Introduction
Ideology is a contested term with competing definitions.Footnote 1 Coined in the late-eighteenth century by Antoine Destutt de Tracy to denote his general “science of ideas,” ideology has generally come to mean a system of beliefs shared by some group.Footnote 2 Our approach to ideology treats it as a type of cultural system, a web of meanings symbolically mediated through semiotic devices such as metaphors. Ideologies underlie social orders while helping people make sense of their environment. Ideological commitments serve as rules that frame alternative courses of action. While much has been said about ideology, little has been written on the sources of ideological change beyond pointing to ideological entrepreneurship.Footnote 3 Even less has been written on the relationship between violent and disruptive social movements and ideology beyond pointing to the ideological motivations for such events.Footnote 4
Our essay adds to the discussion by framing extreme protests—which involve disorderly demonstrations, riots, and other disruptive acts—as a form of ideological work.Footnote 5 Ideological work involves creating, developing, maintaining, revising, and/or refining an ideology. A protest becomes extreme when its protestors resort to violent means of affirming their aims.Footnote 6 Extreme protests are often sources of ideological inspiration, development, and change. Additionally, extreme protests are often triggered by an ideological crisis, that is, an intolerable disconnection between the ideals embedded in the ideology adopted by some group and the current situation or, alternatively, an inability of an adopted ideology to make sense of the current situation.Footnote 7 Arguably, the way (extreme) protests affect ideological development is often ignored and, so, deserves special attention. Although we recognize the significance of nonviolent ideological work, we believe that extreme protests—involving spontaneous acts of collective violence—are unique cases that deserve better understanding and explanation.Footnote 8
In the “Understanding ideology” section, we summarize the literature on ideology and, following Clifford Geertz, argue that ideology is appropriately understood as a type of cultural system.Footnote 9 Next, in the “Understanding extreme protests as emergent phenomena” section, we discuss the literature on violent and disruptive social movements and treat these extreme protests as emergent orders.Footnote 10 In the “Social unrest as a form of ideological work” section, we then argue that extreme protests are triggered by ideological crises and are a form of ideological work. Social unrest and protests reveal, clarify, and crystallize holes in an ideology. As protestors make sense of their actions during and immediately following a protest, they rearticulate their ideological commitments, retain and refine some old ideological views, and discover new ideological positions that resonate. We then offer some concluding thoughts.
Understanding ideology
Because the concept of ideology is generally understood as shared beliefs, it is closely tied to notions of group identity or groupthink and “the phenomenon of ideas becoming a source of our sense of identity.”Footnote 11 Adherence to ideology can also mean rigid views and a closed mind, a habitual unwillingness to come to terms with the beliefs of diverse others. As ideologues we are blind to evidence that might contradict our worldviews. We seek adherence to our group’s beliefs and may even be incapable of considering the beliefs of some other group, depending on the concepts that are available within our interpretative schemes. Our social discourse devolves into a team sport in which “we boo the visiting team and cheer for the home team, irrespective of the merits of the ideas” that the visitors bring to the table.Footnote 12 People who are under the sway of ideology, in short, subscribe to shared beliefs that frame the world in a certain way, often at the expense of another group.
