tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/political-protest-9498/articlesPolitical protest – The Conversation2023-08-10T12:41:42Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2099282023-08-10T12:41:42Z2023-08-10T12:41:42Z‘Uncivil obedience’ becomes an increasingly common form of protest in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540448/original/file-20230801-25-ykxcyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C0%2C5522%2C3119&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters in Utah demonstrate against a school district's ban on the Bible for having 'vulgarity and violence' unfit for young children.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BibleBanUtahSchools/10711f2c31de462f899153fe9fd49502/photo">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Utah legislators passed a bill requiring the review and removal of “pornographic or indecent” books in school libraries, they likely did not imagine the law would be used to justify banning the Bible.</p>
<p>Utah’s H.B. 374, which took effect in May 2022, “prohibits certain <a href="https://le.utah.gov/%7E2022/bills/static/HB0374.html">sensitive instructional materials in public schools</a>.” It joins a series of conservative book bans that supporters claim protect children but critics have argued unfairly target <a href="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2023/06/23/lgbtq-titles-targeted-censorship-stand-against-book-banning">LGBTQ+ content</a> and <a href="https://www.goalcast.com/how-book-bans-silence-minority-groups/">minority authors</a>. </p>
<p>But in early June 2023, the bill stirred further controversy when, after receiving a complaint from a parent using the bill’s provisions, a Utah school district <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65794363">removed the Bible</a> from elementary and middle schools because it contains “vulgarity and violence” deemed inappropriate for the age group. </p>
<p>Utah is not the only state that has faced complaints about the age-inappropriate content of the Bible in response to book bans. In June 2023, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maX9IoUo5uc">Florida rabbi, Barry Silver</a>, <a href="https://www.wptv.com/news/palm-beach-county/parent-wants-bible-removed-from-palm-beach-county-school-to-make-a-point">compiled a list of Bible verses</a> that he argues contains violence and sex. Although he maintains he is opposed to censorship, he argues the Bible meets the criteria for Florida’s controversial <a href="https://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=76545">Parental Rights in Education Act</a> and concludes: “You want to censor books? <a href="https://www.wptv.com/news/palm-beach-county/parent-wants-bible-removed-from-palm-beach-county-school-to-make-a-point">Start with the one that you like the best</a>.”</p>
<p>In May 2023, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit promoting the separation of church and state, called for <a href="https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/local-regional/2023-05-17/state-superintendent-ryan-walters-possibly-ripe-for-lawsuit-after-promoting-biblical-instruction">Oklahoma to ban the Bible from schools</a> due to its pornographic content. That move came after state education Superintendent Ryan Walters called for a <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oklahoma-s-head-superintendent-wants-to-ban-lgbtq-books-but-teach-the-bible-in-history-classes/ar-AA1aPjQ9">ban on LGBTQ+ books</a>, while arguing the Bible should be taught in government-funded public schools. Like Silver, foundation leaders say <a href="https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/2023/05/20/ryan-walters-oklahoma-banned-books-freedom-from-religion-foundation-letter-bible/70238103007/">they do not support book bans</a> but maintain that if conservative Christians, who have been some of the strongest supporters of recent bans, want to ban books containing sexual references, they cannot ignore the Bible.</p>
<p>Such attempts to ban the Bible based on book ban laws are examples of a protest strategy called “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43387025">uncivil obedience</a>.”</p>
<h2>A different approach to protest</h2>
<p>Uncivil obedience is the opposite of the more commonly known protest strategy of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/">civil disobedience</a>, which entails breaking the law in surprisingly respectful ways. Uncivil obedience, on the other hand, involves following the law but in ways that disregard people’s expectations.</p>
<p>Like civil disobedience, the purpose of uncivil obedience is to change laws, but it does so by “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43387025">mastering the system’s rules</a>.” Protesters may appear to respect authority by carefully following the laws to show what they are doing is legal. But the behavior may be seen as “uncivil” by some because the behavior challenges social expectations, uses laws in ways unintended by their originators, or both.</p>
<p>Uncivil obedience has been used to challenge the practicality and fairness of laws and processes. For example, in the 1990s, protesters challenged low <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-04-26-me-27445-story.html">speed limits</a> by strictly following them on a busy California freeway, leading to the disruption of traffic. The strategy has also been used to challenge
<a href="https://eu.gainesville.com/story/news/2006/05/02/industries-feel-effect-of-boycott/31482810007/">immigration policies</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/709417">election laws</a>. </p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://www.usd.edu/research-and-faculty/faculty-and-staff/kristina-lee">political and religious rhetoric</a>, I have seen uncivil obedience be embraced by people across the political spectrum as a way to challenge laws – and to specifically use religion as one element of those challenges.</p>
<h2>Conservative Christians step to the plate</h2>
<p>A federal law passed in 1993 called the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Religious-Freedom-Restoration-Act">Religious Freedom Restoration Act</a> has often been at the center of religious strategists embracing uncivil obedience. That law, which prohibits the government from creating substantial burdens on citizens’ free exercise of religion, was originally passed by Congress in response to a <a href="https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/364/employment-division-department-of-human-resources-of-oregon-v-smith">1990 Supreme Court</a> case that critics argued restricted the religious freedom of Indigenous people. Over <a href="https://www.becketlaw.org/research-central/rfra-info-central/">20 states have passed similar laws</a>.</p>
<p>Although the law was originally designed to protect the rights of practitioners of all religions, <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/do-no-harm-act">particularly ones that are not as prominent</a> in the U.S. as Christianity, conservative Christians have <a href="https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/3931/">used its provisions</a> to resist progressive policies including <a href="https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2015/04/02/rfra-discrimination-concerns-really-surprise/70820966/">same-sex marriage</a> and the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2013/13-354">Affordable Care Act</a>. A common argument proponents use is that the law protects conservative Christian business owners and employees who view recognizing same-sex marriage or providing contraception as a violation of their religious beliefs. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2018/05/bad-faith-how-conservatives-are-weaponizing-religious-liberty-allow-institutions">Opponents view</a> the conservative embrace of the idea of religious freedom as a bizarre interpretation of the law, arguing that they are using it for the purpose of justifying discrimination based on religious beliefs. Defenders of the practice, however, argue that they want <a href="https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/25/gov-mike-pence-sign-religious-freedom-bill-thursday/70448858/">religion to be free from government intervention</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540446/original/file-20230801-15-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a suit stands at a lectern in front of a group of people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540446/original/file-20230801-15-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540446/original/file-20230801-15-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540446/original/file-20230801-15-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540446/original/file-20230801-15-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540446/original/file-20230801-15-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540446/original/file-20230801-15-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540446/original/file-20230801-15-o2s08v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In 2015, when he was governor of Indiana, Mike Pence supported a state version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/indiana-gov-mike-pence-speaks-during-a-press-conference-news-photo/468209982">Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Progressive groups turn the tables</h2>
<p>Now, progressive groups are increasingly using religious freedom arguments, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, to justify exemptions from conservative policies.</p>
<p>Most recently, progressive Christian clergy members, Jews, Muslims, Satanists and other religious plaintiffs have begun to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/21/legal-strategy-that-could-topple-abortion-bans-00102468">file lawsuits</a> in states challenging strict abortion bans. These lawsuits claim their religions allow reproductive health care and abortions, and that bans violate their religious freedom.</p>
<p><a href="https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/about-us">The Satanic Temple</a>, one of the religious organizations that embrace opposing injustices as part of its mission, has also used other religious freedom cases to demand the same rights as Christians. For example, the group uses the ruling of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-2036.ZO.html">Good News Club v. Milford Central Schools</a>, which determined schools cannot prohibit religious clubs from meeting on school ground after hours, to argue that schools also must allow <a href="https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/after-school-satan">Satanist clubs</a>. Satanists argue that they are just <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-after-school-clubs-became-a-new-battleground-in-the-satanic-temples-push-to-preserve-separation-of-church-and-state-209579">demanding the same rights that Christians</a> have won in court.</p>
<p>Progressive advocates claim they are championing religious freedom and equality. Their opponents, however, argued that plaintiffs are just engaging in “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/21/legal-strategy-that-could-topple-abortion-bans-00102468">political stunts</a>,” not advocating for <a href="https://becketnewsite.s3.amazonaws.com/20230118184008/Individual-Members-v.-Anonymous-Planitiff-Amicus-Brief.pdf">sincere religious beliefs</a>.</p>
<p>When uncivil obedience is used, its critics can frame such behavior as unprecedented, dangerous and insincere. Advocates, however, can argue that they are simply trying to follow the law and ask others to do the same. In religious freedom debates, these disputes are at the heart of a crucial question: where to establish the legal limits of religious freedom.</p>
<h2>Even failure can become a victory</h2>
<p>If uncivil obedience advocates are not successful, they can use their experiences to identify double standards in laws and policies, which can stir public anger over perceived biases regarding religious freedom. </p>
<p>When conservatives lose religious freedom cases, they <a href="https://www.moodymedia.org/articles/demise-religious-freedom-america/">can claim</a> such losses reflect bias against conservative Christian religious beliefs.</p>
<p>When minority religions or progressive Christians lose their religious freedom cases, <a href="https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/legal-action">they can point to the success</a> of conservative Christians in similar cases to highlight the courts’ protection of conservative religious principles.</p>
<p>Using uncivil obedience is a relatively safe protest strategy – at least legally speaking – because, unlike civil disobedience, those who use it do not risk being arrested. Yet it still allows people to draw attention to social issues in unprecedented ways that can spark public discussion.</p>
<p>There is risk, though. Uncivil obedience tactics can draw immense criticism from the public, who may view such tactics as manipulative or disingenuous. Additionally, although uncivil obedience can draw attention to double standards in societies, those standards can remain obstacles for those wanting social change. This can result in legal challenges that can be long and expensive to pursue but in which there is no guarantee of success.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jun/21/utah-bible-school-libraries-ban-reversed">Utah</a>, while the Bible was initially banned, public pressure caused the school board to quickly reverse the decision.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.wptv.com/news/education/bible-wont-be-banned-in-palm-beach-county-public-schools">Florida</a> and <a href="https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/2023/05/20/ryan-walters-oklahoma-banned-books-freedom-from-religion-foundation-letter-bible/70238103007/">Oklahoma</a>, challenges to the Bible so far have been dismissed, with the holy book’s supporters arguing that the proposals should not be taken seriously. </p>
<p>Both Rabbi Silver and the Freedom From Religion Foundation have maintained they will continue the fight until attempts to censor books in schools cease, or all books are judged by the same standards.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristina M. Lee is on the board of the Secular Student Alliance.</span></em></p>Distinct from civil disobedience, this legal strategy demands complete compliance with the law – even when there are loopholes that the laws’ creators didn’t intend.Kristina M. Lee, Assistant Professor, University of South DakotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1977092023-01-16T06:05:43Z2023-01-16T06:05:43ZWhy food is such a powerful symbol in political protest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504260/original/file-20230112-61369-99arna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C26%2C2972%2C1970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Food is a hot issue in today’s activism. Last year, UK climate group Just Stop Oil <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph_wBTmfU-4">hurled tomato soup</a> at Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London. Later they <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3EjWbW0z2I">smeared cake</a> on a Madame Tussauds waxwork of King Charles. Protesters affiliated with the German group <em>Letzte Generation</em> (Last Generation) threw mashed potatoes on Claude Monet’s Grainstacks at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, Germany. An activist targeted Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with cake at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/30/mona-lisa-smeared-cake-suspected-climate-protester">Louvre Museum in Paris</a>. All were intended as wake-up calls about the anthropogenic climate catastrophe.</p>
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<p>Food has a long history of being a weapon of protest. Historian <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/650244">E.P. Thompson</a> proposed in 1971 that food was part of the “moral economy” of protest in pre-industrial England. Food riots in the 18th century (such as those that took place across England <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/mdh.1985.10.1.72?journalCode=ymdh20">in 1766</a> over the rising price of wheat and other cereals) were partly a response to the breakdown of the old moral economy of provision, replaced by the new political economy of the free market. </p>
<p>Food has been <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_397-1">mobilised</a> many times since as an expression of a sense of injustice. In 2007 and 2008, rallies unfolded in more than <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_397-1">25 countries</a> against the social and economic consequences of dramatically increased food prices. </p>
<p>Food also becomes part of feminist expression, as was the case in 1863 <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/bread-riot-richmond/">bread riots</a> in Richmond, Virginia led largely by hungry mothers, chanting “bread or blood!”. </p>
<p>It is even tied up with national identity. In the 2007 <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/meaningful-resistance/sin-maiz-no-hay-pais-the-mexican-tortillazo-protests/2531FAE0D4213CB2A562098EBBEE0528">tortilla protests in Mexico</a> protestors came up with the slogan “<em>sin maíz, no hay país</em>” (without corn, there is no country).</p>
<p>Just Stop Oil said its own use of soup draws attention to the cost of living crisis. Soup is a common feature at food banks, which are multiplying across the country. </p>
<p>The group’s refrain that people are being forced to <a href="https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/451798/just-stop-oil-throw-soup-over-iconic-van-gogh-painting-in-latest-stunt/#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20cost%20of%20living%20crisis,droughts%20caused%20by%20climate%20breakdown">choose between heating and eating</a> is a reminder that some can’t even afford to heat that soup. The food used in the protest, therefore, becomes a multilayered symbol – of the climate crisis and the associated cost of living crisis. </p>
<h2>Food is inclusion</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/ae.1981.8.3.02a00050">his seminal 1981</a> article on gastro-politics, anthropologist Arjun Appadurai argued that food can either serve the symbolic function of indicating equality, intimacy or solidarity or serve to sustain relations characterised by hierarchy, distance or segmentation. For example, seeds have been long associated with <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315631493-19/seeds-women-hands-symbol-food-security-solidarity-farida-akhter">solidarity among peasants</a> but at the same time can become an instrument of control when in the hands of global seed multinationals, which can end up with the power to <a href="https://www.accesstoseeds.org/about/">decide who has access to them</a>.</p>
<p>The food thrown at famous works of art by climate activists can, in a way, be seen as a medium of inclusion. It can be interpreted as an act of sharing – and sharing food is one of the most basic ways that shared community and identity is created. Even though the food is not “shared” in a traditional sense, it nevertheless serves as a medium for consolidating the activists’ identities, through which they communicate their message to others in the hope of mobilising a strong collective response.</p>
<p>It has also been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2752/175174413X13673466711642">documented</a> that the creation of new social movements draws on food as part of the process of creating new identities and possibilities for action. This inclusion can take place on the level of other activist groups as part of what <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm174">sociologist Herbert H. Haines</a> labels “radical flank effects”. </p>
<p>This is when the radical faction of a social movement can <a href="https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/3/pgac110/6633666?login=false">increase</a> both support for and identification with more moderate groups in the same movement. In other words, more moderate climate activist groups may be getting more support and exposure thanks to the radical food-involving actions of the groups such as Just Stop Oil and Letzte Generation.</p>
<h2>Food is exclusion</h2>
<p>But food can also be a medium of exclusion. As <a href="https://monoskop.org/images/e/e0/Pierre_Bourdieu_Distinction_A_Social_Critique_of_the_Judgement_of_Taste_1984.pdf">sociologist Pierre Bourdieu</a> has convincingly shown, food can define the inside and outside of group boundaries. He distinguishes between “the taste of necessity” associated with the most filling and most economical foods for the lower classes, and “the taste of liberty or luxury” for the upper classes, who have the freedom to concern themselves not only with being full but with presentation and experience of eating.</p>
<p>Food can become a symbol of what separates the powerful from the powerless, or certain groups from the rest of society. In the context of climate activism, using food as one of the mediums of protest can further separate the activist groups from the rest of the society (which is evident from the <a href="https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/just-stop-oil-protests">criticism</a> of them). </p>
<p>Those observing the protest can feel disgusted by the tactics – either as an act of vandalism relating to the art or to the food itself – particularly in a culture that opposes food waste.</p>
<p>Anthropologist David Sutton also <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2752/175174413X13673466711642">suggests</a> that food can serve as a tool to challenge the so-called market “rationality” and other assumptions of contemporary neoliberalism. According to him “the language of food is a language that contextualises, that situates, that moralises, that challenges the supposedly neutral, non-cultural language of neoliberal economics”. </p>
<p>For climate activism today this is a crucial point: the link between a capitalist drive for growth and climate change is well <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/parr15828">established</a>. Using food in protests can therefore be a symbol of a failure on the part of governments to re-structure our political economic systems to guarantee planetary sustainability. </p>
<p>The sharp contrast between the convivial eating of food and using it as a tool of condemnation of government inaction – as an expression of rage and frustration – reflects the sharp contrast between the protestors’ vision for the future of the planet and the government’s political economic vision.</p>
<p>Food has long been a rich, diverse, and complex medium for protest and as the climate crisis collides with the cost of living crisis, it appears to be more potent than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ekaterina Gladkova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From throwing soup over works of art to waving tortillas in the street, what we eat is a powerful emblem of what we want.Ekaterina Gladkova, Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1923212022-12-13T13:19:55Z2022-12-13T13:19:55ZIranian protesters turn to TikTok to get their message past government censors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496835/original/file-20221122-13-zlg2uv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C1038%2C748&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scenes of protest in Iran are difficult to get out of the country, but TikTok users are rising to the challenge.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screen capture by The Conversation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Images of the protests that followed the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-62954648">death of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini</a> on Sept. 16, 2022, in Iran and reports of the government’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/11/19/23466689/brutal-suppression-irans-regime-fails-to-contain-mass-protests">brutal crackdown</a> have circulated widely on social media. This flow of information comes despite efforts by the Iranian regime to <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/iran-mahsa-amini-internet-shutdown/">throttle internet access</a> and censor information leaving the country.</p>
<p>One effective method the protesters have hit on has been to use TikTok, the video-sharing app better known for young people posting clips of themselves singing and dancing. The way video clips are shared on the social media platform and the protesters’ clever use of labeling have helped activists circumvent the information blockade of Iran’s tech-savvy security services and reach a wide audience.</p>
<p>As a researcher who studies <a href="https://faculty.txst.edu/profile/1922004/activity/scholarly-creative">young people and participatory culture</a> – art and information produced by nonspecialists, including fan fiction and citizen journalism – I believe that TikTok is proving to be an effective tool of political activism in the face of severe repression. </p>
<p>Key to its effectiveness is how TikTok works. Each TikTok video recorded by the user is typically 60 seconds or shorter and loops when finished. Other users can edit or “stitch” someone else’s TikTok video into their own. Users can also create a split screen or “duet” TikTok video, with the original video on one side of the screen and their own on the other.</p>
<h2>Stitching and duetting</h2>
<p>To use TikTok, a protester in Iran typically uses multihop virtual private networks, meaning VPNs that send internet traffic through multiple servers, to route around <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/iran-protests-2022-internet-shutdown-whatsapp/">government internet blackouts</a> just long enough to post a video to TikTok. There, TikTok users who support the protester “like” the video thousands of times, stitch it into other videos, and duet it to then be liked, stitched and duetted again and again.</p>
<p>In the process, identifying information about the original poster is obscured. Within minutes the protester becomes anonymous even as the message spreads. Even if the video is flagged for violating <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/community-guidelines?lang=en">TikTok’s community guidelines</a>, its sharers like and incorporate its duets too quickly for TikTok to remove the original content from the platform completely.</p>
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<p>In <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@elica.lebon/video/7147104991767989547?_r=1&_t=8WjhJQEpgY2&is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7147104991767989547">one video</a> that has received over 620,000 views, Iranian-American attorney Elica Le Bon urges viewers to share all Iranian content to make sure the world keeps paying attention. In <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@gal_lynette/video/7146189758291594539?_r=1&_t=8WjgPS0de4B&is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7146189758291594539">another</a>, TikTok user @gal_lynette directs her 35,000 followers to instantly duet videos made by Iranian women as a form of citizen journalism to “keep their reporting – their story … alive.” </p>
<h2>Gaming the algorithms</h2>
<p>Elsewhere, TikTok user <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@m0rr1gu?lang=en">@m0rr1gu</a> tells her 44,000 followers how to share that content without triggering community guidelines violations. This advice includes using “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/08/algospeak-tiktok-le-dollar-bean/">algospeak</a>,” or code, for bypassing community guidelines violations. For TikTokkers boosting Iranian content, this means altering the word “Iran” in captions, among other tactics.</p>
<p>Gaming TikTok’s algorithm helps ensure that the people most likely to share this content can find it. For example, Iranian-American TikTokker Yeganeh Mafaher tapped a recent celebrity scandal’s virality by titling a video “<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@littleyeg/video/7145873395664604459?_r=1&_t=8WjhmccC0lC&is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7145873395664604459">Adam Levine Also DMd Me</a>,” only to announce “Okay, now that I have your attention, the internet is going to be cut off in Ir@n.”</p>
<p>By removing the word “Iran” but leaving Levine’s name searchable, Yeganeh was gaming the algorithm to help her retain her viewers who were seeking Iranian content while also “<a href="https://doaj.org/article/09342ded736c45c3a6c3b8a56a9ac200">hashbaiting</a>” additional users who were following the celebrity scandal. Up to that point, Yeganeh’s most-viewed revolution-related video was a history of hijab laws that garnered nearly 341,000 views. The Levine video exceeded 1.6 million.</p>
<p>Yeganeh’s account had previously recorded her experiences as an Iranian-American citizen and attracted followers interested in Iranian culture. After Amini’s death, she credited her followers with boosting her account to the point that she was interviewed by cable news host Chris Cuomo on NewsNation to discuss the uprising.</p>
<h2>Song of a movement</h2>
<p>A key element of a TikTok video is its audio track or “sound,” often a song that provides a thematic thread across stitched and duetted videos. The sound of many of the videos depicting the events in Iran, with more than 11.7 million views, is the song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0th9_v-BbUI">Baraye</a>” by Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour.</p>
<p>The song’s lyrics are derived from a string of Farsi tweets that detail Iranians’ reasons for revolution. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/oct/04/iran-arrests-musician-anthem-iran-protests-viral-mahsa-amini-shervin-hajipour-baraye">Hajipour was detained</a> because of the song but was later released. “Baraye” has since become a global protest ballad.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour’s protest song ‘Baraye’ has become the unofficial anthem of the uprising.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Worried for Hajipour’s safety, TikTokkers supporting the uprising united in an effort to shield him from backlash by posting thousands of videos directing users to nominate “Baraye” for the Grammys’ newest special merits award, <a href="https://songforsocialchange.grammy.com/">best song for social change</a>. In October, the song had <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-10/iran-protest-song-baraye-dominates-grammy-nominations-for-new-award">received 83% of the 115,000 nominations</a>, which increased international attention on Hajipour and the song. Baraye <a href="https://variety.com/2023/global/news/iran-protest-song-baraye-grammy-amnesty-jailed-activists-1235514072/">went on to win</a> the social change Grammy on Feb. 5, 2023.</p>
