Loadenthal, “Eco-Terrorism? Coun-
tering Dominant Narratives of Securitisation: A Critical, Quantitative History of the Earth Liberation Front (1996–2009)”,
Perspectives on Terrorism, (Center for Terrorism and Security Studies, Terrorism Research Initiative), Vol. 8, No. 3 (June 25,
2014), pp. 16–50.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 3

variety of governmental statements, for example, Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of

Public Affairs releases. In order to isolate and identify the discourse in question, I utilized
an archival approach to locate relevant texts, focusing on documents which either spoke to
the framing of leftist networks (i.e. anarchist, anti-fascist, animal liberation, eco-justice,
anti-racism, etc.)7 or which recounted the prosecutorial histories of these movements
and networks.8
This study is located within an Autoethnographic approach which situates personal
observation and experience through larger, historical interpretations. Throughout, I am
frequently referring to events I have witnessed, legal cases I have played a support role
in, and in the central case under examination—the prosecution of counter-Inaugural
demonstrators—I am speaking directly to my experience of federal prosecution as an
indicted defendant traversing the legal system for nearly two years. During this time, I
conducted semi-structured interviews with eleven defendants and four individuals
serving as non-indicted legal support persons. I also spoke at length, and on a recurring
basis with four journalists, three lawyers, and one federal law enforcement agent who
specializes in domestic terrorism. In addition, I participated in inter-defendant exchanges
for more than two years (and continue to do so) where strategy, support, messaging, and
other issues were discussed, debated, and coordinated. Though I did not conduct formal
interviews, I did occasionally take notes which helped to form the skeleton of my interpre-
tive analysis. Throughout Spring 2019, I oversaw the structured analysis of 214 J20 cases;
coded for quantitative analysis and reviewed by three individuals as part of an indepen-
dent, pre-existing, multi-year research project focused around the criminal justice
system’s prosecution of politically-motivated crimes.9
In addition to my ethnographic observations, interviews, discursive document analysis,
descriptive statistics, and qualitative event analyses, I reviewed a library of materials I had
privileged access to as a result of my prosecution. These materials were typically restricted
by the court (i.e. protected from public release via court order) but made available by pro-
secutors to defendants via evidentiary discovery. These restricted materials included hun-
dreds of hours of police body camera footage with audio (nearly 3 terabytes!), CCTV and
other surveillance video from non-police sources (e.g. marchers’ social media accounts),
nearly 10 hours of police radio chatter (i.e. “radio runs”), scores of photographs,
content extracted from defendants’ seized cellphones, helicopter footage, and lengthy tes-
timony by prosecutors, police, and FBI expert witnesses to historicize and contextualize
demonstrations.10
These materials allowed a unique insight into the decision-making process by security
forces and city officials. For example, through reviewing police radio chatter, we learned
that Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Homeland Security Bureau Commander

7
E.g. Regional Organized Crime Information Center, “Antifa/Anti-Antifa: Fighting in the Streets”, Special Research Report
(Nashville, TN: Regional Organized Crime Information Center, 2017); State of New Jersey Office of Homeland Security
and Preparedness, “Anarchist Extremists: Antifa”, Governmental, June 12, 2017, https://www.njhomelandsecurity.gov/
analysis/anarchist-extremists-antifa.
8
E.g. 109th Congress, “Oversight on Eco-Terrorism Specifically Examining the Earth Liberation Front (‘ELF’) and the Animal
Liberation Front (‘ALF’)” (United States Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works, May 18, 2005), http://epw.
senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=237836.
9
This was part of the Prosecution Project (tPP), a research project I founded and manage since 2017. Defendant data was
gathered and integrated into a ∼50 variable database led by undergraduate student Alexandria Doty.
10
These materials are detailed in a +300-page document: Jennifer A. Kerkhoff and Jessie K. Liu, “Re: Discovery and Infor-
mation Produced in the Rioting Case” (U.S. Department of Justice, March 15, 2018).
4 M. LOADENTHAL

Keith DeVille ordered officers to mass arrest demonstrators before we departed our assem-
bly point—and thus prior to any alleged rioting—precisely because the group was judged
to be made up largely of anarchists. According to his testimony, DeVille believed “the
group gathering at Logan Circle was going to be problematic [because they were] … anar-
chist or anarchist ideology and anti-capitalist”, adding a distinction between “anarchist-
type [protest]” and “just protest”,11 demonstrating the “good protestor”/“bad protestor”
frame, and in effect claiming that anarchists could not “just protest”. DeVille’s framing
was central in the police’s justification for arrest and prosecutors’ arguments during
trial. This privileged access to individuals and materials made for a research subject
which was immersive and challenging, engaging and terrifying—blurring the lines deli-
neating where “data collection” began and ended.

On objectivity and detachment

Some scholars may question a (formerly) indicted individual’s ability to speak “objec-
tively” of their legal reality. My approach to this question, and to my wider scholarship,
builds on the work of sociologist C. Wright Mills,12 anthropologist Nancy Scheper-
Hughes,13 and terrorism scholar Richard Jackson,14 all of whom have argued for
engaged inquiry and a rejection of detachment as a research goal. These scholars have
argued not only against the preeminence of objectivity, but also the fallacy of the research-
ers as a neutral, dispassionate, truth-seeker. These critical interrogations of objectivity,
attachment to a research subject, neutrality, and bias have been explored in many other
works including my own.15 Embracing the affective and emotive, and seeking to integrate
the reflexive and embodied, is a great contribution of feminist research ethics, and these
works16 have greatly informed my own approach here.
With this positionality and framing in mind, the following discussion will begin by
exploring the current stage of repression and protest—the criminalization of dissent
and the fostering of felons from the discordant. In concluding, I assess how these discur-
sive challenges can create ruptures for those engaged in revolutionary nonviolence. Build-
ing upon the discussions of power offered by Peter Bloom and Stellan Vinthagen, I explore
how malcontented experiments with power can have emancipatory ends beyond the
(capital “r”) Revolution often imagined, and instead reconsider the inherent power in
opposing domination.
11
Jury Trial Demanded: Class Action (Jesse P. Schultz III et al. vs. District of Columbia, Peter Newsham, et al.), No. 1:18-cv–
00120 (US District Court For the District of Columbia January 19, 2018).
12
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1959).
13
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology”, Current Anthropology, Vol.
36, No. 3 (1995), pp. 409–40.
14
Richard Jackson, “Critical Terrorism Studies: An Explanation, a Defence and a Way Forward” (International Studies Associ-
ation 51st Annual Convention, New Orleans, LA: International Studies Association, 2010), p. 6, 10.
15
E.g. Michael Loadenthal, “Contemporary Questions on Eco-Terrorism with Michael Loadenthal”, Fletcher Security Review,
Security Studies Journal of the Fletcher School, Tufts University, Vol. 5, No. 1 (February 20, 2018), pp. 95–102; Michael
Loadenthal, “Introduction: Studying Political Violence While Indicted – against Objectivity and Detachment”, Critical
Studies on Terrorism, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2019), pp. 481–90, https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2019.1599167.
16
Andrea Doucet and Natasha S. Mauthner, “Feminist Methodologies and Epistemologies”, in Clifton D. Bryant and Dennis
L. Peck (eds.), Handbook of 21st Century Sociology, (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2006), p. 26–32; Kristin Blakely,
“Reflections on the Role of Emotion in Feminist Research”, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, Vol. 6, No. 2
(2007), pp. 1–7; Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber, “Feminist Research: Exploring, Interrogating, and Transforming the Intercon-
nections of Epistemology, Methodology, and Method”, in Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, 2nd ed.
(Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2011).
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 5

