Swatting at the Noose of Cynicism

By Robert Koehler

July 11, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

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EmlLee Hutchinson - Hope. Flickr.

As hard as I try, i the privacy of my own being, not to get caught up in the scathing absurdities of the moment — e.g., the presidential election, America’ looming fascism, our love of money and war (to name a few) — yikes, here I am, caught up in it all.

And all I can do is reach for a larger truth . . . peace will prevail, the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. And it so quickly feels like a cliché. Welcome to cynicism!

I swat at it, push it away, but it’s always there. So calm down, I tell myself. I’m doing so right now. In the context of a Biden blank stare and a looming Trump presidency, here I am, reaching for a sense of hope and transcendence — a sense of belief, a sense of joy, that humanity is evolving, that the present is just a necessary flicker in our becoming.

I invite you to join me as I reach for a larger context in which to put this flickering moment. I begin by quoting Peter Bloom, addressing the looming presidential farce: 

“Increasingly, elections have become competitions between the ambitions and personalities of individual ‘great men’ rather than contests of ideas or visions for society.

“This phenomenon reflects a contemporary belief in the outsized power of elite individuals—whether CEOs, celebrities, or political leaders—to drive change and shape the world around them. . . .

“This personalization of politics serves to obscure the deeper structural issues facing American democracy and society. By focusing on the qualities of individual leaders, we lose sight of the systemic problems that no single person, no matter how talented or well-intentioned, can solve alone.”

Hmmm . . . This opens up a line of thought oh so easily disparaged and dismissed, at least by the corporate media (“the bouncers,” as I call them), whose job is to keep complexity out of our collective national consciousness and reduce politics — national and even global — to a simplistic, win-lose game. This, of course, maintains the present two-party system: evil vs. lesser evil. And those who challenge it, attempting to transcend spectator democracy by participating directly and complexly in the process, are nothing but “spoilers.”

What a joke, eh? Thinking we can build a political system based on the concept that we’re all in this together.

In contrast, let me snatch a quote from Rupert Ross’s great book on Restorative Justice, Returning to the Teachings. Ross quotes Anne Fausto-Sterling: 

“Modern textbooks still like to talk of cutthroat competition, of the survival of the fittest, as the overriding force that drives evolution. . . . Yet research in the past two decades shows that cooperation among species plays at least as big a role as violent struggle. … And suddenly, it seems, you can find cooperation in plants and animals wherever you look — suggesting a whole new view of evolution and interdependence among all forms of life.”

Working together? Building society as a collaborative effort? Yeah, it’s nice-sounding claptrap and a necessary part of human existence — families have to get along, drivers have to stop at stop signs, etc., etc. — but, come on! America is about winning and losing. The Super Bowl isn’t a focus on politeness. We have a trillion-dollar annual “defense” budget and several thousand nuclear weapons, not just stockpiled but “actively deployed.” So does Russia! What kind of idiot sings “kumbaya” and says we all just need to get along?

This is the noose of cynicism from which we need both personal and collective escape. And the escape isn’t a kick in the bad guy’s kneecaps (whoever the bad guy is). The escape from cynicism is, ahem, loving.

Here’s another quote from Ross’s book, which he calls the first of the Twelve Teachings of the Sacred Tree, that is to say, an expression of indigenous awareness of the nature of the universe: 

“All things are interrelated. Everything in the universe is part of a single whole. Everything is connected in some way to everything else. It is therefore possible to understand something only if we can understand how it is connected to everything else.”

The world is not simply ours to extract and exploit, to divide into categories, to dump into the trash bin? Bad guys and good guys both matter, even in a presidential race? All I can do is quote a poem I wrote a few years ago. It’s called “The Cardinal”:

I thank you God

if that’s your name

for the beauty and the trash,

the spill, the vomit, the love and

exhaust smoke of

this new most

amazing day.

Outside my window

a cardinal shocking

as a nosebleed

pecks the raw winter

ground beneath its feet.

I thank you for its

food and mine,

for my coffee and for these

words, these malleable

playthings of awareness,

which still birth

all I think and know.

Let them stroke

the trembling potential

of what I see and what’s

to come.

The cardinal lifts.

I salute it with

my cup

and swallow.

I know, I know. This solves nothing. This answers nothing. The presidential race and raw hell are still looming and human-created climate change has ahold of the planet. I’m lost. Perhaps we all are, as we stare wide-eyed at the cynical noose dangling from the headlines. Oh Lord, kumbaya.

But look! The cardinal’s coming back.

Robert Koehler

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. Koehler has been the recipient of multiple awards for writing and journalism from organizations including the National Newspaper Association, Suburban Newspapers of America, and the Chicago Headline Club.

Why The Climate Movement Is Actually Close To Winning

Despite widespread discouragement among climate activists, a tested blueprint for successful movements shows immense progress being made.

By Nick Engelfried

July 11, 2024
Source: Waging Nonviolence

Credit: Chris Yakimov / Flickr

In January, U.S. climate activists prepared for one of the largest direct action protests against fossil fuels in years. The plan was for people to descend on the Department of Energy headquarters for three days of sit-ins protesting a series of massive liquefied natural gas, or LNG, terminals up for approval on the Gulf Coast. If built, the projects would dramatically increase the amount of fossil natural gas being burned around the world. Hundreds of activists readied themselves to risk arrest.

