PhilPaine.com

There’s an impor­tant dif­fer­ence between polit­i­cal protests tak­ing place with­in a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly ordered soci­ety and those tak­ing place with­in a crude dic­ta­tor­ship, or a fun­da­men­tal­ly cor­rupt and crim­i­nal regime. This dif­fer­ence is rarely acknowl­edged by the media, or by the­o­rists who casu­al­ly lump all acts of protest togeth­er. But sure­ly, the fact that one process is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous and the oth­er is not should loom large in any analysis.

When Václav Hav­el and oth­er Czech and Slo­vak dis­si­dents found­ed the Civic Forum, with the aim of putting an end to Com­mu­nist rule in Czecho­slo­va­kia, he had already expe­ri­enced sev­er­al jail sen­tences, includ­ing one that was five years long. His writ­ings were banned, and he was not per­mit­ted to work in his cho­sen pro­fes­sion. He had expe­ri­enced a life­time of sys­tem­at­ic threats and harass­ment. Any­one engag­ing in the kind of polit­i­cal demon­stra­tion that would have been with­out risk in Cana­da, the U.K., or the Unit­ed States could expect to be pun­ished severe­ly, to dis­ap­pear into one of the prison or slave labour camps, or even face exe­cu­tion. Their friends and fam­i­ly would also face pun­ish­ment. Many tens of thou­sands of peo­ple had already expe­ri­enced these pun­ish­ments. Yet the Czech Com­mu­nist regime was only mild­ly repres­sive by the century’s stan­dards. Many regimes have been much more brutal. 

Havel’s actions of protest were not aimed at con­vinc­ing the Czech and Slo­vak peo­ple that their rulers were act­ing wrong­ly. Every­one was per­fect­ly aware that they were occu­pied by an impe­ri­al­ist pow­er, exploit­ed, and tyr­an­nized. They did not have to be con­vinced of this. Rather, protests in this con­text were acts of defi­ance against the rulers. This defi­ance had a small, but dis­rup­tive effect on the rulers, since it dis­turbed their sense of enti­tle­ment. It also had a small, but use­ful effect out­side of Czecho­slo­va­kia. While very lit­tle news of these protests reached the out­side world, and there most­ly met indif­fer­ence, a slow accu­mu­la­tion of rumours of dis­si­dent activ­i­ty did help to erode the frame­work of lies that the regime pro­ject­ed. Intel­lec­tu­als in the democ­ra­cies who had made careers of col­lab­o­rat­ing with tyran­ny lost some of their cred­i­bil­i­ty. But the pri­ma­ry effect was on the spir­i­tu­al state of the dis­si­dents them­selves. As Hav­el wrote long before the suc­cess­ful over­throw of the regime: “…we nev­er decid­ed to become dis­si­dents. We have been trans­formed into them, with­out quite know­ing how, some­times we have end­ed up in prison with­out pre­cise­ly know­ing how. We sim­ply went ahead and did cer­tain things that we felt we ought to do, and that seemed to us decent to do, noth­ing more nor less.” [1] This strength­en­ing and focus­ing of inner moral pur­pose allowed them to act ratio­nal­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly. Over the years, an infra­struc­ture of resis­tance was con­struct­ed, and the peo­ple of Czecho­slo­va­kia came to see this as the real source of polit­i­cal legit­i­ma­cy, the real rep­re­sen­ta­tion of them­selves. Ulti­mate­ly, some demon­stra­tions occurred which trig­gered the over­throw of the oppres­sive regime, but the demon­stra­tions were the tip of the ice­berg. Under­neath, there was a sol­id struc­ture, which was itself con­struct­ed on sol­id moral ground. My friend Fil­ip Marek, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in these events, often tells me that he dis­likes the phrase “Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion,” because it implies that it was both easy and blood­less. In real­i­ty, much blood was shed over the years to accom­plish it, and it was not even remote­ly easy.

