The futility of protest – Issue XXII
The success or failure of a protest movement is predetermined. The regime has the ability to make the good bad and the bad good.
This is an excerpt of an article that features in our 22nd print issue.
It is the great myth of liberal democracy that the voice of the people is amplified by congregation. That all we need to do in order to tell the ruling class what's what is to gather together and protest. That they will listen. That they will care.
I write this piece with two sets of protests in mind. These shatter the carefully constructed ruse that the power held by the people is the driving mechanism of democracy. One changed the life as we know it and the other will be a footnote; condemned to be forgotten in a decade and doomed to never see its own vision.
Why? It's simple; the success or failure of a protest movement is predetermined. The regime – with its instruments of power in middle management, human resources, media, education and policing – has the ability to make the good bad and the bad good. It will editorialise, alter language, gaslight, and, if necessary, lie outright to protect its interests.
This is a regime that will resort, immediately, to destruction without a second thought. It won't kill you, it'll just ruin your life. It is permissive to its friends and ruthless to its critics.
2020 saw the most widespread political violence in America for a generation. Rioting, arson, looting, attacks on police and federal property, dozens killed, statues torn down, American flags burned, and an autonomous zone declared. Yet the only thing we were told by the instruments of non-governmental power was that this was peaceful, an earnest rebellion against a cruel system, in the civilly disobedient tradition of Gandhi. And now, a year later, it is but a memory.
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