<p>“Baraye” and related hashtags are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/style/tiktok-teen-politics-gen-z.html">shared resources</a> that help make TikTok a platform for <a href="https://ypp.dmlcentral.net/sites/default/files/publications/YPP_WorkinPapers_Paper01_8.24.17.pdf">participatory politics</a>. As the world watches Iran, TikTokkers game the platform’s algorithms to amplify Iranians’ videos beyond the reach of the Iranian government.</p>
<p>There are active TikTok campaigns for everything from Grammy nominations to <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@gghamari/video/7148198520661544198?_r=1&_t=8Wjfimj3Zco&is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7148198520661544198">scripting emails to local representatives</a> and <a href="http://Tinyurl.com/2p8nhrac">global leaders</a>. Videos teach laypeople to discreetly host Iranian web traffic and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@sepehr_for_freedom/video/7156292246332034346?_r=1&_t=8WjfX4RpA2o&is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7156292246332034346">direct users to local protests</a>. They share petitions for G-7 leaders to <a href="https://www.change.org/p/g7-leaders-expel-iran-s-diplomats-demand-that-political-prisoners-be-freed">expel Iran’s diplomats</a> and the U.N. to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-the-protest-bloodshed-in-iran/">hold the Iranian government accountable</a> for its crimes against international law. As <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63939428">state executions of protesters have begun in Iran</a>, the #StopExecutionsInIran campaign has clocked over 100 million views on TikTok.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The ‘TikTok generation’ is at the forefront of the protests in Iran.</span></figcaption>
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<p>These interactive tools and the platform’s algorithm for promoting content are what transformed TikTok from teen dance app to powerful global platform for protest and political action. While much is uncertain as Iranians fight for change and their supporters worldwide flood an unlikely platform to boost their voices, one thing seems likely: The revolution may not be televised, but it will be liked, stitched and duetted.</p>
<p><em>This story has been updated to include the song Baraye’s Grammy win.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Whitney Shylee May does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The app best known for kids sharing video clips of themselves singing and dancing has become a powerful tool for activists speaking out against repression in Iran.Whitney Shylee May, Ph.D. candidate in American Studies, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1954322022-12-07T03:31:23Z2022-12-07T03:31:23ZFIFA’s mirage of unity: why the World Cup is a vessel for political protest<p>Before the Qatar World Cup began, FIFA launched a social campaign called “<a href="https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1130464/fifa-unites-the-world-campiagn">Football Unites the World</a>”. FIFA acknowledged “the world is divided […] with conflicts and global crises”, but promised the World Cup “will <a href="https://tr.fifa.com/en/social-impact/campaigns/football-unites-the-world">bring people together</a> to cross borders, unite and celebrate”.</p>
<p>It’s a similar message to that of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in which the Olympic Games are said to “unify” <a href="https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-president-emphasises-role-of-the-olympic-games-to-unite-the-world-at-g20-summit-in-osaka">the world of nations</a>. Such aspirations aren’t simply about bringing countries together to play sport under agreed rules: these two global bodies also believe they have some capacity to shape international relations.</p>
<p>Indeed, both the FIFA and IOC presidents were invited speakers at the recent <a href="https://www.viva.co.id/english/1523091-jokowi-invites-fifa-and-ioc-presidents-to-present-at-g20-summit">G20 Summit in Bali</a>. The FIFA supremo, Gianni Infantino, drew upon the fabled <a href="http://sportlibrary.org/Olympictruce2000.html">Olympic truce</a>, urging for a ceasefire to the Russian invasion of Ukraine <a href="https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1130452/bach-infantino-g20-meeting">for the length of the men’s World Cup in Qatar</a>.</p>
<p>Yet, despite FIFA heralding unity and peace during the 2022 World Cup, the tournament has featured potent examples of political conflict and protest, while Russian attacks against Ukraine have intensified.</p>
<h2>Political football</h2>
<p>At the very time football was supposed to be “uniting the world”, FIFA was scrambling to quell what it saw as unwelcome criticism from some participants and many commentators. This dissent stemmed principally from widespread criticism about <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-qatar-fifa-world-cup-so-controversial-192627">Qatar as World Cup host</a>, notably the exploitation of foreign labourers, discrimination against LGBTQI+ communities, and constraints around drinking alcohol.</p>
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<p>In response, Infantino sent a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/fifa-urges-world-cup-teams-focus-soccer-politics-92652746">letter to football federations</a> saying: “Please, let’s now focus on the football!” He urged them to “not allow football to be dragged into every ideological or political battle that exists”.</p>
<p>However, while football teams concentrate on winning games, some also promote <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/sport-and-anti-doping/international-charter-sport">bedrock values in modern sport</a> such as inclusion, and rail against discrimination.</p>
<p>Many football teams – especially those from Western democratic cultures – have a <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/fifa-world-cup/lgbtq-how-germany-promotes-tolerance-in-its-soccer-stadiums/ar-AA14JW9T">progressive vision</a> of what “unity” in sport and society should mean.</p>
<h2>Rainbow dispute</h2>
<p>FIFA’s 2017 <a href="https://www.fifa.com/about-fifa/organisation/news/fifa-publishes-landmark-human-rights-policy-2893311">Human Rights Policy</a> prohibits discrimination “in the world of football both on and off the pitch”, with freedom of sexual orientation specifically protected, among other attributes.</p>
<p>In keeping with this, seven European countries informed FIFA they intended to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/world-cup-2022-what-is-onelove-armband-why-did-fifa-ban-it-2022-11-24/">showcase their support</a> for sex and gender diverse communities at the 2022 World Cup. Team captains were to wear the “OneLove” rainbow-coloured armband, as had been done by the Dutch at the <a href="https://www.knvb.com/news/extra/diversity/1225/onelove-football-brings-people-together-not-apart">UEFA Euro 2020</a> championship.</p>
<p>But just hours before the opening game, FIFA announced the OneLove symbols were a “breach” of its rules: no kit should feature “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/world-cup-2022-what-is-onelove-armband-why-did-fifa-ban-it-2022-11-24/">any political, religious or personal slogans, statements or images</a>”.</p>
<p>What’s more, wearing the armband would not merely attract a fine. FIFA warned of on-field punishment in the form of <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/3744929-fifa-quashes-lgbtq-armband-support-at-world-cup-with-yellow-card-threat/">yellow cards</a>.</p>
<p>The European teams, while angry, now felt they had little choice other than to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/european-teams-abandon-plan-wear-armbands-world-cup-93705929">back down</a>. But there were creative responses. The German team offered a symbolic protest before the start of their next match, covering their mouths to denounce being “gagged” <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-world-cup-players-cover-mouths-protest-fifa-ban-one-love-armbands-qatar-human-rights-abuses/">by FIFA</a>. Germany’s Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser, sported the OneLove armband while <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/german-minister-wears-one-love-armband-next-to-fifa-president-despite-ban-160908374.html">setting next to Infantino</a> during that game.</p>
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<h2>Clash of values</h2>
<p>FIFA, meanwhile, offered its own “<a href="https://news.yahoo.com/fifa-launches-captain-armband-eve-080907955.html">solution</a>”. The FIFA “No Discrimination” <a href="https://www.fifa.com/social-impact/campaigns/football-unites-the-world/media-releases/fifa-partner-with-united-nations-agencies-to-run-social-campaigns-during">campaign</a> was brought forward from the planned quarter-finals stage, with <a href="https://www.fifa.com/social-impact/campaigns/no-discrimination/media-releases/no-discrimination-campaign-made-available-for-entire-fifa-world-cup-qatar">FIFA-approved armbands</a> endorsing anti-discrimination, albeit without a specific focus on sex and gender diversity.</p>
<p>FIFA’s feeble public relations spin then quickly denigrated into <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/doublespeak-language-term-1690475">doublespeak</a>. Despite banning the OneLove armbands, FIFA announced it also “supports” OneLove and the LGBTQI+ community, and “Football unites behind [FIFA’s] call for #NoDiscrimination”.</p>
<p>That message would hardly resonate with <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/qatar-human-rights-watch-report-states-security-forces-arrest-abuse-lgbtq-people/a-63533696">Qatari authorities</a>, for whom homosexuality is an affront to Islam and <a href="https://qatarjust.com/common-rules-and-regulation-in-doha-qatar/">forbidden under law</a>. Just prior to the tournament, Qatar’s World Cup ambassador, former footballer Khalid Salman, claimed to a German broadcaster that same sex attraction is “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/08/football/qatar-fifa-world-cup-ambassador-homosexuality-spt-intl/index.html">damage in the mind</a>”.</p>
<p>Two weeks later, panellists on Qatar’s Alkass Sports channel <a href="https://www.thesun.ie/sport/football/9837057/rte-pundit-richie-sadlier-furious-reaction-qatari-mock-germany/">mocked</a> the German football team’s protest gesture, relishing their elimination from the Cup. These Europeans, they said, had <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/02/sport/world-cup-qatar-mocks-germany-armband-gesture-intl-hnk/index.html">failed to respect</a> Qatar’s customs.</p>
<p>FIFA, in gifting the World Cup to Qatar as host, was well aware of this <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-qatar-fifa-world-cup-so-controversial-192627">clash of values</a>, but deferred to local norms.</p>
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<p>That said, FIFA occasionally pushed back, most notably to quell the ire of fans prevented from conveying symbolic support for LGBTQI+ communities through their <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-63710435">clothing</a>. At the entry to stadiums, Qatari security initially refused entry to people wearing clothing with <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-22/fifa-world-cup-qatar-rainbow-clothing-one-love-armband/101681732">rainbow adornments</a>. However, after “<a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/11/25/qatar-world-cup-u-turn-on-rainbow-ban/">urgent talks</a>” with FIFA, that position was rescinded. In this sense, fans ended up having more freedom of expression than players.</p>
<p>But not completely. When some England fans arrived at the opening match dressed as their country’s patron saint, often replete with faux helmets, plastic swords, and shields featuring the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/25/exclusive-england-fans-knight-fancy-dress-accused-muslim-killers/">St George Cross</a>, Qatari police refused them entry. This attire has a long tradition among English sports fans, but FIFA sided with Qatar, deciding that “crusader” costumes could be <a href="https://theconversation.com/understanding-the-crusades-from-an-islamic-perspective-96932">historically offensive to Muslims</a>.</p>
<p>According to FIFA, this position was consistent with it striving to promote “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/25/sport/world-cup-crusader-costumes-offensive-intl-scli/index.html">a discrimination-free environment</a>”.</p>
<h2>National (dis)unity</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, Iranian spectators in Doha were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/28/gianni-infantino-fifa-world-cup-2022-qatar">confronted by security</a> for the “offense” of wearing t-shirts or holding up placards in support of the recent protest movement against the Islamic Republic and its <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/4/iran-suspends-morality-police-what-does-it-mean">morality police</a>.</p>
<p>Persian pre-revolutionary flags and items emblazoned with one or all of the words “<a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/fifa-world-cup-iran-fans-denied-entry-into-stadium-8295526/">Woman, Life, Freedom</a>” were <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/protests-iran-world-cup_n_6381bcdfe4b006c42d3ea5eb">routinely seized</a>, either by security forces or pro-government agents and supporters.</p>
<p>FIFA eventually <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/fifa-allows-banners-iran-protests-world-cup/32157150.html">intervened</a> to assure Iranians that symbols of dissent would no longer be constrained by World Cup authorities, but this only happened after the Iran team had been eliminated from the tournament.</p>
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<p>Elsewhere, Brazilian fans confronted a very different political quandary. In recent years their team’s iconic yellow jersey, the canarinho, has been deployed as an <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bolsonaro-lula-brazil-election-yellow-soccer-jersey_n_635dcfcfe4b04dfacf80d283">unofficial emblem</a> of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/06/football/bolsonaro-brazil-foootball-yellow-shirt-cmd-spt-intl/index.html">right-wing populist movement</a>.</p>
<p>Many supporters of the new left-wing president, known as Lula, have concluded the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/06/football/bolsonaro-brazil-foootball-yellow-shirt-cmd-spt-intl/index.html">yellow jersey is still politically tainted</a>: after all, Bolsanaro and his supporters had used the canarinho in a similar vein to Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bolsonaro-lula-brazil-election-yellow-soccer-jersey_n_635dcfcfe4b04dfacf80d283">MAGA merchandise</a>.</p>
<p>The long-term goal of leftist football fans is to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/24/leftwing-brazilians-reclaim-football-jersey-bolsonaro-world-cup">reclaim and democratise the canarinho</a> as a patriotic but not partisan symbol. For now they encourage wearing the <a href="https://twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1597121389416226816?s=20&t=5R-0SaFNgEo1koLwCt0P6A">lesser-known blue kit</a>, worn when Brazil won the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27809268">1958 World Cup</a> against Sweden, which donned yellow.</p>
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<h2>FIFA’s fantasy</h2>
<p>Promotional rhetoric either by FIFA or its stakeholders routinely emphasises the unifying and integrative “power” of football and the World Cup.</p>
<p>However, starry-eyed claims such as “<a href="https://www.expatsportfifaworldcuphospitality.com/football-the-universal-salve-fifa-world-cup-qatar-2022-offers-hope-on-the-horizon/">football the universal salve</a>” and “<a href="https://www.fifa.com/social-impact/campaigns/football-unites-the-world/news/dunga-the-world-cup-brings-down-cultural-barriers">the World Cup brings down cultural barriers</a>” simply don’t stand up to scrutiny.</p>
<p>Future World Cups will be obliged to adhere to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-qatar-fifa-world-cup-so-controversial-192627">human rights obligations</a> that Qatar (2022) and Russia (2018) weren’t required to follow.</p>
<p>Yet, such is FIFA’s cognitive dissonance that Infantino, on the eve of the cup, fantasised about the possibility of a <a href="https://me.mashable.com/culture/22285/world-cup-fifas-president-is-open-to-hosting-the-tournament-in-north-korea-heres-why">World Cup in North Korea</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daryl Adair does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Starry-eyed claims such as “the World Cup brings down cultural barriers” simply do not stand up to scrutiny.Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1907162022-09-15T14:02:19Z2022-09-15T14:02:19ZJean-Luc Godard: how his prickly fragmented filmmaking asked all the right questions<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/14/godard-shattered-cinema-martin-scorsese-mike-leigh-abel-ferrara-luca-guadagnino-and-more-pay-tribute">Jean-Luc Godard</a>, who has died at the age of 91, was the last survivor of the <a href="http://www.newwavefilm.com/new-wave-cinema-guide/nouvelle-vague-where-to-start.shtml">French New Wave</a> (Nouvelle Vague), the immensely influential movement of rebellious young filmmakers and critics who ensured that French cinema was the focus of film goers’ attention at the start of the 1960s. </p>
<p>Along with his friend <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/francois-truffaut">François Truffaut</a> and several other future directors, Godard had been writing devastating put-downs of the current state of the official French cinema in the magazine <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1028-a-short-history-of-cahiers-du-cinema">Cahiers du cinéma</a>. At the same time, they devoured the Hollywood westerns and thrillers which were circulating freely in Paris and spent long evenings at the <a href="https://www.cinematheque.fr/saison-2022-2023.html">Paris Cinémathèque</a>.</p>
<p>They tried out their ideas in short films. And then, between 1958 and 1960, one after the other, they released their first feature films. The effect was immediate. Truffaut won the Golden Palm at Cannes in 1959 for his autobiographical <a href="https://www.criterion.com/films/151-the-400-blows">The 400 Blows</a>. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/02/alain-resnais">Alain Resnais’</a> <a href="https://mubi.com/films/hiroshima-mon-amour">Hiroshima Mon Amour</a> narrowly missed that prize. At the end of the year, Godard released <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jun/06/film-jean-luc-godard-breathless-feature-philip-french-french-new-wave">Breathless</a>.</p>
<p>In it, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/sep/06/jean-paul-belmondo-star-of-breathless-dies-aged-88">Jean-Paul Belmondo</a> (who was not yet a star), and <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/spring/statement/the-secret-lives-jean-seberg">Jean Seberg</a> (who was), are two lovers on the run from the police on the streets of Paris, seeking money to escape the city. It was energetic, stylish and surprising, full of unexpected digressions and imaginative shots that brought Paris to life on screen.</p>
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<h2>Catching the cultural mood</h2>
<p>For the next decade, Godard would cement his reputation as a director with his finger on the pulse of modern life. Sensitive to the debates and discontents of the decade, he took storylines from the American genre films he loved and used them as frames on which to attach glimpses of a changing France, satirical sketches, adverts, and quotations from theorists, poets and political protesters.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/dec/28/my-favourite-film-alphaville-godard">Alphaville</a> (1965) he makes the popular serial hero Lemmy Caution break down the system of a machine-run future city by means of a book of poetry. In <a href="https://medium.com/cinenation-show/jean-luc-godard-s-two-or-three-things-i-know-about-her-is-radical-filmmaking-at-its-best-7a85eac7d4d2">Two or Three Things I Know About Her</a> (1967), he turns a day in the life of a part-time prostitute into a summary of the condition of Paris, in less than 90 minutes.</p>
<p>Between 1960 and 1967, Godard made 15 feature films. Each one sparked debate among an enthusiastic, largely young audience who felt that he spoke for the times. They were quite happy – in fact, delighted – to accept that the films weren’t always easy to follow. The cultural explosion of 1968 was brewing; student protests and worker strikes were challenging the French (and European) status quo. Godard’s prickly, fragmented cinema seemed to be asking all the right questions.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of 1968, everything changed. Swept up in the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/may-1968-paris-student-riots-demonstrations-sorbonne-nanterre-de-gaulle-a8335866.html">radical political rhetoric of the time</a>, Godard announced his withdrawal from mainstream cinema.</p>
<p>His <a href="https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3661-godard-vs-truffaut">bitter falling-out</a> with François Truffaut marked the end of any possible illusion that the New Wave still existed as an entity. He and some friends formed a short-lived experimental collective, the <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/jean-luc-godard-dziga-vertov-group">Dziga-Vertov group</a>. It only lasted three years, but Godard remained largely absent from commercial screens for a decade.</p>
<h2>A new direction</h2>
<p>Not that he had stopped working. He experimented – with the new medium of video (<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/numero-deux/">Numéro Deux</a>, (1975)), with political activism and television work. He cemented his professional and personal partnership with <a href="https://mubi.com/cast/anne-marie-mieville">Anne-Marie Miéville</a>, which was to last the rest of his life.</p>
<p>In 1981, his first new feature film for a decade, <a href="https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-selection/archive-2022/programme/detail/202214328.html">Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie)</a> (Every Man For Himself), co-written by Miéville and starring Isabelle Huppert, marked a return to the forefront of critical attention.</p>
<p>The “new” Jean-Luc Godard was no less experimental, challenging or spiky than the old one had been. Audience expectations, however, had changed, and he was never to regain the status of popular youth icon that he had held in the 1960s. Instead, he developed a reputation as an awkward thinker, but one who illustrated his ideas about cinema and politics in sound and image, rather than explaining them in books and articles.</p>
<p>He and Melville had moved their production company to the small Swiss town of Rolle in the late 1970s, and as he grew older, he became more and more unwilling to travel away from that base – as over-optimistic festival directors who found themselves “waiting for Godard” can attest. He appeared in his own films as a chaotic, cinema-obsessed recluse (<a href="http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/2009/02/films-i-love-19-first-name-carmen-jean.html">First Name: Carmen</a> (1983), and <a href="https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/issue-30-spring-2012-godard-is/king-lear/">King Lear</a> (1987)).</p>
<p>But he and Miéville worked continuously. Film after film proved their commitment to research and their refusal to compromise. The monumental <a href="https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2008/cteq/histoires-cinema/">History/ies of Cinema</a> (1989-99) is still a challenge to received ideas about cinema’s place in history and the historical role of images.</p>
<p>The political anxieties of the new millennium, from persistent wars on the edges of Europe to the dialogue between the global north and south, find their restless way into films like <a href="https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-selection/archive-2022/programme/detail/202209098.html">Notre Musique</a> (2004), <a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/film-socialisme/">Film Socialisme</a> (2010) and his last feature, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/11/the-image-book-review-jean-luc-godard-cannes-2018.">The Image Book</a> (2018).</p>
<p>It’s not all that easy to make out exactly what he wants to say about these things, let alone agree with him. But then, Godard never showed much sign of expecting agreement. His vocation was as an irritant, and long may his exceptional filmmaking remind us of that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190716/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The groundbreaking filmmaker captured the changing mood of France as it moved from the austere 1950s into the exciting possibilities of the 1960s.Alison Smith, Lecturer in European Film Studies, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1772072022-02-16T20:02:26Z2022-02-16T20:02:26ZUnderstanding Canada’s crisis: Has Trumpism arrived or are people just tired of pandemic restrictions?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446817/original/file-20220216-21-sif0kk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C13%2C4637%2C3144&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters from across Canada came to the nation's capital in Ottawa to demonstrate against vaccine mandates and other measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/understanding-canada-s-crisis--has-trumpism-arrived-or-are-people-just-tired-of-pandemic-restrictions" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>What’s happening in Canada? International observers may understandably be confused by recent events in a country better known for maple syrup and good behaviour. </p>
<p>For nearly three weeks, large commercial trucks have blocked streets in downtown Ottawa in front of Canada’s Parliament buildings, honking their horns and harassing downtown residents.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in western Canada, another <a href="https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/alberta-border-reopens-as-protesters-leave-blockade-after-18-days">group blocked an important United States border crossing in Alberta</a>. Most recently, protesters blocked a key bridge between the cities of Windsor and Detroit that carries more than <a href="https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/freight_analysis/ambass_brdg/ambass_brdge_ovrvw.htm#:%7E:text=The%20Ambassador%20Bridge%20connects%20Windsor,used%20the%20bridge%20in%202000.">a quarter of all Canada-U.S. cross-border trade</a>. </p>
<p>The stated impetus for the protests was a Canadian government requirement that all cross-border truckers be vaccinated against COVID-19. While <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8533779/truckers-convoy-canada-vaccine-mandate/">the vast majority</a> were already vaccinated, the requirement provoked a “convoy” of trucks and dissenters who travelled to Ottawa to make their voices heard. This unlocked a broader populist movement against all COVID-19 measures. </p>
<h2>No tradition of unrest</h2>
<p>Canada does not have much of a tradition of mass political unrest, especially on the political right. The most significant recent political disruptions in Canada have been Indigenous protests, such as a railroad blockade <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/world/canada/rail-blockade-protest.html">in February 2020</a> that drew massive national attention. </p>
<p>And Canada has had a generally unified, though not unanimous, approach to the pandemic — <a href="https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccination-coverage/">83 per cent of the eligible population</a> is vaccinated. While some provincial leaders have been ambivalent about restrictions, Canada is far more united in its COVID-19 response than the United States. But the trucker vaccination mandate was the tipping point that unleashed these protests by a small but vocal minority. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man on a bicycle carries a flag that says 'Trump Won.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446818/original/file-20220216-15-wcfsgs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446818/original/file-20220216-15-wcfsgs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446818/original/file-20220216-15-wcfsgs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446818/original/file-20220216-15-wcfsgs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446818/original/file-20220216-15-wcfsgs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446818/original/file-20220216-15-wcfsgs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446818/original/file-20220216-15-wcfsgs.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Donald Trump supporter protests at a rally held in Toronto against vaccine mandates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For many, this is the unwelcome arrival in force of Trumpism in Canada, and the start of a potential insurrection akin to the January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.</p>
<p>There have been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/4/ottawa-residents-decry-anti-vaccine-trucker-occupation">numerous incidents</a> of harassing behaviour against Ottawa residents. Protesters have <a href="https://cpj.org/2022/02/threats-attacks-and-insults-canadian-reporters-on-covering-vaccine-mandate-protests/">attacked journalists</a>. A significant and perhaps even majority of fundraising for the protests <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/american-donors-to-trucker-convoy-may-be-outnumbering-canadians-ctv-news-analysis-1.5775986">comes from Americans</a>. Confederate flags and swastikas have been spotted in the protest ranks, along with QAnon signs and other conspiracy references. And the protesters are overwhelmingly white, even though more than 22 per cent of Canadians are not.</p>
<h2>Are fears overblown?</h2>
<p>But some insist these fears are overblown, and that the protests are mostly peaceable and simply represent a population tired of pandemic measures. Indeed, the protests at times have a family atmosphere; at one point inflatable children’s bouncy castles were set up amid the Ottawa protest trucks. </p>
<p>These very different impressions have coloured reports and popular discussion of the protests. As journalist Matt Gurney <a href="https://theline.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-the-ottawa-front-hot">reports in his own observations</a> of the Ottawa protesters, people can see what they want to see: “This crowd is mostly friendly. But anyone telling you there’s no dark edge here is either blind, or lying to you.”</p>
<p>So the protests can be framed in different ways — a deep threat to democracy straight from the Trump playbook, or valid political expression. And this framing divides Canadians.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/nearly-three-quarters-of-canadians-want-convoy-protesters-to-go-home-now-survey-1.5781022">One poll</a> finds that 72 per cent of Canadians felt that the protesters should “go home.” But <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8610727/ipsos-poll-trucker-convoy-support-ottawa-canada/">another survey</a> found that 46 per cent of Canadians felt at least some sympathy toward the protesters, even if they did not fully agree with their tactics. </p>
