Preparing for the next coup
Waging Nonviolence is once again teaming up with Choose Democracy to provide resources on how to stem the rising authoritarian tide. This is the second in a series of interviews with experienced organizers and movement thinkers on ways to defend and expand democracy.
Last month, the New York Times published a broad overview of rising political violence in the United States, noting that, “By almost all measures, the evidence of the trend is striking.” According to one poll, more than 80 percent of local officials said they had been threatened or harassed…..
In cases like that, how did people prepare themselves to handle a potentially violent response?
Anticipating what the other side is probably going to do is actually helpful because the fear of the unknown is often paralyzing — and people succumb to confusion, and then demobilization. I so admire the scholar Brian Martin and others who have done research into what makes repression backfire. They point to the five steps perpetrators use to try to inhibit outrage:
First, they cover it up, deny it ever happened and try to prevent knowledge of it from spreading.
Second, they devalue the victim and try to reduce their social standing in the eyes of onlookers.
Third, they reinterpret the abuse that happened by claiming it was necessary — that the police, who may have done something totally unlawful, were actually just trying to keep order or do their jobs. Or they were just a few bad apples.
Fourth, if they have to, they’ll say they’re going to launch an internal investigation. They like internal investigations that are closed doors, because they give the appearance of justice and take time. People demobilize frequently when they see an institutional process is underway.
Finally, they offer threats and rewards: threats against people talking out and rewards for people who stay silent.
That’s the playbook. It’s used by authoritarians. It’s used by governments and businesses. It’s used at a micro personal level. It’s used at a macro level.
How can organizers respond to these moves?
The backfire framework tells us what we need to do to counter all that. There’s five R’s:
1. Reveal what happened. Counter attempts to cover up.
2. Redeem: value the victim, humanize the victim, don’t let them be othered and cast aside.
3. Reframe and say “Actually, what’s going on is systemic, deeply abusive, corrosive and actually the tip of the iceberg. It’s indicative of a much deeper problem.
4. Redirect: If there is an institutional process, you may participate in it, you may not, but you don’t depend on it. You continue to mobilize. You continue to use that institutional process as a mobilizing opportunity.
5. Resist threats and bribes, and possibly turn them into new forms of backfire.
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