Gulf States

Laundering Carbon—The Gulf’s ‘New Scramble for Africa’

Monday 12 August 2024, by Adam Hanieh



In early November 2023, shortly before the COP28 summit opened in Dubai, a hitherto obscure UAE firm attracted significant media attention around news of their prospective land deals in Africa

Kenyatta Ngusilo (C), a member of the Ogiek community, watches as his storehouse burns in Sasimwani Mau Forest, 2023. Hundreds of Ogiek people were left homeless after the Kenyan government evicted alleged encroachers. James Wakibia/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Reports suggested that Blue Carbon—a company privately owned by Sheikh Ahmed al-Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s ruling family—had signed deals promising the firm control over vast tracts of land across the African continent. These deals included an astonishing 10 percent of the landmass in Liberia, Zambia and Tanzania, and 20 percent in Zimbabwe. Altogether, the area equalled the size of Britain.

Blue Carbon intended to use the land to launch carbon offset projects, an increasingly popular practice that proponents claim will help tackle climate change. Carbon offsets involve forest protection and other environmental schemes that are equated to a certain quantity of carbon “credits.” These credits can then be sold to polluters around the world to offset their own emissions. Prior to entering into the negotiations of the massive deal, Blue Carbon had no experience in either carbon offsets or forest management. Nonetheless the firm stood to make billions of dollars from these projects.

Environmental NGOs, journalists and activists quickly condemned the deals as a new “scramble for Africa”—a land grab enacted in the name of climate change mitigation. In response, Blue Carbon insisted the discussions were merely exploratory and would require community consultation and further negotiation before formal approval.

Regardless of their current status, the land deals raise concerns that indigenous and other local communities could be evicted to make way for Blue Carbon’s forest protection plans. In Eastern Kenya, for example, the indigenous Ogiek People were driven out of the Mau Forest in November 2023, an expulsion that lawyers linked to ongoing negotiations between Blue Carbon and Kenya’s president, William Ruto. Protests have also followed the Liberian government’s closed-door negotiations with Blue Carbon, with activists claiming the project violates the land rights of indigenous people enshrined within Liberian law. Similar cases of land evictions elsewhere have led the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Calí Tzay, to call for a global moratorium on carbon offset projects.

Beyond their potentially destructive impact on local communities, Blue Carbon’s activities in Africa point to a major shift in the climate strategies of Gulf states. As critics have shown, the carbon offsetting industry exists largely as a greenwashing mechanism, allowing polluters to hide their continued emissions behind the smokescreen of misleading carbon accounting methodologies while providing a profitable new asset class for financial actors. As the world’s largest exporters of crude oil and liquified natural gas, the Gulf states are now positioning themselves across all stages of this new industry—including the financial markets where carbon credits are bought and sold. This development is reconfiguring the Gulf’s relationships with the African continent and will have significant consequences for the trajectories of our warming planet.

False Accounting and Carbon Laundering

There are many varieties of carbon offset projects. The most common involves the avoided deforestation schemes that make up the bulk of Blue Carbon’s interest in African land. In these schemes, land is enclosed and protected from deforestation. Carbon offset certifiers—of which the largest in the world is the Washington-based firm, Verra—then assess the amount of carbon these projects prevent from being released into the atmosphere (measured in tons of CO2). Once assessed, carbon credits can be sold to polluters, who use them to cancel out their own emissions and thus meet their stated climate goals.

Superficially attractive—after all, who doesn’t want to see money going into the protection of forests?—such schemes have two major flaws. The first is known as “permanence.” Buyers who purchase carbon credits gain the right to pollute in the here and now. Meanwhile, it takes hundreds of years for those carbon emissions to be re-absorbed from the atmosphere, and there is no guarantee that the forest will continue to stand for that timeframe. If a forest fire occurs or the political situation changes and the forest is destroyed, it is too late to take back the carbon credits that were initially issued. This concern is not simply theoretical. In recent years, California wildfires have consumed millions of hectares of forest, including offsets purchased by major international firms such as Microsoft and BP. Given the increasing incidence of forest fires due to global warming, such outcomes will undoubtedly become more frequent.

Again, this estimate depends on an unknowable future, opening up significant profit-making opportunities for companies certifying and selling carbon credits.The second major flaw with these schemes is that any estimation of carbon credits for avoided deforestation projects rests on an imaginary counterfactual: How much carbon would have been released if the offset project were not in place? Again, this estimate depends on an unknowable future, opening up significant profit-making opportunities for companies certifying and selling carbon credits. By inflating the estimated emissions reductions associated with a particular project, it is possible to sell many more carbon credits than are actually warranted. This scope for speculation is one reason why the carbon credit market is so closely associated with repeated scandals and corruption. Indeed, according to reporting in the New Yorker, after one massive carbon fraud was revealed in Europe, “the Danish government admitted that eighty per cent of the country’s carbon-trading firms were fronts for the racket.”[1]
These methodological problems are structurally intrinsic to offsetting and cannot be avoided. As a result, most carbon credits traded today are fictitious and do not result in any real reduction in carbon emissions. Tunisian analyst Fadhel Kaboub describes them as simply “a licence to pollute.”[2] One investigative report from early 2023 found that more than 90 percent of rainforest carbon credits certified by Verra were likely bogus and did not represent actual carbon reductions. Another study conducted for the EU Commission reported that 85 percent of the offset projects established under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism failed to reduce emissions. A recent academic study of offset projects across six countries, meanwhile, found that most did not reduce deforestation, and for those that did, the reductions were significantly lower than initially claimed. Consequently, the authors conclude, carbon credits sold for these projects were used to “offset almost three times more carbon emissions than their actual contributions to climate change mitigation.”[3]

Despite these fundamental problems—or perhaps because of them—the use of carbon offsets is growing rapidly. The investment bank Morgan Stanley predicts that the market will be worth $250 billion by 2050, up from about $2 billion in 2020, as large polluters utilize offsetting to sanction their continued carbon emissions while claiming to meet net zero targets. In the case of Blue Carbon, one estimate found that the amount of carbon credits likely to be accredited through the firm’s projects in Africa would equal all of the UAE’s annual carbon emissions. Akin to carbon laundering, this practice allows ongoing emissions to disappear from the carbon accounting ledger, swapped for credits that have little basis in reality.

