from July 3, 2002
This is a dashed-off exposition I stuck into an already lively discussion on a forum for designers (which, like most discussion boards, makes ample space for politics and who knows what else). I'm tacking it up here because I'm happy with some of what I said, and I've been wanting to write a bit on the subject. This is by no means a complete discussion, and of course it references remarks not reproduced here, though I hope the meaning will be clear. More will come later on this subject; it's a big one.
I've heard this derision toward the anti-WTO movement and related folks before, the quick and easy statement that their tactics are all wrong. Near as I can tell you mostly like to state that and leave it; I'm very interested in the question, but so far you've offered me little reason for thinking these activist movements are doing something wrong.
Little, that is, beyond what seems a personal distaste for their members. Not unlike: Nobody wants to hear about environmentalism from a hippie in a Phish t-shirt who smells of patchouli and ass.
Well, saying a thing like that doesn't carry any actual meaning. Everybody on Earth falls into an equally disparaging stereotype in somebody's eyes. Gets the conversation nowhere, and certainly imparts no useful insight about the people you're talking about or their methods.
I am a fairly new student of left-wing politics; I was given Atlas Shrugged to read, by my dad, when I was fourteen years old. I have always charted my intellectual awakening to the reading of that book, and for better or for worse I still think that was the case. I am steeped in libertarian thinking, and still friendly with some elements of it ("enlightened self-interest" still seems obvious to me, though I'm leery of some of what gets touted under that rubric). But some two years ago, I finally decided I needed to invest some energy in learning about lefty causes--particularly environmentalism, always the easiest for newcomers to pick up--and since then I've been in a turmoil, changing my mind about huge numbers of things at a dizzying pace. It's damnably uncomfortable.
The pace has picked up since 9/11, as I began to really follow the news, and to sound off about it. I've been writing furiously about precisely the sorts of complaints you started this thread with since then. I've been reading the news for hours, hours, every day. This is new, and wildly out of character, and in its way invigorating. I know what the hell I'm talking about in a way that's unprecedented in my life. I deserve to be taken seriously far more now than I ever did.
Which is why I find it so frustrating when somebody suggests that I need to tone down my discourse a little, because otherwise "nobody will listen." There may be truth to that, and I'm constantly debating with myself about what stance to take. The problem is that the way the world, and particularly the US, is really operating is so starkly different from the conventional idea of it that the plainest possible exposition of some of these perspectives makes you sound like a lunatic-fringe nutjob. Compounding that, after you've spent months researching corporate and governmental corruption, you slowly start to forget that most people don't know anything at all about it. You forget, and you make some statement that seems rudimentary to you, but for which the overwhelming majority of Americans lack all the background.
I do understand that hippies are not well respected, and that they seem freakish in many ways to most people. I have deeply mixed feelings about them myself, and about the efficacy of protests. I have only been to a couple of protests myself and I think I need to see a few more before I can start to form better ideas about what's working and what's not and what else might. But I get a little impatient with some lot of rich white web designers dismissing them out of hand. Among those ass-patchouli hippies is a small army of people whose informedness and understanding of how the world works so mightily outstrips yours that there's hardly a comparison worth making. Please try at least to consider it possible that I know what I'm talking about here.
Now, again, I'm a beginner at this. Too often the protests seem futile to me as well; I think some are far better than others, certainly. But I'm woefully uncertain as to what might be better. I'm not sure what sort of program A. might have in mind for a psyop-style resurgence against our current atmosphere; remember, the military psyop unit you worked with probably had a substantial budget, and maybe other tools civilians wouldn't have. That rallying of the American right in the 80s that T. mentions didn't just happen, it was obscenely well-funded because its policies favored the wallets of enormous corporations. That dual corruption is precisely the engine that has brought us to our current position, and it will remain a weapon for their side only. Who's going to bankroll your long subtle propaganda campaign?
There is a value in taking to the streets, and it is precisely an information struggle--a way of repeatedly showing isolated malcontents that they are not as isolated as they may feel they are. A way of showing the people in power that the majority might wake up someday, and that therefore they need to watch their step a little.
The folks running the show have a pretty good understanding of who's corrupt and how, and they know that a befuddled populace is critical to its continued success; J., if the Chinese government had felt the Tianenmen Square protesters were accomplishing "fuck-all," those tanks would never have been there. The protesters at the bottom and the power-brokers at the top both understand very well that they are locked in an active struggle for public opinion. The fact that you feel derision for the protesters is not proof that the protesters can never get anywhere, but that the power-brokers are currently winning the battle for your head. Rather, the fact of your derision is precisely their victory condition.
And even then they succeeded to a remarkable extent, defending the ghetto for weeks, twice driving the Germans out by force, until finally the Nazis brought in artillery and burned the ghetto to root them out. This, mind you, is after some eighty percent of their original population had been shipped off, piecemeal, to the camps. So why didn't they fight earlier?
The Nazis carefully kept offering them safety in other forms. You'll be safe if you work for one of these designated companies; you'll be safe if you volunteer to police the others, etc. Over and over, some facade of mercy seemed like a safer bet than rising up locally against the army that had already conquered Poland.
And indeed, a forceful revolution against a modern seems pretty well doomed, even if backed by a majority; there wil be no American Revolution this time. Not only was England's attention mostly elsewhere at the time of our revolution, the same weapons technologies were freely available to both sides--the official military and the common people. Get enough guys with guns together, and it was every bit as much an army as the snazzy redcoats were. Not in this day and age. A militant uprising in the US--even though an unusually large number of people might be interested in joining one if it started, what with an administration of highly questionable legitimacy going on a binge of aggression abroad and right infringements at home--would be too long a bet by far. You can't fight today's military with a bunch of civilians and small arms fire.
People know that, and as S. says, this is chiefly why nobody will do anything about it. What would we do? We can't throw the bums out; they've got all the guns. Even those protesters, as you may or may not know, risk imprisonment and off-record abuses every time they march (and these days, Ashcroft's boys have assumed the power to arbitrarily designate any person a terrorist and therefore without rights of any sort).
This is where the idea of some sort of nonviolent movement enters. The specifics do need work, I think; but the pattern the activists are trying to follow is that of Gandhi, King, and Mandela. All three of whom, please note, won--working nonmilitarily against overwhelming military odds.
Why? Because public opinion really is the bottom line. None of the above-referenced struggles required an actual majority of the populace (nor did the American Revolution for that matter). Just a large number. No state wants to face a loud, angry mob of dissatisfied people. The most shameless of regimes might make profound reforms rather than pick that fight.
But rather than that, they'd prefer to keep it from coming up. Which is why the media has become the battlefield of choice.