Over-criminalization: felonization and riotization

This inquiry is chiefly focused on the mechanisms and results used to over-criminalize
forms of political dissent through felony prosecution—felonization—and the rhetoric of
the riot—riotization. In order to establish these discursive regimes, State authority is
used to “name and shame” confrontational (i.e. anti-capitalist, anti-State, illegalist, mili-
tant) social movements and those who refuse to engage through normative, liberal, demo-
cratic politics. This is part of a larger repressive strategy social movement scholar Sidney
Tarrow terms “selective facilitation”17 wherein reformist and more easily assimilated ten-
dencies are allowed to operate by the State to prevent the rise of more radical elements.
These publicly-theatrical methods of naming and shaming—exemplified in indictments
announced with sensationalist fanfare or the FBI’s Most Wanted lists—are strategically
distinct from those designed to remind the surveilled of the State’s omnipresence to
produce self-policing subjects. Methods, such as Federal Grand Juries, pervasive electronic
surveillance, long-term infiltration, and charging individuals with the crime of conspiracy,
exemplify Michel Foucault’s disciplinary power fostering “docile bodies”—“pliable” enti-
ties able to be “manipulated, shaped, trained”.18 The use of conspiracy to indict is a key
component of this approach and has been examined by numerous critical social move-
ment thinkers,19 and in the era since 9/11, has been deployed against various shades of
leftism including animal liberation, eco-justice, and anti-war movements.
Surveillance helps to form this social control framework; buttressed by constant remin-
ders to the surveilled that they are being watched, counted, classified, and assessed. With
the FBI claiming to have deployed up to 15,000 informants,20 biopolitical sovereignty is
threatened as the State’s intelligence apparatus conveys its omnipresence. This is especially
true for individuals who inhabit marginalized populations—where residents are constant
suspects of radicalization—such as the discourse forced upon Muslim communities and
individuals. These methods of surveillance represent a form of “necropolitical surveil-
lance”21 wherein the sovereign extends its biopolitical reach to the management and
administration of life. It is reckless to claim that such mechanisms constitute an articulated
and self-aware strategy by the State, though the net results have not escaped the eye of
journalists who have frequently commented on the increasing prosecution of activists
via felonies for crimes previously deal with through misdemeanors.22

17
Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics, 3rd ed. (New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), p. 209.
18
Discipline and Punish (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1977), p. 135, 136.
19
E.g. CrimethInc Ex-Workers Collective, “The Age of Conspiracy Charges”, July 27, 2010, https://crimethinc.com/2010/07/
27/the-age-of-conspiracy-charges; Leslie James Pickering, Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism: The Collective
Autobiography of the RNC 8 (Portland, OR: Arissa Media Group, 2011); Scott DeMuth and David Naguib Pellow, “Terroriz-
ing Dissent and the Conspiracy Against ‘Radical’ Movements”, in Jason Del Gandio and Anthony Nocella (eds.), The Ter-
rorization of Dissent: Corporate Repression, Legal Corruption and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, (New York, NY: Lantern
Books, 2014), p. 134.
20
Trevor Aaronson, “The Informants,” Mother Jones (blog), October 2011, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/
fbi-terrorist-informants/.
21
Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics”, in Stephen Morton and Stephen Bygrave (eds.), Foucault in an Age of Terror: Essays on
Biopolitics and the Defense of Society (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 152–82.
22
E.g. Natasha Lennard, “How the Government Is Turning Protesters Into Felons”, Esquire, December 2017; Alleen Brown,
“Trump Administration Asks Congress to Make Disrupting Pipeline Construction a Crime Punishable by 20 Years in
Prison”, The Intercept, June 5, 2019, Online edition, https://theintercept.com/2019/06/05/pipeline-protests-proposed-
legislation-phmsa-alec/.
6 M. LOADENTHAL

These epochal cycles in which the State appears to favor or rely upon one manner of
social control over another have no easily identifiable beginning and end. However, we
can mark these modern shifts to a degree: the unmasking of the FBI’s COINTELPRO
(Monarchical power), followed by an increase in movement infiltration and “conspicuous
surveillance”23 (disciplinary power), to be followed by a re-condemnation of political acti-
vists as rioters (Monarchical). At the DOJ press conference announcing the Operation
Backfire indictments, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called the 65-count indictment
“a significant step in bringing these terrorists to justice”.24 This language was repeated by
FBI director Robert Mueller who called the incidents “acts of domestic terrorism on behalf
of animal rights or the environment”25 further exemplifying the intended disciplinary
echo of the spectacle. Events like the 1969 murder of Black Panthers Fred Hampton
and Mark Clark by the Chicago police, the Philadelphia police’s 1985 bombing of the
MOVE organization, or the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians compound in Waco,
Texas, are key for demonstrating the might of the sovereign Monarch, and the necropo-
litical control wielded upon those who dissent. On the other hand, the mass indictment of
clandestine networks such as the FBI’s Operation Backfire, alongside the exposure of long-
term movement infiltrators, serves to point towards a preference for disciplinary methods.