The sit-in never happened, but not because activists lost their nerve. Rather, just a couple weeks before it was to begin, the Biden administration announced it would delay its review of the LNG projects to look at their climate impacts. The eventual fate of the terminals remains uncertain, in light of court challenges and Biden’s shaky re-election prospects. However, the fact that activists moved the administration without one actual arrest represents a remarkable win.

Successful social movements — especially big, complex ones like the climate movement — are messy affairs. Victories are hard-won, and sometimes the end goal seems unreachable. However, there are patterns movements follow as they expand from the political fringes to start shaping national decisions. One framework for identifying these is the eight-stage “Movement Action Plan,” or MAP, articulated by activist and scholar Bill Moyer in 1987.

Trying to fit the whole climate movement, with its many sub-movements, projects and campaigns, neatly into the MAP isn’t simple. After all, it is arguably really a composite of movements for fossil fuel divestment, community-centered clean energy, and just solutions, as well as against coal, oil and gas development.

Still, preventing the worst effects of climate change is a definable goal, requiring a set of policy wins that no single one of the smaller movements above can accomplish fully on its own. For this reason, there’s value in taking a big-picture look at the larger climate movement through the lens of the MAP. Doing so helps show how we got to a point where activists dealt a major blow to one of the biggest fossil fuel build-outs in history with relatively little effort. It also suggests possible paths forward for the movement.

Today, many climate activists seem discouraged, unable to appreciate how successful their own efforts have been. Putting their work in the context of the MAP’s eight stages suggests there is more reason for hope than some realize.

Stage One: Normal Times

According to Moyer, during Stage One of the MAP unjust conditions “are maintained by the policies of public and private powerholders, and a majority of public opinion.” This applies to the state of affairs for climate issues in the U.S. through the early 2000s, before there was a national, grassroots climate movement. Frontline communities resisted the fossil fuel industry and some explicitly connected their struggles to climate, but without the support of a national uprising. Large environmental organizations supported curbing carbon emissions, but the issue had yet to become a top priority even for them.

The science of climate change has been well established since the 1970s, but its implications were largely ignored by policymakers, the media and the public. Occasionally, events like Dr. James Hansen’s 1988 testimony to Congress elevated the issue in the news, but without much lasting impact. Public confusion about climate science was partly by design, as fossil fuel companies deliberately sowed misinformation.

Stage One is a demoralizing time for movements, when success may seem unimaginable. During this period for the climate movement the scattering of frontline communities, scientists and a few writers seeking to call attention to the crisis seemed to be shouting into a void.

Stage Two: Prove the Failure of Institutions

During the MAP’s Stage One, the status quo is reinforced by the public’s misconception that if something were seriously amiss, officially sanctioned forms of advocacy like lobbying should be sufficient to rectify the problem. Stage Two is about shattering this illusion.

Traditional advocacy organizations, which Moyer called “professional opposition organizations,” or POOs, play a key role during this stage. By trying to fix a major societal problem through official channels, POOs end up demonstrating the inefficacy of this approach. Thus, in the ‘90s and 2000s, environmental nonprofits with paid staff and substantial — but largely passive — memberships lobbied, petitioned and pleaded with policymakers to act against climate change. These efforts were not entirely without results; for example, investments in clean energy were included in the Obama administration’s 2009 economic stimulus. Yet, there were limits to what they could achieve.

In late 2009, activists hoped the world would adopt a legally binding climate treaty at U.N. talks in Copenhagen. Instead, the talks collapsed, with the Obama administration expending minimal capital to change the outcome. Efforts to pass domestic climate legislation unraveled around the same time. By mid-2010, it was clear lobbying and petitioning would not, on their own, turn the tide on climate.

Becoming disillusioned with institutions is painful, and during this stage activists may lash out not just at government decision makers, but POOs whose efforts failed to achieve the needed change. This anger is useful when it motivates people to try new approaches to activism. However, POOs serve a necessary function during Stage Two by demonstrating the limitations of official advocacy channels. And, to the extent that they achieve some partial wins, their work may lay a foundation for broader change.

Stage Three: Ripening Conditions

The next stage of the MAP involves conditions aligning to create a political environment where the birth of a broad-based movement becomes possible. This may involve national or global events over which activists have little control. For the climate movement, these included:Awareness raising events like Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which demonstrated the potential for extreme weather to cause havoc; the 2006 release of Al Gore’s massively popular film “An Inconvenient Truth;” and the publication of a key Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007.
A new and seemingly more hopeful political environment following Barack Obama’s election in 2008, which inspired POOs and grassroots groups to “field test” diverse approaches to activism. Some of these, like fossil fuel divestment and the direct action campaign against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, won important victories that eroded the fossil fuel industry’s power.

The advent of a new age of mass protests following Trump’s election in 2016, which saw historic demonstrations in support of women’s rights, racial justice, immigrants and gun control. All of these demonstrated a readiness on the part of progressives to take action in huge numbers.