<p>This ambivalence clouded the official response, especially in the initial stages. Ottawa municipal authorities initially co-operated and co-ordinated to a degree with the protesters. The Conservatives, the leading federal opposition party, <a href="https://theconversation.com/replacing-erin-otoole-exposes-the-conservative-partys-ever-deepening-divides-176790">overthrew their leader Erin O’Toole</a> after he was too equivocal in his support of the protests for many members.</p>
<h2>Police force used selectively</h2>
<p>Only as the disruption grew did official opinion turn — and still slowly. The intolerable honking in downtown Ottawa was only stopped by a court injunction <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/zexi-li-ottawa-injunction-trucker-protest-convoy-1.6344503">filed by a 21-year-old woman</a>. The police have used force selectively and avoided violent confrontations. </p>
<p>This hesitancy to crack down contrasts with responses to past disruptive events, such as anti-racism and Indigenous protests. In fact some defenders of the current protest, notably Conservative leadership front-runner <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottMoffatt21/status/1492550644867248129?s=20&t=pcvExs_jRyTGxKaPmElkCQ">Pierre Poilievere</a>, had been quick to demand the end of the 2020 Indigenous blockade. </p>
<p>Only the Windsor border protest brought true national alarm, with its massive potential impact on the Canadian economy. Authorities moved to end the blockade, which was smaller than the Ottawa occupation and cleared after a few days. Other protests, including the earlier border blockade in Alberta, have also been cleared, though they could easily resume.</p>
<p>On Feb. 14, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the <em><a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/02/canadas-emergencies-act.html">Emergencies Act</a></em>, a statute passed in 1988 but never previously used, that allows governments to override normal restrictions. Exactly how the act will be used remains to be seen. And some argue it is unnecessary, and the only thing really missing is political leadership. </p>
<h2>Politicians haven’t performed well</h2>
<p>Indeed, Canadian politicians have not performed well here. Both Trudeau and his Conservative opponents have used the protests opportunistically, trying to pin blame on each other rather than attempting a united front. Provincial leaders like Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose jurisdiction includes the city of Ottawa, have stayed out of the limelight as much as possible. And municipal authorities, especially in Ottawa, are <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-council-special-meeting-motions-convoy-1.6342350">in disarray and/or overwhelmed</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People pose beside a semi-truck adorned with the words F*CK TRUDEAU" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446820/original/file-20220216-23-cal0b1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446820/original/file-20220216-23-cal0b1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446820/original/file-20220216-23-cal0b1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446820/original/file-20220216-23-cal0b1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446820/original/file-20220216-23-cal0b1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446820/original/file-20220216-23-cal0b1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446820/original/file-20220216-23-cal0b1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been the focal point of the protesters who have come to Ottawa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the other hand, there is no simple solution here, at least one without a high risk of violence that will likely spur further disruptions. In Ottawa the police have made efforts to curb protestor activity. But there is little appetite for stronger confrontation, and on Feb. 15 the Ottawa police chief resigned after heavy criticism.</p>
<p>The Ottawa protest will likely dissipate in time. But the great fear is that this is an irreparable tear in the Canadian political fabric that brings the country closer to the toxic polarization seen in the U.S.</p>
<p>Extremism can breed extremism, and the more benign interpretations of the protest provide a cover for the undeniably fanatical elements. As in the United States where moderate Republicans have been decimated, the most profound immediate effect of the crisis is the moderate wing of the Conservative Party of Canada, as seen in O'Toole’s demise.</p>
<p>Ironically, vaccine and social distancing requirements are on the wane in Canada independent of the “freedom convoy.” The issues that sparked the protests may soon be gone. But the protests are ultimately about something much deeper than vaccines. The struggle is over conceptions of democracy in Canada.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177207/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Malloy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Canada’s international reputation as a relatively peaceful country is at odds with the noisy protests by people opposed to measures aimed at preventing COVID-19.Jonathan Malloy, Professor of Political Science, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1756372022-02-01T19:13:15Z2022-02-01T19:13:15ZHow will China handle the dual threats of COVID and political protests at the Winter Olympics?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443640/original/file-20220201-15-1ubuabm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=386%2C64%2C4578%2C3514&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David J. Phillip/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics start on Friday – the first time in history the same city has hosted both the summer and winter games.</p>
<p>Compared to the 2008 summer games, the upcoming Winter Olympics face two major challenges: the global pandemic and a dramatically different geopolitical setting. For the Communist Party of China (CCP), which always draws a long bow on reputation and international impact, both of these challenges may seem insurmountable. </p>
<p>But when it comes to the pandemic, the likelihood is the regime will safely manage the event, despite the potential for operational difficulties and even minor COVID outbreaks.</p>
<p>China has responded to the pandemic with a strongly enforced policy of zero tolerance for the past two years. Public health may well have prompted it to continue with a zero-COVID policy long after the world gave it up. At the same time, two major events this year could have also been a factor: the Winter Olympics and the party’s <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Xi-says-2022-party-congress-will-be-major-event-for-China-s-politics">20th National Congress</a> in late 2022.</p>
<p>To cope with the pandemic during the Olympics, the government has gone to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/21/china/beijing-winter-olympics-covid-quarantine-explained-mic-intl-hnk/index.html">even further lengths</a> than the Tokyo Olympic organisers to try to minimise the spread of infection. Whole villages have been built for the competitors, officials and service personnel, together with transport and testing services for movement to, within and between the Olympic sites. </p>
<p>Even before the arrival of the sports delegations, Chinese staff moved in at the start of January to establish what has been described locally as “closed loops” – the now-familiar “bubbles” we’ve seen at other sporting events. A sophisticated surveillance system will ensure everyone complies with the rules.</p>
<p>Given these preparations, there is less of a chance of the Olympics becoming a superspreader event, at least for the competitors and officials. </p>
<p>As for crowds, the government has severely restricted spectators. As of mid-January, the Olympic organisers <a href="https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/limited-spectators-allowed-winter-olympics-131730040.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIdf64HtmAADHH-IDrto5gdTbeHxwpwwTS3l6jk3nBwAcGZAayMKYtksS0fYCr8-oxE2OSsesnXyuCadZymS5oZb06v8XSuzvBBQOYMDgtGAtfTdNorjpHSodXW-QHyIeQvVxvTiDhinleoXrVaMK7HoWZMQIi6kn7oKTaF54OZE">announced</a> tickets would not be on sale at all; instead, tickets would go to “selected” Chinese spectators (with no fans from other countries permitted). Those lucky enough to be invited would </p>
<blockquote>
<p>strictly abide by the COVID-19 countermeasures before, during and after each event so as to help create an absolutely safe environment for the athletes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1488259543616430084"}"></div></p>
<h2>Muted boycott</h2>
<p>The changes in the geopolitical atmosphere since the 2008 summer Olympics present a greater challenge.</p>
<p>For much of the English-speaking world, China seems to have become an existential threat that must be vigorously opposed. China has been harshly criticised for
its expansion into the South China Sea, the end to Hong Kong’s previous degree of political autonomy, and its restrictive policies towards the Uyghurs in the western Xinjiang region. </p>
<p>The government’s treatment of the Uyghurs has been <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59595952">labelled by many</a> a genocide. In this context, there’s an obvious parallel with the hosting of the 1936 summer Olympics by Nazi Germany. Josh Rogin, the noted Washington Post columnist, recently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/20/beijing-olympics-has-become-an-exercise-genocide-denial/">argued</a> against those he describes as “atrocity deniers”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the actions of the athletes, companies and international organisations at the 2022 Beijing Olympics will be remembered for generations, as they were after the Games in 1936. Each of them — and each of us — must think hard about which side of history we want to be on.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite these criticisms, the calls for an Olympic boycott have been surprisingly muted, particularly in contrast to the US-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. </p>
<p>No national Olympic committees have called for a boycott, and the so-called “diplomatic boycott” of government representatives has remained limited in scale. It has been weakened somewhat by the reported <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3163850/china-will-issue-visas-us-olympic-delegation-despite">visa applications for 46 US officials</a> – most from the State Department – to visit China during the games as part of the US Olympic team support.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-the-beijing-winter-olympics-countdown-begins-calls-to-boycott-the-genocide-games-grow-147352">As the Beijing Winter Olympics countdown begins, calls to boycott the 'Genocide Games' grow</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>On the other hand, the boycott calls have not been resisted as stridently as they were by Olympic supporters in 1936. Avery Brundage, then-president of the US Olympic Committee, <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/olympics/?content=favor_participation&lang=en">described</a> a proposed boycott of the Berlin games a “Jewish-Communist conspiracy”. </p>
<p>The reason there’s more restraint today is likely due to globalisation – China and the US may see themselves as competitors for world leadership, but they are still more closely economically integrated than the US and USSR were in 1980.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Protesters outside the Chinese embassy in Jakarta." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443635/original/file-20220201-21-jq6uja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443635/original/file-20220201-21-jq6uja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443635/original/file-20220201-21-jq6uja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443635/original/file-20220201-21-jq6uja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443635/original/file-20220201-21-jq6uja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443635/original/file-20220201-21-jq6uja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443635/original/file-20220201-21-jq6uja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters wearing masks with the colours of the pro-independence East Turkistan flag shout slogans outside the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tatan Syuflana/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How will China respond to protests?</h2>
<p>Even if there is no major boycott, the chance for political statements during the games remains high.</p>
<p>Athletes and sports officials have been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/01/19/china-winter-olympics-politics-speech/">warned not to speak out</a> or they could be punished under Chinese law. Athletes have also been advised to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-60034013">leave their mobile phones at home</a> and use burners instead. </p>
<p>While no athletes have yet publicly criticised China, it would be surprising if there were no such incidents. Olympic athletes have made political statements in the past, and given the current geopolitics, the Beijing Olympics present a large stage with an enormous potential audience. </p>
<p>It’s unlikely a medal winner would drape the flag of former East Turkestan (now used by those <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/11/independence-east-turkistan-china-uyghurs-xinjiang/">advocating Uyghur resistance to Beijing</a>) around their shoulders, but there may be complaints about the strict controls on athletes in China.</p>
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<p>In the short term, China’s critics will express their views, while the Chinese government will expound on the significance of harmonious world interaction at a great sporting event such as the Olympic Games.</p>
<p>The limited diplomatic boycott of the games certainly has annoyed the CCP. But neither it, nor operational problems, nor criticisms of China that may emerge at the games, are likely to have any longer-term consequences. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-winter-olympics-are-so-vital-to-the-chinese-communist-partys-legitimacy-176130">Why the Winter Olympics are so vital to the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy</a>
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<p>They will certainly not shake the regime to its foundations, or even adversely affect Xi’s leadership. In fact, any attacks on the CCP will only reinforce the position of Chinese leaders arguing for the need to ensure stability and strength in the face of an external threat – both in terms of politics and public health. </p>
<p>The more likely outcome is the Chinese government will revel in its ability to hold a prestigious international event under difficult conditions. </p>
<p>It is a message that will speak to many parts of the world, especially those attracted by or envious of China’s economic growth. These will even include some in liberal democracies, though certainly not China’s harshest critics – the governments of the US, Australia, Canada and United Kingdom.</p>
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<p><em>The China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney is holding an online roundtable discussion on the Beijing Winter Olympics on Thursday, Feb. 3, at 1pm. To register or for more information, visit <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/beijing-winter-olympics-2022-sports-law-and-policies-tickets-242549049737">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David S G Goodman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A tight bubble will likely keep the games from becoming a super-spreader event, but how the hosts will handle outspoken athletes remains a concern.David S G Goodman, Director, China Studies Centre, Professor of Chinese Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1621372021-06-15T14:25:20Z2021-06-15T14:25:20ZAreas in Africa with more Chinese-backed projects were more likely to experience protests<p>Chinese investment in Africa has helped spark economic growth and improve social outcomes across the continent. Yet Chinese projects often seem to go hand in hand with civil protests. We wanted to find out whether these were isolated incidents or signalled broader discontent among the population.</p>
<p>In new <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292121000945">research</a>, we show that regions hosting Chinese-led projects are more likely to experience protests. </p>
<p>China’s financial involvement on the continent has grown dramatically since the launch of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2000 and the China-Africa Development Fund in 2006. Today, China is Africa’s <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1844049/trade-between-china-and-africa-dropped-14-percent-in-the-first-quarter/">largest trading partner</a>. China also spent an estimated <a href="http://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/WPS46_Aid_China_and_Growth.pdf">US$350 billion</a> (£250 million) on development programmes on the continent between 2000 and 2014 (the most recent data), on a par with what the US spent in the same period. </p>
<p>The social, economic and political implications of this vast investment are subject to much controversy. Western countries are critical of China’s attempt to gain “soft power” (gaining economic and cultural power without coercion) on the continent, saying it might <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10670564.2014.898893">undermine good governance</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/90001834.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A4e069aee8c090c80762752e7b0a57abc">human rights</a>. But what do Africans citizens think about China’s impact on their lives? </p>
<p>It is easy to find evidence of protests against Chinese projects and investments. In the Kenyan archipelago of Lamu, for instance, residents and local businesses recently managed to <a href="https://chinadialogue.net/en/energy/lamu-kenyan-coal-project-chinese-investors-take-environmental-risks-seriously/">block</a> a proposed Chinese coal power plant, which they said would hurt the local tourist industry. People in the Gambia have <a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-in-the-gambia-highlight-tensions-over-chinese-investment-in-africa-119221">protested against Chinese fish factories</a>, which have drained waste into nearby wildlife reserves, hurting the local fish industry and the environment. Or in 2012, Zambian workers protested against low pay and hazardous working conditions in Chinese-run mines and even <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19135435">killed a Chinese manager</a>. </p>
<p>Of course, these are just a few examples from across a huge continent – we wanted to explore whether there is a systematic link between Chinese projects and civil protests. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-in-the-gambia-highlight-tensions-over-chinese-investment-in-africa-119221">Protests in the Gambia highlight tensions over Chinese investment in Africa</a>
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<p>To do this, we used a global database on local protests that located around 125,000 protests across Africa and combined it with data on the location of Chinese projects across the continent. We did find a link: areas with more Chinese projects were more likely to experience protests. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405973/original/file-20210611-27-1srcebl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of Africa with green and red dots" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405973/original/file-20210611-27-1srcebl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405973/original/file-20210611-27-1srcebl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405973/original/file-20210611-27-1srcebl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405973/original/file-20210611-27-1srcebl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405973/original/file-20210611-27-1srcebl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405973/original/file-20210611-27-1srcebl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405973/original/file-20210611-27-1srcebl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Map of Chinese projects and protests in Africa between 2000 and 2014. (Chinese projects in green; protests in red)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Iacoella, Martorano, Metzger, Sanfilippo (2021)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>We also found that the type of project and its location matter. For instance, energy projects, often hydropower, are generally far away from towns and cities. By contrast, big infrastructure projects could be more likely to promote public demonstrations because they have visible effects on local and regional activities. </p>
<h2>Perceptions influence and trust in governments</h2>
<p>There are a couple of potential explanations for this link between projects and protests. First, we know from previous research that, compared with World Bank aid, Chinese finance is prone to being <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030438781831099X">used by local elites</a> to pursue their own interests and obtain <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272718300021">many of the benefits</a>, perhaps because of a <a href="https://www.aiddata.org/publications/how-china-lends">lack of transparency</a> in loan conditions, or because of China’s principle of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030438781831099X">not interfering in domestic affairs</a> when granting loans, which gives local political leaders more power to allocate resources to projects. All this can lower citizens’ trust in their government institutions. When people lose trust in institutions, they may prefer protesting to voting. Our analysis confirms that areas with a larger number of Chinese projects do see lowered trust in local government. </p>
<p>Second, using data from the <a href="https://afrobarometer.org/data">Afrobarometer</a>, which surveys Africans on their view on democracy, governance and other issues, we observe a growing sense of China’s rising domestic economic influence among citizens who are more strongly exposed to Chinese projects. This perception can stir protests when citizens feel that the economic changes are serving Chinese rather than domestic interests. </p>
<p>But under what circumstances will citizens’ grievances and distrust effectively result in protests? Almost unsurprisingly, and reminiscent of the Arab spring, we find that improved mobile connectivity may have played an important role in helping citizens to coordinate. </p>
<p>Protests are an interesting way to explore how African citizens are responding to Chinese investment. A direct and legitimate form of political participation, protests can draw attention to grievances and to demand accountability from governments. Our study shows a systematic link between Chinese projects and the occurrence of protests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162137/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We looked at 125,000 protests across Africa and mapped them against Chinese investments.Bruno Martorano, Assistant Professor, Maastricht University and Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), United Nations UniversityFrancesco Iacoella, Researcher, Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), United Nations UniversityLaura Metzger, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for International Development, Harvard Kennedy SchoolMarco Sanfilippo, Associate Professor of Economics, Università di TorinoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1546942021-02-10T16:14:12Z2021-02-10T16:14:12ZThe Stansted 15 appeal: a hollow victory for the right to protest?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382992/original/file-20210208-17-1rzpr6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C0%2C5476%2C3647&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stansted 15 standing before Chelmsford Crown Court prior to sentencing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/chelmsford-uk-6th-february-2019-the-stansted-15-stand-outside-chelmsford-crown-court-before-sentencing-they-were-convicted-on-10th-december-of-an-anti-terrorism-offence-under-the-aviation-and-maritime-security-act-1990-following-non-violent-direct-action-to-try-to-prevent-a-home-office-deportation-flight-carrying-precarious-migrants-to-nigeria-ghana-and-sierra-leone-from-taking-off-from-stansted-airport-in-march-2017-credit-mark-kerrisonalamy-live-news-image235323775.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=E4F61243-8D55-4E18-A39C-AD4018A82865&p=278138&n=0&orientation=0&pn=1&searchtype=0&IsFromSearch=1&srch=foo%3dbar%26st%3d0%26pn%3d1%26ps%3d100%26sortby%3d2%26resultview%3dsortbyPopular%26npgs%3d0%26qt%3dSTANSTED%252015%26qt_raw%3dSTANSTED%252015%26lic%3d3%26mr%3d0%26pr%3d0%26ot%3d0%26creative%3d%26ag%3d0%26hc%3d0%26pc%3d%26blackwhite%3d%26cutout%3d%26tbar%3d1%26et%3d0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3d0%26loc%3d0%26imgt%3d0%26dtfr%3d%26dtto%3d%26size%3d0xFF%26archive%3d1%26groupid%3d%26pseudoid%3d%26a%3d%26cdid%3d%26cdsrt%3d%26name%3d%26qn%3d%26apalib%3d%26apalic%3d%26lightbox%3d%26gname%3d%26gtype%3d%26xstx%3d0%26simid%3d%26saveQry%3d%26editorial%3d%26nu%3d%26t%3d%26edoptin%3d%26customgeoip%3dGB%26cap%3d1%26cbstore%3d1%26vd%3d0%26lb%3d%26fi%3d2%26edrf%3d%26ispremium%3d1%26flip%3d0%26pl%3d">Mark Kerrison/Alamy Live News</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>To widespread delight, Ian Burnet, lord chief justice, handed down <a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Thacker-and-ors-judgment.pdf">judgement in the Court of Appeal</a>, quashing the convictions of direct action protesters known as the Stansted 15.</p>
<p>Following the release from prison of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-45888172">three anti-fracking activists</a> in October 2018, this is the second major victory in the court for non-violent direct action protesters in recent years. But the terms of this victory should be considered carefully: it has two stings in the tail.</p>
<p>In March 2017, the 15 protesters cut through the perimeter fence of Stansted airport, “locked on” to one another around the nose wheel of a <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/deportation-and-direct-action-in-britain-terrorist-trial-o/">Home Office chartered deportation flight to west Africa</a>, and built a tripod behind the wing to stop it moving.</p>
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<p>They were prosecuted under a very specific and rarely used charge, s1(2)(b) of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/31/contents">Aviation and Maritime Security Act (AMSA) 1990</a>. This legislation was enacted <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/jan/10/aviation-and-maritime-security-bill">in the wake of the Lockerbie bombing</a> in order to make UK law consistent with an <a href="https://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/terrorism/Commonwealth_Chapter_5.pdf">international agreement</a> dealing with acts of terrorism at airports. The defence had argued that the AMSA couldn’t therefore be applied to non-terrorist actions like the Stansted 15’s. However, this argument was rejected in the original trial by the judge, Christopher Morgan.</p>
<p>Quashing the convictions, the Court of Appeal accepted the appellants’ case that this charge should never have been brought in a case of non-violent direct action. There was, in the words of the court, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-55859455">“no case to answer”</a>.</p>
<h2>What the victory means for protesting</h2>
<p>This is an important outcome not just for protest rights (and for common sense), but for democratic and legal process. Misuse of legislation by the Crown could infringe the right to protest and deter others from protesting in future. But while it is important that AMSA is now unlikely ever to be brought again against non-violent activists, in reality, this is only a limited victory for protest rights; after all, AMSA had never been used against activists before.</p>
<p>More important is what the court’s ruling says about protest rights in general.</p>
<p>In the initial trial, while the prosecution argued that the defendants’ actions at Stansted were “political”, the defendants insisted they acted out of necessity, to prevent a greater harm. This is a relatively common defence from activists prosecuted for direct action, such as climate disobedience.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman holding protest sign that says " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382994/original/file-20210208-23-1suile9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382994/original/file-20210208-23-1suile9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382994/original/file-20210208-23-1suile9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382994/original/file-20210208-23-1suile9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382994/original/file-20210208-23-1suile9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382994/original/file-20210208-23-1suile9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382994/original/file-20210208-23-1suile9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters gathered outside Chelmsford Crown Court after the Standstead 15 were convicted.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/the-sentencing-of-15-protesters-who-blocked-a-deportation-flight-and-disrupted-operations-at-stansted-airport-on-28-march-2017-has-taken-place-at-chelmsford-crown-court-and-they-have-avoided-jail-sentences-protesters-had-gathered-outside-the-court-demonstrating-against-their-convictions-image235152975.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=04E4CD42-7188-4F45-8695-56B86E99321A&p=176215&n=0&orientation=0&pn=1&searchtype=0&IsFromSearch=1&srch=foo%3dbar%26st%3d0%26pn%3d1%26ps%3d100%26sortby%3d2%26resultview%3dsortbyPopular%26npgs%3d0%26qt%3dSTANSTED%252015%26qt_raw%3dSTANSTED%252015%26lic%3d3%26mr%3d0%26pr%3d0%26ot%3d0%26creative%3d%26ag%3d0%26hc%3d0%26pc%3d%26blackwhite%3d%26cutout%3d%26tbar%3d1%26et%3d0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3d0%26loc%3d0%26imgt%3d0%26dtfr%3d%26dtto%3d%26size%3d0xFF%26archive%3d1%26groupid%3d%26pseudoid%3d%26a%3d%26cdid%3d%26cdsrt%3d%26name%3d%26qn%3d%26apalib%3d%26apalic%3d%26lightbox%3d%26gname%3d%26gtype%3d%26xstx%3d0%26simid%3d%26saveQry%3d%26editorial%3d%26nu%3d%26t%3d%26edoptin%3d%26customgeoip%3dGB%26cap%3d1%26cbstore%3d1%26vd%3d0%26lb%3d%26fi%3d2%26edrf%3d%26ispremium%3d1%26flip%3d0%26pl%3d">Avpics/Alamy Stock Photo</a></span>
