Ineffective Activism: Don’t Be An Asshole

Where I grew up in the north Central US, people are far too passive aggressive to admit to not liking something. Instead, we describe bad things as “interesting.” We live in an interesting political era. The lion’s share of our interesting times can be laid at the feet of one Donald Trump, but increasingly aggressively off-putting activists have entered the ring to contend for the “biggest reason why we can’t have nice things” title.

A bit of my background: I was actually extremely politically active in South Dakota as a teenager to twenty-something in the aughts. Not really a part of anything organized, but enough of a pain in the ass, that Tom Daschle and a lot of the political power players in the state who weren’t the type to shoot liberals on sight knew who I was. I even lived near DC briefly after college before a gigantic flame out sent me back to SD with my tail between my legs.

During my political era in SD, the Iraq War started, SD had a constitutional amendment to make gay marriage even more illegaler, and there was a law passed, and overturned via ballot initiative, to make abortion completely illegal. All the while, Native Americans continued to be treated terribly by the state and a lot of its residents. Don’t get me wrong; I am and always have been basically nobody, but I actually have gotten my hands dirty and been an honest to gosh activist, and have spent a lot of the intervening decade and a half since my flame-out ruminating on what works and what doesn’t.

First of the bat, a lot of people have asked me whether I think property destruction or violence is ever justified and I really don’t know. Obviously, vandalizing a Target store or whatever is not as bad as police violence, but it also isn’t justified by police violence. I think the question that does matter is whether property destruction or disruptive protests (hence forth I will call them “bigger asshole tactics”) are effective and I think the answer is yes, but not nearly as often as these tactics are deployed.

Being the bigger asshole is best at stopping something from happening by making it too much of a pain in the ass to do or intimidating an individual or small group into doing something when they have sole power to do the thing. NIMBYs often employ these tactics when they go and tantrum at city council meetings. Another successful example is when cancellers overwhelm some company’s HR department with nasty tweets and emails until they fire that person to make the annoyance go away.

I, as a progressive, do not simply want to stop or destroy things (which sounds almost reactionary when I type it out). I want to build things and help people! I want a future that is better than the past and present! And bigger asshole tactics will not build anything. They will not make people more warm and open and ready to give your cause a chance.

Being an asshole is not going to garner sympathy for a group of people (illegal immigrants, Palestinians, Jewish people, those targeted by police), or inspire trust, get people to sacrifice to ward off danger (public health measures, the fight against global warming), or build new policy rules and institutions (a different healthcare funding system, an alternative to policing, a legal immigration system that works, etc.) In fact, being a destructive asshole can end up garnering support for the other side.

When interesting people try to make the case for bigger asshole tactics, they often invoke the Civil Disobedience of Ghandi and Dr. King, completely misunderstanding these men’s political genius. The entire point of civil disobedience is to goad your oppressor into being the bigger asshole. When the police come in and sic dogs on people simply walking across a bridge or violently arrest people simply eating at a lunch counter, a powerful piece of anti-oppressor propaganda is produced. If your antics are featured in your oppositions campaign, you, as an activist, have failed.

A defense of ineffective activism I often hear is that it doesn’t matter how good or bad your protest is; the people who oppose you will always try to make you look bad. And while that is true enough, your aim should be to make their job hard. It’s one thing to inspire backlash from political obsessives, but you don’t want normal people to have “those guys are annoying” as one of the 5-10 facts they know about politics.

After my eldest daughter was born, I remember feeling fiercely protective of her. Like, I wanted to wrestle a bear to keep her safe. We haven’t had any bear encounters yet, but one time when she was about two, I tossed her up in the air. In her delightful flailing, she wound up kicking me in the throat. Hard. And I still had to override my instincts and catch her.

Changing the world is hard. Building things and changing the world for the better is even harder. Moments of righteous glory are few and far between. There is much more persuading and begging and holding your nose for a compromise that at least moves the ball down the field.

There are definitely bears in the political system. That’s what keeps everything so interesting. But, most of the time, you can’t defeat the bears in a wrestling match, as satisfying as that would be. However, while bears exist, flailing toddlers are legion, and making a better world means catching the toddlers and smiling through the pain.