Activist wars about tactics – Not just a question of effectiveness
..
Why do activists fight? What are the circumstances of the most widespread and vicious fights between white First World activists (of all colours) who are supposedly against the same injustices and supposedly fighting the same system of exploitation?
..
I have seen the biggest disagreements arise regarding differences in tactics. If the activists are all fighting the same oppressor, all pushing in the same direction, then why should they have such visceral confrontations about methods?
..
Generally speaking, those who propose more direct and higher risk approaches are told that they “put the movement at risk,” “are counterproductive,” “will give us bad press,” “will turn sympathisers and contributors to the illusive ‘critical mass’ away,” etc. Significant energy is expended confining and normalizing those elements that would be more bold.
..
The independent minded are told to subject themselves to the consensus decisions of majority groups, to “show solidarity,” and to “respect what others are trying to achieve.”
..
All of this is contrary to the anarchic spirit of exploration, vital impulse, and diversity of tactics. All of this is contrary to the millennial traditions of celebrating the bravest and supporting those who elect to push harder.
..
I have come to believe that the majority of organized First World activists prize their security in numbers and in imposed low-risk behaviours more than they are driven to actually fight the oppressor.
..
The radicals are seen not only as not fitting in but they also represent a critique of mainstream ineffective protest and of low-risk cooperative behaviour mainly aimed at guilt alleviation and mutual comforting. Such a critique, even if not verbalized, cannot be tolerated. This critique is deeply threatening to self-image and to the main evasion tactic of talking loudly and in large coordinated numbers to the wind.
..
Tactics are the expression in action of the activist model. And the two main competing First World models are: (1) the dominant model that low-risk expression if it involves sufficient numbers is the best lever for “progress,” and (2) the minority model that fighting the oppressor means fighting the oppressor, inflicting disabling damage, and thereby necessarily implying a backlash or adjustment and an associated risk.
..
So differences in tactics, along this divide, give rise to significant disagreements and often cause break ups. These differences in tactics are at the heart of self-image and worldview, of how the activist perceives her place and purpose. They are tied to the activist’s beliefs about finding meaning.
..
..
Activist wars in across-class oppression
..
This is all well known and has been written about often enough, but now consider a special variety of this dynamic – one that arises when middle class First World activists fight the oppressor of an underprivileged group living on the same territory (e.g. aboriginals) or in a distant land (e.g., Palestinians).
..
Occasionally, a member of the middle class activist community recognizes that the same oppressor acts in her immediate work or school environment, in the place where her own livelihood and liberation are at stake and decides to directly fight the oppressor (or one of its many tentacles) in her work or school environment, using necessarily high-risk tactics that involve trying to reduce the oppressor’s undemocratic and concentrated power in the work or school environment.
..
If this driven activist on the road to liberation claims solidarity with the underprivileged group and draws attention to the across-class character of the oppression by suggesting that we need to actually fight the bastards where we are and where we have power, then that is going too far. The majority middle class weekend and after-work low-risk consensus-seeking activists who fight for the underprivileged simply flip out.
..
Corporate media coverage of ineffective actions is allowed whereas media coverage of actions that threaten power is generally not. And media ties the activist to the broad community with its social norms and opinions, which in turn protect the individual resistor from indiscriminate and disproportionate applications of power, such that media-share, media-strategy, and media-use are often at the core of the conflict between activists. And our driven workplace activist is “subverting media away from the dying underprivileged children…”
..
The accusations are almost comically predictable: “You are using the underprivileged for your own selfish means, for your own promotion…” “You are privileged; you can therefore not be oppressed.” “How dare you compare their suffering to yours; these people are being killed.”
..
The protectors of low-risk activism call upon the obviously extreme suffering of the distant group targeted for aid via critical mass leverage, in order to argue that they need not actually fight anyone. They focus their efforts to eliminate this threat to their cultist belief in action at a distance via multiple filters as the most they can do.
..
Their contributions may arguably be important and the nurtured consciousness of First World civil society may arguably play a role in frustrating expressions of war and genocide in non-First-World-middle-class jurisdictions, but the point here is that any suggestion that they are not doing everything they can or that they need to do more that would involve an actual fight with consequences and casualties will not be tolerated.
..
An activist from their own privileged class that actually takes the battle personally into the halls of the economic system that sustains the oppression, and is necessarily not polite and suitably restrained in doing so, must be killed, or at least defamed, isolated, and neutralized.
..
It’s a mobbing with the full intellectual pretext mill backing of university-bred feminist theory and progressive liberal rationalization. It’s ugly; the finest expression of fear and ignorance that mainstream First World activism can provide.
..
Today’s North American mainstream progressive liberal low-risk consensus-seeking hobby activists are possibly the greatest barrier to First World liberation (and whole-world sanity); since the radicals that are neutralized rather than projected and multiplied are the main connections to liberation.
..
..
RELATED POSTS
Activism and Risk
Against Chomsky
Means and Freire
Embracing Hatred
..
RESPONSE FROM THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION PARTY:
Open Letter to Denis Rancourt: Harsh Words for the Ex-Professor
..
OTHER RELATED EXAMPLES:
Why Norman Finkelstein dropped out of the Gaza Freedom March