According to Moyer, in response to external events during Stage Three, “growing numbers of discontented local people across the country quietly start new autonomous local groups, which as a whole form a ‘new wave’ of grassroots opposition [to status quo policies], which is independent from the established POOs.” This takes thousands of volunteers pitching in to hold meetings, build supporter lists, and train others in organizing.

In the 2000s and 2010s, a diversity of decentralized, mostly volunteer-run climate organizations took root in the U.S. These included climate justice groups tied to specific communities, such as the Black Mesa Water Coalition in the Navajo Nation, and national projects like 350.org, Rising Tide, Zero Hour and Sunrise Movement. Some eventually developed large paid staffs and now straddle the line between POO and outside agitator group. Others have remained volunteer-run.

Stage Four: Social Movement Take-Off

All successful movements experience a moment when they enter the public consciousness and become a potent political force, usually after a trigger event that grabs people’s attention. History is full of such moments, from the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott to mass protests against the 1999 World Trade Organization in Seattle. Large movements may involve multiple trigger events that reinforce one message. For example, the civil rights movement was propelled into the spotlight by not just the Montgomery bus boycott, but the 1960 Greensboro sit-in and 1961 Freedom Rides.

Identifying a take-off for the climate movement is complicated because many of its branches can be said to have had their own take-off moments. For instance, the campaign against Keystone XL exploded during a series of mobilizations that began in 2011 and included mass direct action at the White House. Still, it’s possible to point to a period from late 2018 through early 2020 when the broader climate crisis became a national political issue in a way it never had before.

In late 2018, young activists from Sunrise Movement called for a Green New Deal during sit-ins at the offices of Congressional Democrats, who had just won a House majority. Images of young people being led out in handcuffs spread across the internet, forcing Democratic leaders to respond to the activists’ demands. The following year, Sunrise joined forces with the climate school strike movement that spread from Europe, generating an unprecedented display of public support for climate action. That September, over seven million people around the world joined climate protests.

In Stage Four, mass media begin paying serious attention to activists, and casual observers may get the impression this is when the movement began. However, it’s important to understand that while movements seem to spring from nowhere at this stage, this happens thanks to years of work creating conditions where such a take-off became possible.

Stage Five: Identity Crisis of Powerlessness

The MAP’s greatest paradox is that the moment a movement achieves unprecedented recognition, it is followed by discouragement and even despair for activists, who come to believe over a period of months or years that their best efforts are failing. Yet, according to Moyer, the problem “is not that the movement has failed to achieve its goals, but that expectations that its goal could possibly be achieved in such a short time were unrealistic.”

School strike leader Greta Thunberg captured this sense of powerlessness at COP25 in 2019, claiming her movement had “achieved nothing.” Months earlier, climate activists had brought millions of people into the streets. U.S. presidential candidates were signaling support for a Green New Deal and polls showed a clear uptick in public concern about the crisis. Yet, leaders like Thunberg seemed to feel their work had been for naught.

It is understandable that activists want to see immediate results from their efforts. However, there is a lag time between when a movement begins shifting public consciousness, and the translation of public concern into policy. Success may depend on a movement’s ability to prevent activists from becoming burnt out and overly discouraged during this period, so they can carry momentum into the final stages of the MAP.

Stage Six: Majority Public Support

This stage occurs concurrently with Stage Five, as public opinion shifts to align more closely with that of the movement. Public support for climate action in the U.S. has long hovered somewhere over 50 percent, but the years following the school strikes and Sunrise Movement’s sit-ins saw the issue become a larger priority for more people.

Polling from Yale last December showed 72 percent of respondents believe climate change is happening, while 55 percent think it should be a high priority for political leaders. An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released in April showed 45 percent of respondents becoming more worried about climate change over the past year. The shift in public opinion is reflected in political rhetoric. While Republicans plan to roll back many Biden administration climate policies if they win the presidency and Congress this November, obstructing progress has not become a conservative rallying cry to the degree it did after climate legislation failed in 2010.

In Stage Six, activists’ efforts to elevate an issue lead to a durable shift in public opinion. This can translate into policy wins — if the movement presses its advantage.

Stage Seven: Success

In Stage Seven, movements see at least some major goals translated into government policy. This may be achieved through a dramatic showdown, where activists proactively force powerholders to make concessions; a quiet showdown, in which new political realities cause policymakers to reverse previously held positions; or attrition, where victory results from small wins accumulated over years.

Current trends suggest the climate movement is now in Stage Seven, even if many activists don’t yet realize it. Climate provisions in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act helped tip the balance decisively toward renewable energy in the U.S., while similar transitions are underway in other countries. In the U.S., final victory will likely come through either a dramatic showdown or attrition — however, the unique nature of the climate crisis means these two pathways will produce very different results. This makes for unusually high stakes in the final stages of the movement’s fight.

The latest International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook report states current government policies will result in an unstoppable shift toward renewables, amounting to a victory through attrition for climate activists. The risk of backsliding exists, but the energy transition is too far underway to be easily derailed. Even the election of Donald Trump to another term as president would slow, but not stop the shift away from fossil fuels. However, when it comes to climate change, victory by attrition will come too slowly to prevent enormous damage.