State laws: BLM and NoDAPL

Biopolitical control extends beyond its disciplinary and Monarchical effects and functions
as a key component in the increasing use of felonies to prosecute unlawful assemblies and
civil disobedience. The drive towards felonization can be observed in a series of bold leg-
islative actions revealed around the election of President Trump but begun at least a year
earlier in final months of the Barak Obama administration. Between January and February
2017, at least nineteen states announced legislation designed to limit protests, increase
penalties for demonstrators, and provide increased powers to disrupt and prosecute dis-
senters. By April 2018, the number had increased to thirty-one states considering sixty-
two bills of this type. While a full review of these laws is beyond the scope of this exam-
ination, a brief overview is warranted.
In seven states26 bills were introduced reducing or eliminating criminal liability for
drivers who strike demonstrators blocking roads, while in fourteen states27 bills were
introduced increasing penalties for blocking highways—both initiatives responding to
the use of road blockades by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. In at least seventeen
states28 bills were introduced providing additional penalties for protestors targeting “criti-
cal infrastructure” and energy facilities (e.g. oil pipelines, hydraulic fracturing sites), a
response to recent successes of the No Dakota Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) campaign. In
June 2019, federal legislation was proposed in concert with the Department of
23
Brian Glick, War at Home: Covert Action against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do about It (Boston, MA: South End Press,
1989), p. 53.
24
As qtd. in: Jules Boykoff, Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007), p.
303.
25
As qtd. in: Boykoff, 303.
26
Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas.
27
Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota,
Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin.
28
Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Okla-
homa, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 7

Transportation further criminalizing protests adjacent to pipelines and energy infrastruc-

ture, with penalties of up to 20 years in prison for disrupting operation or conspiring to do
so.29
While these attempts specially target the BLM and NoDAPL movements, other bills
have been written to targeting particular protest tactics, such as those utilized by anarchists
and militant anti-fascists (i.e. antifa). In these bills, legislators utilized defamatory language
denying dissenters the legitimacy of terminology (e.g. demonstrator or protestor), choosing
to label them as rioters. In at least nine states30 legislative strategies have been pursued
recasting a variety of protest tactics as the actions of rioters. Related laws were introduced
increasing penalties for “threatening, intimidating or retaliating” against state officials31 or
“mass picketing”.32 In at least four states33 legislation was introduced calling protests
“economic terrorism” or linking protest activity to “domestic terrorism”.
When scrutinizing the recent policing trends, one can discern a swing back towards the
Monarchal—the production of public spectacle by the sovereign. For BLM, after four years
of activity and approximately 2,000 demonstrations, in July 2016, during the blocking of a
Minnesota highway following the murder of Philando Castile, 40 individuals were charged
with “rioting”. Only two months later, Glo Merriweather was arrested in Charlotte, NC, at
a demonstration following an officer-involved shooting, and charged with felony “inciting
a riot”. While one may have expected such actions during the Ferguson, Missouri uprising
(∼$4.6 million in damages) or those in Baltimore, Maryland (∼$13 million), it is shocking
to see the use of such rioting charges when the actionable offense resembles nonviolent
civil disobedience—the unarmed blocking of vehicular traffic.
Beginning in April 2016, up to 8,000 demonstrators developed an encampment on
lands held by the Standing Rock Sioux nation to resist the construction of the Dakota
Access Pipeline. On December 4, the US Army Corps of Engineers announced that it
would not issue the required permit for the pipeline’s construction and many demonstra-
tors declared victory. As celebrations were under way, the Governor signed into law a bill
that outlawed demonstrators’ wearing of masks and hoodies and increased penalties for
“rioting” alongside other policy changes. Several NoDAPL organizers would eventually
be charged with “inciting a riot”34 and others were convicted on federal felony charges
such as Michael “Little Feather” Giron—sentenced to three years incarceration for
“Civil Disorder”—described as “[constructing a] makeshift barricade … in an effort to
obstruct and impede law enforcement”.35 Other NoDAPL activists have been convicted
for “Civil Disorder” and have served or are currently serving federal felony-length

29
Elaine L. Chao and Department of Transportation, “Protecting Our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act of
2019”, Title 49, USC § (2019), https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/sites/phmsa.dot.gov/files/docs/news/71476/2019-pipeline-
safety-reauthorization.pdf.
30
Including AZ-SB1033/SB1142, IN-SB78, MA-HD2369, NJ-AB4777/AB2853, ND-HB1426, OR-SB540/SD-SB189, VA-HB1791,
WV-HB4618, and WI-AB395/SB303/AB396/SB304/AB397/SB305.
31
North Carolina.
32
Michigan, Alaska.
33
Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington.
34
Many stem from a Standing Rock protest, October 2017 in which 141 were arrested. Other non-NoDAPL cases include
Scott Daniel Warren, member of the migrant aid network No Mas Muertes, who received a felony indictment February
2018 for supporting individuals crossing the US-Mexico border.
35
U.S. Attorney’s Office District of North Dakota, “New Mexico Man Sentenced for Civil Disorder During the Dakota Access
Pipeline (DAPL) Project Protest” (U.S. Department of Justice, May 31, 2018), https://www.justice.gov/usao-nd/pr/new-
mexico-man-sentenced-civil-disorder-during-dakota-access-pipeline-dapl-project.
8 M. LOADENTHAL

prison sentences including Red Fawn Fallis,36 Dion Ortiz,37 Michael “Rattler” Markus38
and James “Angry Bird” White.39 More recently, on 14 August 2019, twelve activists
were arrested following a noise demonstration outside of the Prima County Adult Deten-
tion Complex, a Tucson-area jail—all charged with felony riot—after being arrested off site
with the assistance of aerial surveillance. Three days later, on August 17, at least five anti-
fascists40 were arrested in Portland, OR, and charged with felony rioting (and other
charges) resulting from clashes occurring during a right-wing march organized by Joe
Biggs, the Proud Boys, American Guard and others. Other cases combine the drive
towards felonization and the preexisting terrorization frame, such as the charging of
two anti-pipeline activists41 with “threat of terrorism” alongside other charges for a non-
violent blockade of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia. The sudden and see-
mingly-accelerating use of felony charges is concerning, and constitutes a necessary
prerequisite for the recasting of confrontational protest as rioting.

