9 min
What do we want? An End to Violent Activism! When do we want it? Now! Antidoters Podcast
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- Philosophy
Activism is in-vogue. So much so, ‘Activist’ appears to now be a job-title according to LinkedIn and it’s perhaps no surprise given that rage has replaced sex as the hottest marketing tool (Scott Galloway is great on this here). Maybe it never left, and arguably, we have much progress to thank it for. The right to protest is a fundamental democratic right that most of us in the West believe in wholeheartedly. It can be hugely inspiring to observe and no doubt participate in crowds thronging together in a single, shared world-changing purpose. Feeling like we’re ‘doing something’ and ‘making a difference’.
As Yascha Mounk writes in the Spectator this week of the current protest :
Its ostensible cause is hardly ignoble. It’s possible to be appalled both by the 7 October attacks and the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths. It would be inhumane not to share the widespread horror at what is happening in Gaza. And anti-war rallies have, of course, long been part of the student experience, a hallmark of a free society.
But as the above article goes on to demonstrate, I am not alone in fearing that the current angry, lawless iterations risk damaging their causes more than furthering them.
Like this? Intensely dislike it? Please sign up & share to help spread the word so we can all have a civilised debate about what I get wrong!
Like many, I’ve watched the on-campus protests in the US and many others in recent years- increasingly imported to the UK - along with their descent into unruliness with a mixture of alarm and fear. Where is the line between peaceful protest and anarchy?
On the current issue, I utterly accept my own ignorance, despite having sought to read as widely as I can from all sides. But given my ongoing ignorance of the complicated historical, religious and ideological context, I defer the debate to experts and instead, like many, to resort to favouring gut instincts based on my own values - democratic processes, respect for law, tolerance of difference, free speech, debate and the rules of modern warfare - all of which, frankly appear under threat. It is alarming. And deeply upsetting to witness mass loss of civilian life, but personally I choose not to wade in and fuel any agenda with further ignorance. The issue on which I have Antidoter concerns this week is around modern activism itself.
Primarily… does it actually work? As far as I can observe, it seems to turn people away rather than towards the violent protestor’s cause (and I do draw a distinction between peaceful and violent), driving even deeper wedges down through society between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’. Have we entirely lost the ability to converse respectfully on contentious issues, instead requiring shouting and worse - destruction and violence - to make ourselves heard?
When passions run high, anger is unavoidable but common sense suggests it’s rarely the best strategy. If we resort to dehumanising each other and violence, have we not already lost the argument? As the saying goes - never negotiate with terrorists… and as any parent of toddler-terrorists knows, it is rarely effective. To acquiesce to the demands or descend to the level of the screaming child rarely gets results, and worse, it risks damaging the causes the protesters care so much about.
In our attention economy, it’s become performative and darker. As I’ve come to realise, it’s perhaps the most high-profile symptom of so many of the various issues I’ve discussed previously - polarisation, privilege, victimhood and narcissism.
Many (not all!) activists drink from a firehose of one-sided, angry, politicised content and then tribe-up in self-affirming bubbles of outrage to signal their global-good-person credentials vs the ‘unenlightened’. These days, it’s fuelled by binary short-form content which is performative by design, stoking fear and rewarding outrage. The inten
Activism is in-vogue. So much so, ‘Activist’ appears to now be a job-title according to LinkedIn and it’s perhaps no surprise given that rage has replaced sex as the hottest marketing tool (Scott Galloway is great on this here). Maybe it never left, and arguably, we have much progress to thank it for. The right to protest is a fundamental democratic right that most of us in the West believe in wholeheartedly. It can be hugely inspiring to observe and no doubt participate in crowds thronging together in a single, shared world-changing purpose. Feeling like we’re ‘doing something’ and ‘making a difference’.
As Yascha Mounk writes in the Spectator this week of the current protest :
Its ostensible cause is hardly ignoble. It’s possible to be appalled both by the 7 October attacks and the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths. It would be inhumane not to share the widespread horror at what is happening in Gaza. And anti-war rallies have, of course, long been part of the student experience, a hallmark of a free society.
But as the above article goes on to demonstrate, I am not alone in fearing that the current angry, lawless iterations risk damaging their causes more than furthering them.
Like this? Intensely dislike it? Please sign up & share to help spread the word so we can all have a civilised debate about what I get wrong!
Like many, I’ve watched the on-campus protests in the US and many others in recent years- increasingly imported to the UK - along with their descent into unruliness with a mixture of alarm and fear. Where is the line between peaceful protest and anarchy?
On the current issue, I utterly accept my own ignorance, despite having sought to read as widely as I can from all sides. But given my ongoing ignorance of the complicated historical, religious and ideological context, I defer the debate to experts and instead, like many, to resort to favouring gut instincts based on my own values - democratic processes, respect for law, tolerance of difference, free speech, debate and the rules of modern warfare - all of which, frankly appear under threat. It is alarming. And deeply upsetting to witness mass loss of civilian life, but personally I choose not to wade in and fuel any agenda with further ignorance. The issue on which I have Antidoter concerns this week is around modern activism itself.
Primarily… does it actually work? As far as I can observe, it seems to turn people away rather than towards the violent protestor’s cause (and I do draw a distinction between peaceful and violent), driving even deeper wedges down through society between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’. Have we entirely lost the ability to converse respectfully on contentious issues, instead requiring shouting and worse - destruction and violence - to make ourselves heard?
When passions run high, anger is unavoidable but common sense suggests it’s rarely the best strategy. If we resort to dehumanising each other and violence, have we not already lost the argument? As the saying goes - never negotiate with terrorists… and as any parent of toddler-terrorists knows, it is rarely effective. To acquiesce to the demands or descend to the level of the screaming child rarely gets results, and worse, it risks damaging the causes the protesters care so much about.
In our attention economy, it’s become performative and darker. As I’ve come to realise, it’s perhaps the most high-profile symptom of so many of the various issues I’ve discussed previously - polarisation, privilege, victimhood and narcissism.
Many (not all!) activists drink from a firehose of one-sided, angry, politicised content and then tribe-up in self-affirming bubbles of outrage to signal their global-good-person credentials vs the ‘unenlightened’. These days, it’s fuelled by binary short-form content which is performative by design, stoking fear and rewarding outrage. The inten
9 min