Another widely held meaning of ideology is that it consists of false beliefs. When ideology is understood as a form of “false consciousness,” specifically in Marxist theory, it is viewed as an expression of the dominant social class masquerading as the unequivocal truth for all of society.Footnote 13 Ideology then operates as a set of eyeglasses or a frame of reference that can reveal but often obscures how the world really works.Footnote 14 On this view, the ideology of the economically dominant class obfuscates true class positions and interests. It largely operates as a cloak for the exploitation and oppression of subordinate classes who also adopt the dominant ideology.Footnote 15 Social circumstances appear upside down, as in a “camera obscura,” which leads the subordinate group to mistakenly believe that their interests are being served by a current circumstance when it is in fact serving the interests of the dominant group.Footnote 16
Victims of ideological thinking, in the Marxist tradition, are unable to reason their way out of false beliefs to identify their oppression and correct any injustices they suffer.Footnote 17 Because ideologies are “distorted by illusions” they are regarded as “epistemically defective”; it is through illusions that ideology “functions to establish or reinforce social relations of oppression.”Footnote 18 In some cases, ideologies lack the concepts that would enable the oppressed to conceptualize and understand their oppression, meaning that ideologies can at times be “epistemically disabling.”Footnote 19 Even if certain groups identify their oppression, however, they may still believe that they lack the necessary agency to revolt, fight back, and overcome their oppression.Footnote 20 In other cases, false beliefs (or “legitimizing myths”) turn what would otherwise be morally neutral social categories into normative social hierarchies that become “grounded in superiority and inferiority.”Footnote 21 Certain groups come to perceive themselves or others “as justifiably possessing lower standing.”Footnote 22
Although the Marxist approach to ideology is clear and useful, we find that its primary focus on false beliefs imposed by a dominant social class cannot adequately deal with all ideological phenomena. Ideologies arguably emerge in any context and can operate to serve the interests of people from a variety of social positions or classes. Marxist theory thus offers an approach for understanding a specific instance of a more general phenomenon. While Karl Marx’s approach is compatible with some of our purposes, a more general approach to ideology with neutral connotations is arguably better suited.Footnote 23
The work of Michael Freeden and Geertz offer approaches to understanding ideology that can get at the significance of ideology when it is not operating as a form of false consciousness.Footnote 24 Ideologies, for Freeden, are understood
not as defective philosophies, but rather as ubiquitous and patterned forms of thinking about politics … [as] clusters of ideas, beliefs, opinions, values, and attitudes usually held by identifiable groups, that provide directives, even plans, of action for public policy-making in an endeavor to uphold, justify, change or criticize the social and political arrangements of a state or other political community.Footnote 25
Ideology, here, is understood as a general way of making sense of the world by reference to shared meanings. These meanings are often political in nature. Ideologies can be found “in the entire field of thinking about political ends and principles, and virtually all members of a society have political views and values they promote and defend.”Footnote 26
Geertz, like Freeden, offers a general approach to ideology that is more semiotic and thus useful for our purposes.Footnote 27 Ideology, for Geertz, is one type of “cultural system” consisting of “interacting symbols” that are conveyed and interpreted as “patterns of interworking meanings” that contribute to social order and change.Footnote 28 An ideology provides symbolic vehicles for conceptions that help people make sense of their worlds. Ideological attitudes are “given a public existence,” as Geertz puts it, through “elaborate symbolic structures.”Footnote 29 Following the work of Walker Percy, Geertz is essentially getting at the “figurative nature of ideology,” which is characterized by language that uses “metaphor, analogy, irony, ambiguity, pun, paradox, hyperbole, [and] rhythm.”Footnote 30 For Geertz, then, ideologies “are, most distinctively, maps of problematic social reality and matrices for the creation of collective conscience.”Footnote 31 They are cultural systems equipped to interpret and legitimate worldviews. An ideology—like other cultural systems such as religion or common sense—provides “orientation for an organism which cannot live in a world it is unable to understand.”Footnote 32 Through our “construction of ideologies” we therefore devise “schematic images of social order.”Footnote 33
Although politics remains the “home turf” of ideology, we believe that ideology is usefully understood as a more general frame of reference through which actors make sense of their worlds in alternative contexts.Footnote 34 It not only provides directives for political action but can also provide plans of action for social interactions and engagement, for example, who to consider allies, how to treat the members of certain groups, the obligations owed to others, and so on.