The riotization apex: the J20 case

Perhaps the most blunt display of felonization relying on summoning the rhetorical might
of the riot was the mass arrest and prosecution of more than 200 individuals, myself
included, during Trump’s 20 January 2017 Presidential Inauguration. The J20 case consti-
tuted the largest mass felony indictment in US protest history and signaled a change in
policing strategies. For many, it was not only the exceptionally high charges levied, but
also the way in which an informal, temporary, and heterogeneous crowd of hundreds
came to be understood as a singular, coordinated, and thus conspiratorial cabal. In the
physical surrounding and arresting of demonstrators—often referred to as a kettle—
police utilize an exceptionally large perimeter to encircle and incapacitate a crowd
before shrinking the boundary and coordinating arrest. This precise moment, when a
fluid assemblage becomes a police-encircled, finite congregation of individuals, marks
the body’s becoming—the moment when the crowd loses its biopolitical sovereignty,
enters the venue of management, and emerges as an object of political power.
This portrayal of a diverse grouping as a singular body complete with a command and
control structure, was common and consistent throughout the police and prosecutorial
frames, and a prerequisite for charging defendants with conspiracy, a charge which pro-
vided a necessary foundation for the prosecution’s entire case. In his own testimony, MPD
Commander DeVille—discussed earlier in reference to anti-anarchist bias—notes that he
“wasn’t differentiating who was demonstrating and who was rioting”.42 All defendants
were charged with the same set of offences, exemplifying Foucault’s “individuals”-
versus-“populations” binary—the claim that discipline (of the individual) and control
(of the population) are “two poles … linked together by a whole intermediary cluster of
relations”.43 The rhetorical framing of street demonstrators as rioters speaks to the co-
36
57 months.
37
16 months.
38
36 months.
39
Time served.
40
Antonio S. Zamora, Alexander G. Dial, Zachary Lange, Richard J. Klimek, Evan Duke.
41
Holden Dometrius, Jeremy Edwards.
42
Jury Trial Demanded: Class Action (Jesse P. Schultz III et al. vs. District of Columbia, Peter Newsham, et al.) at 16.
43
The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (New York, NY: Vintage, 1990), p. 139.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 9

construction of the riotization phenomenon, where the language of the riot is used to label,
and in doing so, serves to produce the subject rather than simply describe its occurrence.
While the USAO initially charged individuals with single counts of felony rioting, a
superseding indictment added a litany of crimes including “inciting or urging to riot”,
“conspiracy to riot”, and numerous counts of “destruction of property”, “assault on a
police officer”, and “assault on a police officer while armed”.44 The case demonstrates
the diffused might of the sovereign; diffused through the USAO, MPD, DOJ, and
others, as it is not a central figure against the many, but rather as Foucault describes, “mul-
tiple forms of domination … not the king in his central position, but subjects in their reci-
procal relations, not sovereignty in its one edifice, but the multiple subjugation that take
place and function within the social body”.45 In the case of the counter-Inaugural, MPD
failed to follow their self-proscribed standard operating procedures for dealing with mass
assemblies, and instead responded violently, firing chemical weapons, incendiaries, and
“stingball” grenades into large crowds. While this produced a spectacle of disturbing
images, we should remember it was political theorist Carl Schmitt who famously said
that the “sovereign is he who decides on the exception”46—in this case, to not follow a
clearly proscribed procedure based on an escalating continuum of force.47
The J20 case showcases an unprecedented mass prosecution of marchers under a single
set of felony charges and a conspiratorial frame. The prosecution’s rhetorical and legal
logic seeks to inscribe riotous violence and political illegitimacy upon the bodies of the
accused; to mark participants as something other than marchers, activists, demonstrators,
and committed anti-fascists and anti-capitalists. Because of the destruction of property
which occurred during the demonstration, the actions of hundreds are reduced to the
spectacle of a few broken windows and graffitied panes, denying agency and symbolic
meaning to those acting in dissent.

The riotization approach

This recent history, with all of its cyclical regressions and switchbacks, sets a broad tra-
jectory in which the role of the demonstrator and the language through which they are
labeled has changed. While the rise of the anti-globalization movements of the 1990–
2000s prominently saw the use of the label “activist”, (e.g. “anti-globalization acti-
vist”,48 “student activist”49) this terminology seemed to stick even when individuals
engaged in confrontational tactics including property destruction.50 In discussing
44
The United States of America v. Nathaniel H. Jaffe, et al., No. CF2 001147-CF2 001405 (Superior Court of the District of
Columbia April 27, 2017).
45
Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976, trans. David Macey, Reprint
(London, UK: Picador, 2003), p. 27.
46
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1985).
47
Metropolitan Police Department, “Standard Operating Procedures for Handling First Amendment Assemblies and Mass
Demonstrations”, K7–12; Metropolitan Police Department, “Standard Operating Procedures: Handling First Amendment
Assemblies and Mass Demonstrations,” L7–12.
48
E.g. Agence France Presse, “Czech President Pardons 16-Year-Old Anti-Globalization Activist,” Agence France Presse,
October 24, 2000, sec. International News.
49
Jorge Rueda, “Activists Seek End to Poverty, Iraq War”, Associated Press, January 26, 2006, sec. International News.
50
E.g. Manny Fernandez and David A. Fahrenthold, “Police Arrest Hundreds in Protests”, The Washington Post, September
28, 2002, Online edition, sec. Politics, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/09/28/police-arrest-
hundreds-in-protests/7dc6c9d0-3f88-462a-8800-ad1581b9fd61/?utm_term=.d7e557356eed.
10 M. LOADENTHAL

