JMG: The Twilight of Protest

[GliderGuider]

The role of protest movements in the decline and fall of the American empire.

The Twilight of Protest

That’s an issue sufficiently burdened with tangled emotions and unstated agendas that even finding a good starting place for the discussion is a challenge. Fortunately I have some assistance, courtesy of Owen Lloyd, who is involved with an organization called Deep Green Resistance and recently wrote a review of my book The Blood of the Earth. It’s by no means a bad review. Quite the contrary, Lloyd made a serious effort to grapple with the issues that book tried to raise, and by and large succeeded; where he failed, the misunderstandings were all but inevitable, given the differences between his views and mine. Thus it’s all the more striking that his review points up so precisely the reasons why protest movements have by and large been spinning their wheels in empty air for thirty years, and will almost certainly continue to do so while America’s empire crashes and burns around them.

The point that matters here is the review’s denunciation of one of the central points of the book, which is that those who want to change the world need to start by changing their own lives. According to Lloyd, we don’t have time for that, since the biosphere is in dire peril; what’s needed instead are the standard tools of contemporary activism—"direct action, community building, and outreach," in his convenient summary. His reasoning is logical enough, as far as it goes; if your house is on fire, after all, it’s a little late to install sprinklers and smoke alarms. If the situation is as urgent as Lloyd claims, all other considerations have to take a back seat to an all-out effort to deal with the immediate crisis with the most effective means available.

It’s a common enough claim in the contemporary activist community; Derrick Jensen had an article in Orion Magazine a few years back making essentially the same argument. Still, there’s a problem with that argument, because the responses Lloyd, Jensen, and other activists are promoting here have been standard across the spectrum of activist groups for more than three decades now, and that’s more than enough time to see how well they work. The answer? Well, let’s be charitable and say "not very well."

Glance back to a slightly earlier period and at least one of those lessons stands out in bold relief. In the 1970s, environmental activists facing equally powerful and well-funded corporate interests built a mass movement and forced through landmark legislation. In the United States, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and a bevy of less famous but equally important environmental bills crashed through a wall of corporate opposition and became the law of the land. That sort of success is something that today’s environmental activists can only daydream about, and it was accomplished using the same tools that activists use today—with one important addition: the environmental activists of that time recognized that the most effective way to advocate any given change was to make that change in their own lives first. That awareness was not limited to the environmental movement; it was pioneered by the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s, in fact, who turned it into a core principle of their movement—"the personal is political"—and leveraged it efficiently to bring about dramatic if still incomplete gains in women’s rights. They recognized, as did many other activists in those years, that if your lifestyle supports a system, and depends on that system, any efforts you may think you’re making to force significant change on that system will be wasted breath.

[kristopher]

1. Want active activism?

Bring back the draft and start another mindless war to chew up our young people.

[chaska]

2. Anyone on the left not reading JMG is missing one of the most important ...

thinkers out there. The Archdruid Report is an absolute must read every week (new post every Wednesday).

He's had a huge impact on my own thinking. That said, I'm having a hard time with his be the change you want to see idea. He's pretty hard on the Occupy movement. I really don't think he has a clear picture of them. But, it's JMG and he's a brain-monster. I will certainly give this week's post (not read yet, apart from the excerpt) careful consideration.

[GliderGuider]

7. I have bones to pick with Greer from time to time

I keep grumbling to myself, "Just because he's bright doesn't mean he's right..." I think he misses the point with Occupy, and he's too much of a gradualist for my taste. I'm more of a "Collapse and get it over with already, don't give me none of this candyass "catabolic" bullshit!" sort of guy, but in the end I suspect reality is going to manage to surprise us both.

[99th_Monkey]

3. Two BIG differences between 1970 and 2012

1) MEDIA now is wholly owned subsidiary of military industrial complex and the 1%. This was not
nearly as true back in 1970.
2) MILITARIZATION & epidemic of murderous mean-spiritedness in police departments everywhere.

These two things in and of themselves make a HUGE difference in how "protests" play out as
productive or simply an exercise in futility.

However, with Occupy, the jury is still out I believe... we'll see how Spring and Summer go.

[phantom power]

4. I know its been discussed before...

but I've begun to question how many of the environmental gains in America were "real", as opposed to "achieved by exporting our pollution to China and other developing countries." That is: maybe environmental activism is less effective because the "developing country" buffer is now full?

[XemaSab]

5. I've been asking myself that too

[GliderGuider]

6. A trenchant observation.

We tend to think of this as a recent phenomenon with China, but it's been going on for a long time.