Monetizing Nature as a Development Strategy

For the African continent, the growth of these new carbon markets cannot be separated from the escalating global debt crisis that has followed the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. According to a new database, Debt Service Watch, the Global South is experiencing its worst debt crisis on record, with one-third of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa spending over half their budget revenues on servicing debt. Faced with such unprecedented fiscal pressures, the commodification of land through offsetting is now heavily promoted by international lenders and many development organizations as a way out of the deep-rooted crisis.

The African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI), an alliance launched in 2022 at the Cairo COP27 summit, has emerged as a prominent voice in this new development discourse. ACMI brings together African leaders, carbon credit firms (including Verra), Western donors (USAID, the Rockefeller Foundation and Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund) and multilateral organizations like the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Along with practical efforts to mobilize funds and encourage policy changes, ACMI has taken a lead role in advocating for carbon markets as a win-win solution for both heavily indebted African countries and the climate. In the words of the organization’s founding document, “The emergence of carbon credits as a new product allows for the monetization of Africa’s large natural capital endowment, while enhancing it.”[4]

ACMI’s activities are deeply tied to the Gulf. One side to this relationship is that Gulf firms, especially fossil fuel producers, are now the key source of demand for future African carbon credits. At the September 2023 African Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, for example, a group of prominent Emirati energy and financial firms (known as the UAE Carbon Alliance) committed to purchasing $450 million worth of carbon credits from ACMI over the next six years. The pledge immediately confirmed the UAE as ACMI’s biggest financial backer. Moreover, by guaranteeing demand for carbon credits for the rest of this decade, the UAE’s pledge helps create the market today, driving forward new offset projects and solidifying their place in the development strategies of African states. It also helps legitimize offsetting as a response to the climate emergency, despite the numerous scandals that have beset the industry in recent years.

Saudi Arabia is likewise playing a major role in pushing forward carbon markets in Africa. One of ACMI’s steering committee members is the Saudi businesswoman, Riham ElGizy, who heads the Regional Voluntary Carbon Market Company (RVCMC). Established in 2022 as a joint venture between the Public Investment Fund (Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund) and the Saudi stock exchange, Tadawul, RVCMC has organized the world’s two largest carbon auctions, selling more than 3.5 million tons worth of carbon credits in 2022 and 2023. 70 percent of the credits sold in these auctions were sourced from offset projects in Africa, with the 2023 auction taking place in Kenya. The principal buyers of these credits were Saudi firms, led by the largest oil company in the world, Saudi Aramco.

Beyond simply owning offset projects in Africa, the Gulf states are also positioning themselves at the other end of the carbon value chain: the marketing and sale of carbon credits to regional and international buyers.The Emirati and Saudi relationships with ACMI and the trade in African carbon credits illustrate a notable development when it comes to the Gulf’s role in these new markets. Beyond simply owning offset projects in Africa, the Gulf states are also positioning themselves at the other end of the carbon value chain: the marketing and sale of carbon credits to regional and international buyers. In this respect, the Gulf is emerging as a key economic space where African carbon is turned into a financial asset that can be bought, sold and speculated upon by financial actors across the globe.
Indeed, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have each sought to establish permanent carbon exchanges, where carbon credits can be bought and sold just like any other commodity. The UAE set up the first such trading exchange following an investment by the Abu Dhabi-controlled sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, in the Singapore-based AirCarbon Exchange (ACX) in September 2022. As part of this acquisition, Mubadala now owns 20 percent of ACX and has established a regulated digital carbon trading exchange in Abu Dhabi’s financial free zone, the Abu Dhabi Global Market. ACX claims the exchange is the first regulated exchange of its kind in the world, with the trade in carbon credits beginning there in late 2023. Likewise, in Saudi Arabia the RVCMC has partnered with US market technology firm Xpansiv to establish a permanent carbon credit exchange set to launch in late 2024.

Whether these two Gulf-based exchanges will compete or prioritize different trading instruments, such as carbon derivatives or Shariah-compliant carbon credits, remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that major financial centers in the Gulf are leveraging their existing infrastructures to establish regional dominance in the sale of carbon. Active at all stages of the offsetting industry—from generating carbon credits to purchasing them—the Gulf is now a principal actor in the new forms of wealth extraction that connect the African continent to the wider global economy.

Entrenching a Fossil-Fuelled Future

Over the past two decades, the Gulf’s oil and especially gas production has grown markedly, alongside a substantial eastward shift in energy exports to meet the new hydrocarbon demand from China and East Asia. At the same time, the Gulf states have expanded their involvement in energy-intensive downstream sectors, notably the production of petrochemicals, plastics and fertilizers. Led by Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Gulf-based National Oil Companies now rival the traditional Western oil supermajors in key metrics such as reserves, refining capacity and export levels.

Rather, much like the big Western oil companies, the Gulf’s vision of expanded fossil fuel production is accompanied by an attempt to seize the leadership of global efforts to tackle the climate crisis.In this context—and despite the reality of the climate emergency—the Gulf states are doubling down on fossil fuel production, seeing much to be gained from hanging on to an oil-centered world for as long as possible. As the Saudi oil minister vowed back in 2021, “every molecule of hydrocarbon will come out.”[5] But this approach does not mean the Gulf states have adopted a stance of head-in-the-sand climate change denialism. Rather, much like the big Western oil companies, the Gulf’s vision of expanded fossil fuel production is accompanied by an attempt to seize the leadership of global efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
One side to this approach is their heavy involvement in flawed and unproven low carbon technologies, like hydrogen and carbon capture. Another is their attempts to steer global climate negotiations, seen in the recent UN climate change conferences, COP27 and COP28, where the Gulf states channelled policy discussions away from effective efforts to phase out fossil fuels, turning these events into little more than corporate spectacles and networking forums for the oil industry.

