In response to my recent article on a joke I made about the G-20 protesters, one of the readers — in fact, an old friend — asked me “Do you think protesting the G-20 is entirely without merit?”
That’s a complex question. It’s so complex that I am going to suspend, for this post, my self-imposed moratorium on cursing in writing on this weblog. If foul language offends you, you might want to stop reading now.
First off, let’s be clear that people have the right to and can peacefully protest whatever they want, and whether or not I think their cause has merit or not doesn’t really matter.
Regarding the G-20 protests specifically, I have several critiques. Some of those critiques are objective, and one is subjective. The first objective critique is that at each and every G-20 summit protest, the protesters have brought some level of violence and intentional destruction of property. I think that that is unacceptable thuggery, and anyone engaged in it must be publicly shamed.
A common rejoinder to this is “Well, not all the protesters are violent, so don’t blame everyone for a few bad apples.” That’s a bad argument. Let me explain why.
Recently, the right-wing “Tea Baggers” marched on Washington. Some of the marchers carried signs like this:
Now, I don’t feel at all shy about saying that not only was the person carrying that sign a racist pigfucker, but every single person marching within sight of that sign who didn’t confront him is, without question, someone who likes hanging out with, aiding, and abetting racist pigfuckers.
I apply the same standard to the G-20 protesters. Every person who marches with people committing violence and thuggery, and who doesn’t confront them and try to stop it, is someone who likes hanging out with, aiding, and abetting thugs.
My other objective observation is that the G-20 protests have no center, no organization, no cohesive goal, and no end game. One can’t even state with certainty what, in fact, is being protested. There is absolutely no set of actions any government or private entity could take that would result in “the protesters” (giving them a monolithic status they don’t in fact have) saying “Our demands have been met: we’re going home.” Given that, my impression is that this is less a legitimate protest movement and more a party holiday for people who have determined that showing up at protests is the best possible way to get laid.
My subjective comment is that we live in a world where most women are subjected on a regular basis to systemic and widespread oppression through physical violence, where in much of the world you can be harassed, injured, or killed if you are of the wrong religion, where much of the world is subject to governments that are actually totalitarian police states, and where the response to protests on the scale of the G-20 would be, as we’ve seen in Iran, violence on a much greater order of magnitude (warning: disturbing violent imagery at that link). As I said above, people can protest whatever they want to. But in my personal opinion, if you live in the Western world and economic globalization is the issue you choose to get worked up over, then you’re a complete lightweight and not worth taking seriously.
My feeling is this: Damn hippies! Get off my lawn!
here here.
“Every person who marches with people committing violence and thuggery, and who doesn’t confront them and try to stop it, is someone who likes hanging out with, aiding, and abetting thugs.”
OK…… while I can see your point in general, I dunno about this bit specifically. There is a BIG difference between saying to someone holding a sign daubed with racist slogans “your world views are unacceptable in a civilised society and I politely insist that you remove your sign, and yourself, from this rally which was organised for reasons other than racial hatred”, and going up to someone throwing petrol bombs at a police cordon and saying “violence is unacceptable in a civilised society, and I politely insist that you OW OW OW PLEASE STOP STAMPING ON MY HEAD”. The latter carries much more significant personal risk.
“One can’t even state with certainty what, in fact, is being protested. There is absolutely no set of actions any government or private entity could take that would result in “the protesters” … going home.”
Yeah, fair enough, with you on that one, agree completely.
“But in my personal opinion, if you live in the Western world and economic globalization is the issue you choose to get worked up over, then you’re a complete lightweight and not worth taking seriously.”
This I am not so sure about. I would mention the old saying “money is at the root of all evil” and suggest that a (not “the”) root cause of many of the more obviously-repulsive problems in the world is indeed the rise of global corporations in which the few make a lot of money while the many scrimp and starve, because that is reflected in the global society as a whole, and which not only encourages an “us and them” mentality but allows such things as governments (or dictators, or religious movements) that oppress the populace in general, and women in particular, to take hold. And all those totalitarian states out there? For the most part, freely allowed to get on with it as long as they don’t have oil. Why is Somalia ignored and Ethiopa left to starve, while Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded? (Not, I hasten to add, that I necessarily agree with a military solution, I’m simply pointing out which kinds of problems have any kind of solution attempted for them at all).
Or, from a more direct perspective, he recent global economic collapse cost (in aggregate) EVERY LIVING PERSON ON THE PLANET $2000 to fix (if one can even say it has truly been fixed), and already they’re going back to the old ways of big bankers bonuses, even after most of the banks got bailed out despite their transgressions. I find it easy to understand why a lot of people are pissed off with that. It does bother me that our governments have stumped up seventeen quadrillion million trillion brazillion dollars (approximate figure) to bail out the banks, while people starve in Darfur.
So as both an underlying cause and something that is morally questionable in its own right, the rise and rise of amoral capitalism is, I think, something that I can understand people protesting against.
Just my thoughts…
Having been on the other side of these kinds of protests while I was at the World Bank, I mainly just wish they were better at it. I (and, I’d suspect, a lot of Bank staff) would agree with the theoretical protester’s critique of the globalized economic exploitation. But it’s hard to say that with a straight face when they’re marching around a development organization with signs that read “drop food not bombs.” Whatever someone thinks of the Bank’s effectiveness, that’s just stupid.