Where does the parade end?

What exactly is the goal of the parade, and what can the parade bring about, are questions that have been pondering recently.

In terms of form, a demonstration is a collective act in which citizens take to the streets to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with a specific issue or even their will to "civil disobedience".

On a larger scale, demonstrations are an integral part of civil disobedience , demonstrating to those in power that citizens are dissatisfied or even disobedient about a particular issue or even a particular provision of the law.

The American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who proposed the concept of "civil disobedience", wrote in his short essay "On Civil Disobedience" in 1849:

Do citizens have to surrender their conscience to the legislator and keep nothing for themselves? If this is the case, then what does a person have a conscience for? I think we have to be human first, and then talk about being ruled or not. Cultivating respect for the law is as wrong as cultivating respect for rights. The only obligation I have the right to do is to do what I think is right at all times. . . The law never increases the integrity of man in the slightest; and by virtue of the reverence of the law, even the good-natured are day by day the agents of injustice. Those who claim that "the war in Mexico was wrong" and that "enforcement of slavery is wrong" would be self-contradictory if they paid taxes to fund these government actions. In a republic like the one we have, it is often thought that the most appropriate response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but until the law changes, obey the law. But if the law itself is clearly unjust, and the law-making process was not designed to quickly eliminate the unjust law, then the law is not worthy of respect - go violate such a law. …Anti-slavery advocates should withdraw their support for the government entirely and stop paying taxes, even if it means jail time. If a thousand people refuse to pay their taxes this year, it will be less violent and bloody than agreeing to pay them, because paying the taxes would make the state violent and the innocent bloodshed. In fact, this is a peaceful revolution.

This article of his deeply influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

The American philosopher John Rawls, in "On the Legitimacy of Civil Disobedience" and "Theory of Justice" , agreed on the main meaning of "civil disobedience" as:

1. It is an act against an unjust law or policy: it includes more than just direct "civil disobedience" - the direct violation of the law to be protested, for example, in Martin Luther King's black civil rights movement, where black people deliberately Entering certain places in the United States that are prohibited by bad laws to show the injustice of the law; also includes indirect "civil disobedience", for example, modern social movements or democracy movements by violating traffic laws to attract social attention to a certain government policy or law of injustice.
2. It is to expect and accept arrest and punishment for actions committed.
3. It is a political act: it seeks to give opinions to those with political power based on political, social, not individual, principles, and it appeals to the shared conception of justice that underlies the political order.
4. It is a public act: it not only appeals to the principle of publicity, but is also done publicly with advance notice, not secretly. Therefore, like public speech, it can be said to have educational significance.
5. It is a moral, non-violent act: not only because it is an expression of a deep and serious political conviction, a formal petition taken after all other means have been tried, but also because it is in allegiance to the law Disobedience to the law within (albeit on the fringes of) the law. This loyalty is shown through openness, peace, and a willingness to bear the consequences of breaking the law. It focuses on moral persuasion and is therefore generally peaceful and non-violent.

The purpose of civil disobedience, therefore, is to express dissatisfaction with a particular unjust law—whether it’s black people knowingly entering places where bad laws prohibit them, or breaking traffic laws to get social attention, it’s all about expressing themselves (belonging to group) dissatisfaction with a particular evil law. And its typical method is to attract social attention by deliberately breaking the law, so as to pass on its own ideas - evil laws and injustices - to more people.

Of course, it is clear that Rawls' civil disobedience is not quite the same as the demonstrations we are talking about here. The former is aimed at citizens' protests against unjust laws and policies, while the latter is not limited to the category of unjust laws, and there can be collective behaviors to express dissatisfaction on any issue. But demonstrations and civil disobedience are ideologically the same, with the same ends and the same means.

That is, specific groups of people express their dissatisfaction with specific issues by deliberately breaking the existing social order, attracting people's attention, and thus promoting change.

So, the question arises: Where are the boundaries of this practice in this day and age? Does it really work?

