Opinion: How Authoritarians are Obscuring the Value of Protest Behind the Specter of Riot

There is a disconnect in the way Americans are talking about protesters. The sheer tonnage of outrage and concern about “violent rioters” is overwhelming and doesn’t seem to have any relationship with the actual amount of violence. This isn’t an accident. There are a series of ludicrous claims about protesting that are quickly making their way into the mainstream of political thought. 

The first of these claims is that protests held today are somehow less legitimate or effective than the protests of the civil rights era and earlier.

“The fight for voting rights by women and African-Americans were successful, but protests today are aimless and ineffective.”

“Activism in pursuit of a 40-hour work week or to fight Jim Crow laws was necessary and righteous, but we don’t have those problems now.”

Comments like these have blanketed social media since the election but they have no relationship with reality.

The truth is that authoritarian and corporate power centers were just as opposed to child labor laws then as they are today toward police reform or a higher minimum wage. And there has always been a white moderate class that is, as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice”. Activists from previous eras used the same tactics of direct action, social disruption, civil disobedience, and yes, even blocking traffic. And they were misunderstood and scorned by potential allies then, just as they are now. Is “I don’t like Trump either, but do you have to be so disrespectful?” really any different than “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”?

Early estimates say that more than a million and a half people showed up across the US to protest the election of Donald Trump. A series of events that have been overwhelmingly peaceful. At most, there have been a handful of violent or destructive incidents since the inauguration. These incidents have been widely condemned. So, why are authoritarians and moderates attacking the already condemned minority? Because the right to protest is too fundamentally American to directly oppose. However, if you can rewrite “protest” as “riot”, if you can typify the “rioter” as black, female, angry, liberal, or anti-American- you have an enemy.

We must remember the essential differences between non-violent protest and violent revolt. The action of non-violent protest is to place one's body in harm's way in order to demand attention. The action of a riot is destruction and chaos. The two are at cross purposes and one does not emerge from the other.

If you scrolled through your social media this past week, you probably noticed a theme coming from the conservative side of your feed: the same three or four videos of violence breaking out near protests. Accompanying these videos are furious anger at “rioters” and “protesters”, as if they were the same people. These videos are shared from predictable sources, like thelastlineofdefense.org, or the Facebook page Cold Dead Hands, a group ostensibly focused on public safety and gun rights activism.

The comments on these pages, predictably, range from revolting to infuriating. On a meme about rioters the top comment is “It has nothing to do with politics, it’s all about rioting for fun and profit”. The implication being that protesters aren’t really concerned or angry about Trump’s election, they are merely greedy, craven, and savage.

The racial hatred and misogyny backing this sentiment is predictable and abrupt. On a photo of the Trump family, the highest rated comment is:

“I don’t see a penis lump on any of the women. That’s a refreshing change.”

For the uninitiated, this is a reference to the popular conservative conspiracy theory that Michelle Obama is a man pretending to be a woman. If this shocks you, it shouldn't. This is the casual cruelty and hatred that has become the hallmark of the alt-right. The remainder of the comments reference the comparative “classiness” of the Trumps compared to the Obamas. The meaning of “class” here is sickeningly obvious.

On a completely innocuous photo of a fully clothed young woman modeling a “Cold Dead Hands” branded sweatshirt, the comments look like this:

“i’ll take the hoodie if the girl comes with it”

“does the model come with it?”

“how much is the bootie?”

“granny panties, what a shame”

It’s not hard to imagine why many people had no moral difficulty voting for a fraction of a man who bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy”.

While disgusting, posts and comments like these may not seem directly related to the distinction between protesters and rioters, but they are. These conversations are happening in code. Words like “class”, “decency”, “morality”, and “rioter” have racial and partisan significance. How else could a person who claims the mantle of family values vote for Trump, or joke about purchasing a woman who’s only crime was modeling an ugly sweatshirt?

Class means white, decency means silence in the face of bullying, morality means a specific flavor of Christian, and a riot is any expression of resistance to authoritarianism. 

We know that conservatives are familiar with the concept of protesting. Throughout the Obama administration we have seen a variety of conservative protests against the Affordable Care Act, allowing gay people to serve openly in the military, marriage equality, and the War on Christmas among other things. The process of holding up a sign and marching in public is not foreign to anyone, least of all our President-Electoral.

Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016

Referencing 1984 as a yardstick for propaganda has gone from cliched to unsettling. Orwell said that “first they steal the words, then they steal the meaning”. Even today, no serious figure would claim that the right to protest should be curtailed, they don’t need to. Protest is being reframed as violent, destructive, purposeless revolt. And, in the end, that's what we will be asked to denounce. Pearl-clutching over "rioters" is only the first step.

If we want to retain the right to assemble non-violently, this false definition needs to be challenged and debunked at every opportunity. When a family member, friend, acquaintance, or pundit throws out the term “rioter” or “protester”, demand distinction. Point out that the logic that says “Anti-Trump protesters are violent” is the same logic that says “Tea partiers are Nazis”. Make no mistake, there is no protest so peaceful or somber that could satisfy their demands. Authoritarianism, in all its forms, cannot abide the foundation of popular democracy- that the will of the people be done.