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<p>Unlike in some climate change trials, however, the danger the defendants cited was direct, material, and identifiable: they had to stop the flight because they had information that three of the people scheduled to be on it faced imminent and serious harm after deportation. Judge Morgan ruled however that this necessity defence did not meet the standard to be put to the jury.</p>
<p>The Court of Appeal agreed, classing the defendants’ actions as primarily political. The Court stated that in the UK, the correct forum for complaints about deportations is immigration tribunals. As a consequence, there could be no justification for using direct action to prevent deportations.</p>
<p>Of the 60 people due to be deported on the flight in question, 11 are still in the UK and five have now established their right to remain. It’s hard to square this with the court’s insistence that the Home Office, and the “deport first, appeal later” hostile environment, is either functional or democratic.</p>
<p>The fact that the Court of Appeal supported the judge in ruling against a necessity defence is important for future trials of protesters. The Stansted 15’s action required commitment, know-how, and organisational networks; it is therefore inherently political. Some of the defendants also had <a href="https://novaramedia.com/2021/02/04/the-stansted-15-have-won-what-can-we-learn-from-their-four-year-legal-battle/">clear political motives</a>. But this does not mean it can’t also be an urgent humanitarian intervention carried out to save people from harm.</p>
<p>Rather than a victory, we expect this ruling will encourage the lower courts to consider direct action as something that is only driven by political motives, regardless of context. Defences, too, will find it even harder to persuade judges to put “the necessity defence” to juries. Perhaps the only avenue for a successful defence in protest trials now is for a perverse verdict, where a jury (or bench of magistrates) acquits despite the law.</p>
<h2>Political prosecution</h2>
<p>The Stansted prosecution was itself political. The attorney general must give consent for any prosecution under AMSA. In the original trial, the defence argued this consent had been wrongly given, and that prosecution was an abuse of process.</p>
<p>Implicitly, the Court of Appeal appears to agree. Yet this ground of appeal was summarily dismissed by Burnett in just one paragraph, rejecting all “basis for impugning the decision” of the AG. Despite the inappropriateness of the charge on multiple counts, there were no grounds to question the AG’s involvement. For the court, this was simply an honest mistake, of the kind that happens in all walks of life.</p>
<p>As we discuss in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0038038520954318">our article on the original Crown Court trial</a>, we tend to think too much about the outcomes of trials and not enough about the processes that defendants are subjected to. In this case, 15 defendants were put through a gruelling and exceptionally stressful process for an offence which is normally charged – and in this case, was initially charged – as aggravated trespass.</p>
<p>In cases like this, the AG’s consent is specifically required because it is designed to safeguard against the over-reach of the Crown, not enable it.</p>
<p>On both these counts, it is hard to see anything other than a closing of ranks in the Court of Appeal’s decision: a further restriction of protest defences (because they are inherently political), while giving a tacit endorsement of political involvement in charging.</p>
<p>It’s important to celebrate when clear miscarriages of justice are overturned. But the wider implications of this ruling are much less encouraging for the exercise of non-violent direct action. The home secretary is reportedly currently working on bringing new legislation to further curb protest rights; there will doubtless be more trials and more appeals like this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s important to celebrate when miscarriages of justice are overturned. But the wider implications of the ruling are far from encouraging.Graeme Hayes, Reader in Political Sociology, Aston UniversityBrian Doherty, Professor of Political Sociology, Keele UniversitySteven Cammiss, Senior lecturer, Birmingham Law School, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539642021-01-31T18:56:13Z2021-01-31T18:56:13ZNavalny returns to Russia and brings anti-Putin politics with him<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381508/original/file-20210131-20398-1jpgmes.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3473%2C2509&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters oppose riot police during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny on January 31, 2021 in Moscow, Russia. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-oppose-riot-police-during-a-rally-in-support-of-news-photo/1230895686?adppopup=true">Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and his team have stunned the Russian government again, forcing President Vladimir Putin and his allies to confront significant protest led by a foe they hoped to first sideline and, more recently, eliminate. </p>
<p>Navalny was nearly killed in August by the <a href="https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2020/12/14/fsb-team-of-chemical-weapon-experts-implicated-in-alexey-navalny-novichok-poisoning/">Novichok nerve agent</a> in what most experts believe was an <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-navalny-bellingcat-fsb-putin/31002377.html">assassination attempt by the Kremlin</a>. But he survived, after being <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/world/europe/russia-navalny-poison-hospital.html">airlifted from Russia to Germany</a>, where he spent five months recovering. </p>
<p>The Kremlin discouraged Navalny from returning to Russia by revoking his probation on previous charges and issuing an <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/alexei-navalnys-arrest-sparks-nationwide-protests-expert-analysis">arrest warrant</a>. </p>
<p>In response, Navalny <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-politics-navalny/russia-is-my-country-despite-risks-kremlin-critic-navalny-to-fly-home-idUSKBN29I0W3">said</a>, “Russia is my country, Moscow is my city, I miss them.” He flew back on Jan. 17 and was immediately detained.</p>
<p>Navalny didn’t go quietly: His call for protests against his detention brought Russians to the streets in late January, in the largest opposition events in a decade and the most geographically widespread actions since the late Soviet period. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381406/original/file-20210129-20349-ubfr1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Navalny at passport control in Moscow on his return, just before he was arrested." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381406/original/file-20210129-20349-ubfr1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381406/original/file-20210129-20349-ubfr1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381406/original/file-20210129-20349-ubfr1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381406/original/file-20210129-20349-ubfr1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381406/original/file-20210129-20349-ubfr1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381406/original/file-20210129-20349-ubfr1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381406/original/file-20210129-20349-ubfr1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexei Navalny is seen at the passport control point at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Jan. 17; he was then arrested by Russian police.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-opposition-leader-alexei-navalny-is-seen-at-the-news-photo/1230642274?adppopup=true">Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A controversial leader</h2>
<p>I write about Navalny’s opposition strategy in my book “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/elections-protest-and-authoritarian-regime-stability/51A474C37A1671C885CC5F90091EDBC0">Elections, Protest, and Authoritarian Regime Stability: Russia 2008-2020</a>,” which explores the nature of Navalny’s threat to the Kremlin.</p>
<p>Since 2011, Navalny has been often quoted saying that his goal is to live in a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/08/584369719/banned-from-election-putin-foe-navalny-pursues-politics-by-other-means">normal country</a> that is fair and can realize its economic potential. When he ran for Moscow mayor in 2013, his campaign slogan was “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/809e84ba-f84c-11e2-b4c4-00144feabdc0">Change Russia, Begin with Moscow</a>.”</p>
<p>Rivals in the opposition and in the regime dispute his motivations. During his early political career, Navalny espoused <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/is-aleksei-navalny-a-liberal-or-a-nationalist/278186/">ethnic nationalist beliefs</a>, and participated in the far right’s annual Russian March. He supported Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and used <a href="https://navalny.livejournal.com/274456.html">racial slurs</a> to call for the deportation of Georgians and illegal Central Asian migrants. This rhetoric generated <a href="https://imrussia.org/en/politics/183-who-is-mr-navalny?start=2">enduring distrust</a> among the democratic opposition. </p>
<p>Kremlin officials dismiss him as an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55799143">ambitious</a> <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/12/22/kremlin-calls-navalny-megalomaniac-with-persecution-complex-a72446">megalomaniac</a>, implying that he wants power and wealth. These claims limited his personal support.</p>
<h2>Anti-corruption campaign</h2>
<p>Navalny began as a lawyer, challenging the large Russian energy companies by buying stock and thus gaining the right to attend shareholders’ meetings. He used his access to <a href="http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1970475,00.html">confront corporate leadership</a>, demanding transparent corporate governance.</p>
<p>He established the Anti-Corruption Foundation, or FBK, to collect citizens’ reports of corrupt government practices. The project engaged Russians in everyday politics, a core element of the Navalny strategy. But it is now <a href="https://meduza.io/en/news/2019/10/09/russia-s-justice-ministry-blacklists-alexey-navalny-s-anti-corruption-foundation-as-a-foreign-agent">branded a “foreign agent”</a> under Russian law, a move made by the government with no explanation. The designation subjects an organization to disruptive government oversight. </p>
<p>Navalny amplified his anti-corruption fight during Russia’s 2011 parliamentary election, when he labeled Putin’s political party, United Russia, the “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/putins-big-mistake">Party of Crooks and Thieves</a>.” Navalny was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16324644">at the fore</a> as these efforts contributed to mass protest sparked by evidence of significant electoral fraud.</p>
<p>He used his platform to build a <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2983994">team of committed activists</a> who extended his reach across the country. Drawing on the resources of past protests, the team crafted an opposition strategy to confront the regime at every step of the election process, from candidate registration to vote tabulation. </p>
<p>His canny combination of <a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/how-alexei-navalny-exposed-russian-corruption">investigative journalism</a> and social media provided new evidence of government corruption. In 2017, Navalny released an exposé, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g">“Don’t Call Him Dimon,”</a> lampooning the deep corruption of former President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev by showing his vast sneaker collection and an elaborate duck pond at his estate. Both ducks and sneakers became opposition symbols.</p>
<p>In response, tens of thousands of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/world/europe/in-protests-kremlin-fears-a-young-generation-stirring.html">young people took to the streets</a> in 2017, shocking a country that believed Putin’s opposition had waned. Months later, those young people flocked to join Navalny’s presidential campaign.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354133/original/file-20200821-22-1v9x3hu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large rubber duck floating above a political opposition rally." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354133/original/file-20200821-22-1v9x3hu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354133/original/file-20200821-22-1v9x3hu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354133/original/file-20200821-22-1v9x3hu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354133/original/file-20200821-22-1v9x3hu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354133/original/file-20200821-22-1v9x3hu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354133/original/file-20200821-22-1v9x3hu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354133/original/file-20200821-22-1v9x3hu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Navalny’s foundation made ducks a symbol of Russian political corruption. One floated at an opposition rally in June 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-plays-with-a-figure-of-a-yellow-duck-which-is-news-photo/695281516?adppopup=true">Sergey Mihailicenko/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since 2011, Navalny has played a long game, challenging the regime through protest and elections and influencing the political agenda. That strategy is gaining traction among ordinary Russians.</p>
<h2>Navalny’s return strategy</h2>
<p>Social media was key to Navalny’s plans for his return to Russia.</p>
<p>Before he left Germany, Navalny <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibqiet6Bg38">released an interview with a Russian security service officer</a> who allegedly participated in the Novichok attack against him. The officer <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/europe/russia-navalny-poisoning-underpants-ward/index.html">confessed the details of the assassination plot, revealing</a> that the poison was delivered in Navalny’s boxer shorts. A new <a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/toilet-brushes-and-blue-pants-symbols-of-russia-s-protests-01611579311?tesla=y">protest symbol</a> emerged: blue boxers. </p>
<p>Navalny then headed home. As supporters gathered at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, the Kremlin <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/alexei-navalny-plane-account/2021/01/18/6ca3d366-597e-11eb-a849-6f9423a75ffd_story.html">diverted his plane to a different Moscow airport, Sheremyetovo</a>, to avoid media coverage. Yet reporters from international and Russian alternative media outlets on the plane recorded his trip. They live-streamed Navalny and his wife Yulia <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D18D4xJPwx0">embracing</a> before police led him away. </p>
<p>Yulia <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/18/yulia-navalnaya-kremlin-critics-wife-in-the-spotlight-a72648">addressed supporters outside the airport</a>: “Alexei is not afraid. I’m not afraid either, and I call on you all not to be afraid.” The message echoed across social media.</p>
<p>As he was transferred to prison, Navalny <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-navalny-putin-call-for-protests-taking-sides-population/31051330.html">called Russians to the streets</a> to demand his release. His team called for actions across Russia on Jan. 23.</p>
<p>In a video posted to <a href="https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1351206752281387010?lang=en">Twitter</a>, Navalny spoke from a makeshift courtroom. He counseled supporters, “There is only one thing to be afraid of, that’s your own fear.” <a href="https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/01/22/nobody-s-afraid-anymore">TikTok was overrun</a> with videos of young people expressing support.</p>
<p>Three days before the protests, Navalny dropped a new exposé that violated the <a href="https://www.bloombergquint.com/opinion/russia-s-guerilla-media-are-beating-up-on-putin">unwritten code in Russian media against revealing details of Putin’s</a> <a href="https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/01/19/putin-s-palace">personal life</a>. The film focused on a US$1.35 billion Black Sea compound that <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/21/a-glimpse-at-putins-palace-10-years-ago-a72677">allegedly belongs to Putin</a>, linking Kremlin theft to its failure to improve everyday lives. Navalny ended the video urging Russians to vote, using his Smart Vote app. </p>
<p>Putin’s childhood friend, oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, claimed <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/30/russian-billionaire-arkady-says-he-owns-putin-palace-a72783">ownership</a> of what he called the apartment-hotel project.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI">“Putin’s Palace”</a> has been viewed over 100 million times. The “Palace” rooms became fodder for <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/25/inside-akvadiskoteka-the-viral-russian-protest-anthem-inspired-by-putins-palace-a72718">internet memes</a> and protest icons.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ipAnwilMncI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A video made and narrated by Navalny exposes the extravagant palace constructed for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Renewed protest</h2>
<p>The return, the video and the protests combined to defy the Kremlin’s version of reality: that Navalny was an unimportant tool of the West. </p>
<p>Instead, what happened next illustrated Navalny’s influence, despite <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/22/a-step-into-the-unknown-russians-relationship-with-jailed-navalny-is-complicated-a72691">limited personal support</a>. The <a href="https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/01/25/january-23rd-in-photos">resulting protests</a> began on Jan. 23 in Russia’s Far East and cascaded west through 11 time zones.</p>
<p>Navalny’s mobilization strategy reflects his deep understanding of changes in Russian society. New research shows that the <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/mobile-internet-government-confidence-and-populism">extension of 3G internet across the globe decreases trust in government</a> and increases perceptions of corruption by giving users free access to information. In Russia, the expansion of internet coverage <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/20/world/europe/russia-internet-norilsk-youtube-arctic.html">fueled activism</a>, even in remote areas. </p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p>
<p>Navalny has also tapped into <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2020.102004">generational change</a> that divides young people – who rely on new media for information – from their elders, who remain loyal to state television. </p>
<p>The crowd on Jan. 23 reflected this. <a href="https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/here_and_now/sotsiologija-523176/">A survey</a> revealed that protesters’ median age was 31. Women participated equally with men. Over 42% of respondents were first-time protest participants.</p>
<p>Navalny’s team called for renewed protest on Jan. 31, provoking a nationwide government intimidation campaign. Police <a href="https://zona.media/chronicle/preparations">raided homes and detained</a> protest leaders, including Navalny’s brother. The Federal Investigative Committee posted humiliating <a href="https://zona.media/article/2021/01/30/apologize">apology videos</a> of protesters, who were facing serious charges from the previous week. </p>
<p>The government fined <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/27/russia-to-fine-social-media-giants-for-keeping-up-pro-navalny-videos-a72756">social media corporations</a> and arrested alternative journalists and new media users under <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-key-elections-analysis-putin-tightens-screws/31030348.html">expanded censorship laws</a>. </p>
<p>Despite these efforts, nationwide protest continued on Jan. 31 even while <a href="https://zona.media/online/2021/01/31/navalny-31-jan">police blocked city centers</a>. The actions met with <a href="https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4670536?from=main_1">mass arrests</a> and <a href="https://meduza.io/feature/2021/01/31/siloviki-zhestko-zaderzhivayut-protestuyuschih-po-vsey-rossii-byut-elektroshokerami-i-ugrozhayut-ognestrelnym-oruzhiem-vot-samye-pokazatelnye-video">unprecedented police violence</a>. </p>
<p>Russia’s top prosecutor warned that if the protests turned violent, participants would be charged with joining in a mass riot. This suggests a new round of <a href="https://bolotnoedelo.info/en/the-bolotnaya-square-case">demonstration trials</a> designed to discourage participation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381509/original/file-20210131-20349-tjov3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Riot police dragging a protester away in St. Petersburg, Russia." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381509/original/file-20210131-20349-tjov3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381509/original/file-20210131-20349-tjov3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381509/original/file-20210131-20349-tjov3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381509/original/file-20210131-20349-tjov3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381509/original/file-20210131-20349-tjov3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381509/original/file-20210131-20349-tjov3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381509/original/file-20210131-20349-tjov3t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Riot police officers detain a man during a rally in support of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Jan. 31.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/riot-police-officers-detain-a-man-during-a-rally-in-support-news-photo/1230896874?adppopup=true">Anatolij Medved/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the Kremlin’s repressive response <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/26/by-trying-silence-protesters-vladimir-putin-is-falling-into-repression-trap/">risks backlash</a> at the polls and on the streets, Navalny is proving to be an unexpectedly persistent challenge to Putinism. Having survived the assassination attempt, his return to Russia reignited the opposition.</p>
<p><em>This story incorporates material <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-alexei-navalny-revolutionized-opposition-politics-in-russia-before-his-apparent-poisoning-144830">from a previous article</a>, published Aug. 21, 2020.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153964/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Regina Smyth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Poisoning Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny didn’t get rid of him. He survived the attack, and now the Kremlin must deal with a reinvigorated reform movement led by Navalny.Regina Smyth, Professor of Political Science, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1306562020-01-29T13:29:14Z2020-01-29T13:29:14ZClimate action shouldn’t mean choosing between personal and political responsibility<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312490/original/file-20200129-92954-15mnp76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Montreal climate march, September 27 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/montreal-quebec-canada-september-27-2019-1516078307">Maria Merlos/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Can your individual behaviour make a real <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-yes-your-individual-action-does-make-a-difference-115169">difference to the environment</a>? And should you be expected to voluntarily change your life in the face of our worsening <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-pandemics-biodiversity-loss-no-country-is-sufficiently-prepared-123466">environmental crises</a>? Some argue this <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-focusing-on-how-individuals-can-help-is-very-convenient-for-corporations-108546">emphasis on personal responsibility</a> is a distraction from the real culprits: companies and governments.</p>
<p>We often treat the decisions to find alternative ways of living more sustainably and to pursue political resistance against big polluters and inactive governments as separate. But our recent research found that the relationship between alternatives and resistance is really far more complex. One can often lead to the other.</p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716212454831">Previous studies</a> have shown that taking individual responsibility for the environment or developing green alternatives often go <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/ap.2015.27">hand in hand</a> with political action. Our research suggests that this relationship can form over time, and that when people change their lifestyles for environmental reasons this can galvanise their political action more generally. But we also found that this doesn’t always happen and that bringing the two together can be difficult.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/EE37A2794AA982B44474C73D735BB3F4/S1755773919000377a.pdf/gateway_or_getaway_testing_the_link_between_lifestyle_politics_and_other_modes_of_political_participation.pdf">first study</a>, carried out with Soetkin Verhaegen of UCLouvain in Belgium, looked at the environmental actions of a group of over 1,500 politically interested Belgians between 2017 and 2018. We found that citizens who took individual actions such as buying ethical products, changing how they travelled or producing their own food or energy, became more politically active over time. This included interacting with political institutions (for example, contacting elected politicians) and other actions such as taking part in protests.</p>
<p>Our research suggests that taking individual responsibility for the environment increases your concern for it, which in turn motivates you to participate in other forms of action. While the effect was quite small, this seems to be good news for environmental movements. It shows that when people (at least the politically interested ones) can be motivated to adopt modest lifestyle changes, they can, in turn, become politically active in more a general sense.</p>
<p>Yet on a practical level, trying to encourage both individual alternatives and political resistance isn’t easy, as we found in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14742837.2019.1708311?fbclid=IwAR23PNebw_YtnZReA2cY11JRUexuaCSKAe_U-l_vFQ0cMH9UNlDTl2r8eIk">our study</a> of two organisations promoting local food and energy systems in Manchester in the UK. As well as having limited time, the organisations found political activism sometimes conflicted with their aim of promoting alternative lifestyle projects to the broadest possible audience. As one interviewee put it: “If we’re trying to influence the uptake of solutions, then being seen as the opposition … isn’t particularly productive.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312500/original/file-20200129-92987-sx3fnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312500/original/file-20200129-92987-sx3fnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312500/original/file-20200129-92987-sx3fnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312500/original/file-20200129-92987-sx3fnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312500/original/file-20200129-92987-sx3fnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312500/original/file-20200129-92987-sx3fnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312500/original/file-20200129-92987-sx3fnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The personal can become political.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ottawa-canada-sep-17-unidentified-occupy-113097916">Paul McKinnon/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>However, we’ve also seen how bringing alternatives and resistance together can be done, and that its success can depend on location. In a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-2427.12860?fbclid=IwAR3mAVlZZh2vhS3BdVnnegePLqy39oHJAvPZAqjQJXIP74VEeoZAY4la65o">series of in-depth interviews</a> with environmental organisers in Bristol, we found the activists strongly benefited from their city’s compact size and layout (when compared to Manchester). Being more likely to bump into people from other activist groups means that, according to one interviewee, “your socialising is political”.</p>
<p>The result was that activists in Bristol were better at maintaining relationships between different groups and at keeping the social side of activism going than in Manchester. This enabled a crossover of participants between the alternatives and resistance sides of the movement.</p>
<p>Some started growing their own food and ended up defending their allotments against urban developments. Others who were initially protesting against supermarkets ended up in a food-growing scheme.</p>
<p>Pursuing alternatives also helped sustain the resistance activities. This was both because the alternatives often involved a more positive experience and because they made it easier to point to viable solutions during environmental protests.</p>
<h2>Increasing involvement</h2>
<p>So from a campaigner’s point of view, there’s little evidence that promoting alternative lifestyle choices and political resistance are mutually exclusive. In fact, in many cases the two feed into each other in positive ways, especially in the form of spillover from participation in one form of action to another.</p>
<p>The effect we found was quite small and spillover will certainly not happen automatically. But that suggests there’s an important role for organisers to stimulate it further. Different organisations are needed to provide both personal and political activities and encourage more (and more diverse) people to get involved.</p>