Additionally, as noted above, ideology need not take on the more evaluative or derogatory meaning that it sometimes does. Indeed, ideology can have neutral or even positive connotations. Friedrich Hayek, for instance, believes that ideologies are general “sets of principles” that are indispensable for any given social order; they provide a means of perspective for acting within the world.Footnote 35 For Hayek, “every social order rests on an ideology.”Footnote 36 Moreover, although “an ideology is something which cannot be ‘proved’ (or demonstrated to be true), it may well be something whose widespread acceptance is the indispensable condition for most of the particular things we strive for,” as attaining a goal in a complex order entails coordination with countless others trying to attain their own goals.Footnote 37 An ideologically motivated action need not, therefore, be entirely guided “by explicit particular purposes which one consciously accepts.”Footnote 38 We regularly rely on “general values whose conduciveness to particular desirable results cannot be demonstrated” but which nonetheless provide a crucial means of mutual orientation.Footnote 39
This way of conceiving ideology—that is, as a cultural system that grounds social order—raises the question of what occurs when there is disconnection between the ideological system individuals have adopted and the prevailing social order. What happens when the ideological tools that individuals have at their disposal are not up to the hermeneutical function they are meant to serve? How do individuals react when their ideology and their social circumstances are incompatible? Any gap between an ideology and the social order necessitates ideological work. Again, ideological work can be understood as creating, developing, maintaining, revising, and/or refining an ideology. Arguably, extreme protests are a form of ideological work where the fracture between an ideology and the existing social order is laid bare, the social order is directly undermined and challenged, and further ideological developments are given their impetus.Footnote 40
Understanding extreme protests as emergent phenomena
Extreme protests, like their nonviolent counterparts, can involve marches, demonstrations, petitions, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, vigils, fund-raisers, or the burning of effigies.Footnote 41 But their more salient actions are violent, involving property destruction, arson, harassment, sabotage, kidnapping, bombings, guerilla warfare, or armed conflict.Footnote 42 Consider, for instance, the New York Draft riots in 1863. Also, consider the racial riots of the Red Summer (that is, the late spring, summer, and fall of 1919) where whites terrorized blacks in cities across the United States. Additionally, consider the Watts Riots in 1965 and the Los Angeles riots in 1992, which occurred against a backdrop of multiple incidences of perceived police abuse and in response to a particular act of police violence against a member of the local black community.
There is a large social-science literature on “social movements,” some of which involve extreme protests.Footnote 43 Most definitions of social movements are based on at least several conceptual axes, including collective or joint action, change-oriented goals or claims, some extra- or non-institutional collective action, some degree of organization, and some degree of temporal continuity.Footnote 44 As a form of collective action, social movements challenge authorities either to “bring about social change” or “prevent such change from occurring.”Footnote 45 When social movements involve group action, it is typically planned in such a way as to articulate the shared grievances and claims of the group.Footnote 46 Although the type of social change that is sought in social movements often varies, most definitions of social movements emphasize their change-oriented nature, specifying that actors within any movement seek to promote or resist changing some aspect of their local or global worlds.Footnote 47
Other scholars focus on what they call “social movement organizations.”Footnote 48 Organized actors plan, combine, and employ resources for orderly and disorderly protests as well as other types of campaigns that serve to attain the organization’s goals.Footnote 49 Successful organizations serve as focal points around which participants can orient their actions. Social scientists look to organizations in their attempts to understand the important coordinative purpose they serve in social movements.Footnote 50 Although the life spans of social movements are variable, a period of sustained collective action tends to be necessary for change to occur. If social movement actors want to have a reasonable chance of attaining their goals, in other words, some sense of “temporal continuity” is often required.Footnote 51
An arguably underappreciated characteristic of social movements and, specifically, extreme protests, is that they are often spontaneous (or emergent) orders, products of human action but not of human design.Footnote 52 A spontaneous order is perhaps most often associated with the works of Adam Smith and Hayek who wrote in the mainline tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment.Footnote 53 An order is spontaneous when it is not entirely made or designed by any one person or organization but is, rather, an unplanned by-product of human interaction. In contrast with an organization, a spontaneous order consists of individuals and organizations acting in accordance with their own hierarchies of ends and plans that may differ and compete with one another.
