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As many people have noted the peaceful Restore Nature march of around 100,000 people made hardly a ripple in the media (The Observer had a story buried in the depths of the paper).... so Zoe Williams puts the dots together to reach the same conclusion we all have:
There is a problem when the media only give coverage to violent or high-profile protests that cause trouble.... peaceful protests look less effective, drawing people towards disruption!
@ChrisMayLA6 the Suffragettes had it right.
I've been thinking about protest movements like the Suffragettes. They were a radical faction in a much broader movement, much of which advocated non-disruptive, lawful actions. But it is the Suffragettes we remember, and thank for women's votes.
It seems to me this is true more or less wherever you look in history. If you're in the labour movement, you know about the arrested and deported Tolpuddle Martyrs, but have you heard of the early trade union pioneers that were (generally) law-abiding - Joseph Arch, for example?
Recent studies of the abolition of slavery have moved from seeing it as a peaceful parliamentary achievement to the fact that the cost of slave rebellions and other economic pressures had already made it unviable - and we celebrate now the disruptive protests led by more recent black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela (whose defense of the use of violence was precisely what got him jailed).
Seems to me, the claim that disruptive protest doesn't work is wishful thinking on the part of people comfortable with the status quo - and ignorant of history.
Great post, thanks (boosted!)
@GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
I feel the need to chip in, because as a bloke with very strong inclinations towards "building bridges" and "resolving/preventing conflicts" it took me a LONG time to understand these things.
When I did, I wrote about it, because I feel that understanding them made me a much better person - or something...
Thus, I think sharing my thoughts can be useful.
https://sergiograziosi.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/the-wrong-kind-of-activism/
@GraziosiSergio @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 Great article, well argued. We need uncompromising activists as well as ‘reasonable’ sympathisers to make progress on almost any issue.
@GraziosiSergio @GeofCox @_bydbach_
I think your last paragraph is right on the button... thanks, like you, helped me put something into focus a little better!
@GeofCox @ChrisMayLA6 the patriarchy never smashed itself out of the goodness of its heart.
@GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 Could it be both? The extremists demonstrate what the reasonable people may become if there is no change. Perhaps exploitative people need to be scared out of their complacency. The exploiters are not reasonable people either.
⧖ @GeofCox @ChrisMayLA6 @woo @_bydbach_ Back in the nineties, when we were trying various means to get government to let us in round the table (as a very middle class campaign using strategic litigation to produce legal protections for trans people) I used to reassure the more shouty activists that we weren’t against them but rather appreciated the opportunity to position ourselves as ‘the people you’d rather be dealing with’.
@christineburns @GeofCox @ChrisMayLA6 @woo @_bydbach_ If you want to move the Overton window, you need to stake out a maximalist demand then position your real needs as "moderate" (but still better for you than the status quo.)
The far right are terrifyingly good at this.
@GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 The main questions one should ask about disruptive protests are:
- disruptive how? (f.ex: Is a media performance stunt really disruptive?)
- disruptive to whom? (f.ex: to the powers that be, the general population, the economy or just generating buzz for media and social media companies?)
- and why? (f.ex: Is there a connection between the disruption and the goal? Is this obvious to the "whom" you're trying to disrupt or to the ones who might benefit or be sympathetic to your cause?)
Just supporting disruptive protests because disruptive protests have worked in the past doesn't get you very far. Social movements worked this out a century ago, but liberalism has worked very hard to make people unlearn it.
Thanks, great reply (boosted!)
@GeofCox
You've read How to Blow Up a Pipeline then? Pretty much this argument.
@_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 @Judeet88
@GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 disruptive protest comes after after peaceful has been tried over and over. Generally they do not start extremist but are driven to it.
@Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 Exactly. Serious scientists have been peacefully warning about climate change for more than a century. Has that resulted in the action that’s needed? Has it heck! Frankly, Just Stop Oil has been extremely restrained in the circumstances.
@KimSJ @Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
Very little has been gained by peaceful protest.
@EA7KRC @KimSJ @Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
"Violence exercised merely in self-defense, all societies, from the most primitive to the most cultured and civilized, accept as moral and legal."
- Dr. M.L. King Jr.
And at this stage, environmental protest is definitely self-defense.
@RhinosWorryMe @EA7KRC @KimSJ @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 I shall tell a story. In Derry in the late 60s there were protests, first by Catholics over unionist violence that was being used on them that all came to a head on a terrible Sunday.
