September 21, 2007

• Modern Activism

  In a very funny segment, Stephen Colbert mocked the modern activist, suggesting that they are a group of people more inclined to post things on blogs and youtube than to actually act to stand up for their principles. This was in response to the ‘taser’ incident at Florida.  I’d link to the segment, but it was taken off of youtube and other sites and I refuse to support Viacomm silly stance on copyright by linking to their own site.

  Similarly, I recall a speech where the speaker said that the modern American generation is the “mtv coach potato activist generation”. The idea is similar. We, in the US, are a people who talk about action on the internet but don’t actually do anything in real life.

  There’s some superficial truth to those kinds of sentiments but I think it is overblown. Real life protests in the modern era have actually been quite huge. Many, including that of the Iraq war were considerably larger in real terms than those old classic protests we look on with such nostalgia. 

  And besides that this new kind of ‘internet activism’ is not as trivial or insignificant as the commentators would have us believe. It is something new and powerful that will have a profound impact on the future development of humanity. You see the thing that distinguishes it from the major protest movements of the past is that it is ironically *more* of an active engagement for the individuals involved.

  Consider being a person who attends a march in support of something or some odd thing. So you go there, you get excited, you have a good old time, but to what extent have you really engaged yourself in the protest? You’re there sure. But if you aren’t one of the leaders and organizers chances are you are not engaging your mind or your creativity in any way in support of the cause.  You aren’t coming up with ideas considering alternatives or coming up with new ways to spread your message.  It’s true, nothing is stopping you from doing those things in the physical world, it’s just that most of the many masses who take place in a protest march or rally don’t and probably wouldn’t even know how to begin. They ‘participate’ in much the same way you participate in a concert or a football game. You’re just there adding to the numbers. You’re an extra body.
   
  Internet protests have an entirely diferent character to them. Every individual contributes in their own tiny little hole in reality. Everybody engages their creativity and their intellect. Everyone expresses themselves. Everyone’s a kind of a leader even if it is of only a super tiny community of 3 or 4 people out there who actually read your blog or bother to watch your youtube commentary. The barriers to entry are so small that virtually everybody can do it (if they can afford or obtain computer and internet access).  And on top of that people communicate back. It becomes a dialog where real ideas can be generated and spread and understanding can evolve. It’s entirely different from being a part of a crowd listening to people preach at you and cheering in response with never an opportunity to disagree or object or clarify or contribute in any way shape or form.  That’s the difference between the new internet forum for change and the old fashioned mechanisms we are used to.

  There’s a problem though. This new kind of communal interaction in the netherworld of the internet lacks something very important that more immediate civil protests tend to have. They are inherently less scary.  And  yes, that’s a bad thing.

  You see there is always beneathe any protest even the most pecaefull an undercurrent of fear. There is a sense of risk that observers get. A sense of trepidation an feeling of the need for caution. There is nothing more terrifying to those whose livelihoods depend upon stability than a tightly controlled mob a hair’s breathe away from unleashing itself into chaos. The civil rights marches and the anti-vietnam protests were for the most part very peaceful affairs, but people were clearly pissed off and willing to do anything to create change. The risk of these clean and civil affairs breaking down into chaos was very real. And that scared people. It scared power. It scared random audiences throughout the county who had never paid attention and never thought about the issues being raised. And that fear made people take the events more serious. That uncertainty made it more likely that the people in power would take into consideration the principles being argued for and make concessions.

  But who is afraid of some random guy ranting nonsense on his blog? Who fears the guy who mashes up some sort of satire mocking a public official? Nobody really. Even when the numbers become massive it doesn’t really have the same effect. People can safely feel as if they can ignore all of these angry people who are after all just sitting in from of their computers typing away. What’s the risk?

  And yet, ironically those attempts to organize popular protests in the modern era have also seemed to have lost a lot of their teeth. Are we just so used to nonviolent protests that we take them for granted now? There just doesn’t seem to be any fear anymore. We can have a huge protest where untold numbers of people take the day off from their job in protest of illegal immigrant laws being proposed in Congress, and nothing happens. The same sick laws are still being proposed, still just a hands breathe away from being passed. Why? Because everybody knows they’ll all just go back to work tomorrow. There’s no fear there. It’s a big event, but power just keeps on doing what its doing and ignores the ramblings of the meek masses. It’s in fact acceptable losses. What’s one day of earnings if it keeps the people happy, keeps them thinking that they are doing something?  The Iraq war continues despite protest after protest, march after march, and Congress doesn’t even really consider changing its foreign policy. And people think getting everyone to wear black on a specific day is going to make a difference? The weak might be scared into changing when popular opinion goes against them, but the already powerful just don’t care.

  So the problem isn’t the internet culture, the existence of youtubes and myspaces and blogs. The problem isn’t that people don’t remember the good old days and that youth today just aren’t the same caliber of the old guard civil rights activists. Something much more fundamental has broken down in the US. Popular power just isn’t as powerful anymore. It’s as if activism has become a kind of game looked on upon with amusement by the people who are making all of the decisions and don’t really give a damn about what the people think. They watch and them promptly ignore them. They simply assume, and apparently with some degree of accuracy, that they’ll just be able to manipulate people’s opinions after the fact until everyone agrees with them anyway.

  I don’t know the solution to this problem. Surely we need to somehow combine the powers of the internet with more hands on approaches to protest and activism in order to have a deeper impact. Somehow we have to interject into the modern protests a level of seriousness and scale that makes everyone take pause and take note. When a major protest happens, people who are watching need to stop and say “woah, what the heck just happened here?” And people who are participating need to feel as if they are truly a part of history in the making.

  That’s the future of activism. We just need to get there.

  • 12:29 pm
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