What do we want? An End to Violent Activism! When do we want it? Now!
If outrage is the only thing that sells, it is time to get outraged about lawless outrage?
Activism is in-vogue. So much so, ‘Activist’ appears to now be a job-title according to LinkedIn and it’s perhaps no surprise given that rage has replaced sex as the hottest marketing tool (Scott Galloway is great on this here). Maybe it never left, and arguably, we have much progress to thank it for. The right to protest is a fundamental democratic right that most of us in the West believe in wholeheartedly. It can be hugely inspiring to observe and no doubt participate in crowds thronging together in a single, shared world-changing purpose. Feeling like we’re ‘doing something’ and ‘making a difference’.
As Yascha Mounk writes in the Spectator this week of the current protest :
Its ostensible cause is hardly ignoble. It’s possible to be appalled both by the 7 October attacks and the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths. It would be inhumane not to share the widespread horror at what is happening in Gaza. And anti-war rallies have, of course, long been part of the student experience, a hallmark of a free society.
But as the above article goes on to demonstrate, I am not alone in fearing that the current angry, lawless iterations risk damaging their causes more than furthering them.
Like many, I’ve watched the on-campus protests in the US and many others in recent years- increasingly imported to the UK - along with their descent into unruliness with a mixture of alarm and fear. Where is the line between peaceful protest and anarchy?
On the current issue, I utterly accept my own ignorance, despite having sought to read as widely as I can from all sides. But given my ongoing ignorance of the complicated historical, religious and ideological context, I defer the debate to experts and instead, like many, to resort to favouring gut instincts based on my own values - democratic processes, respect for law, tolerance of difference, free speech, debate and the rules of modern warfare - all of which, frankly appear under threat. It is alarming. And deeply upsetting to witness mass loss of civilian life, but personally I choose not to wade in and fuel any agenda with further ignorance. The issue on which I have Antidoter concerns this week is around modern activism itself.
Primarily… does it actually work? As far as I can observe, it seems to turn people away rather than towards the violent protestor’s cause (and I do draw a distinction between peaceful and violent), driving even deeper wedges down through society between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’. Have we entirely lost the ability to converse respectfully on contentious issues, instead requiring shouting and worse - destruction and violence - to make ourselves heard?
When passions run high, anger is unavoidable but common sense suggests it’s rarely the best strategy. If we resort to dehumanising each other and violence, have we not already lost the argument? As the saying goes - never negotiate with terrorists… and as any parent of toddler-terrorists knows, it is rarely effective. To acquiesce to the demands or descend to the level of the screaming child rarely gets results, and worse, it risks damaging the causes the protesters care so much about.
In our attention economy, it’s become performative and darker. As I’ve come to realise, it’s perhaps the most high-profile symptom of so many of the various issues I’ve discussed previously - polarisation, privilege, victimhood and narcissism.
Many (not all!) activists drink from a firehose of one-sided, angry, politicised content and then tribe-up in self-affirming bubbles of outrage to signal their global-good-person credentials vs the ‘unenlightened’. These days, it’s fuelled by binary short-form content which is performative by design, stoking fear and rewarding outrage. The intention now seems to be to stir up physical altercations that can be filmed and distributed to create social stars of the creators. There is little that depresses me more than the sight of 100s of onlookers getting their phones out to record a confrontation for an opportunity to win followers by throwing fuel on the fire. Is it really being recorded for ‘evidence’ and the greater good? To my mind, it just shows a lack a basic humanity, bordering on glee, to be so close to the drama. And of course, the proliferation of these videos, from every possible angle warps our sense of their prevalence.
Ignorance and hypocrisy can seem rife (no doubt again, amplified by opposing sides): Palestine protesters unable to name either the river or sea, or define ‘intifada’; UK BLM protestors kneeling and shouting ‘don’t shoot’ to unarmed UK police; Both pro and anti Brexit tribes conflating the powers of the EU, the Euro-zone or the European Court of Justice; Just Stop Oil protestors using oil-based paints to destroy priceless works of art (created with oil-based paints); climate protesters flying around the world to rallies or causing miles of idling motorway traffic that exacerbate pollution. Youth, anger and ‘how dare you’ soundbites now trump degrees or Nobel-award-winning lifetimes of experience.
Shadowy well-funded political organisations pull strings behind the scenes, funding placard production at best, bussing in ‘professional’ external activists at worst, or providing tents, play-books and police-baiting strategies - often recycled from the last anti-capitalist/ anti-establishment upswell. Key organisations supporting the current US protests, such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), explicitly celebrated Hamas’s terror attack in the days following 7 October. In the UK, the Socialist Workers Party is always found at protest rallies, no matter the cause, handing out free placards and flags. (More here). On campus protestors can come across as entitled - typically middle class and from affluent families - albeit fleshed out by outside ‘professional’ agitators who have made up a heavy proportion of recent arrests. It will be interesting to see what happens on campuses once the summer break arrives.
This week at Dartmouth University the student government held an open "no confidence" vote on the president's handling of campus protests. It passed (no confidence) 13-2 (with 3 abstentions). When then repeated with a secret ballot, it failed 8-9 (with 2 abstentions)... making something of a mockery of the process and serving to demonstrate the huge recent growth of self-censorship that open hostility to others’ ‘wrong’ opinions results in. Is this not the definition of bullying?
When public property is damaged or everyday people seriously inconvenienced, prevented from hearing diverse viewpoints or worse- vilified, a cause rapidly loses support.
Back in the votes-for-women time, there was a divide between the more militant suffragettes and the more peaceful policy-focussed suffragists, with Fawcett, the leader of the latter accusing the former of setting the movement back. She commented:
"I can never feel that setting fire to houses and churches and litter boxes and destroying valuable pictures really helps to convince people that women ought to be enfranchised."
There remains to this day debate over which group affected more change or how far it would have happened anyway post women’s direct involvement in the war effort and amidst wider emancipation for men during that period.
I’ve long feared this in one of the realms I do know a little more about - the contentious field of gender ideology. I wonder if the biggest threat to trans people going about their daily lives in peace is actually trans activism. This debate turns nasty very quickly and has actually appeared to damage public support (which has swung downwards in recent years) - whether by insisting on exposing children to over-sexualised drag content in the name of promoting inclusivity or labelling anyone daring to voice even a modicum of concern over the complicated balance of rights or myriad of issues self-ID presents - to children’s health, women’s sports or women’s spaces - a TERF, bigot or even child-killer.
Whether shifts in public opinion move away from the aggressive efforts of those who de-platform and choose violet protest or angry rhetoric over debate, or towards a (typically) more measured, longer-form debate of the other is a question that merits investigation as it may be a key to understanding how to actually shift public opinion.
Whatever the case, should a certain prospective president in the States wish to run on a ‘restoring order’ manifesto, it’s likely to find many more sympathetic prospective voters than it might have done prior to the recent uprisings. The phrase ‘cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face’ springs to mind.
More:
Terry Eagleton In defence of our new student radicals
Park Macdougald on The people setting America on Fire
Yascha Mounk - How Universities Raised a new Generation of Activists
Washington Times opinion piece ‘Who is Paying these Outside Agitators?’