mass assemblies like the November 1999 anti-World Trade Organization (WTO)
demonstrators in Seattle, Washington, coverage generally maintains the activist
frame and not that of the rioter.51 Anti-WTO demonstrators damaged $9 million in
property, and cost the city an estimated $20 million when factoring in lost sales, yet
in a typical media account titled “WTO protests hit Seattle in the pocketbook”,52 par-
ticipants are rhetorically labeled as protestors. While the article does refer to the event
as “rioting” the individuals are described as “protestors”. This pattern remains for the
prior examples as well. Regardless of the demonstrations being described as a “battle”
by “militants”, the individuals involved are still described as protestors or activists, not
rioters or felons.
Interestingly, while the J20 case may represent an apex of this riotization strategy, it is
not an entirely unique occurrence. Nearly a decade before J20, a case targeting the same
anarchist and counter-institutional networks occurred, which utilized the rhetoric of both
terrorism and the riot in conjunction increased felony charging. In September 2008, eight
members53 of a Minnesota-based network organizing against the Republic National Con-
vention were charged with four conspiracy-based and terrorism-based rioting charges and
arguing that protest organizers were collectively responsible for the actions of demonstra-
tors. These charges were made possible by the post-9/11 state-level version of the Patriot
Act. The activists were initially charged with two felonies: “Conspiracy to Commit Riot in
the Second Degree” and “Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage to Property”,
enhanced with the addition of two felonies—“Conspiracy to Riot in the Second Degree
in Furtherance of Terrorism” and “Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage to Property
in Furtherance of Terrorism”. The terrorism charges were dropped in April 2009, but
defendants would fight in court until October 2010, when the final four defendants
accepted plea deals with misdemeanor charges and suspended sentences, after two years
of prosecution.
While the RNC8’s prosecution may have been the harbinger of how the post-9/11 legal
realities could be used to further criminalize anarchist and other confrontational and
antagonistic networks, this signaling is not unique or new. Frequently, the label “anar-
chist” is used to color some protestors with a sinister militancy,54 not unlike the
Trump-era use of the label “antifa” to imply anti-fascists who, unlike progressive or
liberal anti-racists, embrace violence. In July 2019, a non-binding resolution55 was intro-
duced seeking to recognize anti-fascists as a “domestic terrorism organization” recalling
the previous year’s “Unmasking Antifa Act”. Such signaling is further apparent in an
FBI dossier profiling By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), which the report describes as
“a national [anarchist] organization … participating in activities that are protected by

51
E.g. John Burgess and Steven Pearlstein, “Protests Delay WTO Opening; Seattle Police Use Tear Gas; Mayor Declares a
Curfew”, The Washington Post, December 1, 1999, Online edition.
52
CBC News, “WTO Protests Hit Seattle in the Pocketbook”, CBC News Online, January 6, 2000, Online edition, sec. World,
http://www.cbc.ca/1.245428.
53
“RNC8”, said to be the leaders of counter-convention network RNC Welcoming Committee: Monica Bicking, Eryn Trimmer,
Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, Max Spector.
54
E.g. Missouri Information Analysis Center, Division of Drug & Crime Control, “MIAC Strategic Report: Anarchist Movement”,
Strategic Report (Jefferson City, MO: Missouri Information Analysis Center & Missouri State Highway Patrol, November 28,
2008); Federal Bureau of Investigation, Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit, “Anarchist Extremism” (PowerPoint, Decem-
ber 8, 2011).
55
S.Res.279.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 11

the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution”.56 The FBI notes that despite the report’s
classification as one focused on “DT [domestic terrorism]—ANARCHIST EXTRE-
MISM”,57 “inclusion here [in this report] is not intended to associate the protected activity
with criminality or a threat to national security, or to infer that such protected activity
itself violated federal law”.58 Despite this nod towards the distinction between dissent
and extremism, the dossier supports the terrorization-riotization thesis by laying out
“potential violations of federal law” identifying the relevant statutes as “Conspiracy
Against Rights” and “Riots”.59 Thus despite the report’s praise for democratic rights
and First Amendment speech, when discussing the potential consequences for anar-
chist-style confrontational politics, like the J20 and RNC8 cases, the focus remains on
recasting organizing as conspiracy and assembly as riot.

Constructing the rioter

Terminology such as rioter, anarchist, and antifa are employed derogatively by the State
denoting a subsect of a larger political milieu—a rhetorical attempt to separate out militants
and radicals from progressives and liberals: the “good protestor/bad protestor” frame. The
sensationalist framing of mobs, swarms, hordes, or masses of rioters clashes with liberal-
ism’s view of a disaggregated biopolitical subject invoked to assert individualistic rights,
autonomous identities, and ultimately criminal liability. Though not universal, the dis-
course surrounding the acts of demonstrators allow the individuals to maintain their iden-
tity (as a demonstrator or activist), preventing the assembly’s aesthetic from causing a
linguistic slippage which transforms individuals into a living embodiment of their actions
—turning lost profits into a riot, and those who participate, into rioters. The poststructur-
alist position advanced by Foucault posits that these discourses—such as the incorrigible
protestor who just will not compromise or the rioting anarchist horde—and the bodies of
knowledge that scaffold them, have a directly productive power. These powers are the
focus of liberal Statecraft which seeks to make a “permanent [biopolitical] war against life
on behalf of life”,60 in other words, through the sovereign’s administration of life, the
State seeks a status of permanent conflictuality to foster an ever-present peace.
The term “riot” implies an opaque or semi-opaque, unidentifiable, fluid, temporary,
spontaneous, and amorphous mass. Biopolitical security is most plainly seen in intelli-
gence technologies: biometrics, masked individuals identified via facial recognition,61
automated tracking of individuals in crowds,62 self/machine-learning algorithms, and a
wealth of products that analyze real-time or archival video for gait,63 respiratory rate,
56
Federal Bureau of Investigation, “BAMN - BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY; DT - ANARCHIST EXTREMISM”, Unclassified//Law
Enforcement Sensitive (released via FOIA) (San Francisco, CA: FBI, October 20, 2016), 3, https://propertyofthepeople.org/
document-detail/.
57
Classification used repeatedly, e.g.: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1, 42, 44, 278, 333, 350.
58
Federal Bureau of Investigation, 3, 336.
59
Ibid., 3.
60
Michael Dillon, “Security, Race and War”, in Michael Dillon and Andrew W. Neal (eds.), Foucault on Politics, Security and
War (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 177.
61
Amarjot Singh et al., “Disguised Face Identification (DFI) with Facial KeyPoints Using Spatial Fusion Convolutional
Network”, ArXiv:1708.09317 [Cs], August 30, 2017, http://arxiv.org/abs/1708.09317.
62
Alfonso Pérez-Escudero et al., “IdTracker: Tracking Individuals in a Group by Automatic Identification of Unmarked
Animals”, Nature Methods, Vol. 11, No. 7 (July 1, 2014), p. 743–48.
63
M. S. Nixon and J. N. Carter, “Automatic Recognition by Gait”, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 94, No. 11 (November 2006), p.
2013–24.
12 M. LOADENTHAL