<p>For most ordinary people concerned, the debate over the effectiveness of taking individual responsibility for the environment is likely to continue. Our research at least suggests that people motivating each other to take personal action doesn’t undermine a broader environmental project. But it’s still important for people to discuss what other action is needed, and to look for or even organise ways to put pressure on powerful actors to take their responsibility.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263883/original/file-20190314-28475-1mzxjur.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/imagine-newsletter-researchers-think-of-a-world-with-climate-action-113443?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Imagineheader1130656">Click here to subscribe to our climate action newsletter. Climate change is inevitable. Our response to it isn’t.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joost Demoor receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Doherty receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Catney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research shows changing your lifestyle for environmental reasons can lead you into political action.Joost de Moor, Post-doctoral Researcher, Department of Political Science, Stockholm UniversityBrian Doherty, Professor of Political Sociology, Keele UniversityPhilip Catney, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1296942020-01-16T23:12:38Z2020-01-16T23:12:38ZThe Olympics have always been a platform for protest. Banning hand gestures and kneeling ignores their history<p>It is the year of the Tokyo Olympics, and the International Olympic Committee was quickly out of the blocks with <a href="https://www.olympic.org/-/media/document%20library/olympicorg/news/2020/01/rule-50-guidelines-tokyo-2020.pdf">new guidelines</a> regarding athlete protests. </p>
<p>The IOC is worried the biggest stories of the Games will be political gestures rather than sport performances, and so have introduced specific guidelines to prevent “any political messaging, including signs or armbands” and “gestures of a political nature, like a hand gesture or kneeling” during play, opening and closing ceremonies, medal ceremonies, and at the Olympic village. </p>
<p>The IOC has historically shown greater anxiety around the commercial arrangements of athletes, protecting its sponsors. But the rise of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/sport-sochi-and-the-rising-challenge-of-the-activist-athlete-22491">activist athlete</a> now looms as the more immediate threat to the IOC’s image and bank account. </p>
<p>Most Olympians are not household names. But they can become so by taking advantage of the rare moments when the world’s cameras and microphones are within easy reach. No wonder the IOC’s (mostly) elected Athletes’ Commission is keen to ensure athletes do not give in to the “desire to drive change” and “use the platform of an appearance at the Olympic Games to make [their] point”.</p>
<p>The problem for the IOC is that submitting to this temptation is burnt into Olympic iconography. </p>
<p>The Olympic movement has always claimed to be a unifying force – but bringing the athletes of the world together inevitably means they bring along their politics, too.</p>
<h2>1906: Irish independence</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310126/original/file-20200115-151825-1ax2ow7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310126/original/file-20200115-151825-1ax2ow7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310126/original/file-20200115-151825-1ax2ow7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310126/original/file-20200115-151825-1ax2ow7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310126/original/file-20200115-151825-1ax2ow7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310126/original/file-20200115-151825-1ax2ow7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310126/original/file-20200115-151825-1ax2ow7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Peter O'Connor competing at the 1906 Olympic games.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Irish National Archive</span></span>
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<p>One of the first documented protests at the modern Olympics was Irish athlete <a href="https://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2012/0804/ireland/oaposconnor-waves-flag-of-justice-at-games-203055.html">Peter O’Connor’s rejection</a> of having to compete under the Union Jack in Athens. After winning the silver medal in the long jump, O'Connor was expected to stand under the British flag at the medal ceremony. </p>
<p>Instead, O'Connor climbed the flag pole and waved the Irish flag.</p>
<h2>1964–1988: The ban on apartheid-era South Africa</h2>
<p>In the face of multiple threatened boycotts by nations and athletes opposed to South Africa’s refusal to allow black athletes to compete at the Olympics, the country was <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203044476">banished from Olympic sport</a> for over two decades. </p>
<p>It is widely believed that such sporting bans helped weaken apartheid before its official abandonment in 1991.</p>
<h2>1968: Black power</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310129/original/file-20200115-151887-1l7y3t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310129/original/file-20200115-151887-1l7y3t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310129/original/file-20200115-151887-1l7y3t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310129/original/file-20200115-151887-1l7y3t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310129/original/file-20200115-151887-1l7y3t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310129/original/file-20200115-151887-1l7y3t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310129/original/file-20200115-151887-1l7y3t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Raised fists for black power on the podium after the 200m race.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
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<p>One of most famous Olympic images is of the raised arm, <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/48tcw2qp9780252041075.html">black power demonstration</a> on the podium at the Mexico Olympics by African-American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. </p>
<p>They were silently supported by Australian runner Peter Norman, who was wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge. </p>
<p>Smith and Carlos were sent home and Norman was ostracised by International and Australian Olympic authorities. He received a <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-will-stand-with-you-finally-an-apology-to-peter-norman-10107">posthumous apology</a> in the federal parliament.</p>
<h2>1980 and 1984: Cold War boycotts</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310132/original/file-20200115-151880-1orrfbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310132/original/file-20200115-151880-1orrfbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310132/original/file-20200115-151880-1orrfbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310132/original/file-20200115-151880-1orrfbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310132/original/file-20200115-151880-1orrfbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310132/original/file-20200115-151880-1orrfbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310132/original/file-20200115-151880-1orrfbg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The cover of American magazine Newsweek in January, 1980.</span>
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<p>Seven Olympics have been boycotted, but the most prominent were the tit-for-tat boycotts of the <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137330611">Moscow and Los Angeles</a> games by Eastern and Western blocs after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. </p>
<p>Ironically, these boycotts were driven by nation-states, not protest groups.</p>
<h2>2008: pro-Tibet demonstrations</h2>
<p>The lead up to the Beijing Olympics was marked by protests against China’s treatment of Tibet as the Olympic <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-torch-disruptions/timeline-olympic-torch-protests-around-the-world-idUSSP17070920080428">torch relay</a> proceeded across continents towards the host city. This was a public relations disaster at a time when China was trying to present a more liberal face to the world. </p>
<h2>2014: LGBTQI colours</h2>
<p>When Vladimir Putin’s Russia was trying to improve its image via the Sochi Winter Olympics, it only drew attention to its homophobic laws and treatment of LGBTQI people. Suddenly, rainbow colours <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2014/2/7/5389570/cheryl-maas-rainbow-glove-lgbt-sochi-olympics-snowboarding">began appearing</a> on the bodies and clothes of Olympians.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sport-sochi-and-the-rising-challenge-of-the-activist-athlete-22491">Sport, Sochi and the rising challenge of the activist athlete</a>
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<h2>2018: North Korea</h2>
<p>IOC President Thomas Bach, a strong critic of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/10/ioc-lay-down-law-over-olympic-protests-by-athletes-in-tokyo">athlete protests at Olympic venues</a>, was more than happy to play a very political game over <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/olympics-anoc-bach/olympics-bach-says-ioc-committed-to-aiding-korean-peace-efforts-idUSL8N1Y40CI">North Korean involvement</a> in the PyeonChang (South Korea) Winter Olympics, meeting Leader Kim Jong Un and lobbying the UN to lift sanctions against sports equipment in North Korea.</p>
<h2>2020: Towards Tokyo</h2>
<p>The Athletes’ Commission has expressed concern other athletes will be the main victims of those who protest alongside them.</p>
<p>Despite the threat of disciplinary action for protesting at the venue – including being stripped of a medal – some committed activist athletes may be willing to pay the price for taking the knee, painting their finger nails in politically meaningful colours or, like Australian swimmer Mack Horton last July, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-26/mack-horton-sun-yang-protest-shows-anti-doping-frustration/11347100?pfmredir=sm">refusing to share the podium</a> with a competitor who has been previously banned for doping.</p>
<p>According to the guidelines, expressing political views – which are differentiated from “protests and demonstrations” – can only take place at media conferences, team meetings and on traditional and social media. Freedom of political speech is still permitted, but not where it is closest to the action and attracting maximum attention. </p>
<p>At the Tokyo Olympics, climate change, racism, homophobia, refugees and other urgent political issues will weigh heavily on the consciences of athletes. </p>
<p>Their decisions to accept or invert political protocol will have a major bearing on how this latest chapter of the Olympic story will be told around the globe. </p>
<p>Will this be the silent athlete Olympics, or one where human rights voices are raised on the podium?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From Peter O'Connor waving the Irish flag in 1906 to rainbow colours at Sochi, athletes have always used the Olympics to share their politics.David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1216702019-08-13T14:58:59Z2019-08-13T14:58:59ZRussian protests highlight how authorities crackdown on activists – by targeting their families<p>When <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/06/couple-face-losing-son-after-bringing-him-to-unsanctioned-rally">Dmitri Prokazov and his wife Olga Prokazov</a> recently found themselves caught up in an <a href="https://time.com/5639451/what-the-protests-in-russia-mean-for-president-putin/">unsanctioned demonstration</a> in Moscow, while out with their one-year-old son, they didn’t expect it to end with prosecutors threatening to strip them of their parental rights.</p>
<p>But this is exactly what has happened – a district court in the city pressed for the <a href="https://www.mosproc.ru/news/moscow/prokuratura_moskvy_provodit_proverki_po_faktam_uchastiya_lits_s_maloletnimi_detmi_i_nesovershennolet/">child to be taken into care</a>, on the grounds that at one point during the protest their son was handed over to a third person (a close friend) – which supposedly put the child’s life in danger. Investigations have also been carried out against other people who took part in the <a href="https://www.mosproc.ru/news/moscow/prokuratura_moskvy_provodit_proverki_po_faktam_uchastiya_lits_s_maloletnimi_detmi_i_nesovershennolet/">protests with young children</a>.</p>
<p>The July 27 demonstration was one of a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49125045">series of protests</a> that have been held in the city recently after authorities disqualified a number of opposition candidates from standing in local elections. Thousands were detained at the protests which authorities consider unauthorised and illegal.</p>
<p>Investigators have now <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-protest-row-parents-dmitri-and-olga-prokazov-live-in-fear-of-losing-baby-son-vgqh2tpv3?ni-statuscode=acsaz-307">dropped criminal charges</a> against Dmitri and Olga Prokazov after public outcry. But the couple say they continue to <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-protest-row-parents-dmitri-and-olga-prokazov-live-in-fear-of-losing-baby-son-vgqh2tpv3?ni-statuscode=acsaz-307">live in fear</a> that child protection services could come and take their son away at any moment.</p>
<p>For demonstrators, the implication is clear: opponents of the regime who have young children should think twice before getting involved in any protest – and there is a tradition here.</p>
<h2>Intimidation and control</h2>
<p>“Hostage-taking” is not a new tactic for the Russian state. Indeed, the targeting of the families and networks of “enemies” goes back at least to the Russian Civil War. In the summer of 1918, for example, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/pdf/lenin-cw-vol-44.pdf">Vladimir Lenin ordered that 25-30 hostages</a> be detained in every grain-producing region, with the idea that they would be answerable with their lives for failing to meet grain procurement targets. </p>
<p>During the Russian Civil War, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/650938">Leon Trotsky also insisted on the imprisonment</a> of the families of former tsarist officers serving in the Red Army to ensure their loyalty. While the Cheka (later the KGB) used hostage-taking ruthlessly during the <a href="https://time.com/5386789/red-terror-soviet-history/">Red Terror</a> – a period of political repression and mass killings, that began in 1918. This was terror as a form of propaganda, with the justification that the regime was in a struggle for survival.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dispatches-from-red-square-reporting-russias-revolutions-then-and-now-63370">Dispatches from Red Square: reporting Russia's revolutions then and now</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/timelines/z8nbcdm">Joseph Stalin also deployed similar methods</a>. In the 1930s the family of any “enemy” became a legitimate target. A decree of June 1935 established that spouses and children of people who fled abroad were liable to five-year terms of exile – whether or not they knew anything about it. </p>
<p>A couple of years later, in the <a href="https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/nkvd-mass-secret-operation-n-00447-august-1937-november-1938">infamous Order 00447 of July 1937</a> – which set out numbers for people to be killed or incarcerated – one of the targeted groups was families whose members were “capable of anti-Soviet actions”. The phrasing was conveniently elastic. In the <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/russia-1900-to-1939/the-show-trials-in-the-ussr/">show trials of the late 1930s</a>, pressure was put on defendants to toe the line in exchange for lenient treatment of their relatives. </p>
<h2>Heavy-handed tactics</h2>
<p>Stalin’s death in 1953 <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-stalins-great-terror-can-tell-us-about-russia-today-56842">led to a decline in terror</a>, but authoritarian practices did not disappear. The KGB under <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yury-Andropov">Yuri Andropov</a> – a figure much admired by Vladimir Putin – was adept at devising subtle forms of coercion, sometimes termed “prophylactic methods”. </p>
<p>Applying pressure on people through their families and friends continued to be a trusted method of intimidation. The editors of the human rights journal, <a href="https://chronicle-of-current-events.com/">Chronicle of Current Events</a>, founded in 1968, were once told that whenever any edition of the magazine appeared, <a href="http://www.interpretermag.com/soviet-era-dissident-chronicle-of-current-events-resumes-publication-on-the-internet/">there would be arrests</a> of people not directly involved. And that they could improve the conditions of political prisoners if they moderated their activities. </p>
<p>The intention in this was to load onto dissidents a sense of guilt for actions that the regime was itself responsible for. The physicist and dissident, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/12/28/archives/soviet-dissident-arrested-in-inquiry-on-secret-journal-special-to.html">Sergei Kovalev</a> – who was for a time chairman of the President’s Human Rights Commission in the 1990s – once observed that hostage-taking was the “foundation” of the Soviet system. But he insisted that responsibility for repressions lay “not with us, but with the regime”. His colleague, <a href="http://www.rightsinrussia.info/archive/voices-from-the-past/9">Tatiana Velikanova</a> – who helped produce the Chronicle of Current Events – fiercely rejected all forms of hostage-taking, declaring herself determined not to engage in what she called “these compromises and collusions”. </p>
<p>Hostage-taking also had pre-revolutionary roots, in the practice of what in Russian is called krugovaia poruka. This phrase, which translates as “circular guarantee”, means something like “collective responsibility”. If for example someone failed to pay their taxes, other families were required to step in. This encouraged local institutions to take a strict line against dissent to guard against the possibility of everyone’s lives suffering for the behaviour of one person. </p>
<h2>A powerful message?</h2>
<p>But of course, hostage-taking is <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-patriotism-and-paranoia-will-be-russias-undoing-34683">not a technique exclusive to Russia</a>. Many countries have used it either in a military or a psychological sense. Indeed, if <a href="https://theconversation.com/zero-civilian-casualties-why-the-face-of-western-war-gives-us-a-false-idea-of-conflict-93090">threats to civilians in war</a> are counted as a kind of “hostage-taking”, then it would be difficult to find any powerful country that has not deployed these means at some point.</p>
<p>But such methods <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=russia+democracy&sort=relevancy&language=en&date=all&date_from=&date_to=">will not create an enduring stability</a>. Indeed, the tactics of hostage-taking can only have unhappy consequences for a country – as a climate of fear stifles creativity and destroys the possibility of <a href="https://theconversation.com/little-prospect-of-regime-change-in-russia-short-of-a-popular-uprising-and-thats-unlikely-82465">healthy national development</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Boobbyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Targeting the families of protestors is highly effective as a means of control.Philip Boobbyer, Reader in History, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1183122019-06-06T11:41:37Z2019-06-06T11:41:37ZA urinal in a Scottish pub reveals why toilets matter in international politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278297/original/file-20190606-97989-uhiu1t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Lismore is named after a Scottish island where the inhabitants were forcibly evicted during the Highland Clearances.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you wanted to see international politics in action, where would you go? Maybe the UN headquarters in New York to see diplomats debating resolutions of global import? Or drop in on one of the world’s many financial hubs, where trading shapes international markets and determines the success or failure of nations. But you probably wouldn’t visit a toilet in a Glasgow pub, would you? </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0305829819840422">research</a> analyses the political significance of the urinal in the Lismore – a traditional Scottish pub in the Partick area of Glasgow – and argues that mundane spaces like this are important for understanding contemporary international politics. </p>
<p>In January 2018, a Canadian visitor to The Lismore tweeted a picture of a plaque that sits above the urinal in the male toilet, adding in colourful language that the Scots don’t mess around when it comes to calling things out. The tweet went viral, and was featured in local and national press.</p>
<p>“Brutal reason this pub really wants you to make use of their urinals”, read one <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/brutal-reason-scottish-pub-bosses-11962343">headline</a>.</p>
<p>That reason is the Lismore’s urinal is dedicated to three perpetrators of the <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/The-Highland-Clearances/">Highland Clearances</a> – the brutal sweeping of crofters from the land to make way for sheep farming in the 18th and 19th centuries – a series of events often claimed to be Britain’s first act of ethnic cleansing.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"958771363732512769"}"></div></p>
<h2>Pissing on the past</h2>
<p>In the Lismore, male patrons are invited to “pay their respects” to those responsible for the Highland Clearances by urinating beneath plaques featuring the names of three agents – George Granville (the infamous <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle-2-15039/is-this-scotland-s-most-controversial-statue-1-4544586">Duke of Sutherland</a>), Patrick Sellar and Colonel Fell – all key figures in the forced eviction of Highlanders from 1750 to the mid-1800s.</p>
<p>Here, urination is a political <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1451844">“bodily statement”</a> where the urinator expresses their power over others. The Lismore’s urinal is a site where people can engage in a form of everyday resistance to British imperialism by pissing, literally, on the past. </p>
<p>The urinal informs and educates male visitors about the Highland Clearances, and depicts the perpetrators as “cruel”, “cold-hearted” “ruthless” evil-doers who acted “callously” and “brutally” in order to “decimate” Highland communities and the “indigenous population” of Scotland. Explaining the Highland Clearances in this way and inviting visitors to piss on the memories of these men, serves to give meaning to the Clearances, Scotland’s history and contemporary Scottish identity.</p>
<p>Peeing on the plaque allows visitors to participate in a form of resistance that celebrates Scottish identity while standing against the imperialism and oppression of historic British figures. As the manager of the Lismore told us, many patrons and tourists come specially to see the urinal, finding it humorous and enjoying the idea of “pissing on these evil men”. </p>
<p>Sometimes the urinal provokes anger. It has been daubed with graffiti – “whinging Scottish” – and an Englishman who’d had a few too many threatened to smash it. Whether celebrated or derided, the Lismore’s urinal highlights how everyday spaces and experiences shape people’s understanding of international politics.</p>
<h2>The politicising of toilets</h2>
<p>In 2016, a Dublin pub <a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/craic/dublin-pub-takes-aim-as-urinal-is-decorated-with-donald-trumps-face">decorated a urinal</a> with an image of Donald Trump, and so too have pubs in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-37422388">Nottingham</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/@regroce/here-s-one-poll-you-ll-be-glad-to-know-donald-trump-is-winning-images-f756cb3add28">London</a>. Urinal disinfectant <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/78050/what-are-urinal-cakes-anyway">cakes</a> featuring Trump’s face are also now available for anyone who is “sick of seeing women, African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, LGBTQ people, the free press, reality, ethics, and the rest of the world shit on by Donald Trump”. According to the company that makes them, it’s now possible to “stand up and piss for what’s right” and “make urinals great again”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278308/original/file-20190606-98033-17lb39t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278308/original/file-20190606-98033-17lb39t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278308/original/file-20190606-98033-17lb39t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278308/original/file-20190606-98033-17lb39t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278308/original/file-20190606-98033-17lb39t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278308/original/file-20190606-98033-17lb39t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278308/original/file-20190606-98033-17lb39t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The urinals at the Three Stags pub in London’s Kennington in the run up to the 2016 US election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">@thethreestags</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the act of urinating on an effigy of Donald Trump or the perpetrators of the Highland Clearances may be humorous, it is bound up with power, resistance and political identity. Other recent events also highlight how international politics plays out in the mundane, everyday space of toilets and bathrooms.</p>
<p>In 2016, the state of North Carolina made it <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/06/25/north-carolina-bathroom-bill-transgender/729791002/">illegal</a> for people to use any toilet other than those assigned for use by the sex they were assigned at birth. Although since repealed, other conservative states across the US are attempting to introduce “bathroom bills” that discriminate against transgender and intersex people.</p>
<p>The Scottish government’s ongoing <a href="https://www.gov.scot/publications/review-gender-recognition-act-2004-analysis-responses-public-consultation-exercise-report/">review</a> of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/reform-of-the-gender-recognition-act-2004">Gender Recognition Act</a> has also brought bathroom politics to the fore. Some politicians and pundits have suggested that allowing transwomen to use women’s toilets threatens the safety of women. But <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/5/13/17938102/transgender-people-bathrooms-locker-rooms-schools">research</a> shows that places with trans-inclusive bathrooms have no recorded instances of harassment or assault from transgender people.</p>
<p>Scottish groups which protect women’s rights – such as Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland – <a href="https://www2.gov.scot/Resource/0053/00539300.pdf">advocate</a> for trans-inclusive policies and access to services (and bathrooms) because their experience and evidence shows that trans rights do not contradict or pose a threat to women’s rights.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278153/original/file-20190605-40738-1efmjz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278153/original/file-20190605-40738-1efmjz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278153/original/file-20190605-40738-1efmjz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278153/original/file-20190605-40738-1efmjz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278153/original/file-20190605-40738-1efmjz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278153/original/file-20190605-40738-1efmjz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278153/original/file-20190605-40738-1efmjz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gender-neutral toilet sign at the Kvindemuseet (Women’s Museum), Aarhus, Denmark.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert A Saunders</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Lismore urinal, the Donald Trump urinal cakes and the discrimination that transgender people can face when visiting the bathroom demonstrate that international politics take place through <a href="http://www.broadagenda.com.au/home/patriarchy-is-bigger-than-donald-trump-plenary-by-cynthia-enloe/">“mundane practices… [and in] the most intimate spaces”</a>.</p>
<p>As the feminist <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2017/12/04/interview-cynthia-enloe-2/">Cynthia Enloe</a> reminds us, if we want to understand the world around us we need to be curious about these things, and we need to recognise that even bathrooms, toilets and urinals can, and do, have political significance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118312/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even aside from the gender-neutral issue, toilets have become highly politicised places, especially when it comes to protest.Rhys Crilley, Post-Doctoral Researcher, The Open UniversityRobert A Saunders, Professor of History, Politics and Geography, Farmingdale State CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1143292019-03-27T14:43:12Z2019-03-27T14:43:12ZPeople’s Vote march: when it comes to crowds, history shows it’s not all about size<p>The recent People’s Vote march demanding another say on Brexit in London has re-opened the debate about attendance figures which surfaces every time there is a mass protest. The argument hinges on a correlation between magnitude and success – protesters <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47678763">claim a million people marched</a> while others have sought to <a href="https://fullfact.org/europe/peoples-vote-march-count/">discredit such claims</a>. But my ongoing research into 19th-century crowds who demanded electoral and social reform suggests that attendance figures play a much smaller part in the impact of mass protest than the impression of the power they symbolise.</p>
<p>During a crisis over British political reform in 1831-32, a series of meetings were held at Newhall Hill, a disused sandstone quarry in Birmingham. At stake was a conversation about extending the right to vote and the entitlement of industrial cities to return MPs to Westminster. </p>
<p>Birmingham was part of the constituency of Warwickshire where just 400 men were entitled vote. An alliance between an empowered working class and an aspirational middle class came together to lobby for radical change. The Birmingham Political Union, led by politically astute banker Thomas Attwood spearheaded the Newhall Hill meetings – the first of which, <a href="http://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=AX%2f309%2fVol.10%2f64660&pos=4">held on October 3, 1831</a> to “Petition the Lords to Pass the Reform Bill”, claimed an attendance of 80,000.</p>
