On the Lack of Efficiency of Peaceful Protests
Yes, this is finally a post with some real comments about the situation in Egypt. Or, more exactly, comments inspired by the situation in Egypt, but extrapolated and seen as general issues. That’s because yesterday’s events have once again proven the point I mean to make, so there’s no better time for it. Then again, waiting longer could perhaps provide evidence to back my proposed solutions as well, but the situation is so fluid you really can’t tell what will happen next.
As you have probably noticed from the above paragraph, this will be a pretty rushed post, so I won’t be providing links for everything as I’d do otherwise. I’m trying to throw this on here while I still can and before the situation changes dramatically once again, or at least not too long after it will change, considering the news that are coming in just as I’m starting to write this. In case someone’ll read this, I’m sure you can find links and reports on your own if you’re so inclined. It’s hard enough for me to take a break from following the events to write this anyway, and in fact I’ll be writing it in bits and pieces, constantly throwing glances to see what else is going on. So expect it to make even less sense than my writing usually does…
In fact, I will start this with a few tweets that were just posted by a protester. One says: “Protesters in front of presidential palace are just standing around and socializing. This is what I get for protesting with the upper middle class.” The second says: “Not a single chant at presidential palace. Posh upper middle class tires easily. We need the Tahrir lot here!” While the third says: “Never protest with the rich crowd. They aren’t angry enough.” (I have slightly edited them, considering how you are pretty much forced to post on Twitter.)
What is described in those tweets is a completely pointless type of protest: People who just show up for the sake of showing up, unwilling to do pretty much anything, not even as part of a group. They are, therefore, very easy to simply ignore by those they claim to be protesting against. In fact, it’s pretty hard for anyone to take them into account and the real protesters, those who are actually willing to fight for their cause, are completely entitled to feel at least somewhat annoyed by them, if not completely outraged by their lack of willingness to actually, well, participate!
But mere chants don’t accomplish too much either. Yesterday’s events have proven that yet again, not that additional evidence was necessary in any way. Those who want to preserve the status quo can still do so in the face of mere words, no matter how inspired or loud they may be. They can just reply with their own words, as Mubarak and Suleiman did yesterday, or perhaps ignore the protests completely. Quite simply, mere words are not a real threat, they don’t directly endanger them in any way, so there’s no real reason for them to do what’s asked of them. I mean, if the rulers cared about what the people wanted, there would be no protests in the first place, so there’s little point for the protesters to simply express their demands in such a peaceful manner.
In truth, such peaceful protests inconvenience regular citizens far more than the rulers. As a result, under some circumstances they can backfire, causing people who don’t participate in them to take action against them, even though they don’t support the status quo. Such a development was a real danger in Egypt until only a few days ago. Luckily, in this one case, recently more and more workers have started going on strikes and therefore joining the protests in their own way, so this danger seems to have passed, but in many other situations things don’t work out like this and the “silent majority” can break away from only tacitly supporting the status quo by doing nothing and actually end up taking action against protesters, simply because they’re becoming inconvenient without truly accomplishing anything.
What works is direct action, violent if need be. Of course, there are more serious consequences to such actions, but nothing worthwhile’s ever easy and things often need to first get much worse before they can get better. You can sit and chant and shout for weeks or months and not achieve much of anything, and likely even end up turning the “silent majority” against you because you’re becoming a real nuisance for them, or you can take matters into your own hands and accomplish your immediate goals in perhaps a few days, or even hours. I think many such movements would have a much higher chance of success and we’d see the changes we need to see much sooner if people would understand this simple fact and do what must be done from the beginning.
For example, to go back to the current situation in Egypt, it seemed all too obvious to me from the beginning that protesters should have rushed to the presidential palace, the government building and other such locations and at the very least start something of a siege, preventing anyone from getting in and turning those who were already inside into their prisoners. Of course, that wasn’t too likely to work right away either, as such important prisoners were likely to be rescued by their loyal troops, not to mention that such buildings are likely to have underground escape routes as well, but it would have been a proper first step. Then, in order to actually achieve victory, they should have stormed inside those buildings and taken over, either as soon as the rulers would have made their escape, when loyal troops would have tried to clear away the protesters or simply after the siege would have stretched on for long enough.
That said, I’ll get back to following the developments, since Egyptians seem to have finally woken up and are gathering around the presidential palace today. The only question is whether or not it’s too late, as it would appear that Mubarak has already left and the army may have had time to pretty much take over, which could result in yet another military dictatorship, which would mean that the Egyptian protesters have waited too long before taking the necessary actions and will only be jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