Whether it's a large civil disobedience or a small demonstration, the goal is to arouse the republic of people outside the group through various "moral", "non-violent" and "breaking the existing social order" behavior. In this way, a larger force can be gathered to promote the transformation of the existing social order and structure.

In other words, the goal of all these actions is to rally people outside the protesting party to gain greater power to bring about the desired change.

Ideally, the keys here are three:

1. group of actors expressing protest
2. Marginal groups outside the main group who can be drawn
3. There is an adjustment mechanism based on public opinion in the power structure

Without these three components, demonstrations or other forms of protest are essentially useless.

This would not have happened without the protest crowd, whether it was the black community in BLM (Black Lives Matter), or the ad-buster Media Foundation in Occupy Wall Street.

The main group of protesters is either their ideas conflict with the existing social order, and they think their ideas are more "just", for example, the Ad Buster Media Foundation believes that "the greed and injustice of big companies and social inequality, and oppose the influence of big companies on American politics, and The negative impact of money and corporations on democracy, law and politics in the midst of a global economic crisis”; or self-interest has been greatly violated, such as the systematic injustice and prejudice that black communities in the BLM have historically suffered. Their ideas must, to a certain extent, conform to the broadest concept of justice and morality in the society, otherwise it is just a small group of people protesting indifferently, and we don’t need to pay too much attention.

Marginal groups can be further divided into two categories. One is other groups that have not merged with the protesting mainstream because of different goals or philosophies. The other category is the grey area under the relevant topics in society. Such as the middle class, such as non-red neck whites, and so on. Their ideas are basically consistent with the most extensive simple concept of justice and morality in society, and at the same time they have either failed to form a systematic concept system for reflecting on the injustice in the existing social order, or they have not been treated unfairly in the existing structure of the society. People with prejudice, or interests in the existing environment have not been violated beyond the acceptable range. They are the main part of the society in numbers, but they are no different from the novice who have not yet been converted. The goal of demonstrations, rallies and other behaviors is to pull these gray people who were originally in a state of tranquility and make them stand on their side.

Marginal people are easily deceived, so we can see that in the previous demonstrations in South Korea, they may stand in the parade that overthrew the former president and support the former president, and then stood in the procession that overthrew the current president and the user's next term. in the parade of candidates.

Of course, it is not ruled out that there are some organizations with a unified core concept among marginalized groups. They are different groups from the main group of antibodies, but they can be located in the gray area in certain protests.

The main means of conduct such as marches and rallies is to draw as many marginalized people as possible into their own camps, thereby forming a powerful force - at least on the surface.

This is like a mudslide . The main group is the rocks or muddy water that rolls down from the top of the mountain, but they have almost the same direction and a large initial kinetic energy, while the marginal groups are the original stationary stones on the foothills. , weeds, and dead trees, driven by the initial rock and mud tide, converged into a torrent that rushed down at high speed in the same direction.

And the end of this torrent is the hope of reforming the power structure.

Therefore, the end point of protests and demonstrations such as marches and rallies actually depends entirely on the existence of the third group of people, that is, whether there is an existing power structure that can absorb the energy of protests and demonstrations and is roughly in line with the direction of protest forces. change within.

If such a force for change exists, the force of protest will naturally be incorporated into it as a force against the real core of the establishment. Protesting groups (and the marginalized groups they bring with them) display their energies through a variety of activities—mainly in the form of disrupting or obstructing the existing social order.

And if such a third group does not exist, the situation may evolve into an "arms wrestling" between the protesting party and the power hierarchy, with one party demonstrating the destructive power of their protests on society, while the other party uses the state The public weapon competes against it, and it depends on where it will go in the end, which has more energy.

In fact, this is also the main purpose of the protests - even if there is no group in the power hierarchy with the will to change to promote change, the protesters can still show their energy by showing their obstacles to the existing social order and function, And the social costs that may arise if wishes are not met, violations, or rules are not revoked.

Therefore, if we consider it from another angle, the protest behavior (whether it is a demonstration or a rally) is to "kidnap" social resources - order and functions, etc. - to force the power layer who has mastered social public instruments to compromise, otherwise A corresponding price will be paid.