<p>At Westminster, the traditional party dichotomy between Whigs and Tories at the time was exacerbated by internal party divisions about whether and how to achieve reform. The situation was not dissimilar to today’s constitutional crisis over Brexit, though there were undeniable differences. In 1832, for example, the impasse was between the Lords and the Commons, rather than between the government and parliament. At one point, during what’s been called the “May Days” crisis of 1832, King William IV accepted the resignation of the prime minister, Charles Grey, in favour of the Tory Duke of Wellington only to reappoint him two days later without an election even taking place.</p>
<p>Newhall Hill attendance was <a href="http://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=AX%2f309%2fVol.10%2f64665&pos=9%20%20%20%20http://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=AX%2f309%2fVol.10%2f64661&pos=1">reported</a> as 100,000 on May 10 and an implausible 150,000 on May 7. A final meeting on May 16 to celebrate Grey’s reinstatement was said to have drawn <a href="http://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=AX%2f309%2fVol.10%2f64663&pos=6">50,000</a>. Then, as now, these figures were challenged, with <a href="https://openlibrary.org/works/OL97971W/James_Mill_and_the_art_of_revolution">magistrates suggesting</a> a maximum capacity of 30,000. My ongoing PhD research roughly corroborates this at nearer 40,000.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266073/original/file-20190327-139374-1mdn0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266073/original/file-20190327-139374-1mdn0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266073/original/file-20190327-139374-1mdn0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266073/original/file-20190327-139374-1mdn0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266073/original/file-20190327-139374-1mdn0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266073/original/file-20190327-139374-1mdn0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266073/original/file-20190327-139374-1mdn0n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A meeting of the Birmingham Political Union during May 1832 at Newhall Hill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_May#/media/File:Benjamin_Haydon_-_Meeting_of_the_Birmingham_Political_Union.jpg">Benjamin Haydon via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But regardless of figures, the Newhall Hill meetings were perceived to be persuasive demonstrations of power. They were acknowledged by Grey as having been influential during the reform crisis, and historian E P Thompson <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Aoapz_ry-BkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=making+of+the+english+working+class&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjH4vyhm6LhAhVMVRUIHd3ZA8gQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=immense%20assemblages&f=false">attributed</a> the “triumph” of the 1832 Reform Bill at least in part to the “well-ordered proceedings, extended organisation, and immense assemblages of people” in Birmingham. </p>
<p>But the victory was a Pyrrhic one. Although Attwood was subsequently returned to parliament as one of two MPs for the newly created Birmingham constituency, the Reform Act failed to deliver the vote to the ordinary working man as only those with property could vote. Further acts of parliament in 1867 and 1884 gradually extended the franchise until finally <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/case-study-the-right-to-vote/the-right-to-vote/birmingham-and-the-equal-franchise/1928-equal-franchise-act/">in 1928</a>, all men and women over 21 had the vote. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-brexit-brought-britains-constitution-to-the-brink-114239">How Brexit brought Britain's constitution to the brink</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Power of anticipation</h2>
<p>At other times during the struggle for electoral reform the power of the crowd was paramount. It’s been 200 years since the Peterloo massacre, as depicted in Mike Leigh’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4614612/">recent film</a>. Again, the reported figures for the crowd were contentious and <a href="https://www.academia.edu/29592399/An_examination_of_the_crowd_size_at_the_Peterloo_Massacre_QRS_Essay">my ongoing research</a> suggests that attendance may have been 35,000 rather than the 60,000 recorded. This means the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hL4zAAAACAAJ&dq=michael+bush,+the+casualties+of+peterloo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM69z1pKLhAhWCsXEKHZT0DCgQ6AEIKDAA">654 recorded injuries and 17 deaths</a> represent a higher percentage of the total than previously thought. But the fact that the country is still talking about Peterloo 200 years later demonstrates the extent of penetration of the political power it signified.</p>
<p>The anticipation of a large crowd can be just as powerful as the aftermath. The Great Chartist Meeting at Kennington Common on April 10, 1848 was expected to be such a serious threat that the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4swKO3M8iO8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=chase+chartism+a+new+history&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis1v_apaLhAhXwShUIHYZnA2kQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=solent&f=false">Royal Family was evacuated to the Isle of Wight</a>. London was subjected to a military lockdown with 8,000 troops billeted to defend key buildings with provisions laid-in for a ten-day siege. There were 4,000 police on hand to defend the bridges and 80,000 special constables were enlisted. </p>
<p>This show of force may have been the reason why the attendance didn’t meet expectations which by my calculation didn’t exceed 25,000, meaning the Chartists were seriously outnumbered. But they managed to convince the state that their arguments had a seriously potent reach. Although most of them didn’t live to see their objectives realised, within 80 years all but one of their <a href="http://www.chartistancestors.co.uk/six-points/">six points</a> had been achieved.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1053664662787637249"}"></div></p>
<p>Today, as in the 19th century, the vote is not the only way ordinary people engage with national decisions and hold leaders to account. Marching collectively in shows of power such as the People’s Vote march continues a long tradition of orderly mass protest asserting legitimate demands via the power of political persuasion. But focusing on whether attendance reached one million is missing the point. Just as in the 19th century, modern political crowds are demanding to have their voices heard by the legislature.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Dave Steele does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lessons from the British 19th century protests over electoral reform about the significance of crowd sizes.Dr Dave Steele, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1081142018-12-03T15:59:55Z2018-12-03T15:59:55ZWhy UNESCO was right to add reggae to its cultural heritage list<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248478/original/file-20181203-194932-sk71m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Weinberg</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When UNESCO announced that “the reggae music of Jamaica” had been <a href="https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/reggae-music-of-jamaica-01398">added to its list</a> of cultural products considered worthy of recognition, it was a reflection on the fact that reggae, which grew from its roots in the backstreets and dance halls of Jamaica, is more than just popular music, but an important social and political phenomenon.</p>
<p>Jamaica’s application to the committee mentioned a number of artists from <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/move-over-bob-marley-peter-tosh-is-finally-getting-the-recognition-he-deserves-8914028.html">Bob Marley and Peter Tosh</a> to <a href="https://rootfire.net/chronixx/">Chronixx and the Zinc Fence Band</a>. Some observers may be wondering whether such musicians are a good enough reason to include reggae on this prestigious list. What those readers don’t fully understand is that reggae is far more significant than its musicians. Not only is social commentary “an integral part of the music”, the application argued, but reggae has also made a significant “contribution to international discourse concerning issues of injustice, resistance, love, and humanity”. </p>
<p>Reggae has “provided a voice for maligned groups, the unemployed and at risk groups and provided a vehicle for social commentary and expression where no other outlet existed or was afforded”. It has also “provided a means of praising and communicating with God”. Not only are these big claims, but they are all true.</p>
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<h2>Deep roots</h2>
<p>Culturally, politically, religiously and musically, reggae has done much heavy lifting. Born in the back streets of Kingston in the 1950s, it is proudly Jamaican. Raised in difficult circumstances, it has matured into a friendly and generous music that travels well and warmly embraces the other cultures and music it meets. Hybridisation is part of reggae’s genetic makeup. Its DNA can be traced back to West Africa and out into the world of popular music. It came into being through mento (a form of Jamaican folk music), ska and rock steady, absorbing influences from the Caribbean (especially calypso), rhythm and blues, rock, and jazz.</p>
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<p>However, not only has reggae embraced other musical styles and ideas, but in so doing, it has influenced them and given birth to new sub-genres. Particularly significant in this respect has been the innovative recording techniques developed by Jamaican producers such as <a href="https://www.factmag.com/2015/05/19/king-tubby-beginners-guide-dub-reggae/">King Tubby</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/lee-scratch-perry">Lee “Scratch” Perry</a>, and <a href="https://www.trojanrecords.com/artist/bunny-lee/">Bunny Lee</a>. What became known as “<a href="https://www.factmag.com/2014/04/16/dubbing-is-a-must-a-beginners-guide-to-jamaicas-most-influential-genre/">dub reggae</a>” has inspired generations of artists and producers around the world and is still an important influence in popular music.</p>
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<h2>Politics of resistance</h2>
<p>As well as its musical contribution, reggae hasn’t forgotten its roots. Not only does it comment on current political events and social problems, but it also provides a multi-layered introduction to the history, religion and culture of what music historian Paul Gilroy called “<a href="https://sites.duke.edu/blackatlantic/sample-page/exploring-the-black-atlantic-through-sound/">the Black Atlantic</a>”. While some reggae cannot, of course, be considered religious or political – “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/sep/22/lovers-rock-story-reggae">lovers rock</a>” for example, focuses on romantic relationships – much of it is.</p>
<p>A key moment in Jamaican political history (as well as the story of reggae) happened on April 22 1978 at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/16/bob-marley-peace-concert">One Love Concert</a> hosted by Bob Marley at The National Stadium in Kingston. Marley famously called bitter political rivals Michael Manley and Edward Seaga to the stage and persuaded them to join hands. Few other people could have done this. Although the concert did not bring an end to the turmoil in Jamaica, it did showcase the significance of reggae as a political and cultural force.</p>
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<h2>Rastafari</h2>
<p>It is of particular significance that reggae is inextricably related to the religion of Rastafari, which emerged as a direct response to oppression within Jamaican colonial society. Often articulating the ideas of Jamaican political activist <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/garvey_marcus.shtml">Marcus Garvey</a>, who is understood by Rastafarians to be a prophet, Rasta musicians such as Marley and Burning Spear developed roots reggae as a vehicle for their religio-political messages. </p>
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<p>Even if some musicians are not committed Rastafarians, they typically identify with the movement’s ideas and culture. In particular, many wear dreadlocks, consider smoking “the herb” (cannabis) to be a sacrament, and reference the religio-political dualism of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/">Zion and Babylon</a> (the social systems of the righteous and the unrighteous). There is a hope often articulated within reggae of a better world following Armageddon and the fall of Babylon. “Babylon your throne gone down”, declared Marley in his 1973 song, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBBTitBMEMA">Rasta Man Chant</a>. These biblical ideas are also creatively applied to a range of political issues, from local injustices to climate change and the nuclear arms race.</p>
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<p>Sometimes reggae itself is understood to be a form of direct action, in that musicians are understood to “chant down Babylon”. As Ziggy Marley put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Babylon [is] a devil system … who cause so much problems on the face of the Earth … And by ‘chanting down’ I mean by putting positive messages out there. That is the way we’ll fight a negative with a positive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Examples of this include Yabby You’s Chant Down Babylon Kingdom and of course, Marley’s own Chant Down Babylon. This type of thinking is rooted in Jamaican history. Following violent confrontations with the police during the 1940s and 1950s, Rasta elders – particularly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/mar/23/guardianobituaries.religion">Mortimer Planno</a> – appealed to Jamaican academics to study Rastafari in order to increase popular understanding and tolerance. And in 1960, three scholars (M.G. Smith, Roy Augier and Rex Nettleford) published their <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13865081M/Report_on_the_Rastafari_movement_in_Kingston_Jamaica">Report on the Rastafarian Movement in Kingston, Jamaica</a>. </p>
<p>For Rastas, the destruction of Babylon came to be interpreted less in terms of a violent overthrow of oppressive social structures and more in terms of a conversion to new ways of thinking, central to which was the strategic primacy assumed by the arts. Reggae emerged as part of this process. From the outset, therefore, it was understood by many to be far more than simply “pop music”. It was “rebel music”, a powerful political tool for the peaceful resistance of oppression.</p>
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<h2>Reggae international</h2>
<p>The potency of reggae as an educational and inspirational force became conspicuous shortly after its arrival in Britain. In 1976 it was central to the founding of the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/rock-against-racism-remembering-that-gig-that-started-it-all-815054.html">Rock Against Racism campaign</a> and by the late 1970s, reggae, dub, ska, and the terminology of Rastafari were informing punk culture as part of an emerging “dread culture of resistance”. </p>
<p>For example, in 1979, the same year that witnessed the Southall race riots, during which a teacher, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/apr/27/blair-peach-killed-police-met-report">Blair Peach</a>, was killed, the British punk band <a href="https://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/RUTS.DC.html">The Ruts</a> released their dub reggae influenced single Jah War, on which they sang, “the air was thick with the smell of oppression”. </p>
<p>The Ruts subsequently achieved chart success with Babylon’s Burning. While some may have been bemused by the reference, for their fans – for whom <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/jul/20/urban.popandrock">punk and reggae</a> were first cousins at the very least – the message was obvious: Babylon was the principally white political establishment, which oppressed ethnic minorities and the unemployed poor of the inner cities, and which would eventually be dismantled. </p>
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<p>At the same time, Jamaicans who had moved to Britain in their childhood, such as <a href="http://www.lintonkwesijohnson.com/linton-kwesi-johnson/">Linton Kwesi Johnson</a>, used a creative blend of poetry and reggae to comment on the injustices they faced: “Inglan is a bitch, dere’s no escapin it.” One of Johnson’s poems commented specifically on the murder of Peach, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHrlmwudYuA">Reggae Fi Peach</a>. Since then, reggae music has continued to “speak truth to power” – from <a href="https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/entertainment/queen-ifrica-releases-powerful-song-hitting-back-domestic-violence/">challenging domestic abuse</a> to protesting against <a href="https://jamaicans.com/reggae-songs-nelson-mandela/">apartheid in South Africa</a>. </p>
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<p>For these political, religious and cultural reasons – as much as for the music itself – UNESCO was right to finally give reggae the recognition it deserves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Partridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More than just a musical accolade, UNESCO has recognised the social and political importance of Jamaican music.Christopher Partridge, Professor of Religious Studies, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1012612018-08-08T14:48:07Z2018-08-08T14:48:07ZSouth Africa may finally be marching towards solutions to sexual violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231088/original/file-20180808-191019-1ewvrgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African women march against high levels of gender based violence in the country.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The start of <a href="https://www.gov.za/womens-month">Women’s Month</a> (August) in South Africa this year was refreshingly different from other years as women took to the streets in <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/thetotalshutdown-march-wednesday-1-august/">#TheTotalShutdown</a> protests. It saved the country from the yearly hackneyed speeches by politicians about women’s empowerment.</p>
<p>The marches reminded South Africans of women’s protests that took place during the country’s transition period between 1992 and 1994 under the banner of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/womens-national-coalition">Women’s National Coalition</a>. At the time women were demanding to be included in the negotiation process and in designing the architecture of the new democracy.</p>
<p>In the decade that followed activism around women’s issues became limited to campaigns that were smaller in scope, such as the <a href="http://shukumisa.org.za/">Shukumisa Campaign</a> that engaged the state around the Sexual Offenses Act, or the <a href="https://oneinnine.org.za/">One in Nine Campaign</a> which proclaims that only one in nine rapes are reported. There has also been NGO activism.</p>
<p>Five years ago when the country was shocked into action after the brutal murder of Anene Booysen. The 17-year old was gang raped, disembowled and <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2013/10/31/The-Anene-Booysen-Story">left for dead</a> in a small town called Bredasdorp in the Western Cape province. The brutal nature of the attack led to a country-wide outcry and was featured on the <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2013/10/31/The-Anene-Booysen-Story">front pages of newspapers</a>.</p>
<p>This campaign was short-lived, but it emphasised the need for state intervention that did not happen. Three years later, in 2016, protests erupted at universities across the country as students took gender based violence to the streets. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-south-africas-young-women-activists-are-rewriting-the-script-60980">#EndRapeCulture</a> protests were led by women at universities and was, in my view, South Africa’s <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/metoo-more-than-12-million-facebook-posts-comments-reactions-24-hours/">#Metoo moment</a> – even before #Metoo happened globally. </p>
<p>The #EndRapeCulture exposed the insidious nature of sexual violence, men’s entitlement and women living in constant fear of being raped or sexually brutalised. It was a resistance against the normalisation of gender based violence.</p>
<p>Then the issue once again fell away from public attention – until recently, when women began mobilising for the #TheTotalShutdown protests. This was the first time activism on a national level focused on gender based violence, not only against women but also against members of the <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/thetotalshutdown-march-wednesday-1-august/">LGBTIQ communities</a>. </p>
<p>This activism was long overdue. Not only did the protest marches foreground sexual violence; they also attempted to change the binary view of sex as male and female.</p>
<h2>The demands</h2>
<p>The #TheTotalShutdown has <a href="http://thetotalshutdown.org.za/memorandum-of-demands/">24 demands</a> in its memorandum. None of these are really new, but they are the reiteration of requests that have been made again and again in the hope that something will change this time.</p>
<p>The most important demands are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a review of past national action plans on gender based violence and the development of a new National Action Plan; </p></li>
<li><p>the re-establishment of the Joint Monitoring Committee on the Quality of Life and the Status of Women that did stellar work monitoring state departments under the leadership of feminist and human rights activist Pregs Govender in South Africa’s first democratic parliament; </p></li>
<li><p>greater involvement in monitoring gender based violence by the country’s Chapter 9 bodies, such as the Commission for Gender Equality; and,</p></li>
<li><p>the prevention of secondary victimisation and consistent sentencing of perpetrators of sexual violence; psycho-social support and better resourcing of the Thuthuzela care centres, <a href="http://isssasa.org.za/care-centres">one stop centres</a> for reporting rape at police stations.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>Women have been asking for a great deal of what’s on the list for more than a decade.</p>
<p>So why has there been no action? </p>
<p>There’s clearly a lack of political will to deal with sexual violence. This starts with state agencies such as the police that often trivialise women’s reports of rape, are quite <a href="https://theconversation.com/rape-in-south-africa-why-the-system-is-failing-women-54924">lethargic to investigate rape</a> and often are <a href="https://ewn.co.za/Topic/Cop-rapes-woman">complicit in rape themselves</a>. This needs to change.</p>
<p>South Africans need to know how police are trained to deal with victims of sexual violence.</p>
<p>The large numbers of women who took part in the #TotalShutDown marches showed that women are not only victims. They also have agency. Their decision <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/thetotalshutdown-march-wednesday-1-august/">not to allow men</a> to participate was so that women could take a stand without men taking charge. Men can show solidarity through working with other men, and by challenging men who are involved in violence.</p>
<p>The #TotalShutDown protesters demand 365 days of action against gender based violence. But more powerful ways of keeping government to account must be found. The fight against gender based violence needs to move beyond simply seeking that perpetrators be jailed, as the ANC Women’s League does with its mantra </p>
<blockquote>
<p>rapists should rot in jail.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Violence should be dealt with not only <a href="https://m.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Serial-rapist-should-rot-or-die-in-jail-20101203">once it has happened</a> but should also be prevented. How many more women have to get raped or lose their lives before South Africa develops interventions that will not put the burden of responsibility on women’s shoulders?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101261/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Gouws receives funding from the National Research Foundation</span></em></p>Gender based violence should not be addressed only once it has happened, by jailing offenders. Prevention is just as important.Amanda Gouws, Professor of Political Science and SARChi Chair in Gender Politics, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/967522018-06-19T13:37:15Z2018-06-19T13:37:15ZTurkey resists Erdoğan on social media as snap election approaches<p>Turkey will soon go to the polls for the fifth time in less than four years. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced them on the same day that parliament <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/state-of-emergency-in-turkey-extended-for-seventh-time-130539">extended the national state of emergency</a> for the seventh time since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-struggles-to-make-sense-of-a-surreal-failed-coup-detat-62596">botched coup attempt of July 2016</a>.</p>
<p>Erdoğan brought these elections forward to June 24 for his own political ends: to pre-empt an expected economic downturn, to take his rivals by surprise, and to ride a surge of nationalism stirred up by the recent military offensive in Afrin, Syria. This will be the first national vote since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/erdogan-declares-victory-in-his-pursuit-of-one-man-rule-76032">controversial constitutional referendum of April 2017</a>, which resulted in a narrow vote to establish a presidential system without any checks and balances. Should Erdoğan win this latest election, he will consolidate his power futher: the office of the prime minister will be abolished and taken over by a powerful executive presidency.</p>
<p>The election is taking place under the state of emergency’s restrictions, which have greatly distorted the campaign – but there are also signs that this time, Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) may find it more difficult to control events thanks to a highly motivated opposition and a lively social media environment.</p>
<p>Predicting the result is difficult, but the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/15/turkeys-economy-is-entering-a-slow-burning-crisis-analysts-warn.html">deteriorating economy</a>, an unexpected alliance among <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/02/turkish-opposition-parties-unite-against-erdogan-elections">four opposition parties</a>, and the energy brought by the candidacy of Republican People’s Party’s Muharrem Ince undoubtedly will make life difficult for AKP. </p>
<p>Could Erdoğan ever be beaten? Perhaps – but if only there were a fair election campaign. Instead, the election is taking place under Turkey’s state of emergency, which compromises democratic freedoms and the rule of law. </p>
<p>Before the state of emergency was imposed, the High Electoral Board could penalise TV stations that failed to give opposition parties fair airtime. That provision has now been revoked, and the consequences are already visible: according to a <a href="https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/gundem/2018/05/15/rtuk-uyesi-chpli-ilhan-tasci-rtukun-yetkisi-alindi-trt-bir-kisi-icin-yayinda/">recent report</a>, TRT Haber, the publicly-owned and financed national broadcaster, has covered the AKP-Nationalist Movement Party alliance for 37 hours and 40 minutes, and allotted all opposition parties and their presidential candidates a combined 3 hours and 13 minutes. And to make matters worse, in March 2018, one of Turkey’s leading media groups, Dogan Media, was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/world/europe/turkey-media-erdogan-dogan.html">sold to a pro-government Turkish conglomerate</a>. </p>
<p>This is all forcing the opposition to take its campaign elsewhere – and in particular, to social media. </p>
<h2>Intimidation and resistance</h2>
<p>None of the parties has done so more effectively than the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and its imprisoned former co-leader, <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/jailed-presidential-candidate-of-hdp-makes-landmark-pre-recorded-election-speech-from-prison-133431">Selahattin Demirtaş</a>. In the face of a de facto embargo by mainstream news sources, the HDP depends on social media to announce its parliamentary candidates, to mobilise supporters for its rallies, and to share its policy positions. The internet and the social media in particular also provide a space for many well-known journalists who’ve lost their jobs for criticising the government. They are launching new online newspapers and TV channels to provide alternative sources of information. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, everyday Turks are making a noise on their own, and using Erdoğan’s words against him. The president himself declared a few weeks before the vote that if the nation one day said “tamam” – meaning “done” or “enough” – he would step aside. Seizing upon this statement, the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23TAMAM">#TAMAM</a> has been tweeted almost 2m times in various creative ways. The campaign has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22772352">revived the spirit of the 2013 Gezi Park protests</a> – the biggest popular challenge to the AKP’s rule to this day.</p>
<p>Obviously, a single hashtag campaign is hardly a reliable measure of national opinion, especially considering that <a href="http://konda.com.tr/tr/rapor/secmen-kumeleri-ak-parti-secmenleri/">only 20% of the population</a> uses Twitter. But in a country where thousands have been prosecuted for their social media posts, such a visible public campaign may be a harbinger of change. </p>
<p>Civic groups are also using social media platforms to recruit and train volunteers to increase electoral turnout and transparency in vote counting. These volunteers could be critical on polling day; recent changes in electoral law have introduced some <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-passes-controversial-new-voting-law-erdogan-akp/">controversial measures</a>, such as allowing security forces to attend polling stations if they are invited by a voter. Clearly this provision can be abused to intimidate voters, especially in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish south-east – and all experts agree that the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-election-kurds/jailed-kurdish-leader-may-hold-key-in-turkish-elections-idUSKBN1JE0LJ">size of the Kurdish vote</a> will be crucial in determining the fate of Erdoğan and his party.</p>