The carbon offset market should be viewed as an integral part of these efforts to delay, obfuscate and obstruct addressing climate change in meaningful ways. Through the deceptive carbon accounting of offset projects, the big oil and gas industries in the Gulf can continue business as usual while claiming to meet their so-called climate targets. The Gulf’s dispossession of African land is key to this strategy, ultimately enabling the disastrous specter of ever-accelerating fossil fuel production.

Merip

P.S.

If you like this article or have found it useful, please consider donating towards the work of International Viewpoint. Simply follow this link: Donate then enter an amount of your choice. One-off donations are very welcome. But regular donations by standing order are also vital to our continuing functioning. See the last paragraph of this article for our bank account details and take out a standing order. Thanks.

Attached documents

• laundering-carbon-the-gulf-s-new-scramble-for-africa_a8636.pdf (PDF - 923.5 KiB)
  Extraction PDF [->article8636]

Ecology and the Environment

• Global crisis, conflict and war: what internationalism for the 21st century?
• Ecuador’s Indigenous movement calls for an international movement against extractive industries
• Marx, Communism and Degrowth
• Saito, Marx and the Anthropocene
• ‘Optimism of the Will’: Ecosocialist Dreamin’

Africa

• West Africa: rivalry and division between leaders
• A far-right Françafrique
• Putin transforms Wagner in Africa
• France and its African policy
• Unbridled exploitation in the digital sector

• Adam Hanieh

  Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. His most recent book is Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East (Cambridge University, 2018). Also author of Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East.

International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

How To Make Sure Your Disruptive Protest Helps Your Cause

Five key factors determine whether controversial protests are more likely to spark backlash or create positive outcomes.

By Mark Engler, Paul Engler 

August 10, 2024

Source: Waging Nonviolence



LONG READ

[Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series about how movements can understand and harness the polarizing effects of protest. The first part looked at why disruptive protest is inherently polarizing — and how movements can win in a polarized context. This second part breaks down some of the factors that shape the public response to disruptive actions.]

In one of the most famous protest speeches of the 20th century, Berkeley Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio stood before a crowd of several thousand on Dec. 2, 1964, and delivered an impassioned defense of disobedience: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,” Savio insisted. “You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop.”

Perhaps now more than ever, recognizing the grave and even existential challenges we face in the world around us, people are following Savio’s advice and putting their bodies upon the gears. As a result, our society has witnessed in recent years a great wave of disruptive protest.

We have previously discussed how such action inevitably has a polarizing effect on the public.

Movements can no more avoid this than one can have the ocean without the roar of its waves, as abolitionist Frederick Douglass memorably put it. Disruptive protests draw attention to crucial issues that might otherwise be ignored and elevate them as topics worthy of an urgent response by those in power. As they do this, they polarize the public by compelling previously undecided observers to choose which side they are on. Although protest-shaming pundits may dislike it — chiding activists for working outside of the established channels of mainstream politics — this is critical to the process of social change.

Rather than fearing polarization, organizers should seek to understand how they can use it most effectively. This involves recognizing that, while collective action undertaken in pursuit of a good cause typically results in positive outcomes, not all protests have identical effects or produce equal benefits.

Central to harnessing the power of polarization is appreciating that, by its nature, it cuts both ways: the same actions that create positive polarization — drawing more active supporters into movements and convincing previously neutral or undecided observers to at least passively sympathize with the cause — will also have negative effects, turning off some people and firing up the opposition. The goal of movement participants is therefore to make sure that the beneficial results of their actions outweigh the counterproductive ones, and that they are shifting the overall spectrum of support in their favor.

So how, then, can movement participants predict how a given protest will polarize? And how can they work to improve their skills in designing effective actions?

When managing the polarizing effects of civil resistance, there are five factors that play key roles in determining the extent and quality of the public response that an action is likely to generate. Although activists never have complete control over this response, they can optimize their chances of success by thinking carefully about these factors.

1. The framing of the cause through a movement’s demands

More than any other factor, the public response to an act of disruptive protest is shaped by how well onlookers can understand and relate with the righteousness of a movement’s cause. Because the tactics that disruptive protesters deploy are often unpopular, it is crucial that people perceive them as being used for a good reason. Thus, how organizers convey the justice of their aims becomes absolutely critical in whether the polarization their actions create will, on balance, be good or bad.

The primary means through which movements do this is through the framing of their demands.

A movement’s demands need not be overly technocratic. Often, media pundits will express frustration that protests have not rallied around a specific piece of legislation or produced an easily enacted five-point plan for reform. But, while such specific demands may be important in long-term negotiations over how a campaign plays out, they are often beside the point in terms of the dynamics of public polarization.

Far more important is that the movement presents its cause in a sympathetic way by appealing to widely held values and making clear the moral stakes of the struggle. Along these lines, we have written extensively in the past about how, in mass protest movements, the symbolic dimensions of an activist demand — “how well a demand serves to dramatize for the public the urgent need to remedy an injustice” — often outweighs its instrumental qualities, or the ways in which it might translate into short-term public policy impact or immediate concessions at the bargaining table.

To take on British colonial rule India, Gandhi elevated the issue of the salt tax — a particularly hated levy imposed by the imperial regime — because he knew that the same public that might be divided over various schemes for independence or home rule would eagerly support opposition to the tax, the injustice of which was keenly felt. Likewise, for the civil rights movement, desegregating bus service in the South may not technically have been the most important step in dismantling the Jim Crow order. And yet it became a critical symbolic demand because both the immediate community and outside observers could immediately understand why it was just, and it therefore effectively conveyed the legitimacy of the movement’s wider ambitions.