It can also be said that it is a kind of "nuclear binding": although the main body of the antibody does not have the ability to directly confront the power layer, it can compete with the latter by hijacking a large number of social resources.

Of course, this is not to accuse this approach of being inappropriate. After all, as the weak against the power hierarchy, this "fake and tiger" approach can be said to be inevitable.

But since it is to use social resources, there is naturally the possibility of being used by social resources in turn.

Therefore, the end of the parade is not necessarily the two paths mentioned above-either to make peace with the reformists, or to hold social resources and power layers hard.

A great possibility, especially in the information age, is that the main groups of the protests are gradually unable to control the direction of the protests.

During the protests, the main group will attract marginalized groups with a larger number and energy to join itself through the concept of simple morality and values that conform to the current mainstream society as much as possible, so as to complete the final "small and broad" struggle and lead the way. The possible final change occurs. Here, as the crowd becomes larger and larger, the voices in the group will naturally increase, so that two problems will naturally emerge:

1. People who are fishing in troubled waters began to appear in the crowd, and the only reason for their participation was because they saw that there were opportunities for their own benefit in the temporary suspension of social order caused by the protests;
2. This process of attracting is essentially achieved through emotions, emotions and even words, and is not coordinated through rationality. Therefore, there is a great possibility that the subject's appeal will be intercepted by more infectious emotions, emotions or words. Hu.

We cannot assume that, just because of the lofty ideals of the protest movement in its initial moments, it has radiated the radiance of noble humanity throughout its life cycle.

So the end of the parade is likely to be an extraordinarily violent carnival, under the banner of nobility, all attempts to stop the banquet have come to naught. It is also possible that the parade was guided by other forces, and finally went in a direction completely different from the original intention, but still held the familiar banner.

All in all, the high beauty of the original intention does not guarantee that the end of the parade will be a pure holy place - if it can promote change, of course it is excellent, but as the information interference method becomes more and more advanced, the penetration becomes deeper, and The professional team has become more meticulous and precise in controlling emotions, and we are not sure where the parade will end.

After all, good flowers can also bear bad results.

Of course, it could have been worse.

Let's take a look again. The biggest features of protests such as demonstrations are as follows:

1. In line with the simple values and morals generally recognized by the society
2. Spread through irrational elements such as emotions
3. By hijacking a large number of social resources and hindering the social order, it is used as the capital to negotiate with the existing social rights.

Among them, the most important thing to expand the crowd is to rely on irrational elements such as emotions, and activities based on emotions are easy to gradually escalate and eventually go to a certain extreme.

For example, it may be just disgust for a certain behavior at the beginning, and then it will escalate to the crusade of all who defend the behavior, and then become the object of crusade for all reflections on protesting the behavior, and below all Anyone who does not praise these protests is the target of crusade, which has gone to the extreme.

However, because it appeals to the most commonly accepted simple values and morals in society, it is always easier for people to find justification for such activities.

Therefore, in the face of a sufficiently powerful propaganda machine (at the social level but not specifically at the government level), protests can easily turn into a game of siding, and the stronger the propaganda machine, the more thorough the siding. And once it develops to the level of standing in line, it doesn't matter whether it can solve the problem or not, it will become more and more difficult to stop the activity, and it will either be replaced by the next activity or terminated violently.

That is to say, with the development of propaganda-related technologies and theories, no matter what the original intention of the protests is, there is a great possibility that the protests will become abnormal obstacles and divisions to the society as a whole - today may be a black issue, tomorrow may be LGBTQ , the day after tomorrow may be abortion, gun bans, religious beliefs, big government, welfare cuts, all are possible. These problems can always find a point where reasonable colleagues cater to the demands of a large number of people, and thus begin to become a fuse for gangs.

Therefore, the core issue of demonstrations and protests such as marches has long been not a question of whether the core demands are reasonable, nor is it a question of whether the issues aimed at are reasonable, but which side of the propaganda machine is stronger and can attract more people. , can cause even greater obstacles to the society.

So, where does the parade end?