Features headquarters of the Conservative party, conducting vandalism on HM Treasury’s buildings and attacking the royal motorcade despite attempts by NUS organisers to stop them. Introspectively, there were clearly no signs of organisational elements in the 2010 movement as compared to the Indian National Congress or the Extinction Rebellion who had visible organisational structures and leaders with coherent and clear strategies of achieving ends. The student demonstrations were rather a leaderless, grassroots movements that gone rogue exhibiting the distinction between an organised protest movement from an unruly riot. Moreover, public opinion plays one of the largest roles in deciding and legitimising whether a movement is branded the peaceful protest or the anarchic rebellion. While we recognise the subjectivity of the nature of different civil disobediences is dependent on the social receptions toward the question at hand, the key determinant that sets protests from rebellions would be whether its goals receive popular support. Yet, this can once again be influenced by the nature of the regime or the biases shown by media outlets in depicting the movement as a protest of a riot. All in all, while civil disobediences all demand changes, the tactic and their very political nature determine whether they fall under the peaceful protest label or the anarchic rebellion subdivision. While protests may seem to be the cornerstone of democracy in terms of freedom of speech, there is a need to keep in mind that different political climates and their tolerance to such demonstrations may influence KCL Politics Society
7 how these events are perceived. Generally speaking, three key defining factors that separate these social movements into their respective camps would be the deployment of symmetric or asymmetric means to achieve its objectives, the effectiveness and coherence of organisational tactics and strategy and finally, the impact and favour of public perception and opinion.
Are Protests CounterProductive? By Pinja Rönkä Growing up in the cultural context of Europe, protests have been integrated as a very fundamental part of the political culture. Expressing dissatisfaction about political decisions under the right to freedom of speech is widely accepted. However, this article would like to dive deeper into the topic of protesting and think about the practicality and other implications which might emerge within. Fundamentally, protests are widely used to forward political objectives and raise awareness, hence some thought has to be put into
evaluating the effectiveness of this tool. Is the cost-benefit ratio not only neutral but negative? This article is going to ponder some perspectives and examples when it comes to the counterproductivity of protesting. If we think for a brief moment what the implications are that protesters hope to get out of their behaviour, we can come up with things like “raise awareness and gain recognition for the cause”. Such objectives are believed to kick-start action and change in policymaking. But on the contrary, there are studies which found that “extreme protesting undermines activist’s goal of attracting more people to the movement”, and often the change created is minimal. Protesting can also cause harm to the cause and even create resentment among people. One example of this is the Extinction Rebellion movement in London and around Europe. When in the morning, one is trying to make their way to Strand across Waterloo bridge in the pouring rain because public transport is cancelled due to the protests, gratitude is not the first feeling crossing one’s mind towards the rebellions. Most of the average people cannot see further than their noses when it comes to