Using demands in this way is a critical part of the art of framing. Protesters may find that, in some respects, their cause is an unpopular one. For example, if they are seeking to win cuts to the military budget, they may see that many groups feel supportive of the armed forces and that opposition is perceived as unpatriotic. However, antiwar forces might nevertheless make inroads by taking on the corruption of military contractors, shining light on the wastefulness of wanton defense spending (exposing infamous expenses such as “$37 screws, a $7,622 coffee maker, $640 toilet seats”), dramatizing the unpopularity of particular foreign interventions, or elevating the opportunity costs of war and militarism. By providing a sympathetic entree into their wider set of goals, protesters present their cause in a manner that allows them to build momentum and sway targeted constituencies.

Prior to an action, organizers can study how different constituencies have responded when a given topic is discussed by politicians or otherwise enters into public debate. However, the most surefire predictor of how the public will polarize when their protest forces more people to take sides is not how these people feel about a general issue (such as climate change), but rather whether they sympathize with the demand a movement puts forward (be it the denial of a permit for pipeline construction, a tax on carbon emissions, the creation of new public transportation, or an agenda like the Green New Deal).

Some advisors in the worlds of media and narrative strategy get wrapped up in discussing finer aspects of talking points and messaging around an issue. But the element that protesters have most control over when they undertake collective action is how they present the basic idea of what they are there for. If someone is sympathetic to the movement’s demand, even if they do not particularly like its tactics, they will likely polarize in the right direction.

Protesters convey their intent not only through signs, banners, chants and speeches, but also through the nature of their protest itself — its action logic. This is a concept innovated by Patrick Reinsborough and Doyle Canning of the Center for Story-based Strategy.

“Your action should speak for itself,” the writers at Beautiful Trouble explain. “With good action logic… an outsider can look at what you’re doing and immediately understand why you’re doing it. For example, people doing a tree-sit so the forest cannot be cut down — the logic is clear and obvious.” If a movement’s demand is to shut down an oil refinery, and activists have locked themselves to the facility’s gates to prevent entrance, the action logic is once again transparent. If the goal is to desegregate lunch counters, having interracial groups sit down and demand service is an act of defiance that requires little additional explanation.

Yet the objectives of civil resistance are not always so evident. As an example of protest in which the action logic was considerably less coherent, climate protesters recently disrupted a Broadway performance of a classic Ibsen play starring actor Jeremy Strong. Ironically, as the New York Times reported, the play “was already intended to shed light on the climate crisis, in the eyes of its creative team and stars,” who were sympathetic to the cause of climate justice. Audience members and the media alike struggled to understand why the protest was taking place, and if it might have even been a planned part of the show. Explaining their action, protesters expressed a desire to impede business as usual to dramatize the threat of a warming planet, even if that meant shutting down artistic performances that they liked. Needless to say, this intent was not readily apparent to most observers.

When any disruptive protest takes place, dismissive pundits will ask with exasperation, “What do they want?” Movements need not answer these detractors on the terms they demand. But, for the public, they must make their answer as self-evident and compelling as possible.

2. The balance of disruption and sacrifice

The second most important factor that shapes how the public polarizes in response to protest is the balance of disruption and sacrifice present in the action scenario, or the plan for the protest and how it unfolds in practice.

Social movement theorist Frances Fox Piven emphasizes that while protests have a communicative function, they are not merely a form of communication. They are more than theater, “showmanship,” or “noise,” Piven argues. Rather, protests exercise disruptive power when people stop obeying rules and cooperating with the orderly functioning of the status quo: Workers decide not to go to work. Renters refuse to pay rent. Students stop going to school. Consumers cease spending their money at a business. People expected to wait in line, fill out paperwork, and comply with bureaucratic processes decline to do so. In some cases — including sit-ins, land occupations, factory takeovers, and various types of blockades — these people go beyond passively withdrawing cooperation and instead choose to actively prevent the system from functioning.

Such disobedience creates crises, large and small, that cannot be easily ignored by those in positions of authority. And so the level of disruption in a given protest is a central component in determining how significant a response it will generate.

Yet in terms of how disruption might polarize the public, there is a problem here. When movement participants stop doing their part to grease the wheels of the established order and instead throw their bodies on the gears of the machine, their actions can interfere with accustomed routines and end up inconveniencing other people. Because of this, activists risk turning bystanders against their cause.

A key factor in winning sympathy in the face of such inconvenience is the level of sacrifice on display in the action. As scholar and writer Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor recently noted with regard to campus sit-ins: “Students who engage in civil disobedience do so with the expectation of some reprisal. That is, after all, the moral imperative at the heart of this particular form of activism: self-sacrifice in the name of a higher political goal.” Such can be said of acts of protest more broadly: participants who put themselves on the line expect that they will bear a cost. They face firing or expulsion; they encounter the prospect of arrest and legal consequences; they may even risk bodily harm.

The willingness of protesters to bear these sacrifices has significant effects. For participants themselves, it can clarify their values and strengthen their resolve. For the undecided public, seeing high levels of sacrifice invites an empathetic response. And for passive supporters, the courage and moral seriousness on display can convince them that they, too, should be taking a stand. Witnessing high-sacrifice actions, it is common that friends, family members, co-workers, and neighbors are moved to act in myriad ways — to deliver food, donate money, write letters, join boycotts, use their professional influence, appeal to politicians, or show up in support.

Every tactic involves a combination of disruption and sacrifice, working in tandem. In the early 1970s, Gene Sharp, a pioneering theorist of civil resistance, famously published a list of 198 methods of nonviolent action, cataloging approaches that ranged from picketing and musical performances, to walkouts and rent strikes, to “protest disrobings” and “politically motivated counterfeiting,” to pray-ins and land seizures. The point of Sharp’s tactical inventory was to illustrate the expansive array of options that dissidents might choose from in crafting their protests.

Pulling from this list, it is possible to place each of the tactics on a chart measuring, on one axis, the level of disruption it creates, and, on another, the level of sacrifice it entails. Based on their placement, the tactics on the chart would fall into one of four quadrants:


Each quadrant offers different strengths and weaknesses, and the tactics found in different locations can be used by movements for different purposes.

