A group has admitted responsibility for an attack on a newspaper office.
Seventeen windows were smashed at the Bristol Evening Post and paint was thrown at the building during the vandalism on Thursday night. The incident followed a front page which featured pictures of culprits involved in the riots and looting in the city.
Now a group has admitted responsibility and and have accused the media of ‘demonising’ those who fight back. The post appears on volunteer-run website Bristol Indymedia, which is described as an open-access news website focused on grassroots non-commercial news written by ordinary people.
The posting on the website under the name ‘anonymous individuals’ states: “Thursday night, despite heavy police presence in the city centre and across Bristol we smashed all the front bottom windows and some of the higher ones at the Evening Post headquarters and decorated the front with paint bombs. The paper has estimated £20,000 damage.
“The media demonises those who choose to resist and fight back, opening the way for more repression again us all.
“They attempt to divert our attention away from the real everyday thugs and looters – the cops and capitalists, who routinely get away with large-scale theft and murder. This is part of the divisive strategy of rulers to get us fearing and fighting each other and taking sides with authority against rebels.
“This action was made by people who are not fooled. They do not understand our anger as an unstoppable force that will not be stopped by batons or bullets – we fight with all means for a future of complete liberty we have yet to know.
It concluded: “When the gloves come off and the social war has never been clearer, the class enemy reply on corporate media to be used as just another weapon against us all who want something better for our own lives and those yet to come.”
Publisher for the Bristol Evening Post Alan Renwick said: “What is clear from this attack is that we are doing what a city newspaper should do and speaking for 99pc of the community.
“We have had great backing today from local government and the police for being on the ‘front line’ and taking one for Bristol. We are also attracting wider media interest. The damage to our building is a short term nuisance but a signal that we remain important, and at the heart of our city.”
Police are currently investigating the incident and are examining CCTV footage.
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If a paper decides to act as the de facto propaganda wing of the local police – who are very unpopular in some quarters for good reasons – it shouldn’t be surprised to find itself on the frontline of the social war that is breaking out around it. Live by the sword, die by the sword…
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Social war? Please. These were acts of wanton vandalism committed by opportunists. The catalyst for the trouble started in Tottenham, and you are trying to convince people that there were likeminded and socially aware individuals in Bristol using that as there key to rise up? I think the allure of free track suits and tellys was more like it. Where was the real resistance? Where was the protesting and the voices? Far as I could see, no one would even show their face to be counted.
How many people on the “front line of the social war” even knew who Mark Duggan was? Furthermore, why were the ambulance and fire services prevented from helping others? What had they done. This wasnt a war, nor were the acts committed for any genuine cause. This was pathetic thuggery, which has only put our already fragile economy further back.
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