gestures, and even minute facial movements to extract from the body a uniqueness used to
surveil and latter prosecute.64 Achille Mbembe calls these extractable metrics “a new tech-
netronic regime … [to] measure and archive the uniqueness of individuals;”65 the process
wherein the body becomes an instrument of scrutiny, “a source of its own metric … dis-
aggregated”.66 This may be of particular importance in the maintenance of a bio-securi-
tization framework, as the rioter is understood to be less easily racialized and
phenotypically distinguished when compared to the (foreign) terrorist. If the rioter is a
masked individual in a dense sea of individuals, this further complicates the difficulty,
as one is no longer hunting for a figurehead—for example, a characterized bearded Magh-
rebi or Arab donning a kufi and Kalashnikov—and is instead looking at an onslaught of
semi-obscured faces that may more clearly resembles one’s own. This re-individualization
via security from the de-individualization of the riot is a particularly modern biopolitical
challenge.
The genealogies provided by Foucault, Mbembe and others point to the Monarch’s
abonnement of chain gangs and beheadings as he seeks to maintain sovereignty with
clean hands. A disciplinary approach can be observed in the State’s willingness to
deploy the rhetoric of terrorism when discussing broken store windows, stalled pipelines,
unpermitted street marches and clashes with police. Examples of such a trend abound and
include internal emails from the USAO linking an anti-terrorism training to anti-pipeline
demonstrators,67 training materials which discuss investigating property vandals via the
“Domestic Terrorism squad”,68 intelligence reports which describe “rioting in Portland
… and destruction of property in Washington during the Inauguration” as “domestic ter-
rorist violence”,69 and letters to the US Attorney General from Congresspersons who
speak in support of increased penalties for demonstrators.70 In his exploration of political
repression, political scientist Jules Boykoff calls this “bi-level demonization” wherein, “the
State publicly connects activists to a demonized group or individual from the international
realm … [including] an abstraction like communism or terrorism”.71 Social movement
scholar AK Thompson describes these as the State’s usage of “the threat of misrecogni-
tion—a threat that takes as its premise the interchangeability of activist and terrorist”,72
noting the intentionality of the frame’s constructed nature. These attempts to link activism
to terrorism precede the focused felonization and riotization under discussion73 but can be

64
Deep Eyes claims to already possess these tools bundled for use in gaming, defense, security, manufacturing, financial,
point of sale, and human resources.
65
Critique of Black Reason, trans. Laurent Dubois (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2017), p. 23–24.
66
Dillon, “Security, Race and War”, 190.
67
Michael Rankin, “FOIA Document - Government Email about ‘Anti-Terrorism Training’ Ahead of Keystone XL Pipeline Pro-
tests,” American Civil Liberties Union, April 25, 2018, https://www.aclu.org/other/foia-document-government-email-
about-anti-terrorism-training-ahead-keystone-xl-pipeline.
68
“Animal Rights/Environmental Extremism” (PowerPoint, December 8, 2011), FBI026417, FBI026419, FBI26420.
69
North Carolina Information Sharing and Analysis Center and Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence &
Analysis, “Recent Spike in Election-Related Physical and Cyber Incidents … ” (DHS Office of Intelligence & Analysis, Feb-
ruary 21, 2017).
70
115th US Congress (84 members), “Protecting Energy Infrastructure” (Letter to US Attorney General the Honorable Jess
Sessions, October 23, 2017), https://buck.house.gov/sites/buck.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_uploaded/Protecting%20Energy
%20Infrastructure.pdf.
71
Boykoff, Beyond Bullets, 300.
72
A. K. Thompson, Black Bloc, White Riot: Antiglobalization and the Genealogy of Dissent (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), p. 33
Emphasis in original.
73
Ibid., 44–49.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 13

understood as genealogically-linked in the battle for social movements to control their

own framing and the discourses summoned to describe them.
Interestingly, the linguistic and prosecutorial shift towards riot is not restricted to lef-
tists and has recently been used in the prosecution of neo-fascist and other far-rightists. In
October 2018, ten members of the Proud Boys, an alt-right/light men’s organization and
street gang classified by the FBI as an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism”,74
were charged with violating a New York riot statute and attempted assault after attacking
anti-fascist activists. Less than two weeks later, four men affiliated with the Rise Above
Movement, described by the USAO as a “militant white supremacist organization”,
were charged with violating federal riot statutes and conspiracy,75 in a manner oddly mir-
roring the prosecution of anti-fascists arrested during the Trump Inauguration. In August
2019, far-right provocateur Joey Gibson was similarly indicted for felony rioting for nearly
three years of orchestrating “Patriot Prayer” assemblies frequented by fascists, white
nationalists and other allied groups.
The terminology of the rioter—a reframing of the activist—emerged at a time when the
population’s vehement sensitivity to the term terrorist may be waning, more than 16 years
since the 9/11 attacks. The millennium-era discursive shift which coincided with the rise of
so-called “eco-terrorism” accelerated in the years following 9/11 as the labeling of move-
ments and networks as terroristic increased and expanded.76 Perhaps the materialization
of a newly deplorable other—the rioter—demonstrates the lifecycle of the specter of terror-
ism, which now in decline, may seem like a European problem, something they deal with
over there, far removed from the US heartland, its mass shootings, and frequent attacks
from the far-right. Through the use of riotous terrorism, State power is projected from
the bully pulpit and the judge’s bench to induce self-censorship while also showcasing
those it deems worthy of scorn; the demonstrably demonizeable in the parlance of the
time—immigrant, communist, anarchist, activist, Muslim, criminal, terrorist, rioter …