In the lower-right quadrant are low-sacrifice, low-disruption actions. These include many of the most common forms of collective protest, such as permitted rallies and marches, the signing of petitions, and the display of banners. These can be useful as low-risk ways of engaging wide swaths of supporters, demonstrating unity, and recruiting participants for future stages of struggle. The danger is that these protests can simply be ignored both by people in power and by the public at large.

The lower left quadrant features actions that involve high sacrifice but low disruption. These often involve small numbers of people making isolated but quietly heroic stances: They may be individuals who maintain long vigils, serve a lengthy jail sentence, fast for extended periods, or undertake a coast-to-coast pilgrimage, speaking to local communities about their issue along the way. Through selfless acts of bearing witness, those adopting these tactics can serve as inspirational gateways into learning about an issue for the people who discover them. Some become revered figures in their communities. Yet, because the level of disruption is low, they too risk being easily overlooked and relegated to the margins.

High-disruption, low-sacrifice actions — which fall in the upper right quadrant — can be more effective at drawing public attention. But this is also the quadrant at the greatest risk of provoking public backlash and courting negative polarization. A single person laying on a highway can snarl traffic for miles around, creating considerable havoc. And while that person may face legal consequences for their acts, the sacrifice is limited when measured by the scale of the whole movement. A similar balance appears when someone interrupts a public event, or during strikes that involve small numbers of workers but suspend services for large numbers of consumers. Such disruption usefully gets the activists noticed and forces a response. But it also has downsides in terms of polarization.

The upper left quadrant contains high-disruption, high-sacrifice tactics, which include many of the great hallmarks of civil resistance. These include major strikes, multi-site occupations, protests with large numbers of arrests that flood the legal system, and community-wide acts of non-cooperation (the Montgomery bus boycott being one example).


Issues of scale are inherent in creating situations of great disruption and sacrifice. When large numbers begin investing themselves in collective action, putting their professional comforts, legal freedoms or personal safety on the line, the scope of collective sacrifice expands and the likelihood of significant disruption increases. A single person walking off the job may be only a nuisance for a local shift manager; tens of thousands doing the same can paralyze an entire industry. One person going on hunger strike might be an isolated martyr; but when dozens upon dozens of imprisoned suffragists in Britain adopted the tactic before the First World War, the women sparked public sensation and created a troubling dilemma for the government. Even a mild tactic such as a march can become a major phenomenon if hundreds of thousands join in. Although rare, it is when such scale is achieved that protests are most likely to result in a “moment of the whirlwind” — or a breakthrough period when an issue goes viral and the ordinary rules of politics seem to be suspended.

Moreover, it is during high-disruption, high-sacrifice actions that attempts by authorities to quell protest are most apt to end up working in favor of the movement — a critical phenomenon that scholars of civil resistance refer to as the “paradox of repression.” While significant disruption forces a reaction from authorities, high levels of sacrifice help to ensure that onlookers sympathize with protesters if that response is violent.

As sociologist Lee Smithey explains, citing examples ranging from the use of police dogs against civil rights protesters to the British government’s massacres of civilians in colonial India, “the use of coercive force against dissidents often backfires, becoming a transformative event that can change the course of a conflict.” Smithey adds, “Rather than demobilizing a movement, repression often ironically fuels resistance and undercuts the legitimacy of a power elite.”

Not only are there countless examples of the paradox of repression historically, the phenomenon has been clearly visible with regard to pro-Palestinian encampments on university campuses this spring. Protests at Columbia University had attracted only limited media coverage prior to April 18, when university President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, fresh from being grilled by Congressional Republicans, moved to arrest more than 100 students who had pitched tents on campus the day before. After the arrests, public attention devoted to student protests increased exponentially. Within days, the Economist ran a story with the headline “Efforts to tackle student protests in America have backfired badly,” explaining that police intervention both “inflamed” the situation and served as “the trigger” for a nationwide expansion of student occupations that would dominate the news cycle for weeks.

“The irony is that in trying to quiet things down and assert control over the encampment, the administration unleashed this firestorm,” stated Columbia Law Professor David Pozen.

In the New Yorker, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor noted that “an overwrought and violent attack by the state can quickly turn a marginal movement into a central one, pulling in people who might otherwise not have paid attention or would have remained on the sidelines.” Taylor quoted a student at SUNY New Paltz who watched riot officers with police dogs sweep up some 130 students who were seated on the ground and refusing to leave. “I wasn’t too involved in what was going on,” the student remarked. “I saw what happened last night, and it was completely unnecessary and disgusting. Now I feel like I need to get involved.”

Reporting on how arrests at Dartmouth University in January ended up fueling a wider encampment, the New York Times quoted a student who argued that the arrests had “turbocharged” campus activism. Likewise, with regard to the initial arrests at Columbia, the Times reported on April 20 that “The aggressive response left students shaken — but also, they say, energized.”

As one protester explained, “Everybody is invigorated.”

3. Sympathetic actors and unsympathetic targets

A third key factor of polarization relates to the “heroes” and “villains” put forward in a protest scenario. In some cases, the presence of highly sympathetic protagonists or greatly disliked antagonists can be decisive in shaping how the public responds to an action — particularly when ordinary people might perceive the movement’s issue to be a complex one, or when they are unclear about what groups might be impacted by an injustice.

Saul Alinksy counseled organizers to “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it,” emphasizing the importance of making an issue less abstract by assigning clear responsibility to an adversary. Likewise, in their rich discussion of how framing works, Reinsborough and Canning of the Center for Story-based Strategy write that sometimes “the messenger is the message” — the characters that movements put forward in their action “embody the message by putting human faces on the conflict, and putting the story in context.”

Along these lines, the civil rights movement famously took advantage of having hot-headed law enforcement chief Bull Connor as an adversary, knowing that he could be relied upon to discredit the genteel and paternalistic self-image of Southern segregation. With Connor acting as villain, the true violence of the Jim Crow system was laid bare before the public.