The International Energy Agency predicts current government policies will limit global temperature increases to 2.4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century — much higher than the 1.5 degrees beyond which many catastrophic, irreversible impacts become likely. Substantially speeding up the clean energy transition will likely require a series of dramatic showdowns between activists and governments. Fortunately, there are signs this could happen under the right conditions.

A dramatic showdown “resembles the take-off stage” in that activists use trigger events to force policymakers to the table. However, now political leaders respond to activists’ demands much more quickly than after the initial trigger event. Meanwhile, POOs push for change through traditional channels with more success than during Stage Two. The Biden administration’s decision to put LNG projects on hold in response to the mere threat of mass protests — when the campaign against Keystone XL, for example, took years to achieve similar results — gives us a hint of what a dramatic showdown for the climate movement in the U.S. could look like.

For the broader movement, such a showdown could take the form of widespread direct action protests against fossil fuel infrastructure, at the offices of elected leaders and following extreme weather disasters. The goal would be to spur Congress and the federal executive branch to take additional action that builds on the climate provisions of the IRA and significantly hastens the phasing out of fossil fuels.

Stage Eight: Continuing the Struggle

The work of fighting for a more just, sustainable world is never over. If and when major economies fully move off fossil fuels, activists will need to ensure the transition is permanent while also pushing for government policies that remove carbon from the atmosphere by allowing ecosystems to regenerate. How much planetary “repair work” remains to be done at this stage — and how much of the damage becomes irreversible — depends largely on whether the energy transition happens through a slow process of attrition, or a faster victory through dramatic showdowns.

An unstable political situation in the U.S. and other countries means activists must prepare for multiple future scenarios. Should President Biden win another term, it will be incumbent on climate groups to organize dramatic protests that force the administration into taking additional action — as happened successfully in the case of the Gulf LNG projects. If Donald Trump wins in November, a different path forward will be necessary.

In the event of a second Trump presidency, climate activists should still organize dramatic protests, but with the goal of isolating the administration and creating a political environment where other policymakers — including future presidential candidates — feel an urgent need to act. Based on Trump’s first term, we can be confident of the administration responding to protests in ways that may ultimately tarnish the president’s image; recall members of the National Guard tear gassing peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters in Lafayette Park for a Trump photo op. Protests should seek to make the administration draw attention to its own incompetence and lack of concern about the climate crisis.

Of course, during a Trump presidency, climate groups can also pressure other policymakers who might be more responsive, as they did with Congressional Democrats in 2018. Precious time to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis will be lost while the administration roles back pollution regulations, fast-tracks approval of the Gulf Coast LNG terminals and similar projects, and attempts to repeal or stymie climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. However, a clear path forward exists for the climate movement.

The MAP helps us understand how social movements successfully capitalize on the political and social influences of their time to achieve a more just world. That said, using the MAP to examine the climate movement is far from a merely academic exercise. Realizing this movement has already progressed through most stages of the MAP can provide activists with a sense of clarity about what work has already been done. It also shows how to increase the likelihood that final victory comes not through slow attrition, but a series of dramatic showdowns that force action fast enough to prevent the worst irreversible impacts of the climate crisis.

Why Protests Work, Even When Not Everybody Likes Them

Organizers must learn to embrace the polarizing nature of protest in order to use it effectively.

By Mark Engler, Paul Engler 

July 11, 2024
Source: Waging Nonviolence


Activists from Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace Netherlands held a peaceful protest at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, the second biggest in the EU, stopping private jets from landing and taking off and sitting and cycling around the area where private jets are parked. (Extinction Rebellion)



This spring, student encampments protesting Israel’s war on Gaza spread across colleges throughout the United States, resulting in campus lockdowns, occupied administrative buildings, canceled graduation ceremonies and scores of arrests. But even before this latest wave of action, we have witnessed in recent years a proliferation of disruptive protest, spanning a wide range of social movements.

A small sampling of activity since the start of 2023 could note that animal rights advocates have disrupted the U.K.’s Grand National horse race and Victoria Beckham’s fashion show; abortion rights protesters have been sentenced for impeding the proceedings of the U.S. Supreme Court; striking dockworkers “upended operations at two of Canada’s three busiest ports;” and climate protesters have blocked access to oil and gas terminals, chained themselves to aircraft gangways to prevent private jet sales, and spoken out forcefully at corporate shareholders meetings.

Given the urgency of the challenges in our world, this wave of disobedient and determined action should generally be regarded as a positive development. Because it breaks the rhythms of orderly business in society, forcing both the public and those in positions of power to pay attention to issues of great importance that might otherwise be downplayed or ignored, disruption is a vital tool of civil resistance.

However, not all disruptive protests are created equal — and not all are equally beneficial in advancing a cause. Some actions can win popular support and lead to a snowball of escalating energy within a movement. Others can drive away potential participants, repel sympathizers and invite state repression. Put another way, some actions lead to victory, while others trap activists into a cycle of self-isolation and alienation from the wider public.

To be clear, in the face of injustice, action is preferable to silence. At the same time, studying the dynamics of polarization can help movement participants maximize their impact and prevent occasions when protests backfire.