Naming, shaming, and othering

“Naming and shaming”, when done at the federal level, is a public, brutal spectacle which
marks the body through defamatory labeling and rhetorical slander—circulating such
language instantaneously through globally-networked communications. This manner of
naming one’s opponents as enemies of life itself, and ungrieveable if killed,77 can be exem-
plified in the discursive frames enacted prior to the present, during the Global War On
Terror. Key in this era is the “freedom lovers” versus “freedom haters” dichotomy
drawn by President George W. Bush’s, his “Axis of Evil”, and his labeling of the attackers
as “those behind these evil acts”. In the rhetorical devices employed by Bush, the President
sought to discursively establish a “regime of truth … [placing] boundaries around what
74
Clark County Sheriff’s Office (Vancouver, WA), “A Violation of the Sheriff’s Office General Orders” (Internal Affairs inves-
tigation, July 5, 2018), 1, https://propertyofthepeople.org/document-detail?doc-id=5189588-Clark-County-Sheriff-s-
Memo&download=https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5189588/Clark-County-Sheriff-s-Memo.pdf.
75
U.S. Attorney’s Office Western District of Virginia, “Four California Men Charged with Conspiracy to Violate Federal Riots
Statute” (The United States Department of Justice, October 2, 2018), https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdva/pr/four-
california-men-charged-conspiracy-violate-federal-riots-statute.
76
Boykoff, Beyond Bullets, chap. 14; Colin Salter, “Activism as Terrorism: The Green Scare, Radical Environmentalism and
Governmentality”, Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, Vol. 1 (2011), pp. 211–38.
77
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York, NY: Verso, 2006).
14 M. LOADENTHAL

can meaningfully be said and understood about the subject”,78 and in doing so, explain the
conflict as a binary—Good/Evil, East/West, Christianity/Islam—those who are bravely
patriotic and their cowardly enemies.
Bush famously employed this frame to the criticism of many, and on the final day of his
administration, spoke of this discursive duality in his farewell address:
I’ve often spoken to you about good and evil, and this has made some uncomfortable. But
good and evil are present in this world, and between the two of them there can be no com-
promise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.
Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right.79

For Bush in his role as war marshal, rhetoric was carefully crafted to label the enemy as
“evil”, “murderers”, and one who “hides in shadows, and has no regard for human life”.
We are told that the enemy is engaging in an “act of war” and the American people are
“freedom-loving”, “victims”, in search of “justice”. The National Security Strategy of the
USA opens by declaring, “America is at war” citing as its target “a new totalitarian ideol-
ogy … grounded not in secular philosophy … [but in] intolerance, murder, terror, ensla-
vement, and repression”.80 This manner of othering the enemy as existing counter to the
will of the State may be most obvious in the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.
The ability of the sovereign to identify its enemies in such a public light extends to the
use of militarized police raids to arrest non-violent activists, the inclusion of such individ-
uals in congressional and FBI reports in which they are named as terrorists, and state-
ments by the Department of Homeland Security,81 FBI, and state-level offices, which
name anti-fascist activists as terrorist-extremists82 or the focus of counter-terrorism inves-
tigations (Image 1).83
In one review focusing on California, journalists identified three intelligence agencies
issuing reports which discussed anti-fascist demonstrators within a domestic terrorist,
homeland security, or “public safety threat” frame.84 In the FBI’s own “domestic extremist
ideology” taxonomy, “animal rights and environmental extremists” and “anarchist extre-
mists” are comingled with movements exhibiting a history of intentional lethality (e.g.
sovereign citizens, anti-abortion, militia, and white supremacists). Returning to the genea-
logical frame offered by Foucault, while the Monarch may rise within a given political
climate, there exists a tipping point, a phase in which State brutality no longer serves to

78
Adam Hodges, The “War on Terror” Narrative: Discourse and Intertextuality in the Construction and Contestation of Socio-
political Reality (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 2011), p. 5.
79
“George W Bush: There Can Be No Compromise between Good and Evil In” (White House (republished by The Indepen-
dent), January 19, 2009), http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/george-w-bush-there-can-be-no-compro
mise-between-good-and-evil-in-this-world-1419300.html.
80
George W. Bush, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” (The White House, March 16, 2006), i, 1,
https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/64884.pdf.
81
Josh Meyer, “FBI, Homeland Security Warn of More ‘Antifa’ Attacks,” POLITICO, September 1, 2017, Online edition, https://
www.politico.com/story/2017/09/01/antifa-charlottesville-violence-fbi-242235.
82
E.g. NCRIC, “Violent Tactics Showcased at Berkeley Riots Likely to Be Used at Future Demonstrations” (Northern California
Regional Intelligence Center, August 21, 2017); State of New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, “Anar-
chist Extremists: Antifa.”
83
E.g. Michael Edison Hayden, “‘Antifa’ Sympathizers Being Investigated by Fbi, Director Tells Lawmakers,” Newsweek,
December 1, 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/antifa-sympathizers-investigated-fbi-728340; Ed Klein, “ISIS Connection
to US Anarchists Revealed in Ed Klein Book,” Daily Mail Online, October 29, 2017, Online edition, http://www.
dailymail.co.uk/~/article-5018141/index.html.
84
Curtis Waltman, “In California, Homeland Security Continues to Argue That Antifa, Not White Supremacists, Pose ‘the
Greatest Threat to Public Safety’”, MuckRock, April 10, 2018, Online edition, sec. News, https://www.muckrock.com/
news/archives/2018/apr/10/dhss-antifa-neonazi-CA-rundown/.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 15

Image 1. 22 November 2017 screenshot, https://www.njhomelandsecurity.gov/analysis/anarchist-

extremists-antifa.

dissuade, and instead serves to motivate sympathy, and eventually, resistance. Gaining a
better understanding of this moment is a key question for social movements seeking to
grow their effectiveness while promoting a culture that resists the modern criminalization
of dissent and avoid replicating its violent means.

