A Genealogy of Structureless Activism
Social media brought new ways of doing politics by decentring communications and connecting thousands of movements together. The old protests that occupied public spaces are now an occasional public spectacle amidst a new pervasive form of activism. An activism that no longer targets corporations or institutions, but individuals who represent a social group, a political movement, or the threat of moderation. With campaigns of retributive justice and rituals of public shaming becoming more common, a genealogy of structureless activism is necessary.
During the 1960’s and 70’s social and political movements were ant-authoritarian. The focus was placed on self-determination and self-management. The civil rights movement and the anti-globalisation movement where self-consciously minoritarian. This distinguishes them from the popular movements of today which emphasize unity, albeit more recently, the unity of minority identity groups. In the 60’ and 70’s the anti-globalization movement emphasized diversity and autonomy. Subcommandante Marcos of the Zapatista movement in southeastern Mexico made the minoritarian mission clear in the 90’s: “Marcos is all the exploited, marginalized, oppressed minorities resisting and saying enough”. In the 1960’s a new militant organisation emerged campaigning for more representation and autonomy for black communities. The Black Power movement demanded that black communities made their own decisions about how these communities would be controlled, rather than have decisions imposed on them.
Two fundamental changes have occurred since the 1990’s because of the advent of social media. Movements became decentred even before social media facilitated the creation of networks. This was clear in the civil rights movement before the turn to popular movements and the advent of social media. During the 1960’s black activists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) developed the idea of ‘group leaderships’ under the guidance of Ella Baker. This group formed from a younger generation critical of The Southern Christian Leadership Conference which was ran by Martin Luther King. The younger activists wanted to avoid the one central leader model. The thinking was that if there was one voice or one charismatic character leading the movement, it would be easier to obstruct or stop the movement by targeting that individual. This was the course of action taken in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated, and then Malcom X after him. The leaderless model of activism developed by Ella Baker would be a precursor to The Black Lives Matter movement that was facilitated by social media.
Secondly, movements have become popular movements that focus on unity. The majoritarian mission of the popular protests was expressed simply in the Occupy Wallstreet Slogan “we are the 99%”. These movements do not engage with organising local minority communities so much as centre people’s emotions upon a particular public place. These kind of ‘take the squares movement’s or ‘occupy movements’ took up a struggle for the ‘appropriation of public space’ (Lefebvre 1974/1991). The streets and squares were being reclaimed for public use and political organising. Social media facilitated the gathering of people who would fuse together at the protest to create a political subject- ‘the people’. The 2011 revolutions against Mubarak in Egypt, and the indignados protest in Spain of the same year, as well as the Occupy protest in the US that followed, provoked new analyses of activism.
These two developments present a contradiction between the physical centring of the protest, and decentring of the organisation. This contradiction is reflected in analyses of social media and its role in activism. A lot of focus has been on cyberspace or online space as distinct from offline space. Paul Mason was optimistic of the possibilities that cyberspace created. He published ‘Why its Kicking Off Everywhere’ in 2012 in the aftermath of the 2011 popular movements. His argument was based on the claim that activism would not be organised in and by leaderless networks. This has become the dominant view of modern activism and the role of social media. For some time now the question is not how a leaderless activist group is possible. The question has been how social media like Facebook and Twitter could gather people into a protest place and transformed into a political subject ‘the people’. Superficially, #Blacklivesmatter movement seems to conform to this dominant view of view. It is another instance of ‘the people’ occupying public place, and it is seemingly proof that network activism is leaderless. This is a great deception. Not only is the decentred network of activists a utopic fantasy, but a radical change in the approach during the BlackLivesMatter movement would also bring the dangers of this fantasy to the fore.
The phrase ‘Black lives matter’ was posted by activist Alicia Garzia in July 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin. Use of the #BlackLivesMatter as hashtag quickly spread to sites such as twitter. This activity would spike in the protests against the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castle in July 2016, but would peak dramatically in May 2020 when George Floyd is killed in police custody in Minneapolis. This would lead to major protests that conformed to the traditional populist’s movement to ‘take back the streets’. However, the public shaming of racists online would transform the nature of activism and the use of social media.
All this started when everyone had smart phones with cameras, around 2013. The reason why the George Floyd murder, and others, sparked a campaign for racial justice is because police brutality was filmed by bystanders. It could not be ignored once it went viral online and there were millions of people as witness. It would not go ignored when thousands could respond in protest simultaneously. Protests peaked on June the 6th 2020 and by that point they were thought to be the largest movements in the country’s history. Over half a million people protested in nearly 550 places. This was a huge step forward for social justice.
Soon, other people were caught on camera and called out for racism. Now it was not just male violence. Women were caught appealing to authorities and making false accusations to punish innocent black men. Most famously, a woman called the police when a black man asked her to put her dog on a leash in Central Park. The man filmed her on his mobile as she told the police that she was being attacked in the park by a black man. More videos went viral of women appealing to an authority (police, manager, building control) to harass innocent black men, and this gave birth the ‘the Karen meme’.
Soon lots of videos were being used to shame people online. Many of these people suffer death threats, lose their job and need to move house, or leave the country. The contestation of Trans Rights has shown the women and feminists are not immune to their own methods of shaming and harassment. The consequence can be severe. Professors such as the philosopher Kathleen Stock have been forced out of her position because of her views. While students can be thrown out of university for something they said as a teenager. It is not surprising that younger generations are drinking less. However, if you are doing the shaming, you gain a lot of popularity online. You can prove beyond doubt that you, at least, are not a racist or a sexist. This is a big deal for younger people today, they want to be on the right side- they need to be on the right side.