<p>In fact, a <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/leaked-video-showing-erdogan-calling-for-tight-marking-of-hdp-goes-viral-133305">recently leaked video</a> shows Erdoğan instructing AKP’s local organisations to put “tight marking” on voters in every district in Istanbul to push the HDP below the national 10% threshold. The national threshold is the highest in the world, and has been <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/wasglo10&id=351">criticised</a> for many years for disenfranchising millions of voters, as happened most dramatically in 2002.</p>
<h2>The online battle</h2>
<p>Turning to social media is not without its risks. Since the 2016 coup attempt, Turkey has arrested thousands of people for allegedly supporting terrorism or insulting government officials on social media. According to the Turkish Interior Ministry, between January 20 and February 26 2018, authorities <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/03/27/turkey-crackdown-social-media-posts">detained 648 people</a> over social media posts criticising Turkey’s military operations in Afrin. </p>
<p>But Erdoğan’s distaste for social media dates back to the 2013 Gezi Park protests, when Twitter and other social media platforms were used extensively to bring people into the streets. Realising the potential of these platforms to disseminate information and enable collective action, he <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/social-media-is-worst-menace-to-society-says-turkey-pm-25-twitter-users-arrested/">decried Twitter</a> at the time as the “worst menace to society”, and in March 2014, Twitter was temporarily <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26677134">blocked in Turkey altogether</a>.</p>
<p>But technology has also come to Erdoğan’s rescue before. During the failed coup in 2016, he <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/16/12206304/turkey-coup-facetime">gave an interview via FaceTime</a> to CNNTurk and called on the people of Turkey to take to the streets against the apparent putsch. Through this last-ditch call and harnessing social media, messaging services, as well as the <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/turkey-coup-attempt-erdogan-mosques.html">creative use of mosques</a> calling people on to the streets, he survived the night and continued consolidating his power.</p>
<p>Should an opposition candidate somehow defeat him, Erdoğan might well try to mobilise his supporters to delegitimise the election result. If he does, technology will certainly be one of his most important tools. But equally, all the major challenges to his rule in the last few years relied on social media to some extent. Each time, Erdoğan has managed to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13608746.2016.1165404?journalCode=fses20">take control of the information environment</a> and repel his rivals, tightening control on internet users, blocking social media platforms, harassing bloggers, and <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2017/turkey">manipulating online discussions</a>. But the internet still offers some hope – and this election will be a crucial test of its power to challenge Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rabia Karakaya Polat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A snap poll intended to boost the Turkish president’s power has stirred up online opposition to his increasing authoritarianism.Rabia Karakaya Polat, Visiting Fellow at the Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/961412018-05-06T11:33:14Z2018-05-06T11:33:14ZFor 15 years South Africans in North West have been getting angrier. Here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217779/original/file-20180504-166887-7yh6sp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A cement delivery truck was burnt by angry protesters against corruption and poor service delivery in South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">INL/Bhekikaya Mabaso</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/mahikeng-reeling-from-the-aftermath-of-violent-protests-20180421">violent protests</a> in Mahikeng in South Africa’s North West province have prompted widespread commentary about what’s behind them, as well as their significance. Protests have raged in the province for two weeks and have seen at least one <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/violent-mahikeng-protests-claim-its-first-casualty">person killed</a> and millions in property damage. The North West, which lies to the west of Johannesburg and borders Botswana, has also been affected by a two-month <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/north-west/sandf-sends-assistance-to-north-west-as-health-strike-continues-14563458">health care services strike</a>. </p>
<p>Some have attributed the protests to demands for the delivery of <a href="https://www.enca.com/media/video/mahikeng-goes-up-in-flames-over-poor-service-delivery">basic services </a> such as housing and sanitation, including concerns about the closure of <a href="https://www.da.org.za/2018/04/supra-lost-control-north-west/">health clinics</a>. Others have focused on democracy and <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/mahumapelos-scandals-in-spotlight-as-calls-mount-for-his-removal-14764245">corruption</a> related issues given that the protesters have been calling for the removal of the Premier of the province, Supra Mahumapelo. </p>
<p>All these factors have no doubt played a part in fuelling people’s anger. But the violent protests in Mahikeng and other parts of the province beg some serious questions about the functioning and state of South Africa’s democracy. Evidence from the latest round of a nationally representative <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/departments/sasas">South African Social Attitudes Survey</a> conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council provides some profound insights into how people in that part of the country see the world. Each survey round consists of a sample of 3,500 adults older than 15 years. This opinion poll (which has been conducted every year since 2003) has enabled us to track public opinion in the North West.</p>
<p>The survey shows that over the past 15 years people in the area have been growing disgruntled with the political leadership in the North West province. Citizens are discontented with the status quo and want meaningful change.</p>
<p>The survey also shows that corruption has become one of the biggest concerns for residents of the province when it featured much lower down their list of concerns 15 years ago. </p>
<p>Another disturbing trend the survey highlights is that a significant minority of those polled view violent protest action as an effective way to achieve change. </p>
<h2>A trend of growing unhappiness</h2>
<p>The survey shows that public trust in local municipal government in the North West province has dropped dramatically since 1998 – from 56% under the then Premier Popo Molefe to 18% in 2017 under <a href="http://www.nwpg.gov.za/Premier-Profile.htm">Mahumapelo</a>. The steepest drop in confidence happened after the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">Marikana tragedy</a> in 2012, when 44 people died. Thirty four were shot by police during a protest at one of the mines belonging to platinum producer Lonmin. </p>
<p>Over the past 15 years people living in the North West Province have also become more cynical about the way democracy, political leaders and the economy have performed in the country. Last year only 14% of North West residents said they were satisfied with the way democracy was working. This was down from 67% in 2005.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217767/original/file-20180504-166890-1s17pm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217767/original/file-20180504-166890-1s17pm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=243&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217767/original/file-20180504-166890-1s17pm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=243&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217767/original/file-20180504-166890-1s17pm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=243&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217767/original/file-20180504-166890-1s17pm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217767/original/file-20180504-166890-1s17pm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/217767/original/file-20180504-166890-1s17pm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=306&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The vertical lines denote the period of office of the two most recent premiers of the North West province Thandi Modise, and Supra Maphumapelo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HSRC SASAS 2011-2017</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition, levels of public satisfaction with water and sanitation services have declined dramatically since the early 2000s. There has also been mounting and sustained discontent when it comes to the delivery of basic services such as electricity. </p>
<p>People’s political priorities have also changed dramatically over the past 15 years. When asked what national challenge was the most important to them, corruption was listed by only 5% of those surveyed in 2003. But by last year this has shot up to nearly a quarter with 23% listing corruption as their top concern.</p>
<h2>Peaceful, disruptive, violent</h2>
<p>A survey question posed to participants in 2016 sheds some disturbing light on how people view protests. Participants were asked about the acceptability and perceived effectiveness of three types of protest action: peaceful, disruptive and violent. </p>
<p>A third of North West residents had a positive view of peaceful protests. And only 19% said they thought peaceful demonstration would bring about positive change. An even smaller proportion (9%) thought that disruptive non-violent forms of action were useful.</p>
<p>A minority – 13% – said they believed that violent protests were an effective instrument for change. </p>
<p>This suggests that the violent protests in the province are largely being driven by a minority who see violence as a way to getting meaningful change. The implication is that the majority of inhabitants are unlikely to condone the violence and militant protests that occurred in Mahikeng.</p>
<h2>Dire situation</h2>
<p>The survey data shows a dire situation. It suggests that the Mahumapelo premiership has failed to address public concerns about service delivery and the local economy. </p>
<p>Nor do people in the province have any faith in peaceful protest as an effective way of securing change. It is, therefore, perhaps unsurprising that there has been a flare up in violent protests. </p>
<p>The creeping disillusionment and loss of political effectiveness in the province is worrying. It is incumbent on the leadership of the governing ANC to ensure that discontent is heeded and that appropriate measures are taken to get the province running effectively again. In the light of this it’s appropriate that President Cyril Ramaphosa is reported to have asked the premier to “<a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/resign-or-be-recalled-anc-top-six-tell-supra-20180504">step down”</a>. </p>
<p><em>Jare Struwig, Benjamin Roberts and Yul Derek Davids were part of the research team that produced the survey on which this article is based.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><em>The <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/departments/sasas">link to the survey</a> in this article provides access to all the data. If readers require a more detailed analysis of the data, please contact the HSCR at datahelp@hsrc.ac.za.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Gordon has received funding from the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development and I currently work for the Human Sciences Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Narnia Bohler-Muller works for the Human Sciences Research Council. She receives funding from governmental, non-governmental and international donors via competitive processes. </span></em></p>Corruption has become one of the biggest concerns for South Africans living in a province that has erupted in violence.Steven Gordon, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Human Sciences Research CouncilNarnia Bohler-Muller, Executive Director Africa Institute of South Africa at the Human Sciences Research Council and Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Fort HareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/955472018-04-30T13:01:28Z2018-04-30T13:01:28ZOutrage at state violence puts Nicaragua’s president on notice<p>In recent days, protests against social security reform have prompted a violent crackdown in Nicaragua. <a href="https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/462489-organismos-continuan-registro-victimas/">At least 42 people have been killed</a> but the final figure will likely be much higher; the government has refused to release the bodies of some of the dead until families sign a <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/victimas-de-la-represion-sin-autopsias/">disclaimer</a> which states that the police were not responsible. This is a level of state violence Nicaragua hasn’t seen since the Somoza dictatorship was overthrown in 1979.</p>
<p>The crisis was sparked by proposed changes to the Nicaraguan Institute of Social Security (INSS), <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2018/02/06/ms020618-nicaragua-staff-concluding-statement-of-an-imf-staff-visit">requested by the International Monetary Fund</a>, which would entail a rise in social security contributions and a reduction in pensions. This was a guaranteed political flashpoint; government officials have been <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2017/05/12/nacionales/2227974-10-anos-oscuros-negocios-del-inss">accused of siphoning off INSS funds</a> for years, and a previous protest at INSS changes in 2013 had triggered what was until this week one of the government’s <a href="http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2013/06/22/actualidad/1371928618_634126.html">harshest responses to peaceful protest</a>.</p>
<p>The INSS reforms were <a href="https://www.lagaceta.gob.ni/2018/04/072/">announced</a> on April 18, when students were already in the streets protesting the government’s mismanagement of an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/11/nicaragua-rainforest-fire-costa-rica">ecological crisis</a>, and this contributed to the size of the protests. But it’s the violence of the government crackdown, rather than the reforms themselves, that has transformed the balance of political power. And the underlying tensions fuelling that violence have been building for more than a decade.</p>
<h2>Holding the reins</h2>
<p>Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, first <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/17/newsid_3870000/3870281.stm">came to power</a> in July 1979 as one of the leaders of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which spearheaded a broad-based popular movement that toppled the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Somoza-family">Somoza dictatorship</a>. Ortega was initially co-ordinator of the country’s governing junta, and was then elected president in country’s first ever democratic elections in November 1984. A <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1981-1988/central-america">US-backed guerrilla war and economic embargo</a> took a considerable toll, and in 1990 Nicaraguans <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/27/world/turnover-nicaragua-nicaraguan-opposition-routs-sandinistas-us-pledges-aid-tied.html">voted the Sandinistas out of office</a>.</p>
<p>Ortega was elected president once again in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/08/1">November 2006</a>, after 16 years of right-wing anti-Sandinista government. The Nicaraguan constitution limits presidents to two terms, but Ortega had the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/21/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-re-election">limit removed</a> and was re-elected in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nicaragua-election/nicaraguas-ortega-wins-landslide-re-election-idUSTRE7A50D320111108">2011</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-37892477">2016</a>. He has now held office continuously for more than a decade.</p>
<p>Ortega’s so-called “second revolution” has differed substantially from the first. In an effort to broaden his appeal, Ortega has built alliances with groups that opposed the Sandinistas in the 1980s. </p>
<p>He has courted the Catholic Church, supporting a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/08/29/nicaragua-blanket-ban-abortion-harms-women">total ban on abortion</a> even where the mother’s life is at risk. He has also formed an alliance with COSEP, an association of business leaders who, until the present crisis, had tacitly supported him provided he consulted them on economic matters.</p>
<p>Alongside these innovations, Ortega has continued to rely on his traditional bases of support. Since the 1990s, Nicaragua’s army and police force have been ostensibly apolitical, but both were built from scratch during the revolutionary decade, and to this day they retain strong historical links with Ortega’s FSLN. A series of anti-poverty programmes, partially funded by Venezuela, won support from poor communities, and many poor Nicaraguans have continued to consider Ortega the standard bearer for Nicaragua’s revolutionary tradition. </p>
<p>The result was what looked like a convincing hold on power. In 2016, Vanderbilt University’s LAPOP survey found that <a href="https://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/nicaragua/RRR_Nicaragua_AB2016_v10_public_W_12.15.17.pdf">44% of Nicaraguans intended to vote for Ortega</a> in that year’s elections, far more than pledged support for any other political party. Yet by closing off all space for political dissent, Ortega and the FSLN government have squandered their advantage. </p>
<h2>Going too far</h2>
<p>Since 2008, election observers have reported <a href="https://www.panoramaelectoral.org/reportes-elecciones-2016">irregularities</a> in every local and <a href="http://eeas.europa.eu/archives/eueom/pdf/missions/moeue-nicaragua-preliminar-08112011_es.pdf">national election</a>. The most recent election was a foregone conclusion because the leader of the main opposition party was removed from office by Nicaragua’s Supreme Court <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/26/nicaragua-opposition-daniel-ortega-presidential-election">less than five months before the vote</a>.</p>
<p>The violence has prompted open opposition from the institutions that Ortega relies on. Senior members of the Catholic Church came out in <a href="https://www.infobae.com/america/mundo/2018/04/21/el-obispo-de-managua-califico-a-los-estudiantes-que-protestan-como-la-reserva-moral-de-nicaragua/">support of the students</a>, and Managua’s cathedral was used as a centre to provide food to protesters during the worst of the violence. Two former chiefs of the <a href="https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2018/04/23/politica/2408456-general-en-retiro-joaquin-cuadra-el-ejercito-no-tiene-porque-intervenir-en-protestas">army</a> (including the president’s own <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuEVRyl7tQI">brother</a>) have expressed concern, while the FSLN’s former allies in the private sector participated in a <a href="https://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/461876-cosep-marcha-hoy-acepta-instaurar-dialogo-urgencia/">massive demonstration</a> in Managua on April 23.</p>
<p>The history of the 1979 revolution still shapes political discourse in Nicaragua, so parallels with the violence of the Somoza era have provoked particular revulsion. The symbolism is potent: scores of demonstrators were held and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/nicaragua-unrest-dozens-detained-protesters-released-180425055125816.html">allegedly beaten</a> at El Chipote, the prison where Ortega himself was held and tortured by the Somoza regime between 1967 and 1974.</p>
<p>Ortega may be saved by the fact that there is no viable candidate to replace him. He and his family have dominated the FSLN for many years, and no opposition party can as yet claim a substantial electoral base. But as the government continues its crackdown on dissent – hospital workers and other government employees were <a href="https://twitter.com/MiguelCanal15/status/989198444504940545">reportedly fired</a> for participating in the April 23 protests – opposition continues to build. </p>
<p>Human rights organisations have <a href="https://confidencial.com.ni/exigen-comision-de-la-verdad-para-investigar-represion-y-asesinatos/">demanded an independent truth commission</a> to investigate the violence of the past week. And given the outrage felt by most Nicaraguans right now, it’s difficult to see how Ortega can stay in power without acceding.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hilary Francis has received funding from the British Academy and NERC-AHRC-ESRC.</span></em></p>By remorselessly crushing political dissent, Daniel Ortega has squandered his people’s goodwill and eroded his power base.Hilary Francis, Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow in Global Challenges, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/906412018-02-08T15:06:03Z2018-02-08T15:06:03ZIsrael escaped an Arab Spring-style uprising in 2011 – but only just<p>Israel is already facing a difficult 2018. Most of the rest of the world seems far more ready than usual to condemn its policies – from the proclamation of Jerusalem as its capital to the <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/protests-against-israel-s-deportation-plan-gather-worldwide-1.5804320">deportation of asylum seekers</a> – spelling trouble for the Israeli goverment’s preferred image as Middle East’s sole democracy <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-netanyahus-new-illustrated-world-israel-has-just-five-enemies/">with global friends</a>. In fact, the last time this image was so noticeably under threat was seven years ago. </p>
<p>As the Arab Spring spread across the Middle East and North Africa, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-is-the-arab-spring-good-for-jews-1.5277338">declared</a> his country “an island of stability”, remarkably secure amid revolutions. <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/pressroom/2011/pages/youtube_world_view_interview_pm_netanyahu_30-mar-2011.aspx">As he saw it</a>, Israel was the Middle East’s only stable state, a “prosperous country” where “everybody is equal”.</p>
<p>But as it turned out, Israel’s populace disagreed. And in summer 2011, Netanyahu’s government faced what became known as the “Housing Protests”. </p>
<p>These protests began as an outcry by young Israelis against escalating housing costs. Throughout July and August 2011, tents were pitched in cities across Israel as a symbol of the pinch young people felt. These were dubbed “tent cities” by Daphni Leef, the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/young-israelis-in-tent-city-protests-over-rising-prices-2318502.html">original protest leader</a>. “We are earning less and paying more,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/22/israel-housing-protests-tent-cities">explained one activist</a> as further tents were erected. “We want a solution that allows us to live in a reasonable place at an affordable price.”</p>
<p>Suddenly, housing costs were firmly on the agenda. But there were other, deeper socio-economic problems in the mix, too, spread across Israel’s ethno-religious spectrum: a widening gap between rich and poor, accusations of corruption, and unemployment rates of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-23817288/haredi-jewish-urged-to-work-and-enlist-in-israel">up to 60%</a> in both Orthodox Jewish and Arab communities. </p>
<p>By August 2011, the movement had widened from a property protest to a movement against inequality and cronyism. Four per cent of Israel’s population was protesting, and in less than a month, Netanyahu’s <a href="https://takethesquare.net/2011/08/06/historic-protest-in-israel-over-300000-demand-social-justice/">approval rating tumbled</a> from 52% to 32%.</p>
<h2>Going through the motions</h2>
<p>Netanyahu responded with a <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4100162,00.html">housing plan</a> to tackle accommodation costs. The best approach, he proclaimed, “is to make sure there are more available, affordable housing.” The plan would add up to 50,000 smaller apartments to Israel’s housing market over a two-year period, with discounted land for contractors of student housing and smaller constructions. Rental prices were to be government-supervised.</p>
<p>Netanyahu formed the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/PM-appoints-team-to-meet-protest-leaders-draw-up-plan">Trajtenberg Committee</a> to address protest demands. The committee’s focus areas included “changing the country’s priorities to ease the economic burden on the population”, “expanding access to social services”, and “increasing competition to reduce prices”, and “implementing the housing plan the government has already launched”. </p>
<p>While Netanyahu presented the proposal as a “genuine solution”, the plan had its critics. The committee’s leader, economist Manuel Trajtenberg, admitted to “mixed feelings” regarding how effective the committee could be in pushing change. </p>
<p>Protesters and political opposition leaders <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/PM-appoints-team-to-meet-protest-leaders-draw-up-plan">accused Netanyahu</a> of staffing the committee with a “one-sided table of ministers who are disconnected from the public”. Labour Party member Isaac Herzog saw Netanyahu’s move as a common tactic during the Arab Spring: paying mere lip service to protestors’ grievances without fully addressing them. </p>
<p>“Instead of adding experts on social welfare and representatives of NGOs that are familiar with the crisis,” he said, Netanyahu simply protected himself by building “a bizarre and bloated staff” to create the impression that he was listening.</p>
<h2>Momentum lost</h2>
<p>In the end, he was able to stick it out. The protests continued to grow through September 2011, but by October, they were being curbed by the police; the tent cities were dismantled, and many Israelis questioned whether the protests would ever translate into political action in Israel’s Knesset.</p>
<p>Asked about upcoming Knesset elections, pollster <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1004/Israel-s-tent-protests-transition-to-next-stage-political-fight">Dahlia Scheindlin</a> was pessimistic: “Even though we had the most impressive turnout in the street, I don’t really think the energy and enthusiasm is going to carry over.” Sure enough, by October’s end, the demonstrations were dwindling, with activists even <a href="http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Tens-of-thousands-turn-out-for-social-justice-protests">cancelling events</a>.</p>
<p>At the month’s end, Netanyahu <a href="http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2011/Pages/PM_Netanyahu_opening_Knesset_winter_session_31-Oct-2011.aspx">addressed the Knesset</a>. He emphasised Israel’s stability during “the most dramatic events of our time”, and made no mention of the Housing Protests. He did acknowledge that basic food prices were being <a href="https://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304584004576417543687962906?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304584004576417543687962906.html">monopolised by Israel’s largest dairy producers</a> – and a subsequent boycott of cottage cheese, a staple breakfast dish, forced price reductions.</p>
<p>Despite their socio-economic discontent, most Israelis did not see the protests as equivalent to the Arab Spring. “This is a middle-class protest,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/22/israel-housing-protests-tent-cities">emphasised one activist</a>. “People in Egypt didn’t have a lot to lose. They had no civil rights and no trust in their government.” Perhaps for this reason, Israel’s unrest was never dubbed a “spring”, but rather a social justice movement.</p>
<p>In the summer of 2012, the first anniversary of the Housing Protest raised the prospect of fresh unrest – but discord between the activist groups ultimately split the movement into two separate marches. As Leef <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/demos-to-mark-year-of-social-protest-1.5266368">explained</a>, the internal arguments within the movement distracted it from its original focus on social problems, and rallies became “a source of friction”. The movement’s disintegration was no doubt welcomed by the Netanyahu government, which continued to celebrate Israel as a <a href="http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2011/Pages/PM_Netanyahu_opening_Knesset_winter_session_31-Oct-2011.aspx">beacon</a> of “unity at times of trouble”. Nonetheless, with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/02/05/israelis-have-been-protesting-government-corruption-for-61-weeks/?utm_term=.838d2193343d">fresh protests against government corruption </a> at the start of 2018, this image may be under threat once again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90641/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolai Due-Gundersen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The events of summer 2011 proved that Israel incubates the same sort of socio-economic discontent that upended the wider Middle East.Nicolai Due-Gundersen, PhD Candidate and Political Analyst, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/896042018-01-05T15:07:08Z2018-01-05T15:07:08ZIran’s reformists have sided with the hardliners – and doomed their cause<p>For a few days at the start of 2018, nationwide protests hit the streets of several Iranian cities, blindsiding the government and briefly drawing the world’s attention. The government sponsored counter-protests in support of the status quo, but anti-government protests continued. It all signals that the arrangement of Iranian politics has radically changed – and in particular that the mainstream political project known as <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2013/05/23/the-legacy-of-reform-in-iran-sixteen-years-later/">reformism</a> is no longer the decisive force it was.</p>
<p>Until now, the only visible protests on the streets of Iran since 2013 revolved around economic issues. They have mostly been organised by Iranians lower down the social ladder; the bus drivers’ union, teachers, and those who lost their savings to fraud and embezzlement by top officials or financial institutions affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.</p>
