Protesting for Protests
A strange situation at Pickled Politics tonight; take a look at the comments thread here. The poster raised the well documented absurdity of the policing at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp. And found himself leapt upon by commenters as a hysterical leftie thoroughly disconnected from reality.
The following comment is typical:
The state are not imposing anything on anyone here. Just because you are forcibly removed from an area does not make you any more right, nor does it automatically entitle you to call yourself a victim. Why don’t these people, go home, get ‘actually’ politically active and try to come up with solutions instead of trying to manufacture publicity through stunts?
Pardon? The state very much has imposed itself here. Citizens have a democratic right to protest; one supposedly guaranteed in law by the Human Rights Act. They may gather on any piece of public land to voice their concerns over any matter. The state should exist to protect those very freedoms. If the state - or its agents, the police - attempts to restrict them, it commits an assault on liberty and fails in its role.
The protestors at Climate Camp were clearly peaceful. They came there to hold workshops on environmental life and climate change, not viciously beat up policemen. Some didn’t attempt to hide their intention of shutting down the power-station, no; but that, at most justified a police cordon around the power station to protect what’s legally private property. (That it spews out noxious gas and thus directly affects those around it, very much bringing the matter into the public interest, remains to be addressed…). The protestors within the Climate Camp should have been free from harrassment.
So when the police spend an estimated £3 million to bus in officers from far-flung corners of the country to set-up a cordon around the camp before routinely entering it, ransacking private possessions and cart-off protestors on any pretext, they do impose themselves. The protestors have a right to make themselves heard, and when a force supposed to protect that right mercilessly shits on it, they are victims.
More bizarre were comments along these lines:
I showed an American friend this video, she laughed, she said they were so brutal, her shoe nearly fell off!
Come on. There actions are probably over the top. But brutal? Have you heard the quip about heaven, where the Police are British, the chefs are French etc?
In France, the CRS would have literally beat the shit out of them. In fact, I cannot think of another country where the all police wouldn’t have drawn their batons straight away.
Wait - so because our instances of authoritarian policing are less brutal than those abroad, they become okay? Police brutality against peaceful protestors remains police brutality; just because the French riot police are downright sadistic doesn’t stop an assault on democratic freedoms across the channel from being just that.
It isn’t hysteria to rage at length over this. Protest is an essential tool to remind the powerful you exist; the state, which exists to protect and extend the freedom of all citizens, cannot be allowed to choose when or how it’s acceptable to exercise that freedom. Unless the exercise of liberty infringes on that of another, it’s not its job, and shouldn’t be - unless we enjoy repression.
Posted in: Fear and Loathing, Madness, Political Ideology, Protest
Yes, this. Also: I wish to have a little protest of my own: your new colour scheme is horrible. Ick, brown.
you’ve got something against brown haven’t you! raciiiist!
i like it… (heh)
The brown took some soul-searching, naturally. There is a black version, but I wanted to give brown a whirl - often neglected online. Popular opinion might pursuade me to use the black…
Admittedly, most of my blogging takes place on a screen with a resolution of 640 X 400, so I don’t actually see anything much of the brown at all.
Sunny, it’s possibly because I am allergic to coffee and chocolate.
Ali, How about a nice Imperial Purple?
But no, black is cool.
allergic to coffee and chocolate? that’s awful. I’d rather lose a leg…
Coffee, fine, but chocolate?? I’m with john b