Violent and disruptive social movements are collective disturbances in which individual reactions spontaneously coalesce to form a “shared collective defense, i.e., a collectively sanctioned defense against demoralization” during a time of distress.Footnote 54 An extreme protest, in other words, is the “spontaneous coalescence of individual reactions in a distressing situation,” which in some circumstances means that “members of an aggrieved population act directly and coercively to assert certain norms against established authority.”Footnote 55 By saying that extreme protests are spontaneous, we do not mean to suggest that there are no organizers or planners involved. Despite their leadership roles, however, protest organizers, planners, or first movers cannot fully control the ebb and flow of the protest. Where a protest appears to be flowing depends on how each protestor responds to their local circumstances of time and place.Footnote 56 The choice by one protestor to start an influential chant or that of another to throw a rock through a storefront are individual actions that can engender collective responses, even though they are not organized in the way, say, an organizer’s mission statement is designed. The “ebbing of protest,” Frances Piven and Richard Cloward explain, is not the result of “the purposive effort of leaders and organizers.”Footnote 57 A protest organizer can at best “try to win whatever can be won while it can be won,” but must necessarily act within her local circumstances, like the other protestors, to engender or combat social change.Footnote 58
To adequately understand the dynamics of an extreme protest—or any spontaneous order—we must draw our attention to the rules and feedback mechanisms that govern its emergence and sustain its existence.Footnote 59 Extreme protestors mutually orient their actions toward a shared but dynamic ideology.Footnote 60 They rely, in part, on their ideologies to give meaning to their experiences and to prescribe and proscribe certain actions. Ideological commitments serve as rules that ultimately shape the emergence of extreme protests and govern how they play out.Footnote 61
When the largely black participants in the 1992 Los Angeles riots, for instance, targeted stores owned by Koreans but stayed clear of stores that were black owned, they were relying on an ideology that emphasized the unfairness of racially biased policing, the perceived disrespect shown by Korean store owners in what were largely black and Hispanic communities, and a solidarity despite class differences with other members of the black community. Consider also the South African protests over the past decade, often referred to as “service delivery” riots, during which protestors blocked public roads with burning debris and, in some cases, burned municipal buildings and the homes of local ward councilors.Footnote 62 The protestors were following an ideology that insisted they deserved higher quality municipal services, such as roads and sanitation, than was being provided by their local government.
Although scholars often point to some triggering event as the proximate cause of an extreme protest (for example, the beating of Rodney King as leading to the 1992 Los Angeles riots) and highlight the underlying economic, political, and social conditions to explain the protest (for example, there had been repeated incidences of apparent racially biased policing in Los Angeles), they rarely emphasize that an ideological crisis is often the connective tissue between the protest’s underlying and proximate causes. Stated another way, extreme protests often occur because an adopted ideology is unable to make sense of the current situation or there is an intolerable disconnection between the ideals embedded in the ideology adopted by some group and the current circumstances. The beating of Rodney King was incompatible with an ideology that maintains that blacks are worthy of dignity and respect.
Likewise, the 1921 Tulsa race massacre occurred because blacks forcibly intervened to prevent the lynching of a young black man and, moreover, the success of the black merchants in Tulsa was incompatible with an ideology of white superiority. The disconnection between the ideology of the dominant white majority and the apparent reality (that is, black success) in 1920s Tulsa rallied the white majority to make reality more reflective of the dominant ideology (that is, black failure), which was a rearticulation, repair, or maintenance of existing beliefs.Footnote 63
In addition to being motivated by ideology and triggered by an ideological crisis, protestors and those witnessing the protest often revise their ideologies during and in the aftermath of an extreme protest. Indeed, extreme protests are also often sources of subsequent ideological inspiration, development, and change.
Social unrest as a form of ideological work
Extreme protests are often a form of ideological work and can be an impetus for ideological work. Susan Gal and Judith Irvine regard all types of ideological work as “fundamentally communicative.”Footnote 64 When people are engaged in ideological work, they are necessarily using “semiotic materials,” such as metaphors, to make sense of their surroundings and to formulate plans for sustaining, repairing, or changing the social orders they (largely) unintentionally constitute.Footnote 65 Gal and Irvine explain that
in some cases ideological work may motivate action to alleviate, remove, or transform what is seen as a divergence from the [ideological] schema. It is when the “problematic” element is seen as fitting some alternative, threatening picture that the semiotic process involved in erasure might become some kind of practical action to remove the threat, if circumstances permit.Footnote 66
Gal and Irvine define “sites of ideological work” as “moments and practices in social life in which experiences and ideas are swept up—drawn into ideologized interpretations.”Footnote 67 Giving analytical priority to the site of ideological work forces us to grapple with the meanings that are being used to engender or prevent social change. In drawing our attention to how ideology creates meaning, we move beyond a sole focus on the individual psychologies of isolated actors and toward the shared communicative processes they interpret and convey. Gal and Irvine also suggest that for an ideology to be effective, it should perhaps “be produced and reproduced” in response to new circumstances.Footnote 68 Again, extreme protests are partly understood as a form of ideological work through which protestors and others affected by the protest produce, reproduce, and revise their ideologies.