But before they can work on the skills needed to harness the power of polarizing action, organizers must engage with more basic questions: Why is polarization around specific issues even necessary? And how can movements know when they are using it effectively?

Understanding how protests polarize

The idea of an issue being polarized is most commonly talked about in negative terms. But to the extent that polarization around an issue is not present at a given time, it is not because difficult underlying tensions do not exist, but rather because politicians sweep them under the rug. They avoid them for fear of generating controversy that could fracture the political coalitions that keep them in power. In an interview discussing his 2020 book, “Why We’re Polarized,” author and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein explained “the alternative to polarization in political systems often isn’t agreement or compromise or civility — it’s suppression. It’s suppression of the things the political system doesn’t want to face[.]”

Protest actions are polarizing. This means that they force people to take sides on an issue. And, contrary to what some may think, that is not a bad thing when it is used for progressive ends.

To take just one example, the civil rights movement was certainly polarizing. But were we really better off living with widespread and often bipartisan acceptance of Jim Crow segregation and the racist terror used to enforce it? Likewise, defying prevalent homophobia and affording equal marriage rights for LGBTQ couples involved considerable controversy and required politicians to take stands that most had long preferred to avoid — until social movements forced them to change course.

Polarizing protest takes a suppressed and simmering issue and brings it to a boil, moving it to the fore of public discussion and, at least temporarily, placing its consideration above other disputes and ordinary deliberations. As famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass contended, earnest struggle for progress is “exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, [puts] all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing.”

The polarization of an issue, in this respect, is both an inevitable and necessary part of the process of social change. In the words of sociologist Frances Fox Piven, a preeminent theorist of disruptive power, “[A]ll of our past experience argues that the mobilization of collective defiance and the disruption it causes have always been essential to the preservation of democracy.”

Activists block entrance of The Age headquarters in Melbourne dressed in press vests and helmets to protest the Australian media silence on journalist deaths in Gaza on Dec. 20, 2023. (Twitter/Free Palestine Melbourne)

The point here is not that polarization is good in itself. In the wrong hands, it can do great harm. For example, conservatives can generate polarization in ways that set back social justice — like when they employ racist and xenophobic tropes to effectively turn up public anger against immigrants. But it is essential for progressive movements to recognize that polarization is a force they can use as a tool, rather than something that simply must be avoided.

Yet even once organizers grow comfortable with the idea that their actions will be polarizing, crucial unanswered questions linger. Making people take sides on an issue is one thing. Making sure they take your side — crafting protests that compel members of the public to sympathize with and support a group’s cause, rather than driving them into the arms of the disapproving opposition — is another. So how, then, can movements do that?

Too often, observers and participants alike consider the success or failure of protests to be mostly a matter of luck, resulting just from historical conditions. Or, they look at protests only through a moral lens, at which point the imperative to just “do something” or “speak truth to power” replaces hard-headed analysis of the impact of one’s actions. Yet those who wish to act more strategically can find a large and growing pool of resources to help.

Social movement theorists and scholars of disruptive power, Piven prominent among them, have analyzed how groups who may possess few conventional resources and enjoy little influence in mainstream politics can nevertheless leverage change through withdrawal of cooperation in status quo systems. An entire field of “civil resistance” has emerged in recent decades that employs both careful study of historical cases and practical experimentation in dissent to discern key principles that can be used by organizers. Still others have focused on developing theories of narrative change and story-based strategy, providing insights and best practices related to the communicative properties of protests.

From radical flanks to a Birmingham jail

The combined message of this varied collection of thinkers is that there is a method to the apparent madness of collective mobilization. Both through examining this scholarship and drawing from the wealth of lived experience passed forward by on-the-ground activists, interested practitioners can learn a lot about what tends to work when it comes to polarizing protest, what tends not to, and why.

But the truth is, it’s complicated.

A safe rule of thumb for protesters is that, if they are acting nonviolently in pursuit of a just goal, taking a stand is far better than passivity or complacency. At the same time, in managing polarization, there is always room for organizers to improve their skills and refine their feel for shaping protest outcomes.

Students at Texas Southern University led Houston’s first sit-in at Weingarten’s grocery store on March 4, 1960. It was the first of many and played a critical role in the desegregation of Houston. (Twitter/Serbino Sandifer-Walker)

The dynamics of polarization remain complex for a variety of reasons. For one, polarization works differently in the context of a short-term electoral contest than in longer-term activist campaigns, the contours of which we are focusing on here. Second, the good and bad effects of controversial protest do not come as an either/or proposition. Instead, positive and negative polarization occur at the same time. Highly visible protests that draw in new sympathizers will simultaneously drive away other people who are turned off by activist tactics and demands. Thus, the White Citizens’ Councils grew in the South when the civil rights movement launched its most high-profile campaigns, such as the Montgomery bus boycott.

Because organizers cannot avoid polarization, both good and bad, their goal must be to ensure that the positive results outweigh the negative. They must use good judgment as they engage in a cost-benefit analysis of any potential action.

One concept related to the positive and negative sides of polarization is what social movement theorists call the “radical flank effect.” The idea here is that sometimes the presence of a more militant faction within a movement — made of activists who deploy more controversial, outsider tactics — can make the demands of mainstream reformers appear more reasonable. Such radicals can advance the ability of insiders to extract concessions from people in power, who grow willing to negotiate with the “respectable” face of dissent when confronted with the threat of a more impolite and uncompromising alternative.