Concluding directions for revolutionary nonviolence

What can get lost in this discussion of the terrorization, felonization, and riotization of
dissent is that all of the social movements facing this particular brand of defamation
would understand themselves to be acting within the realm of nonviolence. Whether
we speak of BLM, NoDAPL, anarchists, or anti-fascists, these networks understand
their politics as one of community self-defense,85 and any force deployed as fundamentally
different than the coercive violence of their opponents—murderous cops, polluting energy
companies, Statists/capitalists, and fascists respectively. This distinction may appear to
some as the violent forces of “both sides” (to quote Trump), but anti-fascists who organize
to deny their enemies the ability to assemble in public (i.e. no platforming86) are enacting a
praxis which conflicts with liberal notions of rights—the right to speech and assembly. For
leftists facing repression, preventing one’s far-right opponent from organizing and mobi-
lizing is understood as a defensive posture, not something akin to the limiting of speech as
it is sometimes cast. This is one means through which activists build power while simul-
taneously preventing their opponents from doing the same.
This reimagining of rights, space, and autonomy emerges from revolutionary social
movements seeking to prefiguratively act through an ethos of nonviolence, embodying
85
scott crow, ed., Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2018);
Mark Bray, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2017), p. 69, 118, 156, 169, 172–73.
86
Bray, Antifa, chap. 5; Mark Bray, For Antifa, No Platform for Fascism, WNYC Radio interview, February 14, 2017, https://
abolitionjournal.org/for-antifa-no-platform-for-fascism/.
16 M. LOADENTHAL

such values amidst challenges to violent conditions. Movements most within the State’s
crosshairs are those challenging sovereign power and “apply[ing] the nonviolent future
in the present as an alternative to and disobedience against current society’s violence
and oppression”.87 The efforts of street protestors and clandestine saboteurs creates
cracks in the biopolitical regime seeking to manage and regulate, while experimenting
with dual-power and resource allocation. Despite this intent, it has been argued that
such resistance can embolden the State by inflaming its desire to retain control.
Political theorist Peter Bloom argues for a “post-resistance existence”, which concep-
tually moves beyond the oppositional notions of power and resistance—and their “discur-
sive pull”88—and instead argues that resistance can serve to embolden power (which in
turn emboldens resistance in a never ending loop), and that power can be possessed
without the proletarian revolution.89 Bloom argues that while resistance and revolutionary
change are continually coopted by State power, their real strength may rely in “novel forms
of agency and experiences of the self”.90 Neo-Marxist theorists Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri seem to agree on this point, pointing out that for indigenous militants
like the Zapatistas, power resides not in their displays of arms and tactical maneuvers,
but in their community programs and “experiments in justice and democracy”.91
Bloom’s notion complicates the understanding of a non-State resisting the sovereign. In
this manner, a nonviolent revolutionary force is not a mass replacing a power structure
with a post-sovereign utopia, but rather a means to foster freedom, peace, and security
in the present. This focus beyond pitched street battles between demonstrators and
cops is particularly relevant in an era when demonstrating outside of a jail or marching
through downtown D.C. can result in felony charges and the hard-to-jettison label of
rioter. Bloom is not alone in his critiques of revolutionary strategy, as others have
argued that while nonviolent systemic change is often celebrated, it serves to sustain tech-
niques of power by failing to fundamentally alter the social conditions.92 Others have
argued that while nonviolent resistance is often ineffectual, when it does serve to challenge
power, it is repressed.93
However, according to resistance studies scholar Stellan Vinthagen,94 there is a power
inherent in resistance as it disrupts the process of socialization which teaches individuals
to act beholden to institutional power structures. By resisting these structures, one forces
the State to deploy coercive violence, and by not confronting such forces, potential dissi-
dents serve to co-construct and buttress the mechanisms of sovereign authority. Violence
by the State (including linguistic and discursive attempts) should be understood not as
proof of its might, but rather a demonstration of its absence—a failing of State power
and a forced retreat to its barbarity. The caveat to this is when violence acts as a threat
—an incentive to self-police—and not a probable outcome or consequence.95 The

87
Stellan Vinthagen, A Theory of Nonviolent Action: How Civil Resistance Works (London, UK: Zed Books, 2015), p. 62.
88
Beyond Power and Resistance: Politics at the Radical Limits (London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016), p. 168.
89
Bloom, 193.
90
Bloom, 168.
91
Assembly (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 270.
92
E.g. Peter Gelderloos, The Failure of Nonviolence, Revised edition (Seattle, WA: Left Bank Books, 2015).
93
Ward Churchill and Mike Ryan, Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America (Edin-
burgh, UK: AK Press, 2007), pp. 57–58.
94
Vinthagen, A Theory of Nonviolent Action, 192–93.
95
Ibid., 194.
 GLOBAL SOCIETY 17

“naming and shaming” discussed prior works precisely because of the threat it communi-
cates: If you rise to the rank of noted resister you will constitute an enemy of the State. The
subordinating effects of social control in this manner operate most efficiently when vio-
lence creates the threat while avoiding the brutality—all the bang with none of the blood.
If we accept Boom’s argument that resistance in its traditional, revolutionary frame-
work is a dead-end conception for fundamental social change, then one must also question
the strategies of social struggle and social control. Vinthagen asserts that this threat of vio-
lence must be resisted, despite the State’s use or threatened use of violence.96 If the task for
revolutionaries, according to Bloom, is no longer to make the revolution, what is it? If the
task of the State is no longer to prevent the revolution, but design and manage the transi-
tional biopolitical epochs, what does anti-State resistance even mean? Within Foucault’s
genealogical account of social control, power is a diffused plurality, wielded not simply
via State agents, but also through the omnipresence of discourse and subtle, micro-
(socio-)political practices. Proceeding from this understanding, the task for those
seeking socio-political transformation appears to be grounded more in building power
than resisting domination, as the latter will simply draw the ire of State repression and
further invite control and violence upon the individual. If on the other hand, social net-
works and movements can increase their capacity for revolutionary nonviolence, they
can prefiguratively experiment with Bloom’s “novel forms” of power sharing, and the
force of revolutionary counter-violence, while challenging biopolitical control and counter-
ing repression.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author .

Notes on contributor
Michael Loadenthal, Ph.D. is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Justice at Miami
University of Oxford, Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA), and
Founding Director of the Prosecution Project (tPP), a long-term data analysis program focusing
political violence and the US court system. Michael is also a social movement trainer, strategist,
researcher, and organizer, frequently collaborating with a variety of local, national, and inter-
national networks around countering repression, building resiliency, and evaluating tactics.

ORCID
Michael Loadenthal http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7144-9495

96
Ibid., 198.