There has also been a tendency for progressive protest movements to get extremely derailed by bad-faith actors subverting the plans, messaging and outcome of the events, seeding bad messages or inciting violence.
While this isn’t necessarily the fault of the protestors, the groups have been terrible about focusing on message and enforcing guidelines for how to safely protest and stay on message, so it’s really hard to separate out these saboteurs and point to them as the problem-starters.
I have said for a long time that the left needs better community organization and better leaders, not just in action movements and marches, but generally on a community level, there are a lot of people committing the same sin as the right, which is attaching to the progressive cause for the performative expression and storyline narrative only, and getting lost in the conflict not the message and goal. Performative progressivism is going to be the thing that sinks movements every time because it’s so easy to poke holes in the half-ass campaigns and the people involved don’t really care enough to push back in an intelligent way, as long as they have their in-groups to retreat to and feel validated and comforted by their community.
Agreed. A lot of these non-violent protests get infiltrated by cops posing as demonstrators. They’re called “agents provocateurs” and they work to undermine and discredit the group’s goals.
They’re fairly easy to spot because they’re always agitating for violence and nobody in the protest seems to know who they are or can remember exactly when they joined your group.
there are a lot of people committing the same sin as the right, which is attaching to the progressive cause for the performative expression and storyline narrative only
There has also been a tendency for progressive protest movements to get extremely derailed by bad-faith actors subverting the plans, messaging and outcome of the events, seeding bad messages or inciting violence.
While this isn’t necessarily the fault of the protestors, the groups have been terrible about focusing on message and enforcing guidelines for how to safely protest and stay on message, so it’s really hard to separate out these saboteurs and point to them as the problem-starters.
I have said for a long time that the left needs better community organization and better leaders, not just in action movements and marches, but generally on a community level, there are a lot of people committing the same sin as the right, which is attaching to the progressive cause for the performative expression and storyline narrative only, and getting lost in the conflict not the message and goal. Performative progressivism is going to be the thing that sinks movements every time because it’s so easy to poke holes in the half-ass campaigns and the people involved don’t really care enough to push back in an intelligent way, as long as they have their in-groups to retreat to and feel validated and comforted by their community.
Agreed. A lot of these non-violent protests get infiltrated by cops posing as demonstrators. They’re called “agents provocateurs” and they work to undermine and discredit the group’s goals.
They’re fairly easy to spot because they’re always agitating for violence and nobody in the protest seems to know who they are or can remember exactly when they joined your group.
Nailed it.