Specifically, using examples from various violent and disruptive social movements, especially the 1942 riot in the Bahamas, we contend that extreme protests do two things. First, they reveal, clarify, and crystallize fissures in the ideology that undergirds the prevailing social order or reinforces key features of the ideology that seem to be weakening. Second, they convert grievances to concrete ideological positions; as protestors make sense of their actions during and in the immediate aftermath of the protest, they are forced to figure out and often articulate what their ideological commitments are, which old ideological views they are still attached to, and which new ideological positions resonate.Footnote 69
Reveal, clarify, and crystallize fissures in the ideology
The 1942 riot in the Bahamas was ostensibly a riot over wages. During World War II, the American and British governments decided to build two bases on New Providence Island in the Bahamas. The Project, as it was called, was supposed to employ over two thousand Bahamians. The wages those Bahamian laborers were offered, however, were lower than was expected. More problematic than this, the Americans and Bahamian laborers employed at the same jobs were paid different rates. Although this inequity led to a growing dissatisfaction among the Bahamian laborers, neither the Project’s management nor the Bahamas government did anything to reconcile the wage dispute. Eventually, the laborers would march to Bay Street, where the parliament building and the main commercial district were located, to express their grievances. When they learned that the pay dispute would not be resolved and, moreover, that it was the local merchant elite and not the British or American governments who had suppressed their wages, the laborers began rioting. The stores on Bay Street were badly damaged.
Bay Street, where the laborers had gathered to protest, served as a natural site for ideological work. As Nona Martin and Henry Virgil Storr describe:
For much of The Bahamas’ history, Bay Street, Nassau’s chief thoroughfare, has been to Nassau what Nassau has been to the rest of The Bahamas: It is the center of activity in the city. It is the site of all major festivals in The Bahamas and a space at the center of everyday life in the country. Bay Street runs along the northern end of New Providence stretching from the current site of the British Colonial Hotel in the west to the Eastern Parade. It is the home of The Bahamas’ Houses of Parliament, the Cabinet Office, the main branches of several prominent banks, law firms and other professional services, as well as stores selling stationery, books, jewelry, perfume, linen, liquor, foodstuffs, clothing, and every other category of goods. … Bay Street is, thus, at the axis of political, economic, and social life in the city and so the country.Footnote 70
At the time of the riot, the Bahamas was still segregated. The minority white population comprised the colony’s political and economic elite. In 1942, then, Bay Street was also a space that largely excluded Bahamian blacks. As such, the street itself was a manifestation of a particular ideology that situated and justified the economic, political, and social stratification that existed as well as the formal and informal barriers that perpetuated it.
This ideology was arguably shared at the time by the elite and many in the majority population,Footnote 71 and, before this riot, had not been challenged—at least not so directly. The Attorney General, who tried to pacify the crowd, and the police superintendent, who tried to disperse the crowd, both explicitly called on that ideology, urging the crowd not to “spoil” their good reputations as a peaceful people. Similarly, almost everyone interviewed in the investigations after the riot expressed surprise that it occurred. It was widely held that an ideology justifying minority rule, segregation, and racialized inequalities would (forever) go unchallenged.
The 1942 riot in the Bahamas, however, occurred in part because that ideology was incompatible with the aspirations and desire for justice of a portion of that population. This ideological crisis triggered this violent response but, for some, also began an ideological shift, an orientation to new ideological commitments. The 1942 riot was the first move in a struggle for political change in the Bahamas and led to the emergence of a pro-Black consciousness in the British colony.Footnote 72 Doris Johnson describes the riot as “the first awakenings of a new political awareness [that] began to be felt in the hearts of black people …. [T]ime … and the remarkable foresight, courage, and initiative of a few dedicated members of that majority were required to crystalize this awareness into a mighty political force.”Footnote 73 Johnson describes the riots as the first stage in the ideological work that replaced an ideology holding that the political and merchant elite were unassailable with an ideology according to which majority rule (along with dignity and equality) were a requirement. As we argue elsewhere, “the riot … was more than an isolated act of venting. … [T]he riot is rightfully considered as the first shot in the battle for political change in the Bahamas. The riot also kindled the development of a pro-Black consciousness in the colony, a necessary precursor to Black rule and independence.”Footnote 74 Although majority rule would not occur for another twenty-five years, the riot began the ideological work necessary for majority rule to occur.