More recently, with Occupy Wall Street, which erupted into news headlines in the fall of 2011, public anger at the wealthy bankers who had sparked a global recession, causing mass foreclosures and spikes in unemployment, overshadowed many other aspects of the encampments. In that instance, the protesters’ target was ultimately more important than their specific demands. Given the public’s palpable sense that Wall Street executives were not being held accountable, an outraged demonstration on their doorstep seemed eminently sensible. And Occupy’s framing of the top “1 percent” versus the inclusive “99 pecent” of society painted the movement as representative of large majorities.

From their launch, Occupy’s encampments benefited from being associated with a set of issues that enjoyed widespread public support: A Time Magazine poll released in October 2011 showed that twice as many respondents held favorable views of Occupy than of the conservative Tea Party, and that of respondents familiar with the protests, “86 percent — including 77 percent of Republicans — [agreed] with the movement’s contention that Wall Street and its proxies in Washington exert too much influence over the political process.” Furthermore, Time reported, “More than 70 percent, and 65 percent of Republicans, [thought] the financial chieftains responsible for dragging the U.S. economy to the brink of implosion in the fall of 2008 should be prosecuted.”

Such sentiment allowed the movement to overcome the dismissive attitudes of media elites and help observers make meaning of the protests. In a speech delivered at an Occupy general assembly that fall, journalist Naomi Klein quipped that, upon seeing the demonstrations, “baffled pundits on TV” asked “Why are they protesting?” Meanwhile, the rest of the world asked, “What took you so long?”

Unusually sympathetic protagonists can have a similarly powerful effect. In early 2005, the movement against the Iraq War was dispirited and demobilized by the narrow loss of Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 presidential contest and the re-election of militarist-in-chief George W. Bush. To reanimate the movement, it took Cindy Sheehan, a Gold Star mother whose son Casey had been killed in the war.

In August 2005, Sheehan erected a camp outside Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. In light of the administration’s lies about the need for an invasion of Iraq, she demanded a meeting with the president to have him explain why her son had died. Sheehan dubbed her protest site “Camp Casey,” and as her stand there extended over several weeks, it produced a compelling dilemma action: By refusing to meet with Sheehan, Bush came off as a callous leader who was out of touch with families that had made harrowing sacrifices; however, if he did grant her an audience, the president risked creating a major media event during which his conduct of the war would be harshly criticized.

The result was a perfect storm for the movement. As the Nation reported: “Bush declined to chat. The media did not. Reporters descended in droves to speak with this woman who had the audacity to mourn so publicly on Bush’s doorstep. Suddenly, Sheehan’s exhausted, sunburned face flashed across TV screens and into nearly every living room in the country — and around the world.” The magazine further quoted Institute for Policy Studies fellow Karen Dolan: “As a mother myself, the first time I heard Cindy speak I was in tears,” Dolan commented. “She was so poignant and touching that I was sure the average American, regardless of their political views, couldn’t help but be moved by this mother who lost her son in Iraq.” NBC News ran a story reporting on “The Cindy Sheehan effect,” featuring presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin remarking on the vigil’s rare potential to earn the movement sympathizers from outside its usual constituencies. And, in the end, Sheehan’s action galvanized a new wave of peace protests across the country, with antiwar military veterans and family members at the fore.

Another example of when atypical protagonists have shaped the reception of protest has recently taken shape in Europe. There, farmers and truck drivers in several countries — including Germany — took to the streets earlier this year to express anger about government taxes and environmental regulations. In many cases, the farmers have deployed the exact same tactics as climate protesters, such as blocking highways. But while politicians denounced the climate youths as terrorists, many have hastened to cozy up with the disgruntled farmers and truckers, even when their blockades have resulted in sometimes fatal traffic accidents.

Important here is that the farmers and truckers were not seen as the “usual suspects” who would be expected to join in street protest, but rather long-suffering, “forgotten” laborers whose grievances finally became intolerable. The use of 18-wheelers, tractors and farm machinery to close down highways became an important part of the protests’ action logic, spotlighting the unexpected and sympathetic character of the participants.

4. Media and public relations capabilities

Of all the factors that contribute to how movements polarize the public, the fourth category is the most straightforward: the movement’s public relations capacities.

Having good action logic allows organizers to “show, not tell” the message of their protests, giving them a leg up in shaping narrative. But telling is important too. And this means engaging with the media.

In the past generation especially, study of the media arts has become widespread — and thus today’s activists have no lack of available resources on the subject. Yet in spite of the increasing sophistication of the most well-run political operations, a dismaying number of grassroots campaigns still fail to take basic, tried-and-true steps such as choosing spokespeople who are well prepared for their roles, crafting coherent written statements that clearly explain a protest’s purpose, and cultivating media contacts over time.

Sometimes this is the result of simple oversight. Because the internal demands of organizing a group and planning potentially high-risk collective action are so intensive, it can be easy to forget external communications. Other times, however, lack of public-facing messaging stems from more than benign neglect. Some radicals see media relations as distasteful and even ideologically offensive; they criticize those concerned with public image to be “playing for the cameras” and suggest that appeals for popular sympathy are antithetical to serious resistance. In this vein, pacifist Catholic Workers have opted not to send press releases about their protests out of the belief that seeking attention would interfere with the purity of their moral witness; meanwhile, anarchist insurrectionists march under intentionally incendiary banners (“Bring Back the Guillotine”), then yell “no cameras!” at news crews that take interest in their provocations.

Certainly, it is valid to deplore mainstream tendencies to reduce politics to image and “spin,” neglecting the deeper forces of moral principle, political consciousness, solidarity and organizational strength. That said, the all-too-common rejection of public-facing communication on the left is an invitation to marginality and self-isolation. It represents a failure to accept the radical responsibility of contesting for hegemony in society at large — that is, making a serious effort to influence the dominant worldview that most people use to make sense of social and political issues.