The protests tak­ing place in the Mid­dle East, today, are extreme­ly dan­ger­ous for the par­tic­i­pants. In the last few months, the dic­ta­tor­ship in Syr­ia has mur­dered more than five thou­sand peo­ple in response to dis­si­dent activ­i­ty, includ­ing chil­dren. In such regimes, any seri­ous protest amounts to trig­ger­ing a rev­o­lu­tion, and the out­come of rev­o­lu­tions is ter­ri­fy­ing­ly unpre­dictable. The wave of pop­u­lar resis­tance that took place with­in the old Sovi­et Empire pro­duced a spread of diver­gent results in var­i­ous parts of the empire. Some places, such as Esto­nia, became per­fect­ly nice, mod­ern, demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries. Some, such as Turk­me­nia, became dic­ta­tor­ships as bru­tal as the one that pre­ced­ed them. Some under­went trau­mat­ic civ­il wars. The largest seg­ment, now the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, suf­fered a decade of eco­nom­ic chaos, fol­lowed by a strong-man regime with par­tial­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions that is build­ing up to anoth­er show-down with its peo­ple. Rev­o­lu­tion is a crap-shoot. The results, so far, of the “Arab Spring” are sim­i­lar­ly diverse. Tunisia pulled off a non-vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion suc­cess­ful­ly. Lybia expe­ri­enced a pro­longed vio­lent strug­gle, and it is not clear if demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions will suc­cess­ful­ly form. Egypt’s mil­i­tary pulled off an effec­tive counter-rev­o­lu­tion, dump­ing the dic­ta­tor who was the focus of pop­u­lar dis­con­tent, but pre­serv­ing its own pow­er and mar­gin­al­iz­ing the most pro­gres­sive ele­ments. The oil-rich monar­chies of the Ara­bi­an penin­su­la have suc­cess­ful­ly crushed the move­ment. Syr­ia remains the most vio­lent, and unpre­dictable locus in the strug­gle. The Con­ser­v­a­tive press in coun­tries like Cana­da and the Unit­ed States is jubi­lant at these fail­ures, much as I remem­ber the snig­ger­ing hos­til­i­ty that intel­lec­tu­als had for the upris­ings in the Sovi­et Empire, back in 1988–91.

Protests with­in a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from these kind of events. The pro­tes­tors face no sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger. This is not to say that we should turn a blind eye to cops vio­lat­ing civ­il rights, strong-arm­ing peace­ful demon­stra­tors, or the kind of trea­so­nous fraud per­pe­trat­ed by the author­i­ties that occurred dur­ing the G‑20 sum­mit in Toron­to. All those respon­si­ble for these crimes against my coun­try should be pun­ished severe­ly for them, though I know that they nev­er will be. But there is a world of dif­fer­ence between a brief stay in a local lock-up and a court appear­ance, and fac­ing a fir­ing squad or ten years dig­ging rocks with your bare hands in a mine. Pro­test­ers in Cana­da do not face dan­ger great enough to clas­si­fy their actions as exam­ples of great courage. I’m not imply­ing that they shouldn’t engage in protest. Protest is urgent­ly need­ed. But it is not help­ful or hon­est to mis­rep­re­sent its nature. 

What moti­vates real protest in a democ­ra­cy is not phys­i­cal courage, but civic virtue. When we protest against the abom­inable activ­i­ties of the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment in Cana­da, we are ful­fill­ing our patri­ot­ic duty to pre­serve the val­ues of our coun­try, not foment­ing rev­o­lu­tion. It is Stephen Harp­er, and his gang of cor­rupt cronies, who are sub­vert­ing and dis­hon­our­ing our coun­try. It is they who are the sedi­tious ele­ment. This is why I do not feel any glad­ness when pro­fes­sion­al pseu­do-rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, con­ven­tion­al ide­o­log­i­cal “anar­chists” or “rad­i­cals” par­tic­i­pate in such protests, or attempt to take them over. They are there pre­cise­ly to val­i­date the “good guy” image of the author­i­ties, and to tor­pe­do the moral legit­i­ma­cy of the protest. They per­form exact­ly the same debas­ing func­tion that Islam­ic Fun­da­men­tal­ist groups have done for the Arab Spring. 