Everything took a more sinister turn when social media platforms started to offer people complete anonymity online. Some platforms refuse as a policy to share any information with nation states or private corporations. These platforms are ideal for terrorists, paedophiles, drug dealers, and political activists to organise themselves online. Telegram is also being used now by Ukrainian soldiers because Russia cannot access the group chats. Extinction Rebellion use it to organise illegal protests in the UK. The problem is that when people are anonymous, their actions are totally unaccountable. Even the group members cannot hold the group leaders to account. Still the group members are willing to follow the instructions of the group administrators.
Soon, small groups of activists decide not to wait for wrongs to be caught on camera. Rather than wait for that unlikely event, they harass and abuse the target to provoke a reaction. A mobile phone or voice recorder is always on the ready. The reactions can be posted online as the reason why the group started the abuse in the first place, when in reality it is the effect of years of abuse. This tactic may have begun haphazard at first, with people provoking any sort of violent outbursts, but it soon became guided by research and perfected in practice. Research in social psychology reveals how certain groups suffer in particular ways in society, this research can be weaponized to turn the table against the dominant group in society- heterosexual white men who are generally thought responsible for the harm done to others. The research in feminism that reveals the different types of abuse women suffer at the hands of men can also double as a repertoire of abuses to turn against men.
The research shows how people tend to respond to certain disadvantages or abuses. Activists try to replicate the results and inflict correlating harms and abuses. Scripted scenes are designed to provoke a particular reaction from the victim. The recordings are posted on a group chat to frame the man for something he had never done before the months of abuse. Indeed, the responses are taken out of context and distorted to a preconceived plan. Different scripted scenes aim to an illicit a response that will be used outrage different groups in society. People get involved in Berlin because they are told the British man hates German women. Black people get involved because they are told the man hates black people. Indian people get involved because they are told he hates them to. Women get involved because he is a misogynist. Married men get involved because he has a wandering hand. People without a university degree get involved because he looks down on such uneducated people.
The group tells different lies to different people to enrol them in the harassment and abuse. Everyone on the group chat sees the prejudices and hatreds the victim is said to harbour, and their hatred grows more ennobling as the victim appears more hateful. Many of the abuses are dehumanizing and the victim also arouses more and more disgust in the group. A small number of people go to extremes without telling anyone beyond the core group what they do to the victim. The group chat, with thousands of members, are only shown the results of abuse without necessarily knowing the extent of the abuse.
The activists who run these harassment campaigns know that the victim is innocent. The gas-lighting of the victim helps keep the activists ignorant of the victim, as much as it keeps the victim helpless before the activist. Gas-lighting demands that the victim be interrupted in their narration of events, that their victimization be diminished, and that the conversation be shut down as quickly as possible. However, if people hear of the victim’s plausible innocence the activists have a response ready. This strategy is made explicit in a book called The Shame Machine, in the central section, ‘Network Shaming’. These men, it is explained, think they are good and when the world informs them that they are not, they suffer from painful cognitive dissonance. They say they are innocent because they are ashamed. So, the argument goes, when a man claims he is innocent, that means he is guilty of something that causes him shame. Society should cause these men more pain and humiliation. Equally the inverse is true for these activists. If the man admits he was in the wrong only to avoid more pain and suffering, “that is not unusual or, for that matter, problematic… most people choose to avoid the pain” (p133). The activists are happy to torture innocent people with shame which “refers to another dimension of pain”. Their ends justify the means, and “there’s no greater power than shame to bring people in line” (p155). The spectacle of their suffering online intimidates and deters everyone from doing what the victim is accused of, whether he is guilty or not.
The online shaming of the Karen’s in the world could have been an opportunity for women to reassess their moral superiority in regard to racism and sexism. The Karen’s of this world might be physically less powerful than their male victims, but women can make an appeal to authority. It is impossible to acknowledge the subtle forms of institutional racism without also acknowledging that women can wield these powers and privileges as well, if not better, than men. Much of the power and privilege that the Karens wield stem from the racial stereotype of black men being threatening and prone to violence. However, this stereotype of vulgar animality hangs over men generally, just as the stereotype of women as weak and vulnerable victims still hangs over women. Both prejudices can be used to harass and abuse men. Indeed, both prejudices have been internalised by men and women and serve as the broad foundation for an activism that advocates the dehumanizing and the shaming of a section of society. Rather than women facing up to their vulnerability to racism and sexism, a small group are projecting what they find unacceptable about themselves into a new disgusting Other. The problem with social media and the anonymity of its leaders is hidden by the semblance of leaderless networks. A very small core group that grounds the group chat can control the circulation of information, while stoking hatred and outrage to compel people to act. These actions are dictated to the group members by the same core group. The latter is anonymous and unaccountable to the group members, let alone broader society.
The dynamics of online shaming and the dissimulation of leaderless activism can be employed by any movement. While gender stereotypes support the shaming of the toxic other, embodied by different men to varying degrees, this does not foreclose other possibilities. There is an inherent tendency to polarization, moral outrage, and mass movement built into social media and the algorithms that facilitate them. This supports a world view of pervasive zero-sum battles being played out, not just between polarized factions, but between good and evil. The shaming of a section of society as something Other has limitless traction and scope. Small groups vie to commandeer the power of social media to inflict immense suffering on it’s Other. It seems like the metric of success for modern activism could be the damage done to human dignity.