Some methods for creating change may not rely much on the mass media: traditions based on patiently building up organizational structures, creating alternative institutions, undertaking inside-game lobbying and legal maneuvering, or working one-on-one with individuals to promote spiritual awakening or personal transformation often do not need or even desire press coverage of their efforts. But unlike these other segments of a healthy social change ecosystem, mass protest and civil resistance rely significantly on public communication.

The consequences of refusing to relate effectively with the public can be stark. In principle, tactics such as workplace strikes or mass refusal by tenants to pay rent do not depend on a public response to be effective. Employers whose businesses are shut down for lack of workers may recognize that they cannot function without making concessions, or a landlord may cede to tenant demands in the face of lost income. Some theorists even define “direct action” in this way, as defiance that immediately challenges a powerholder, without relying on outside intermediaries. But in the modern world, the war of public opinion is often decisive, going far to shape the resolution of disruptive breaks brought about by social movements.

The level of popular response and intervention by “indirect” actors — the outpouring of protective support by co-workers, neighbors, friends, organizational allies, aligned politicians and members of the wider community — can make the difference in whether overwhelming military and police repression will be brought to bear on strikers, occupiers and other dissidents, and whether this repression will ultimately be successful in quelling resistance. It can also be key in determining whether movement participants will subsequently face harsh legal sanctions. And much of that support is mediated through mass communications.

Public relations capabilities can involve movements creating their own media, as well as engaging with existing progressive magazines, websites and alternative media outlets. In general, the left has been far less successful than the right in creating its own media universe with significant reach, failing to match the popular penetration of networks such as Fox News. Lacking such venues, leftists have spent significant energy analyzing the limitations and biases of the corporate media. But like it or not, movements must nevertheless reckon with these institutions. On the plus side, even modest efforts to engage can bear real fruit. Locally, one individual relationship with someone in the media can make a huge difference in both the amount and quality of news coverage a struggle receives.

In the past two decades, social media has drastically changed the media terrain, creating a means to circumvent traditional press and communicate directly with wide audiences. This has given rise to a next generation of media strategists from across the political spectrum offering training and guidance on how to maximize the potential of new platforms. Sometimes the mainstream media can fixate on how movements use fresh technologies and overstate the significance of whatever latest apps seem trendy — dubbing fresh waves of mass demonstrations “Twitter Revolutions” or heralding the launch of a “TikTok Generation” of protest. Activists, meanwhile, are well aware that billionaire-owned, corporate-controlled platforms are not neutral venues, and that they come with pitfalls of their own.

Still, it is also true that organizers must make the most of whatever tools are at their disposal. In the case of the media, that means both adapting to new technologies and learning from the insights the political public relations industry has produced in recent decades, without succumbing to the soulless spin cycle of mainstream politics. It means finding ways to do popular communications effectively while also maintaining one’s integrity.

5. Timing and intangibles

A fifth and final category of factors that determine how a protest will polarize is made up of intangibles. Admittedly, this constitutes a somewhat amorphous, catch-all classification. Nonetheless, it is true that a collection of small external conditions — generally outside the control of protest organizers — can end up having an important influence on how an action is received. Although they tend to be less important than the movement’s demands, the protest’s action scenario, the heroes and villains of an action, or the movement’s ability to handle the press, these factors can, in certain instances, be decisive.

A lot of intangibles relate to questions of timing. Occasionally a natural disaster or breaking news event unrelated to the organizing of a protest will greatly affect how the public views the action. For example, if an oil rig explodes, creating an environmental crisis, a protest planned for the next day that targets fossil fuel executives may draw exaggerated attention — even if the rig was located hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Conversely, if a series of actions seek to shame a celebrity spokesperson for an exploitative corporation, and that targeted celebrity suddenly announces that they have a grave disease, the protests, which now appear irredeemably mean-spirited amid a wave of public compassion, can be sunk.

Another intangible that occasionally appears, related to the paradox of repression, is that reporters, camerapeople, or other members of the media may get caught up in a police crackdown on a protest. After getting harassed, jailed or beat up, these reporters sometimes become very invested in the story — leading to coverage that is significantly more sustained and supportive than organizers would have any right to expect. In this case, what amounts to a quirk in the course of the day’s events ends up having an outsized impact on how a protest polarizes.

Mark Engler  is a writer based in Philadelphia, an editorial board member at Dissent, and co-author of "This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century" (Nation Books). He can be reached via the website www.DemocracyUprising.com

How Our Struggles Are Contained by Those In Power

By John Clarke

August 11, 2024

Source: Canadian Dimension


Public servants marched around Parliament Hill as 155,000 Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) members went on strike, April 19, 2023. Photo by Spencer Colby/Flickr.



After decades of involvement in trade union and anti-poverty struggles, I find myself thinking more and more about the lessons I have learned along the way and how some of these might be of use to other union and community activists. I’m presently developing an educational course on how movements challenge power structures and how those structures develop and apply strategies to contain resistance. These are vital considerations if we are to organize effectively in these volatile and uncertain times.

I worked for over 28 years as an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). During those years, we vigorously confronted an intensifying political agenda of austerity and social abandonment, using disruptive forms of collective action to create a counter-power for poor communities under attack. This approach led to some important victories but it also earned us the ire of the ruling establishment.

As we took action to advance our demands, there were ongoing efforts to bring us under control. The police were deployed against us and we faced legal persecution. Politicians and wide sections of the media would often vilify us and seek to undermine our credibility. Often, governments would try to draw us into more consultative and co-operative approaches that would effectively demobilize us. If we resisted this, more conservative-minded groups would be invited to the table, in an effort to push us aside. Clearly, within the corridors of power, strategies were adopted to limit the need to make concessions to us by reducing our effectiveness as much as possible. It was a lesson in the way the system operates to contain movements for social change.

Drawing Lessons

Six years ago, as I prepared to step down from front-line organizing, I was offered the position of Packer Visitor in Social Justice at Toronto’s York University. It involved teaching courses related to social struggles and this prompted me to try and draw more precise lessons about how workers and communities resist and how those in power respond in the face of that resistance. Based on my own experiences and the record of other social movements, I considered how strategies of containment are employed and how they can be overcome.

