Structure

The last decade has been politically turbulent, with street protests being a common and reoccurring feature of political dissent across the world. But they have had a tendency to flare up, get huge, and fizzle away. They’re also getting more likely to fail – whereas 20 years ago 70 percent of protests demanding systemic change got it, now only 30 percent do. What’s causing this, and what lessons can these trends teach the left about strategy and tactics as we move into the 2020s? 

The increasing frequency of mass protest across the world has a deeper underpinning than simply an increase in people’s frustrations. They’re reflective of deeper structural shifts in society, which are making protest flare ups an increasingly avenue for dissent. There are four interlinked trends which taken together account for this shift.

Firstly, democracy has stalled. Since WW2 there was a steady movement around the world towards more democratic societies but evidence suggests that this movement has now been thrown in reverse. This means that bottom up pressures for more democracy – such as from rising middle classes – are now being rerouted from the arena of the institutions to that of the street.

Secondly, the increasing role social media plays in all communications has made protests more likely to start, more likely to get huge, and more likely to fail. Social media has made it easier for activists to rally people to the streets but with this ease comes a pitfall – it makes it possible to bypass the need to create robust organisations to underpin mobilisation. Whereas 20 years ago mobilisation would be built many years of community outreach and organisation-building, today it can flare up out of nowhere. This leaders to a lack of durability, and a lack of an organised social base, which makes it harder for social movements to press their demands in the long run.

Thirdly, social polarisation is up. Increasing economic inequality, racial and political divides are fuelling a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’. This is leading to the hardening of group identities, which fuels unrest – as particular social groupings mobilise on the streets. Finally, the inefficacy of protests today are the result of the fact that elites have learnt to contain and defuse them, through targeting and isolating key nodes and effectively manipulating the media landscape to mobilise their own support base, for example in the case of Trump.

Taken together these are important lessons. As we move into the 2020s, we need to change our strategy. While the last ten years have shown the increasing prevalence of mass protest, there has been a failure to build a robust base beneath these flare ups. What’s more, the elite have worked out how to contain these pressures. Moving forward we need to realise we’re in it for the long haul – and that there can be no substitute for patient and community-rooted base-building. We must organise to rebuild the mass social base of the left, and then when the time is right, mobilise it.