The British put in as Intelligence (read counter terrorism) chief a man named Kitson. He had done the same job in Kenya and Aden.
@RhinosWorryMe @EA7KRC @KimSJ @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
He decided to flush out the hardline Nationalists by a simple tactic. He leaked the names of all the dangerous moderates (both sides of the discussion) to the UVF and another Loyalist Terror group. And they went to those addresses, broke limbs, threatened children and women, all with a RUC/Army blind eye
@RhinosWorryMe @EA7KRC @KimSJ @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
The responce was the Provos paying a return visit to Loyalist houses, and as it escalated, Kitson rubbed his hands, deployed kill teams and persuaded Heaths Gov that internment was the answer to a problem he had made 10 times worse.
Because in his view, Moderates were the problem as they might solve it rationally.... and then he would be out of a job.
The man was a murderous thug and a British Army Brigadier....
@Thebratdragon @EA7KRC @KimSJ @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
I've been trying to work out the point you're making, and I'm struggling (maybe because it's very hot here and I'm melting).
Possibilities:
1) Don't be a moderate, you'll get your legs broken.
2) Don't trust the British
3) The establishment will use any and all methods to maintain their own power.
Were any of those what you were aiming for? I strongly agree with 2 and 3.
@RhinosWorryMe @EA7KRC @KimSJ @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
3, and they will remove moderate opposition so that only extremism is seen to remain, and anyone disagreeing must be aligned with the extremists, so can be dismissed.
For a current example, the way criticism of Israeli action in Gaza is painted as pro Hamas.
@Thebratdragon @EA7KRC @KimSJ @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
Absolutely. Important historical context/lessons for environmentalists today, especially those who've been privileged enough to never see behind the veneer of civilization that the Powers That Be hide behind.
@RhinosWorryMe @Thebratdragon @EA7KRC @KimSJ @GeofCox @_bydbach_
2) has become an international norm in recent years I suspect
@ChrisMayLA6 @Thebratdragon @EA7KRC @KimSJ @GeofCox @_bydbach_
*Recent* years?! I think it's been a survival trait for centuries!
@EA7KRC @KimSJ @Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
"We had no doubt that we had to continue the fight. Anything else would have been abject surrender. Our problem was not whether to fight, but was how to continue the fight. . . .
This conclusion was not easily arrived at. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle . . . I can only say that I felt morally obliged to do what I did. . . .
Four forms of violence were possible. There is sabotage, there is guerrilla warfare, there is terrorism, and there is open revolution. We chose to adopt the first method . . . Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality. . . ."
- Nelson Mandela
@EA7KRC @KimSJ @Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
"We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence."
- Nelson Mandela
@EA7KRC @KimSJ @Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
"I do not, however, deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the Whites."
- Nelson Mandela
@EA7KRC @KimSJ @Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
"Very little has been gained by peaceful protest."
When you look at protests which demanded major, rather than minor changes, this is almost always the case...
@EA7KRC @KimSJ @Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
"I was not like [Ghandi and M.L.King]. For them, nonviolence was a principle. For me, it was a tactic. And when the tactic wasn’t working, I reversed it and started over."
- Nelson Mandela
@EA7KRC @KimSJ @Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
"Nonviolent passive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do. But if peaceful protest is met with violence, its efficacy is at an end. For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon."
- Nelson Mandela
@EA7KRC @KimSJ @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6
although protest can be both peaceful and disruptive, and that has been known to work.
@Thebratdragon @EA7KRC @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 The Government has been tightening laws to make peaceful disruption illegal as much as possible. At that point, what options for protest are left?
@KimSJ @EA7KRC @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 and knowing protests will escalate is one of the reasons they have criminalised it before hand. So they can portray protests as criminal or even terrorist events.
All part of the 3rd Reich playbook.
Next not enough prisons, so 'camps' to defain protestors.
@KimSJ @Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 I agree- I’ve been expecting environmentalist terrorist groups- by which I mean groups willing to take lives for their position, like the IRA or Red Army Faction- for about a decade and a half now, and Just Stop Oil are nowhere near that.
@Thebratdragon @GeofCox @_bydbach_ @ChrisMayLA6 look at how peaceful climate protesters are being treated at present. If peaceful protesters are treated like this, and achieve very little, what is the point of remaining peaceful? The world is burning. Somehow, we have to cause change.