Black Blocs transparent: experiences of Black Bloc protesters in Germany

Abstract

The events at the G20 summit in Hamburg in July 2017 briefly made the socalled
Black Bloc, a protest tactic that often takes a violent course, a number one news
topic. Despite having been around for at least thirty years in Germany, so far little
research has been conducted on the motives and experiences of those protesting in
the Black Bloc. This research was focussed on obtaining and analysing those accounts
in the context of autonomous groups both on the far left and the far right, with the
latter one having just recently adopted the Black Bloc strategy. To do so, semistructured
interviews were undertaken with eight German protesters and one riot
police officer experienced in policing Black Bloc protests. The qualitative data were
analysed, taking into account the representation of Black Blocs in the media in the
context of the G20 summit. From this data, motives for the participation in Black
Blocs as well as differences and similarities between the protesters from the political
far left and far right were identified. Considering the perspective of policymaking, the
usefulness and limitations of the gained knowledge for policing such protests were
discussed. This dissertation argues, that Black Bloc protesters should be recognised
as individuals with different motivations and opinions. Thus, overgeneralising
approaches are not suitable for the study of Black Blocs.