S-Top hopping!

It was around this time last year that the first critical articles about 'summit hopping' started appearing on the email lists and in the publications of the anti capitalist and anti authoritarian movement. This criticism was primarily aimed at the fact that these protests were geared mainly at creating a spectacle, and at the fact that the international mobilisations were gaining a disproportionately large influence/ role within the movement. People also criticised the fact that the movement is predominantly 'white', which results from the fact that summit hopping is only possible for relatively rich Westerners.

The point was also raised that summit hopping is a method of action which could easily lead to an escalation of violence. The rationale behind this, was the idea that national states would find a way of dealing, to their advantage, with the protests, which in time would become repetitive and therefor predictable. Finally, critics pointed out that summit hopping does nothing to create an alternative to capitalism and that, most importantly, it could be used as a platform by authoritarian 'anti capitalists' and by various big shots for their own ends.

Partly due to the pressures of the approaching "summer of resistance", the discussion around summit hopping faded away after just a few months. However, the events in Genoa have made it clear that it is now time to resume this discussion. It has become clear over the last few months that summit hopping is literally a DEAD end strategy.

There are no summit hoppers!

Summit hopping has often been incorrectly described as a method of activism where x number of so called 'summit hoppers' travel from summit to summit, protesting at each one. When during the European Peoples Global Action conference (March 2001) in a workshop on "Summit hopping versus local activism", people were asked to how many summits they had actually been, it transpired that almost no one had actually been to more than two summits that could be classified "summit hop events". The conclusion was drawn, that the criticism against summit hopping was extremely exaggerated, because actually people seemed to be talking about something that didn't exist. Incidentally, everyone did agree that we should do more to locally combat capitalism. The way this particular discussion went, was indicative of the superficial way in which people have to date been dealing with the international debate on summit hopping. A proposal made by the French Sans Titre network, to officially declare "the end of the summit hopping era" by way of press release after Genoa, didn't even make the agenda at the Peoples Global Action network meeting.

The sad thing is that what many seemed to have overlooked in the whole summit hopping debate, is the extent to which the movement is more and more becoming a highly predictable movement which is build around summit meetings- and protests.

Predictability has in the past lead to social movements becoming institutionalised and manipulated. This is especially true in Italy. As Cedric from the French Longo Mai movement has rightly pointed out a few months earlier, the element of surprise that amazed the world on the first Global Day of Action (18 June 1998) and in Seattle (30 November 1999), has disappeared completely. Instead of surprising people, we are now playing predictable roles, which to a great extent have been scripted by the state, the media and even reformist and authoritarian forces within the movement. Genoa therefore did not just show us the true face of capitalism and the state, it also showed to anyone willing to see the bankruptcy of summit hopping in this current, predictable form.

It is to easy to put the tragic and terrible events of Genoa down to state repression and criminalisation alone. Before Genoa, we saw already the near fascist police operations is Gothenburg and Barcelona. It was clear that he Italian police was out to end the protests in blood, and it must be said that they were not the only ones using the language of war. The spokespeople of the White Overalls and the track record of the Black Block also indicated war. The White Overalls literally marched in rows through the streets of Genoa, wearing helmets and armour, they even 'declared war to the G8', whilst the Black Block left its calling card - a wrecked town center - in Gothenburg. Trotskyists, who had initially only mobilised for the blockade, then decided they didn't want to appear weaker than the autonomous groups and suddenly announced that they too would enter the Red Zone.

On an other side of the political spectrum the big, moderate and pacifist NGO's, together with a large number of small old left parties and groups were united in the Genoa Social Forum. Their leaders warned for the approaching (state-) violence and promised to remain peaceful. They became the spokespeople for non-violent protest. Meanwhile the media, as ever well up for a good riot, unashamedly fuelled the fire further and, in the end, the inevitable happened: Genoa descended into an orgy of violence.

Is this the fault of the Italian state, the media and/or the protestors? Well, it is really not the most important question to ask. Everyone was simply playing the role that they had announced for themselves and this is precisely why the Italian state has been so successful in infiltrating and manipulating the protests.

The question that we should be asking ourselves in the wake of Genoa, is not whose fault it is, or how we should deal with repression, but instead how we can get reigns back into our own hands. For starters we could agree to stop this precarious series of confrontations, and choose for ways of campaigning, that are aimed at the places where we live and work. In other words campaigns which are not aimed at overthrowing something as abstract as "Global Capitalism", but geared towards the local reality and starting from the concrete possibilities that this reality brings with it. And of course let's keep meeting each other, in the flesh and on internet, but at our leisure and on our terms, not chased by baton wielding policemen and teargas,.

A better world is possible, also without summit hopping.

Marco
Anarchist Collective Eurodusnie

Three other articles on the topic of summithopping and other possible counterstrategies:

What moves us? (part 1)
http://squat.net/eurodusnie/articles/dusnieuws/2000/moves.htm

What moves us? (part 2)
http://squat.net/eurodusnie/articles/dusnieuws/2000/moves2.htm

No longer a voice in the wilderness
http://squat.net/eurodusnie/articles/dusnieuws/2001/wilderness.htm

Beyond the ideological ghetto
http://squat.net/eurodusnie/articles/dusnieuws/2001/ghetto.htm