With­in a demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­ty, one finds protests occur­ring all the time, pre­cise­ly because a free soci­ety should be open to them, and should encour­age them. But such protests dif­fer great­ly in their qual­i­ty. Some protests tell us lit­tle more than that some­body is angry about some­thing. Since anoth­er, equal­ly large or influ­en­tial group may be equal­ly angry about an oppo­site state of affairs, this sel­dom has any influ­ence on either opin­ion or pol­i­cy. More sophis­ti­cat­ed protest aims at influ­enc­ing pub­lic opin­ion, by 1) mak­ing clear what is wrong about some pub­lic pol­i­cy; 2) putting for­ward a dif­fer­ent, pre­sum­ably bet­ter pol­i­cy; and 3) con­vinc­ing a broad pub­lic of the wis­dom of act­ing to this end. In a democ­ra­cy, effec­tive protest should mere­ly be the ini­tial step in a process cul­mi­nat­ing in real polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion and action. This action must, to be gen­uine­ly effec­tive, trans­late into peo­ple mark­ing x’s on bal­lots in the end. If it is mere­ly a rit­u­al, an amuse­ment, or a way of blow­ing off steam, it is not progressive.

Regres­sive and cor­rupt­ing forces in our soci­ety have access to very effec­tive means of influ­enc­ing pub­lic opin­ion, and of for­ward­ing their poli­cies. They can fill the news­pa­pers and tele­vi­sion broad­casts that they con­trol with mis­in­for­ma­tion and spe­cious argu­ments. They can cre­ate insti­tu­tions with impres­sive-sound­ing cre­den­tials to pro­mote their views and pro­vide the media with catch-phras­es and sound-bites. They can man­u­fac­ture pho­ny “grass-roots” move­ments among the gullible. They can fill the inter­net with con­trived “inde­pen­dent” sources (there is a com­mer­cial agency in New York that spe­cial­izes in this). They don’t have to be truth­ful, log­i­cal, or even con­sis­tent, since their aim is to deceive a vari­ety of peo­ple “by any means nec­es­sary.” And, of course, they can sim­ply buy politi­cians — use their unlim­it­ed finan­cial resources to install paid stooges in pub­lic office. But even their paid stooges have to be elect­ed. Pro­pa­gan­da is mere­ly a pre­lude to the crit­i­cal process of get­ting the vote out. In every case I know of, in Cana­da and the Unit­ed States, when those coun­tries took a sig­nif­i­cant turn for the worse, the major­i­ty of good-heart­ed peo­ple sat on their bums at elec­tion time, while the forces of bar­barism built effec­tive orga­ni­za­tions to get their fol­low­ers into the polling booths. Paul M. Weyrich, the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal strate­gist who found­ed key orga­ni­za­tions that trained and mobi­lized regres­sive activists, recruit­ed regres­sive can­di­dates, and raised funds for regres­sive caus­es, once stat­ed it suc­cinct­ly: “I don’t want every­body to vote. Elec­tions are not won by a major­i­ty of the peo­ple. They nev­er have been from the begin­ning of our coun­try and they are not now. As a mat­ter of fact, our lever­age in the elec­tions quite can­did­ly goes up as the vot­ing pop­u­lace goes down.” [2] Around the time this was said, many of the peo­ple I knew who claimed to oppose these forces thought them­selves fright­ful­ly clever because they nev­er voted. 

When protest fails to define prob­lems clear­ly, when it fails to clar­i­fy moral issues, when it fails to claim the ter­ri­to­ry of both rea­son and patri­o­tism, when it fails to make clear what action should be tak­en to cor­rect the prob­lem, or what pub­lic pol­i­cy should be pur­sued in pref­er­ence, and when it fails to be a stim­u­lus to real action in the polit­i­cal process, it is worse than useless.

In the last year, there has been an abun­dance of such inef­fec­tive protest, in Cana­da and the Unit­ed States. While else­where, coura­geous peo­ple have been risk­ing their lives for even a slim chance that they might see their coun­tries become democ­ra­cies, lit­tle has been done here to fight the sys­tem­at­ic ero­sion and des­e­cra­tion of our lib­er­ties, except for some sil­ly, mis­con­ceived and mis­di­rect­ed opere buffe, con­nect­ed to no sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal action.