most people, especially outside of Europe, aren't even aware of the existence of the BB and just think of them as Antifa
people are just ignorant. it's the same with many "subcultures", really. Skinheads nowadays are almost always associated with white supremacy, when Anarcho skins, Apolitical skins and leftist-extremist skins probably make up half of all skinheads. It's a shame.
I didn't know there was black Baklava. is it made with black sesame instead of nuts?
It all starts in the 60ies in Europe.
On the one hand the original Autonomes: non-tribal & non-political....intellectual, higher educated, diverse social background, anti-established institutions,etc.... searching, defining their own way to live.... artists, authors, (proto)hippies.... with a touch of world-improvers, with a touch of wanting to connect to the workers class (as enlighting elite)
On the other hand the original skinheads: tribal & non-political.... anti-intellectual, hardly educated, workers class background, anti upstairs and bourgeois.... manifesting the proud identity of the "have nots", the "have no futures", "want no promisses".... F*** you all !
Both meet up to find group strenght, both go to the streets to manifest themselves, both are not afraid to have conflicts with the strong arm of the authorities.
Black dress starts AFAIK in the anti-nuclear Brokdorf, Germany protests in the mid 70ies. Around 1980 the squatting movements in the Netherlands, Germany have their leftish-anarchic BB factions. And black dress becomes very fast in NL in the early 80ies, on the punk/heavy metal wave, just the cultural costume for young people, going to Amsterdam for their education, seeking a place to live and people to socialise with....
Already indicating that the articles and pictures in the (more rightwing) newspapers of their parents, branding the squatting movement, the antifa, anti-nuclear, anti-xxxx, as nihilist blackdressed troublemakers, had a clear influence on young people in the country's far away spectator seats.
"My father is rightwing or bourgeois, his newspaper says rioting in black dress is bad, I am going to riot in black dress".
Sub cultures have very fast generational changes every few years from again and again new waves of people joining and leaving. A real challenge there to keep up some consistency in values and style of engaging. => causing a high diversity in what Autonome, what BB, what black dress, became.
The same happens now with all kinds of antifa or yellow jackets or everything. The newsmedia make up their own reality of what happens, what the supposed motives and objectives are, to satisfy their own agenda's, from politics to juicy fear inducing, and far away people believe it (how about a controlled free will there ?).
How funny that black dress is if you know that the original Autonome movement in Amsterdam in 1965, the Provo's, used white as color for its actions to express innocence and un-tainted from commercial Big Corporate and the connection to the establishment.
White bicycles were given free for the public to use in Amsterdam (and the authorities, their strong arm the police, arrested the Provo's doing that), white banners without text were used for protests (and the protesters arrested by the police), white chickens were given freely to passing Amsterdammers (and the Provo's doing that were arrested)... etc, etc
And yes... it rained batton strokes from the police on the Provo's, but they stayed non-violent.
The authorities and police were, became clueless how to react. During a simple strikeand street protests of construction workers in 1966 against 2% deduction of holiday money, the police used gunfire and killed two construction workers.
It was all hugely succesful in making the authorities ludricous and discrediting the authoritarian behaviour in the eyes of broad masses of our population.
Those Provo thoughts and actions of the mid 60ies were the very base for much of the strenght of all our grassroot movements in NL of the 70ies.
