Justice & Law Quote by John Blair

The line reads like the kind of damning “eyewitness consensus” that turns a street-level disturbance into a legitimacy crisis. Blair isn’t primarily describing chaos; he’s describing selective order. The key move is the passive framing - “were left well alone” - which implies decision, not failure. Policing here isn’t overwhelmed; it’s choosing where to look, and that choice becomes the story.

The specificity of “people dressed as Black Block members” does heavy rhetorical work. “Dressed as” plants suspicion of performance, infiltration, or at minimum a costume politics where identity can be donned to license violence. It nudges the reader toward a conclusion without quite stating it: if the most conspicuously destructive actors can “freely” cross police lines, then either the cops are complicit, coordinating, or cynically letting spectacle burn to justify a crackdown elsewhere. Blair keeps it just short of accusation, relying on the social fact of “many later commented” to spread responsibility for the claim while still laundering it as credible.

The subtext is about narrative control. Black Bloc tactics are often treated by authorities and media as shorthand for illegitimacy; Blair flips that by suggesting the state benefits from that shorthand. “Talking to cops” is the sharpest detail because it violates the expected script of adversarial protest. It hints at the uncomfortable possibility that public disorder can be curated - not to stop destruction, but to produce an image of threat that authorizes force, surveillance, and the delegitimization of dissent.