Vincent Bevins, journalist and author, discusses the lack of improvement in conditions despite mass protests. The left's organizational shortcomings, the shift in tactics, and the importance of leadership are explored. The podcast also delves into the emergence of mass protests and lessons learned, the battles for representation, co-opting of movements, horizontalism, and personal reflections on organizing and activism.
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Quick takeaways
The mass protests of the past decade failed to bring about real change due to a lack of effective organization and a shift away from traditional strategies and leadership.
Purely spontaneous movements without revolutionary theory often struggle to achieve meaningful structural change and may reproduce the dominant ideology of society.
Horizontalist movements, although emphasizing individual decision-making, can lack accountability and benefit from structured organizations to facilitate collective action during political crises.
Deep dives
The Phenomenon of Large Protests in the 2010s
The podcast episode discusses the significant role of large protests in the 2010s. These protests had a major impact on governments around the world, either leading to their overthrow or causing significant destabilization. The episode argues that organizing the history of the 2010s around this phenomenon is a valid approach, as it played a crucial role in shaping political landscapes. The episode also examines why many of these mass protests failed to achieve their initial goals, with protests often leading to unexpected outcomes or being co-opted by other forces.
The New Left and its Impact on Protest Tactics
The podcast explores the emergence of the New Left in the 1960s, which marked a departure from the traditional tactics and strategies of the Old Left. The New Left prioritized means over ends, emphasizing protest, prefiguration, and horizontalism. These ideas gained momentum and became part of the dominant protest culture of the 2010s. However, the episode suggests that these tactics were not always effectively aligned with achieving long-term goals, leading to challenges in leveraging the power of mass protests to bring about significant structural change.
Examples of Protest Movements Analyzed
The podcast highlights specific protest movements examined in the book, such as the uprisings in Egypt, Brazil, and Turkey. These case studies reveal the challenges faced by protesters in taking their demands beyond the initial momentum and achieving lasting change. The episode highlights the struggles of cooptation, the difficulty of representation, and the complexities of power vacuums that emerged in the wake of these mass protests. It also alludes to the media's role in interpreting and often simplifying these complex events.
The Need for Effective Organization in Protest Movements
The episode delves into the importance of effective organization and preparation in protest movements, drawing from Leninist theories. It argues that building organizational structures and strategies prior to mass uprisings is crucial for navigating power vacuums and shaping long-term goals. The episode suggests that the lack of robust left organizations in the 2010s often hindered the ability of protesters to capitalize on their initial momentum and secure meaningful structural change.
The role of revolutionary theory in spontaneous uprisings
The podcast explores the idea that purely spontaneous uprisings, without revolutionary theory, tend to reproduce the dominant ideology of a society. It discusses how the ability to shape the narrative and seize power often falls to groups that already have organized structures and some form of revolutionary theory. This is exemplified in historical events like the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, as well as in more recent uprisings in Brazil and Ukraine. The podcast emphasizes that without a transformative and organized ideology, purely spontaneous movements may struggle to effect actual change.
The challenges of horizontalism and the importance of structure
The podcast examines the concept of horizontalism and its relationship to neoliberalism. It discusses the tendency of horizontalist movements to reject hierarchical structures and authority, allowing for individualistic decision-making. However, it also highlights how this can lead to a lack of accountability and the emergence of unaccountable leaders. The podcast references the essay 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness' by Jo Freeman, which argues for the importance of formal, transparent, and democratic mechanisms in organizing movements. It suggests that having structured organizations, such as political parties, unions, and social movements, can better position activists and facilitate collective action in moments of political crisis or opportunity.
The past decade or so was marked by mass protests—in fact, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history, from Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring to the 2020 George Floyd uprisings and even more recently with millions upon millions pouring into the streets in support of Palestinian liberation. So why, then, have conditions not improved? Why have they, in many cases, only gotten worse?
This is the question that Vincent Bevins set out to answer in his latest book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. The search for an answer took Vincent all over the world, from Brazil to Ukraine, Turkey, Chile, Hong Kong, and Middle East. The answer imparts an extremely important lesson to the left: we’re simply not organized. Or, rather, we’re not organized in an effective way. The shift in the left’s tactics and strategies since the 1960s has left us with movements that rely far too heavily on horizontalism, spontaneity, and an extreme form of prefiguration that subordinates ends to means. This New Left ideology abandons the principles of Marxism-Leninism, revolutionary theory, and the importance of leadership. This, Vincent believes, is why the mass protest decade failed to win its demands and bring about real change.
Thank you to Menstruação Anarquika for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond
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