Not surprisingly, those who hold economic and political power are reluctant to meet demands that arise from people they oppress and exploit. They don’t want to give up any of their wealth and power, and they fear that any sign of weakness on their part will only encourage further demands. The historical record shows that the rights and gains that we enjoy today were initially denied and were granted very reluctantly in the face of mass action.

Though trade unions enjoy significant legal rights today in Canada, these were won only after prolonged and determined struggles, and the initial response by employers and the state was to treat attempts to collectively bargain as acts of criminal conspiracy. The same could be said of the fundamental rights of free expression and assembly. Though even very conservative political leaders will now pay lip service to preserving these rights, attempts by the ‘lower orders’ to organize and take to the streets to press their demands were long considered an outrageous violation of the natural order that was met with brutal acts of state repression. It was only in the face of mass defiance that such rights came to be respected to the extent that they are today.

Given the ability of those with a monopoly of power in this society to dominate public discourse and control the media, it is entirely understandable that delegitimization is another potent weapon at their disposal. When workers go on strike, we read very little in the newspapers about the justice of their demands or how they are mobilizing others to challenge exploitative conditions. Instead coverage will largely be focused on the disruptive impact of their actions on the public.

Now, as protracted genocide unfolds in Gaza, a powerful Palestine solidarity movement has emerged that has taken up a large-scale and determined struggle to challenge this horror, including inspiring encampments at universities across the country. As The Maple has shown, there has also been a veritable sea change in popular consciousness in favour of the Palestinian struggle. Yet there has been a consistent effort to demonize and slander this movement and to criminalize it in ways that threaten well-established rights of assembly and expression.

When concessions have to be made to working class movements and popular struggles, systems of government and administration show a remarkable ability to broker these in ways that keep the lion’s share of wealth and power in the hands of the dominant interests. The post-Second World War trade union upsurge in Canada made a major retreat by the authorities unavoidable, and major union rights were granted in response to a working class uprising that represented a significant threat to capital and the state.

Nevertheless, these concessions constituted a historic retreat by those in power; they were delivered within a carefully crafted framework of state-regulated labour relations that seriously limited and largely compartmentalized working class resistance in ways that still impact us today. The role of this whole approach in preserving the interests of capital and limiting working class struggle is set out clearly in From Consent to Coercion: the Continuing Assault on Labour by Leo Panitch, Donald Swartz, Bryan Evans and Carlo Fanelli (see my review in The Bullet).

This channelling of struggles into safer forms of regulated conflict has had a significant and predictable impact on movements. Mass action tends to be replaced by processes of negotiation that become heavily bureaucratized. Workplace action gives way to arbitrated settlements, and community action is overshadowed by consultation processes between administrators and advocates. Of course, these regulated methods can’t completely co-opt the class struggle and strikes and social explosions that still occur. However, they occur less frequently, and keeping them in check is easier when containment mechanisms are in place.

Finally, sweeping social movements that create crises for ruling establishments are often weakened by granting concessions in a highly selective way. Oppressed groups within society aren’t homogeneous, and their pressure for change can result in uneven gains. The Civil Rights Movement in the US challenged segregation and discrimination in groundbreaking ways. Yet, while the struggles in the 1960s ensured that fundamental rights were granted, vast material inequalities still exist in the US today that primarily affect poor working class Black people. Though there are now Black police chiefs, the systemic racism behind the murder of George Floyd is the abiding reality.

Present Context

Strategies of containment are always being retooled, and readiness to accommodate movements’ demands shifts depending on changes in economic conditions and political developments. The period we are now living in, after decades of neoliberal attacks on labour and civil rights, is especially harsh. Generally speaking, the current mechanisms of compromise are yielding much less material gains than they used to.

The scale of last year’s strike wave in Britain was unprecedented since the days of Margaret Thatcher, yet employers and the state were extremely reluctant to appease the tide of working class anger. The same can be said of the challenge to Macron’s attack on the French pension system in 2023, which was rammed through despite social mobilization on a scale unrivaled since 1968. Both struggles were met with increased levels of intransigence. And the limited forms of action they employed, although they might have been effective once, were simply faced down by those in power.

Different approaches are needed to counter today’s containment strategies. Governments are less likely to be moved by displays of our potential power. Huge rallies and days of action are an essential part of building movements and campaigns, but this is a period when ongoing social action and indefinite strikes will be needed to turn back attacks and win our demands.

I am in the process of developing a course that I hope will contribute to the strategic discussions that must take place among union and social movement activists in light of these changed circumstances. It won’t be a “how-to” format but we will look at how a range of social struggles have been waged and how their power and effectiveness have been limited by strategies to contain them. As concretely as possible, the course will try to develop ways forward for movements in these challenging times.

I will be giving the course in Toronto in September as a kind of test run, but I hope that it can serve as a model that will be taken up in other parts of the country. Social resistanceis very much on the agenda today, as the upsurge of the Palestine solidarity movement makes abundantly clear. However, there is still a pressing need to reflect on the strategies, approaches and organizational forms we need to develop if we are to fight to win. I very much hope that initiatives like this one can help produce the knowledge and facilitate the discussions that will make this possible. •

This article first published on the Canadian Dimension website.

John Clarke is a writer and retired organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). Follow his tweets at @JohnClarke and blog at johnclarkeblog.com.


John Clarke


David Jones on August 11, 2024 4:29 pm

Thanks for this wake-up call, the old direct action playbook is less and less effective and we definitely need “new approaches”. I would like to suggest an old “new” approach: filling the jails. Though we have seen NVCD for decades, it needs to be massively scaled up. Some examples include the IWW free speech fights in 1907- 1916 and more famously, the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham 1963. Extinction Rebellion has the correct analysis but needs to up its ambition IMO. I’m imagining tens of thousands of climate justice activists risking arrest in one strategic location.