These outcomes are examples of positive flank effects. However, those who study radical flanks point out that the behavior of a militant fringe is a double-edged sword. Negative flank effects occur when extreme actions undertaken by a group on a movement’s margins — particularly actions that the public perceives as violent — end up inviting overwhelming backlash, discrediting the cause as a whole, and providing justification for the harsh repression of even modest dissent. Like with polarization more generally, the goal therefore must be to maximize positive flank effects while minimizing negative ones. And once again, this requires rejecting an “anything goes” mentality and instead exercising both judgment and discipline.

Another reason that polarization is complicated is that protests prompt members of the public to polarize around several different things at the same time. Distinct responses can be measured with regard to how observers feel about the issue at hand, what they think about the methods used by those carrying out the action, and how they view the target of a protest. For example, it is possible that people will say that they dislike a protest, but that the action will nevertheless be successful in making them view the target of the actions less favorably.

Another very common result is that, when asked about a demonstration that makes news headlines, respondents will report sympathy for the protesters’ demands, but they will express distaste for the tactics deployed. They will see the activists themselves as too noisy, impatient, and discourteous. This is an age-old dynamic, and one addressed eloquently by Martin Luther King Jr. in his renowned 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” This letter was written not as a response to racist opponents of the movement, but rather to people who professed support for the cause while criticizing demonstrations as “untimely” and deriding direct action methods. “Frankly I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation,” King quipped. But confronting these criticisms, he made the case for why the movement’s campaigns were both necessary and effective.

For social movements, it is acceptable if mainstream observers dislike the disruption and tension caused by protest, so long as support for the underlying issue grows. When it comes to nonviolent resistance, this is the case more often than not, which is why the taking of collective action should be widely encouraged. That said, there are times when a movement’s chosen tactics are so controversial and despised that they overshadow any discussion of the cause itself. Therefore, with all actions, organizers must weigh the relative benefits of the polarization created against potential downsides. Organizers must use any and all means at their disposal to measure this response — whether formal polling data and focus groups, or simple conversations that pay attention to the responses from different groups of people, especially those outside their most immediate circles.

The spectrum of support

Overall, the goal of the movement is to shift the “spectrum of support” in its favor.

Many different organizing traditions have recognized that victory does not come from total conversion of all constituencies, but rather through making more qualified progress. In the labor movement it is common to place workers in a given shop on a one-to-five scale, based on their level of commitment to the union. “Ones” are strong leaders who will convince other co-workers to vote yes for the union. On the other side of the scale, “fives” are employees who are resolutely anti-union and actively side with the boss. Everyone else in the shop falls somewhere on the continuum between these extremes.

An organizer would not expect to win over everyone. But their job is to at least partially move those who can be persuaded, and to minimize the zeal and influence of those who cannot be swayed. The union must work diligently to make indifferent “threes” into more supportive “twos.” It must motivate existing “twos” to step up and become more active leaders. And, finally, it must aim to dampen the negative attitudes circulating among “fours,” convincing members of this group to abstain from actively supporting the opposition if they cannot be moved to defect entirely.

Coming from a different tradition, the spectrum of support — sometimes called the “spectrum of allies” and credited to Quaker organizer and activist trainer George Lakey — provides a visual representation of the same principle. The Momentum training community presents it this way:

For movements to win, they do not need to convince their worst enemies to change. Instead, they win by turning neutrals into passive supporters and turning passive sympathizers into active allies and movement participants. Meanwhile, they should aim to whittle away at ranks of the opposition — making them less resolute, active, and committed, even if these people never move beyond being neutral at best.

As 350.org puts it, the good news is that “in most social-change campaigns it is not necessary to win over the opponent to your point of view. It is only necessary to move the central pie wedges one step in your direction…. That means our goal is not to convince the fossil fuel industry to end themselves. Instead, it is moving the rest of the society to shut them down.”

In the diagram above, the arrow shows the direction in which organizers want people to move. In practice, however, they must accept that there will be some motion each way. In the wake of polarizing actions, it is not unusual for both the movement and the opposition to grow: opponents may be able to rally die-hards to their side who feel threatened by the issue at hand, as did the White Citizens’ Councils. Yet if, on the whole, organizers are moving greater numbers toward their side, they can count themselves as making headway.

In short, polarization is a multifaceted equation — and only by working hard to do the math can those who seek to use it get continually better at improving their results.

Against protest shaming

In recent years, there has been considerable research published that attempts to measure radical flank effects and track the polarizing effects of movements. While there are limits to how much protest impacts can be precisely quantified, the cumulative result of such research, in the words of one literature review, is to point to “strong evidence that protests or protest movements can be effective in achieving their desired outcomes,” and that they can produce “positive effects on public opinion, public discourse and voting behavior.” Both the historical experience of organizers and recent studies also provide backing for the idea that support for a movement’s issue can grow, even when a majority of people do not particularly like the tactics being used.

