Guerrilla theatre at sea

The Turkish flotilla and my revolutionary student days 

Here we go again: more “peace activists” – complete with knives, iron rods, and clubs. It all takes me back to my radical student days, when I too was a “peace activist”. Indeed, those of us in the New Left were experts at using Orwellian doublespeak to achieve our aims: the overthrow of the West.

We became quite adept at highjacking legitimate causes and using them to further our revolution. And we became especially good at creating “incidents”. We knew how to engage in outrageous activities which were guaranteed to draw a response from the authorities, leading to a very public confrontation.

And we were of course always sure to have this violent “overreaction” by our opponents filmed by an eager media, to be broadcast in full colour on the six o’clock news. Amazing how we always came out looking like an innocent victim, and the police or other authorities ended up looking like the aggressor.

We became experts in…