Favourite cop/media smears

The WSM Twitter mentioned Dublin cops accusing activists of being armed with "sharpened CDs" in 2004, apparently!

In spring 2001 during the protests against nuclear waste transport around Gorleben in Germany, the cops concluded from the fact that a wholesale business in the area had sold a large quantity of formic acid and a lot of brushes that protesters were planning to apply the acid with the brushes to the eyes of cops. Most media outlets published that police press release without doubts, the next day it was revealed that not protesters but the local sewage plant had purchased that stuff.

another nice one was the "supermolli" (super petrol bomb) which the cops found and destroyed during the eviction of the Mainzer Strasse squat in Berlin in November 1990: a fermentation tank holding around 50 litres of home-made cider

There was something from the Met about anarchists armed with samuri swords or machetes prior to one of the London Maydays.

EDIT:

"Specialist firearms teams are being drafted in to police this year's May Day demonstrations in the City of London over fears that rioters armed with samurai swords and machetes will infiltrate the protests.
The teams will be ready to isolate anyone carrying these weapons from the thousands of other demonstrators expected. A senior officer involved in the operation said: 'If somebody used a samurai sword or a firearm we would want to put some space between them and the crowd.'"

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/22/globalisation.mayday

Thanks Fozzie for remembering and posting a link for that article.

The BBC reports that reversed footage to show miners attacking cops at Orgreave.

Also Battle of the Beanfield, when dodgey media reports of hippies tooling up with lumps of timber to attack the cops based on footage showing hippies cutting through fences so they could escape out of a police trap.

Class War was suspended from AFA in October 1985, following two articles by David Rose in The Guardian,alleging that Class War was more or less a front organization for the National Front. Most of the information for these articles came from the anti-fascist journal Searchlight.

From Freedom (includes rebuttal of all of the charges that lead to the suspension):

http://www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/misc/MISC0122.pdf

"Favourite" is probably not appropriate for that one, but clearly ludicrous to most.

cops, CDU politicians and some media outlets reported in 1992 during the racist pogroms in Rostock that the refugee accomodations there was attacked by "rightwing and leftwing/autonomous extremists"

Yeah I think that would be good.

There were various claims in the media that anarchists would disrupt the royal weddings of 2011 (from the cops, who were still smarting from violence at an anti-austerity demo) and 2018 (from Ian Bone - who rightly objected to the idea that homeless people be taken off the streets of Windsor on the day)

rat

Thanks Fozzie for remembering and posting a link for that article.

The BBC reports that reversed footage to show miners attacking cops at Orgreave.

Also Battle of the Beanfield, when dodgey media reports of hippies tooling up with lumps of timber to attack the cops based on footage showing hippies cutting through fences so they could escape out of a police trap.

After this post I’m gonna smear you Rat - ANARCHO PUNK!

Noah Fence

I’m gonna smear you Rat - ANARCHO PUNK!

Damn you sir! You have indeed unmasked me!

In 1982(I think), when me and my anarcho punk comrades organised an anti war rally at our local Remembrance Sunday service, the local press ran a front page piece about us and described us as a ‘rag tag and bobtail bunch’, with ‘dubious dress sense’. I took no issue with this, but I must say their assertion that we were ‘unexpectedly quiet and respectful’ resulted in my self esteem taking a nosedive!

I can’t find a ref for this one but I remember one of the frothing UK tabloids saying that anti-capitalist protestors were all given £20 and a packed lunch. I think this must have been 1990s.

Found it: J18

http://af-north.org/afed-archive/org/issue52/j18.html

EDIT:

The Sunday Times claimed that students from Nottingham University told traders at the Liffe building (it's not clear if this was meant to have happened before or after the place was trashed...) that they had been given £30, free transport and a packed lunch (!?!) to attend the Carnival. Of course, the desire was to discredit the event. The report ended with an attempt to disgust the 'middle England' readership, noting that the City would have to be disinfected as 'protesters urinated and defecated in doorways' (Sunday Times, 20/6/99)

£30!

There was also the "Dixan Commando", a supposed terrorist cell made up of Algerian immigrants who were detained on trumped-up charges in Barcelona and Banyoles back in 2003 when the Spanish government needed an excuse to join the Iraq War. The "chemicals" which were seized during a house search and which the group was allegedly planning to use for making explosives turned out to be… laundry detergent. (Hence the nickname for the case; Dixan is a popular Spanish detergent brand.)

Unfortunately, the conclusion of the story was not so funny – five of the people involved were sentenced to 6 to 9 years in prison, and deported to Algeria once they had served out their sentences.

Broadwater Farm uprising (and seen several times since) "materials that could be used to construct petrol bombs. ie bottles. At Broadwater farm the 'haul of materials was a dozen or less iirc and included milk bottles which probably came off people's steps.

In the aftermath of nearly any even slightly rowdy demonstration Australian cops routinely say that they were pelted with piss filled condoms/balloons.

The media continued to say "organised using mobile phones" as if it was a sign of some terrifying technological advantage until well after not having a phone became unusual.

Fozzie

I can’t find a ref for this one but I remember one of the frothing UK tabloids saying that anti-capitalist protestors were all given £20 and a packed lunch. I think this must have been 1990s.

and anti-fascist protesters are getting a financial gratification from the German government for attending demonstrations, according to some rightwing politicians and trolls ;-)