Having linked to an account of how the police treated protesters in New York the < ahref="/2011/09/30/state-of-protest-in-the-us/">other day, I thought it only fair that I also link to this rather good and more in depth look at the protest itself over on Errata Security. I’d suggest you go an read the whole thing, but looking at it with my own particular slant there are a couple of bits which really stand out.
Firstly a problem I think many campaigns have especially online ones:
“As the protesters try to define themselves in order to come up with a coherent political platform, they are hindered by this filter bubble. The forces will drive them to come up with something that excites their small group, but which will prove unacceptable to the larger world. I think they have to learn to reach outside their bubble if they want to actually influence things and to become to the Democrat Party what the Tea Party is to the Republican Party.”
But more interesting to me is this bit:
“I found the occupiers had the same totalitarian attitude, though they don’t see it as totalitarian. Yes, their loving acceptance of those who disagree with them is astonishing, but it’s totalitarian. It asks that people give up their individuality to the state the occupiers are creating. Rather than free speech, the protest has a sort of “managed speech” to make sure everyone has equal time. There is also the flip side, that not to join the movement or to disagree with the protesters means that you are working against the interest of the people.
We have seen this before in history, such as during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. After they ran out of nobles, the Committee for Public Safety started beheading political rivals — even those of their own party who helped overthrow the royalty. Their implicit thinking was this: I support the people. Therefore, if you disagree with me, you are acting against the people and must be beheaded. Or to paraphrase in the modern idiom, “you are either with us or against the people”.
The protesters have been settling on the idea that the conflict is the 99% against the 1%. But since the country is evenly divided between Democrat and Republican, they represent, at best, the interests of 50% against the 1%. No matter how poor, Republicans don’t see socialism as being in their own interests. Instead of chanting “We are the 99%” they should be chanting “We are the 50%”, but they seem immune to seeing things from this perspective”
As this seems to be a very common thread on many recent “popular” demonstrations, totalitarianism seems to be far too in vogue all over the place. If we are facing as many grave issues as we reportedly are on both local and global scales then this sort of all or nothing stance isn’t going to help as it leaves no room for actually thinking our way out of the mess. just more of the same old baying mobs pushing the pendulum this way then that. And when it comes to that 99% statistic a survey by Fox gives them maybe 70% with a few percent not really being clear on what the demo is actually asking for. A camp I must confess to finding myself in but I’ve ranted about the need for clear messages on demonstrations before, I’ve been told that they’re campaigning for jobs and to have smaller loans from getting an education (though the report linked to at the start does observe that most of the protesters seem to be not sci/eng types).
but anyway back to this whole concept of 99% they have a tumblr page where people can post how they as part of the 99% are suffering. Which is interesting as reportedly only 77% of the US are on line. Beyond that this 99% includes such reports as:
“I will owe over 50,000 in student loan debt and I am having doubts my two A.S. degrees and my B.S. in Ecology will get me anywhere”
Now I would have thought that maybe after the first degree stopping to consider that debt might have been a plan maybe? Or at least maybe considering the employment enhancing prospects of the degrees. From reading many of those accounts the unifying threads of the 99% seems to be that they’re pissed off and want to blame someone else, which to be fair probably does cover 99% of the population.
And of course thanks to the joys of the Internet and “anonymous” this nebulous protest is heading here – But then I do have a problem with Anonymous’ claim that “we do not forgive we do not forget” as it’s rather reminiscent of certain slogans in Northern Ireland and is the sort of attitude which would seem to lead to new totalitarianism. Sure don’t forget but forgiveness surely is a measure of humanity. But then the edicts issues from anonymous do tend to have a dictatorial tone to them, no “lets all do this together” more “We have organised this, you will be our foot soldiers and take this chance”. The external point of view in that last missive from them rather rankled mind you.
