The G-20 protests: Cointelpro’d?

Lenny talks about the media hysteria surrounding the G-20 protests and where this is coming from:

A great deal of this scary material is apparently coming from one website, G-20 Meltdown. This website is described as an “umbrella group” for protesters, supposedly representing 67 different protest groups, although there is nothing on the website to show that this is so. The only indication that it might be is a list of organisations supporting the protests, but a disclaimer at the bottom of the list rectifies a previous ‘error’ which implied that these organisations were supporters of G-20 Meltdown. (This error has lead to some statements in newspapers implying that the Stop the War Coalition among others are in some sense affiliated to G-20 Meltdown, which I don’t think they are). And far from being run by hotheaded anarchists, the website is run by Camilla Power, an anthropologist based at the University of East London, a trade unionist, and a member of the CPGB. Another source for these scarifying articles is Chris Knight, cited as a member of the protest group ‘The Government of the Dead’. He is another CPGB member, and a professor of anthropology based at UEL. His frankly bombastic statements include the suggestion that the army and police might lose control of the City of London. If he were serious about this, he wouldn’t say such a thing either to the press or in any public forum where it could be accessed by police. Such statements, whatever the intention behind them, are foolish. They allow the press to imply that there is violence planned (there is not), and they give the police carte blanche to claim that the city is under extraordinary threat, thus mandating severe repression.

The question now is, who are Camilla Power and Chris Knight and why are they allowing themselves to be used to discredit the protests? Yes, there are sometimes young hotheads impressed by reading their first subversive books who think the best way to fight the power is to smash up a McDonalds, but this whole operation smacks of
Cointelpro. Veterans of sixties and seventies leftist causes (civil rights, disinvestment of South Africa undsoweiter) say you could always tell the FBI or Special Branch infiltrants: they were the ones calling for violence and “radical” action, preferably as publically as possible.