Nevertheless, with each new wave of protest, there is inevitably a rash of mainstream commentary about how protesters are naive and likely to harm their cause. Certainly this is the case with this spring’s pro-Palestinian student encampments, which elicited a raft of “protest shaming” articles claiming that the occupations were counterproductive. Often, those making such admonitions invoke an earlier age — such as the 1960s civil rights movement — when protest was ostensibly more dignified and effective. These overlook polls that showed how wide swaths of the public saw lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom Rides to desegregate buses, and even the March on Washington as being harmful to the winning of civil rights. Of course, all of these actions are now considered hallowed landmarks in the struggle for progress in the United States.

Because they appeal to public cynicism, which remains very widespread, about the ability of protests to make a difference at all, protest-shaming pundits can find fertile ground for their arguments. However, their perspective is rarely based on a hard evaluation of contemporary research or deep engagement with the history of social movements. Most often, it results in bad advice: Activists are told to work within establishment channels to pursue change, to avoid controversy, and to be more patient with the system — the same counsel King wrote of having received from erstwhile allies many decades ago.

Instead of conforming to critics’ preferences and seeking to avoid polarization altogether, movements do better to carefully study how they can use it to their advantage. Understanding that both positive and negative polarization occur at the same time means that protesters can win, even when there is backlash. Understanding that a movement’s cause may benefit, even when there is negative perception of the tactics deployed, offers a critical distinction in measuring success. And understanding the spectrum of support allows protesters to gauge when, on balance, they are advancing and when they need to reevaluate their actions.

Protest movements take a gamble when they unsettle the status quo. But it is a risk worth taking. For it is only when movements appreciate how polarization can be used as a tool that they are poised to make their greatest gains.



Mark Engler

Mark Engler is a writer based in New York City and senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus. He is author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008). Mark can be reached via the web site www.DemocracyUprising.com, which contains an archive of his work.

An activist originally from Des Moines, Iowa, Mark also serves as a commentator for the Institute for Public Accuracy and for the Mainstream Media Project.

Declassified Docs: US Knew Russia Felt ‘Snookered’ by NATO

Clinton officials understood Moscow's objection to eastward expansion

By Blaise Malley

July 12, 2024

Source: Responsible Statecraft

TWO DRUNKS

Bill Clinton with Boris Yeltsin

This week at the NATO summit in Washington, alliance leaders are expected to sign a joint communique that declares that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to joining the alliance.

This decision is likely to be celebrated as a big step forward and a reflection of Western unity behind Ukraine, but a series of newly declassified documents show that the U.S. has known all along that NATO expansion over the last 30 years has posed a threat to Russia, and may have been a critical plank in Moscow’s aggressive policies over that time, culminating in the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“The documents show that the Clinton administration’s policy in the 1990s emphasizing two tracks of both NATO enlargement and Russian engagement often collided, leaving lasting scars on [then Russian President Boris] Yeltsin, who constantly sought what he called partnership with the U.S,” according to the National Security Archive, which wrote about the newly declassified documents this week. “But as early as fall 1994, according to the documents, the Partnership for Peace alternative security structure for Europe, which included both Russia and Ukraine, was de-emphasized by U.S. policymakers, who only delayed NATO enlargement until both Clinton and Yeltsin could get through their re-elections in 1996.”

In 1995, then-national security adviser Anthony Lake warned President Bill Clinton that Russian leadership would not accept the expansion of the alliance to the East.

“Russian opposition to NATO enlargement is unlikely to yield in the near or medium term to some kind of grudging endorsement; Russia’s opposition is deep and profound,” Lake wrote. “For the period ahead, the Russian leadership will do its level best to derail our policy, given its conviction that any eastward expansion of NATO is at root antithetical to Russia’s long-term interests.”

Two years later, as Washington and Moscow were entering negotiations on the future of NATO-Russia cooperation, State Department official Dennis Ross wrote what the Archive calls an “astute and empathetic analysis” of the Russian position on NATO expansion.

“To begin with, the Russians for all the reasons you know see NATO expansion through a political, psychological, and historical lens,” Ross wrote in a memo to Strobe Talbott, then the Deputy Secretary of State.

“First they feel they were snookered at the time of German unification. As you noted with me, [former Secretary of State James] Baker’s promises on not extending NATO military presence into what was East Germany were part of a perceived commitment not to expand the Alliance eastward,” the memo continues.”In addition, the 1991 promise to begin to transform NATO from a military alliance into a political alliance was part of the Soviet explanation for accepting a unified Germany in NATO.”

Because these perceived promises were never made concretely, Ross says, the Russians were “taking the lessons of 1991 and are trying to apply them now in the negotiations on NATO expansion.”

Despite these roadblocks, Clinton and his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin nonetheless reached an agreement on a series of issues at a summit in Helsinki one month later. During a private conversation with Clinton at that summit — which was part of the set of declassified documents — Yeltsin would say that he reached an agreement with NATO not because he wanted to “‘but because it is a forced step.”

In his exchange with the American president, Yeltsin made one thing apparent. “[NATO] enlargement should also not embrace the former Soviet republics,” he said. “I cannot sign any agreement without such language. Especially Ukraine. If you get them involved, it will create difficulties in our talks with Ukraine on a number of issues.” Clinton did not agree to a “gentlemen’s agreement” to that effect, and the two men eventually moved on.