<p>The largest demonstrations since the the 2009 Green Movement came in November 2016 and were held by workers <a href="https://www.radiozamaneh.com/297387">against the government’s bill</a> to reform labour laws. In May 2017, hundreds who lost their deposits to Caspian financial institutions protested in front of the Iranian parliament wearing white shrouds – <a href="https://humanrightsiniran.com/1396/42064/">implying they were ready to die</a> for their cause. Union leaders, meanwhile, have made enough political trouble to become the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/6147/2017/en/">largest group of political prisoners</a> during Rouhani’s presidency. In January 2015, <a href="https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2016/05/gold-mine-workers-flogged-for-protest/">17 gold miners</a> from Agh Darreh were arrested and lashed on orders of the judiciary for protesting the firing of 326 miners.</p>
<p>The signals of discontent these protests sent were completely ignored by the government and the pro-government elite, who forgot that Rouhani’s first campaign revolved around the idea that economic hardship could be ended through the nuclear negotiations. But even though he was re-elected president in 2017, he has ultimately never lived up to his initial promise. </p>
<h2>State of denial</h2>
<p>He offered a last slap in the face for Iran’s lower middle and working classes with his 2018 budget bill. With workers in state-owned factories and pensioners facing <a href="https://en.radiozamaneh.com/articles/iranian-workers-pensioners-protest-months-of-delayed-wages/">months of delayed wages</a> and the victims of recent earthquakes still sleeping in tents during western Iran’s deadly winter, the bill <a href="http://www.dw.com/fa-ir/%D8%B3%D9%87%D9%85-%D9%86%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C-%D9%85%D8%B0%D9%87%D8%A8%DB%8C-%D8%BA%DB%8C%D8%B1%D9%BE%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AE%DA%AF%D9%88-%D8%A7%D8%B2-%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%AF%D8%AC%D9%87-%D9%BE%DB%8C%D8%B4%D9%86%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%AF%DB%8C-%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%84-%DB%B9%DB%B7/a-41812179">allocated billions of dollars</a> to numerous religious institutions owned by high-ranking clerics, mostly focused on missionary activities abroad. </p>
<p>In one case, the government channelled <a href="http://www.magiran.com/npview.asp?ID=3684196">IRR280 billion</a> (about US$7.8m) to a religious institution owned by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a radical cleric who was allegedly behind <a href="https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%82%D8%AA%D9%84%E2%80%8C%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C_%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%81%D9%84%DB%8C_%DA%A9%D8%B1%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86">murders committed by Islamist fanatics</a> in Kerman. This institution has been receiving annual allocations since the second term of the last reformist president, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3027382.stm">Mohammad Khatami</a>.</p>
<p>Ayatollah Khomeini called the 1979 Islamic Revolution a “revolution of the barefooted”, a powerful image that helped the regime establish its hegemony and eradicate leftists from Iran’s official political spectrum. But three decades later, pro-government reformists too are using the epithet “barefooted masses” in quite a different way: to denigrate and scorn anyone who protests against the established order.</p>
<p>In total denial about their economic and political failures, the majority of reformists tried at first to blame the most recent protests on their conservative rivals. This was not true. From the beginning, the most recent protests were aimed not just at economic problems, but at the very foundations of the Islamic Regime and its religious leaders. </p>
<p>A week before the main wave of the current protests, <a href="http://bit.ly/2lT2imm">pensioners</a> in the pro-Rouhani city of Isfahan gathered in front of the office of the governorate chanting “pensioners’ wages are under the mullahs’ cloak” and “revolution, our mistake”. Then came the protests in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest and most religious city; in less than a day, the protests flared up and spread to 14 cities across the country. On the sixth day, at least 21 people were killed on the streets. </p>
<p>The reformists’ response was all too predictable. </p>
<h2>Decline and decay</h2>
<p>Mohajerani, a former minister of culture and a pro-government reformist living in exile, has called the protests a rootless movement, <a href="https://twitter.com/MohajeraniSayed/status/946652772052754432">attributed them to Israel</a>, and reproached the media for covering them. Reformist journalist Ebrahim Nabavi, meanwhile, <a href="https://twitter.com/ebrahimnabavi/status/946348055392960512">mocked the protesters</a> as “beetroot sellers and cherry pickers”.</p>
<p>Once a democratic and civil movement, reformism in Iran has now been totally absorbed into the hardliners’ authoritarianism. Confronted with an apparent third force in Iran’s bipolar political spectrum, they chose to become one with their former adversaries on the hardline religious front. Once outraged when former president <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23538717">Mahmoud Ahmadinejad</a> called the Green Movement protesters “dust and dirt”, they are borrowing the same rhetoric to describe the new movement – right down to the shop-worn cliche of tying them to the hostile US.</p>
<p>In the last several elections, reformists successfully mobilised dissident middle and upper middle-class Iranians. This they did mainly through fearmongering; the fear of hardliners and of war got many, even among the most radical opposition of the regime, to the ballot box. </p>
<p>But the truth is that since Khatami’s second term, Iranian reformism has been constantly backing away from its own principled demands to the point that it is now almost unrecognisable. In a same way, the apparatus of the Islamic Republic of Iran has now lost any legitimacy as a “revolution of the barefooted”. The regime, as professor of political science <a href="http://zeitoons.com/42531">Fatemeh Sadeghi</a> puts it, “is no longer a system, but a pure reign without any justification”.</p>
<p>The diversity of today’s protesters looks set to become a pattern for the reconstruction of the opposition, whose prominent figures and leaders have been systematically <a href="http://www.iranhrdc.org/english/publications/reports/3152-no-safe-haven-iran-s-global-assassination-campaign.html">assassinated</a> over the last four decades. For the first time in the history of post-revolution Iran, an opposition is at the verge of forming a real and functional coalition of all the country’s secular forces, from socialists to liberals and all the factions in between. As the reformists’ agenda shrivels into cynicism, that opposition’s time may just be coming.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89604/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Omid Shams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With a hollowed-out agenda and a cynical attitude to corruption, Iran’s reformist forces have squandered their people’s trust.Omid Shams, PhD Candidate, School of Law, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/895892018-01-03T13:35:10Z2018-01-03T13:35:10ZIran: a new kind of protest movement is taking hold<p>When the news broke about a protest in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city and a stronghold for the country’s religious hardliners, in the waning days of 2017 no one thought it would lead to a national rally against the government. But since then the demonstrations have <a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-in-iran-could-spell-trouble-for-the-middle-east-at-large-89588">rapidly spread to Iran’s other provinces</a> and have left the political elite shocked and baffled. </p>
<p>It’s hard to believe that a regime with such a strong regional position, and one that just recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/rouhanis-commanding-election-victory-might-just-help-him-change-iran-78051">held a successful presidential election</a> with a wide range of participants, is in trouble. All parts of the Iranian establishment have duly responded with various forms of denial. </p>
<p>The country’s political <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/01/iran-reformist-reaction-protests-unrest-tajzadeh-abtahi.html">reformists</a> see the protests as a plot by hardliners against the president, Hasan Rouhani, and his moderate government. Iran’s vice-president, Eshaq Jahangiri, implicitly blamed hardliners and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/29/iranian-police-disperse-anti-government-protests">said</a> “those who are behind such events will burn their own fingers”. </p>
<p>Similarly, hardliners are ignoring the fact that the protesters are venting their anger against the religious regime as a whole. Instead, they are framing the protests as a spasm of rage against the elected government’s economic policies. As the protests spread and grew, one of Iran’s most conservative newspapers, Kayhan, <a href="http://kayhan.ir/fa/news/122312/%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%AE%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%AF-%D8%AC%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%AD%DB%8C-%D8%A8%D8%A7-%DA%AF%D9%84%D8%A7%DB%8C%D9%87%E2%80%8C%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C-%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%AA%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%AF%DB%8C-%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%85-%D8%AE%DB%8C%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA">denounced</a> the Rouhani government and said the protesters were angry that it had “ignored” its own election slogans and promises.</p>
<p>But the last seven days have indicated that the protesters are neither lackeys of the hardliners, as the reformists would have it, nor just unhappy with Rouhani‘s government, as the hardliners claim. Indeed, they are representing a new movement: the “economically marginalised people movement”. And this movement is unlike any other seen in post-revolutionary Iran.</p>
<h2>Those who show up</h2>
<p>Whereas 2009’s <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/201351661225981675.html">Green Movement</a> mostly comprised middle-class and affluent Iranians who demanded democracy and political reform, today’s protests come mostly from working-class and low-income families fed up with Iran’s unjust distribution of wealth and the corruption that exacerbates it. These Iranians know that their country has some of the world’s richest natural resources, but they also know that the revenue that should be spent on them is instead siphoned off to fund the government’s foreign adventurism. And so goes their chant: “Leave Syria, do something for us.”</p>
<p>In addition, the current movement, unlike the Green Movement, has no specific leader, and its demonstrations are mostly organised via <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/01/irans-telegram-revolution-216206">Telegram</a>, Iran’s most popular messaging app. While having no leadership can be a negative point for any movement, it also can have its benefits. The Green Movement came to an end when the regime placed its leaders under <a href="https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2016/12/karroubi-mousavi-rahnavard/">house arrest</a>. But when Telegram was <a href="https://twitter.com/durov/status/947441456238735360">blocked</a> in Iran to stymie the growing protests, the movement kept going; people have started to use virtual private networks and proxy servers, and they now have access to Telegram again.</p>
<p>Previous protests in post-revolutionary Iran were hardly national movements. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3879535.stm">The student protests in 1999</a> against the closure of Salam, a reformist newspaper, were confined to Tehran. Conversely, the current movement in Iran extends across the country; even in Qom, a very conservative city where unrest is usually thought highly unlikely, people have been <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/1.831956">out on the streets</a> chanting against the regime.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"946770453099663360"}"></div></p>
<p>Until these demonstrations began, big social movements in Iran were principally organised by reformists – but this time, reformist leaders are withholding their support. As the most powerful challenger to the hardliners, whom they have to fight to win over the broad middle of Iranian public opinion, the reformists have no interest in backing what can be described as a left-wing movement, at least in terms of who its participants are. Equally, the protesters clearly don’t think their economic grievances can be settled within the current reformist discourse. </p>
<p>So if the protests continue to grow and the reformists still want to be Iran’s main opposition voice, they may soon have no choice but to accommodate at least some of the demonstrators’ demands in their political agenda. If they do not, their political struggle could soon be hijacked by something entirely new.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89589/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Meysam Tayebipour does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Iran’s main opposition is loath to embrace a new wave of protesters. It may soon have no choice.Dr Meysam Tayebipour, PhD Candidate, Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/895882018-01-02T16:14:06Z2018-01-02T16:14:06ZProtests in Iran could spell trouble for the Middle East at large<p>Roiling more than a dozen major cities, young Iranians are protesting against the country’s government. They appear to be particularly angered by the country’s funding of wars in Arab countries, such as Yemen and Syria, as Iranian citizens slide towards poverty. In the city of Kerman, demonstrators <a href="http://eaworldview.com/2017/12/iran-videos-saturdays-protests-across-country/">chanted</a> that the “People are living like beggars, the Leader is behaving like a God”, and in Khuzestan, protesters reportedly <a href="https://twitter.com/HadiNili/status/947134139395952640">called out</a> “death to Khamenei”, Iran’s supreme leader. Something profound is happening – and it could have major implications for the Middle East as a whole.</p>
<p>On the face of it, this is reminiscent of the huge protests that followed the 2009 election, known as the <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/201351661225981675.html">Green Movement</a> or Green Revolution. But these latest protests are all round very unlike the Green Movement in their implications, their size, and their demographics. In 2009, protesters mainly came from a young and educated middle class; this time, the protests started in the north-western city of <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iran-economy-protests/hundreds-protest-against-high-prices-in-iran-idUKKBN1EM19T">Mashad</a>, traditionally a religiously conservative place, and those taking to the streets come from a far wider variety of backgrounds.</p>
<p>Alas, much as happened in 2009, the latest protests in Iran face a severe government crackdown. The first deaths at the hands of security forces were reported in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-rallies-shooting/at-least-two-protesters-shot-in-western-iran-social-media-idUSKBN1EO0JN">Dorud</a>, and <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/01/world/iran-protests-deaths-rouhani-intl/index.html">more than 20 casualties</a> have now been counted. And yet the protesters continue to stand up against the government’s iron-fisted approach. So what’s driving them?</p>
<p>Besides the protesters’ explicit antipathy toward Iranian foreign policy in the Arab world, the protests also have a distinctively Arab dimension. In Ahwazi, a majority Arab region in Iran’s south-west, protests have been going on for weeks, with people taking to the streets to rail against the Iranian government’s repression and its <a href="http://unpo.org/article/7696">confiscation of Ahwazi land and water</a>. Thousands of Arab Iranians took to the streets when an Iranian parliamentarian, Qassem al-Saeedi, slammed the Iranian government’s discriminatory policies, even <a href="http://www.basnews.com/index.php/en/opinion/400443">comparing</a> the Iranian regime’s anti-Arab policies to those of Israel.</p>
<h2>Lending support</h2>
<p>Then there’s the matter of Syria. Since the beginning of the Syrian uprisings in 2011, Ahwazi Arab Iranians have stood in solidarity with their counterparts on the Syrian streets, while Syrian pro-democracy protesters have waved the Ahwaz flag in their protests against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Small wonder then that today’s Syrian anti-regime revolutionaries and activists are standing in solidarity with the Iranian protests.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/opinion/bombs-will-not-defeat-isis-but-maybe-the-internet-will.html">Abdelaziz al-Hamza</a>, a Syrian pro-democracy activist from Raqqa and active member of the group <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/the-tragic-legacy-of-raqqa-is-being-slaughtered-silently">Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently</a>, advised the Iranian protesters not to reveal their identity, not to carry any ID documentation, and to use removable memory cards in the devices they use to document the protests. He also strongly advised them to use nicknames for their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, and to communicate via encrypted apps.</p>
<p>Many Syrian opposition activists hope that the Iranian protests will start a domino effect that eventually affects Iranian foreign policy towards Syria. In recent years, the Iranian government has spent billions of dollars annually supporting the repressive Syrian regime. Iran’s powerful military chief, General <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27883162">Qasem Soleimani</a>, has been leading the Iranian military operation inside Syria. If the current protests lead to some sort of revolutionary change, Iran’s strong financial and military support to active actors in the Syrian war – among them <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-hezbollah-matters-so-much-in-a-turbulent-middle-east-88111">Hezbollah</a> and the Assad regime’s army – could suddenly shrivel up. This will also have major implications for Arab countries where Iran is playing a military role, not least <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/14/iran-ballistic-missiles-yemen-houthi-rebels-un">Yemen</a>.</p>
<p>If anything is to be learned from the Syrian uprisings, it’s that protests such as these can take on a life of their own in ways no one anticipated. There is a significant chance that the Iranian regime will be every bit as brutal in its crackdown as the Assad regime. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has blamed the protests on a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-latest-iran-news-agency-says-officer-slain-at-protest/2018/01/01/bf0e71e0-ef57-11e7-95e3-eff284e71c8d_story.html">foreign conspiracy</a>; hundreds of protesters have been arrested, and the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Court <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/irans-chief-justice-protesters-may-face-the-death-penalty">warned</a> that some will receive death sentences. </p>
<p>The prospect of major bloodshed at the hands of the state looms large – and if that happens, the ensuing domino effect could create yet another volatile and explosive situation in an already stormy and dangerous region.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Josepha Ivanka Wessels does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The nationwide anti-government protests in Iran could have significant implications in Syria and beyond.Josepha Ivanka Wessels, Senior Researcher Middle Eastern Studies, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/857422017-10-18T02:49:10Z2017-10-18T02:49:10ZBob Brown wins his case, but High Court leaves the door open to laws targeting protesters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190291/original/file-20171016-1470-16mhuz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Brown was arrested under an anti-protest law after refusing to obey police directions to leave a forestry coup at Lapoinya State Forest.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The High Court has <a href="http://eresources.hcourt.gov.au/downloadPdf/2017/HCA/43">ruled today</a> by a 6:1 majority in favour of Bob Brown and Jessica Hoyt’s challenge to the validity of a Tasmanian anti-protest law. The decision is a significant win for forestry and public-interest activists, although it does not go as far as some may have hoped. </p>
<p>The court found the Tasmanian law was unbalanced and unreasonable. However, it affirmed the right of parliaments to target protesters who interfere with business operations.</p>
<p>Despite this, the case will cause many states to review their protest laws. </p>
<h2>Background to the case</h2>
<p>The Tasmanian Parliament passed the law in question, the <a href="http://www6.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/tas/num_act/wfpa201425o2014498/">Workplace (Protection from Protesters) Act</a>, in 2014. </p>
<p>This came soon after the state had elected a new Liberal government, which had run a significant part of its campaign on a promise to “rebuild” Tasmania’s forestry industry. <a href="https://theconversation.com/criminalising-dissent-anti-protest-law-is-an-ominous-sign-of-the-times-34790">That included</a> tearing up a <a href="https://theconversation.com/end-of-tasmanias-forest-peace-deal-heralds-more-uncertainty-31010">peace deal</a> between loggers and conservationists, allowing companies to sue protesters for defamation, and toughening the law to deter protesters.</p>
<p>The Workplace (Protection from Protesters) Act criminalised certain forms of protest that interfered with “business activity” at any “business premises” or “business access area”. This included forestry and other industrial activities on public or private land. </p>
<p>Workplaces are already protected by a range of existing laws. But the Tasmanian act imposed much higher financial and criminal penalties that were easier for police to enforce.</p>
<p>Under the act, police could prevent the commencement or continuation of an on-site political protest that they reasonably believe would, or was about to, prevent, hinder or obstruct a “business activity” at any “business premises” or “business access area”. </p>
<p>This involved, among other things, allowing police to direct protesters to leave and stay away from certain areas for up to three months. Protesters who failed to do this faced fines of up to A$10,000 and four years in jail.</p>
<p>Brown and Hoyt were among a larger group of the first protesters arrested under the act in January 2016. They and other protesters refused to obey police directions to leave a forestry coup at Lapoinya State Forest, in Tasmania’s northwest. </p>
<p>Brown was the first protester to <a href="https://theconversation.com/bob-brown-takes-to-the-high-court-to-put-hardline-anti-protest-laws-to-the-test-76991">challenge the law’s validity</a> in the High Court. After he did this the state dropped charges against him, due to apparent confusion about which sections of the act he had actually breached. </p>
<p>There was some suspicion that the abandonment of Brown’s charges was also motivated by a desire to circumvent the court challenge. This was amplified when Hoyt’s charges were also dropped after she joined Brown’s action. All of the protesters’ charges were later dropped, and Tasmania sought to have the court challenge discontinued on the grounds that Brown no longer had a “special interest” (or standing) in the matter. </p>
<p>Tasmania subsequently withdrew the challenge to standing in March 2017, after several states and the Commonwealth intervened in the matter. This meant the High Court was only asked to determine the constitutional validity of the Tasmanian law. </p>
<p>Brown and Hoyt argued the act targeted and singled out protesters as a special category without taking into account the importance of protest in a liberal democracy. </p>
<p>They argued that, under the constitutionally protected freedom of political communication, the act was illegitimate and unreasonable: it disproportionately balanced between the need to protect political communication and protect workplaces. </p>
<p>Tasmania argued the act was primarily aimed at protecting business, rather than protest. Some protesters, it argued, posed a special risk to business in the state, and the legislation was narrow and tailored to them. According to Tasmania, protesters still could voice their political views on non-business land or business access areas, ensuring freedom of political communication in the state. </p>
<p>Apart from Western Australia, all states and the Commonwealth joined the action on Tasmania’s side. This suggested concern about the case’s impact on their ability to pass similar laws. Western Australia initially filed to do the same but did not proceed, after its anti-protest bill failed to pass <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-07/wa-protest-laws-on-back-burner-till-after-election/7824184">through its parliament</a>.</p>
<h2>What did the court find?</h2>
<p>The court unanimously found that the act’s stated aims were legitimate. It rejected the assertion that laws that singled out protesters are, of themselves, unconstitutional. However, the court also recognised the Tasmanian law was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… enacted against a background where protesters, or at least some of them, were perceived to be those persons, or groups, who would cause damage or disrupt economic activities during protests of particular kinds.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That other laws already exist to stop interference with business and forestry operations (regardless of whether someone is a protester or not) was not relevant to the decision. This was because protesters create a “particular mischief” that deserves legislation specific to that mischief. This will give some comfort to states that have similar legislation to Tasmania’s. </p>
<p>Despite legitimately aiming to criminalise disruptive protesters, six judges found the way in which the Tasmanian law sought to achieve this was disproportionate and used unnecessary provisions.</p>
<p>All of the majority judges agreed the legislation was confusing, vague and poorly written. </p>
<p>Justice Gageler described its provisions as creating “Pythonesque absurdity” when applied to various foreseeable public gatherings. He noted that the provisions were not only broad and vague in reach, but seemed to create sanctions and penalties far outside the actual purported interference with a workplace. These were, at best, a “blunt instrument to achieve that purpose”. </p>
<p>In particular, Justice Gaegler was concerned with the lack of justification for the times that people could be sent away from a protest site, and just how far they can be sent. These police powers had no relationship with the actual threat to specific workplace activities at specific sites. </p>
<p>Chief Justice Kiefel, in a joint judgement with Justices Bell and Keane (with Justice Nettle agreeing in a separate judgement), suggested that the act’s vagueness and uncertainty were actually designed to give the act a broader reach than just business or forestry land.</p>
<p>While their judgements considered almost all the act’s operative provisions to be invalid, other judges were much more focused on specific provisions. </p>
<p>Unifying all the judgements was a concern that the part of the act that allowed police to order a person off land on a mere suspicion they were or might interfere with a business activity for a four-day period was arbitrary, and could not be justified. Justice Gordon considered only this provision to be invalid. </p>
<p>However, Justice Edelman considered the act to only cover conduct that was already unlawful by making certain high-threshold and more prominent illegal acts more targeted and specific. He therefore concluded that it was valid in its entirety.</p>
<h2>What does it all mean?</h2>
<p>The court varied on which parts of the act were invalid. However, the majority of judges declared sufficient parts of the act unconstitutional to ensure it cannot survive in its current state.</p>
<p>So, the current law is no more. Brown and Hoyt won a major victory.</p>
<p>However, the wider contest between protesters and government remains open. The court made it clear there is no “right to protest” <em>per se</em>, nor a restriction on parliaments targeting protesters who they consider go too far in the name of a political cause.</p>
<p>This part of the decision will disappoint some who had hoped that creating a higher threshold of penalties for those who commit a crime for the purposes of protest, should be unconstitutional on the ground that it is never legitimate to single out protest as a crime. So too will the court’s wider avoidance of considering the much more harsh penalties imposed on protesters than other criminal activities that have the same effect.</p>
<p>The decision will also have implications for legal challenges against Tasmania’s other anti-protest laws, which create “safe access zones” to protect women attending abortion clinics. These laws had been put on hold while the High Court considered Brown’s challenge.</p>
<p>The safe access zones legislation <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-19/anti-abortion-protester-to-appeal-conviction-under-tasmanian-law/7856290">allows police</a> to move on or arrest protesters who are 150 metres from an abortion clinic, regardless if they are actually interfering directly with, or are visible to, patients. In Tasmania’s small CBDs, this could effectively stop people protesting at all in the city centre, given the overlapping zones. The lack of tailoring in that legislation may prove a problem.</p>
<p>In many ways, this decision was predictable from the outset of the charges against Brown and the other protesters. The confusion and poorly-constructed Tasmanian legislation made it especially vulnerable to attack. But that has meant the win is against vague and undisciplined drafting, rather than against anti-protest laws more generally.</p>
<p>While many states will now be reviewing their own anti-protest laws, it will be to determine how to make them more specific and targeted to an identified threat to controversial business activities, such as forestry, mining or fracking. They may be slightly buoyed by the court’s unanimous confirmation that they can limit protest activities that interfere with such operations. The public and political war has not ended just yet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85742/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brendan Gogarty does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bob Brown’s successful High Court challenge to an anti-protest law in Tasmania will cause many states to review their own protest laws.Brendan Gogarty, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.