Violent and disruptive social movements, such as the 1942 riot, then, reveal cracks in the prevailing ideology. The racial massacres that occurred across the United States during the Red Summer of 1919, for instance, were a response to what was perceived to be members of the black community stepping out of their place. Either the ideology of superiority had to be abandoned or it had to be (violently and terribly) reasserted.Footnote 75 As Sally Haslanger explains, an ideology is a web of “semiotic relations” that can “sustain unjust social relations,” with racist beliefs constituting one type of “ideological formation.”Footnote 76 Because blacks during the Red Summer were perceived as acting inappropriately in fighting back against mistreatment, racist beliefs indicated that violence against blacks could make reality more reflective of the social hierarchy indicated by those beliefs.
Extreme protests also clarify and crystallize ideological rifts.Footnote 77 The 1773 Boston Tea Party made clear that Americans were thinking about their relationship to Britain in a way that was incompatible with the way the British were thinking of their relationship with America. One reason the Boston Tea Party holds such a central place in the American narrative and in the self-conception of Americans is because it clarified the contours of the ideological gap between the Americans and the British.
Convert grievances to concrete ideological positions
Violent and disruptive social movements also begin the conversion of grievances to concrete ideological positions. An extreme protest often precipitates a better explanation of the economic, political, and social situation and potential paths forward.
Recall that the 1942 riot in the Bahamas began as a labor dispute. The Bahamian workers on the Project were paid less than the American workers on the Project, even though they were doing the same jobs. Additionally, they were made to understand that the American contractor had been willing to pay equal wages, but the local economic and political elite prevented them from doing so to keep wages low in the local labor market. The workers marched to Bay Street from the work sites to seek redress. As they marched, Bahamians not affiliated with the Project joined the march. By the time the riot occurred, what began as a labor dispute had morphed into demand for more respect and equality—an ideological commitment that proved more relevant moving forward.Footnote 78
Rioters and observers both remarked that it was dismissive and patronizing remarks of the political leaders and public officials who tried to placate them that triggered their anger.Footnote 79 Attorney General Eric Hallinan, in fact, confessed that “there was [sic] signs that [the crowd] resented [his] remarks.”Footnote 80 Moreover, as Leonard Storr Green, who was eventually convicted as a leader of the rioters, remarked when explaining his demands for higher pay, “I’se a man.”Footnote 81 Although on the surface the dispute was over wages, at its core the riot was over respect. Being paid a lower wage than the person working beside them doing the same job simply because they were from different countries or were of a different race was something that the workers could not countenance. Additionally, being dismissed when they made their complaints was, similarly, intolerable. It became clear to both the rioters and observers that Bahamian blacks would not passively accept blatant disrespect. After all, despite their socioeconomic circumstances, they (believed that they) were men and women who deserved to be treated with dignity.
Additionally, the riot clarified that while the rioters were content to remain British subjects, they expected equal treatment. Indeed, as the crowd marched to Bay Street before the riot, they sang patriotic songs, including “We’ll Never Let the Old Flag Fail,” a British World War I war anthem.Footnote 82 However, they (now) expected the liberty and justice symbolized by that flag. As one of the rioters, Napoleon McPhee, explains, “I willing to fight under the flag, I willing even to die under the flag, but I ain’t gwine [sic] starve under the flag.”Footnote 83 Importantly, the rioters did not wish to harm the Bay Street Boys, the nickname for the local economic and political elite, but they did want to dismantle the economic and political system that the Bay Street Boys relied on to maintain their hegemony. Although the crowd was hostile to the whites they encountered, there were no assaults. Theodore Symonette, a Bay Street Boy, reports walking down the center of Bay Street at the height of the riot and not being interfered with by any of the rioters.Footnote 84 Despite this, the stores of all the Bay Street Boys who seemed hostile to black advancement were looted and destroyed.
In the decades after the riot, as Johnson suggests, a group of Bahamian politicians would translate the grievance into a concrete and clear ideology. That ideology would emphasize the economic and political advancement of Bahamian blacks, specifically, economic justice and majority rule. The labor unions in the country would frequently draw inspiration from the 1942 riot when formulating their demands for higher wages or better conditions. When Sir Randol Fawkes began his effort in 1955 to encourage Bahamian workers to unionize, he did so by invoking the riot.Footnote 85 Similarly, political leaders would point to the riot as teaching Bahamians the importance of majority rule. “Until people waken to their own responsibilities,” Methodist minister H. H. Brown explained to his congregation four years after the riot‚ “they will not have a responsible government. But nothing can possibly justify the attempt of any government to keep the people asleep. Who has learned the lesson of the 1942 riot?”Footnote 86 Although not dispositive, these statements suggest that the riot played an important role in clarifying the limits of the pre-riot dominant ideology and highlighting the contours around which further ideological development needed to occur.
