Sinking in the Rubicon

The almost daily theatrics of the Rouvikonas (Rubicon) anarchist group must be turning into an addiction for its members. Wherever there is an issue that "sells," from foreclosures to Palestine, the movement's strategic brains get moving, in the obvious belief that if they ally themselves with popular causes some of the popularity will rub off on to them - that, through their choice of targets, people will see them as Robin Hoods. Using the name of the river that Caesar crossed as he led his troops to Rome, suggests transcendence, a giant step from which there is no turning back. However, with its compulsive behavior, and with the almost touching tolerance of the state, this group has become something of a caricature - somewhere between street theater and a charity seeking victims of injustice so as to prove its own members' virtue. Instead of transcendence, in other words,...