The consequences of choosing to ignore Russian concerns decades ago continue to have an impact on relations between the West and Moscow today, experts say.

“These declassified documents underscore that U.S. officials clearly have long understood the depth of Moscow’s objections to NATO’s eastward expansion, going back to the Gorbachev era and Yeltsin’s presidency. Yet Washington proceeded with this expansion anyway, judging that Russia would remain powerless to prevent it,” George Beebe, director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute, told Responsible Statecraft. “Today, Russia is both embittered by this history and much more powerful than it was then, and it is resolved to block NATO’s incorporation of Ukraine and Georgia by whatever means necessary.”

Supporting Palestine Helped the Left Win in France and Britain. 

Will Democrats Learn From It?

NOT LIKELY; TOO MANY AIPAC WHORES

Victories by the left in France and Britain offer powerful examples for U.S. progressives.

By Natasha Lennard

July 12, 2024

Source: The Intercept


A “Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity” sign seen at Place de Stalingrad, Paris, following the French legislative elections results on July 7, 2024


Immediately following the surprise victory of left party coalition New Popular Front in France’s parliamentary elections last week, Jean-Luc Mélenchon — the leftist leader of the bloc’s largest party, France Unbowed — vowed to see France “recognize the Palestinian state as soon as possible.”

France’s far-right National Rally party, alongside conservative centrists, had spent weeks painting the left’s support of Palestine as an electoral poisoned pill. In attacks all too familiar in the U.S., they conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism, slamming Israel’s critics as antisemites. Israeli officials explicitly backed the far-right party. In this last election, at least, it didn’t work to prevent left-wing success.

In Britain, too, the centrist Labour Party’s landslide victory was tempered in five constituencies, where independent candidates with pro-Palestinian platforms defeated Labour candidates. Labour’s former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, won his North Islington, London, seat with ease; Corbyn was famously ousted from Labour when the party’s conservative wing and British media weaponized charges of antisemitism against the party’s left flank.

If there’s a lesson to be learned in the U.S. from the success of pro-Palestinian candidates in France and Britain, we can be grimly sure that no Democrat in November’s presidential election will learn it. President Joe Biden’s unfettered support of Israel and its genocidal Gaza war is not only a gross moral failure but also an electoral risk, particularly in crucial swing-state Michigan and for young voters in general. But his campaign refuses to change course on the issue. Even if the senescent president is replaced as the Democratic nominee, there’s scant chance that any successor will embrace a platform of Palestinian solidarity or even robust ceasefire demands. This, despite the fact that 77 percent of Democratic voters and two-thirds of voters in the U.S. support a permanent ceasefire.

The French and British results should, or at least could, however, be a lesson for left-wing Democrats to continue to fight against the vicious efforts of groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, to crush Palestine-supportive candidates. This is especially important following the defeat of progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., after pro-Israel groups poured an unprecedented $15 million into the primary race to unseat the pro-Palestine incumbent.

The astroturfed campaign against Bowman should not be heeded as a warning by progressive Democrats to abandon support for Palestine, or to temper their opposition to Israel’s Gaza onslaught. Rather, it should be a jolt to redouble organizing efforts in a united front against AIPAC’s interventions. Top Democrats did little to defend Bowman against the well-funded attack. It is somewhat encouraging that members of the Democratic mainstream have put more support behind AIPAC’s next target, Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, for her primary next month; this support should be stronger still.

The French example is instructive here: Only through a highly strategic coalition of center-to-left candidates have the far right been kept from parliamentary leadership. Centrists did not throw their coalition partners on the left under the bus for their support for Palestine. The bloc can hardly be compared to the Democratic Party with its conservative, pro-Israel mainstream. Yet Democrats face a similar challenge: Win the trust of vast numbers of Muslim and Arab voters and young people, or stand with AIPAC — a lobby that has no problem raising millions for the Republican extreme right.

It would go too far to say the recent French and British election results speak to the unambiguous popularity of Palestinian solidarity — too many variables were at play in both instances to draw simple conclusions. In Britain, desire to unseat the ruinous Conservative Party drove support for new Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s uninspiring Labour. In France, strategic coordination between the center and left in the election’s second round was key. The New Popular Front is a fraught coalition, and internal disagreements over Israel, among other issues, will no doubt threaten its fragile cohesion. The bloc also did not win an absolute majority, despite winning the largest number of seats, and thus faces huge roadblocks to pushing through its political program. Remaining a united front is the only chance the left parties have — and that means support for Palestine cannot be pushed aside.

This is, of course, a vile state of affairs that requires an appeal to realpolitik to see candidates stand against genocide, occupation, and apartheid. Since the need to stop Israel’s intolerable war remains as urgent as ever, however, the fact that support for Palestine can be shown as helpful, rather than harmful, to electoral success is worth stressing. At the very least, leftist candidates and leaders in France and Britain like Mélenchon and Corbyn have modeled powerful examples for U.S. progressives: In the face of bad-faith attacks, and even party expulsions, aimed a quashing support for Palestine, they remained steadfast on the right side of history.