Perhaps the key moment in the concretizing of the ideological positions inspired by the 1942 riot was the set of events that occurred on April 27, 1965, referred to as “Black Tuesday.” On Black Tuesday, supporters of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), which represented the black majority population and was pushing for majority rule, marched to the Parliament Building on Bay Street. They were protesting the constituency boundary maps that they believed were drawn unfairly. When the efforts of the PLP members of the House of Assembly to have the maps redrawn failed, leader of the party Lynden Pindling grabbed the ceremonial mace, which represents the authority of the parliament, and hurled it through the window to the waiting crowd. As Pindling walked over to the Speaker’s desk to grab the mace, he shouted, summarizing the ideology of the PLP—and increasingly of the majority black population—that “this [mace] is the symbol of authority—and the authority—and the authority on this island belongs to the people and the people are outside.”Footnote 87 Violent and disruptive social movements, like the 1942 riot, convert grievances to concrete ideological positions.Footnote 88
Conclusion
Violent and disruptive social movements are sometimes successful at generating social change. For example, although there is some debate, the urban riots of the 1960s in the United States were effective at inspiring sustained (and usually less violent) social movements that were able to effect social change.Footnote 89 In summarizing James Button’s famous work, Marco Giugni offers five conditions under which violence and disruption are likely to be successful:
1. When powerholders have enough public resources to meet the demands of the movement, 2. when violent actions and events are neither too frequent as to cause massive societal and political instability nor severe enough to be noticed and to represent a threat, 3. when a relevant share of powerholders and the public are sympathetic to the goals of the movement and the violence is not so severe as to undermine this sympathy, 4. when the aims and demands of the movement are relatively limited, specific, and clear, and 5. When violence is adopted in combination with peaceful and conventional strategies.Footnote 90
Successful extreme protests walk a fine line between the under- and over-use of violence. Although the public whom the social movement is addressing must be sympathetic to its goals, they must also be comfortable with the social movement’s use of violence. Clarity of argument, in addition to the right amount of violence to not overly change people’s worldviews, are also key to successful violent and disruptive social movements.
Although Button’s approach avoids overly simple causal relationships between “the use of violence and its outcomes,” as Giugni argues, Button’s approach has been criticized for being too broad and running “the risk of leading to trivial results.”Footnote 91 In attempting to correct for what might be considered an overly broad set of criteria under which violent and disruptive social movements are successful, Paul Schumaker narrows the approach.Footnote 92 Schumaker’s empirical findings from studying social movements of the twentieth century suggest that a movement is more effective when its actors limit how much their violence and disruption affects the general, unaffiliated public and instead directs it toward a key demographic, such as a particular industry, political party, or leader.Footnote 93 “In contrast,” Giugni explains, “when the [general] public becomes involved in the conflict (i.e., when the scope of conflict is broad),” the use of violence and disruption tends to reduce the effectiveness of the movement.Footnote 94 In some cases, such as the 1960 U.S. urban riots or the dozens of protests that characterized the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand from 1960 to 1977, the over-use of violence limited the effectiveness of the movements by increasing the amount of repression faced.Footnote 95
The cases of extreme protests we presented in this essay are meant primarily to illustrate and not test our theory.Footnote 96 Our goal was to show that if extreme protests are to bring about genuine social change, they must necessarily have an impact on ideology, given that social orders are undergirded by ideology. The fact that extreme protests can sometimes be a form of ideological work might, then, offer a mechanism that explains why these protests sometimes lead to positive social developments. The success of extreme protests in generating positive social change might largely depend on their capacity for ideological work. Indeed, extreme protests can reveal, clarify, and crystallize fissures in the ideology that undergirds the prevailing social order and can convert grievances to concrete ideological positions as protestors make sense of their actions and rearticulate their ideological commitments.
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
