Does The Media Empower White Supremacists and Other
Modern Protesters?
Written by Intern Writer Rudy Malcom
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The second Unite the Right rally, organized by American white supremacist and neo-Nazi Jason Kessler, was held in Washington, D.C., on August 12, 2018, to mark the first anniversary of its predecessor in Charlottesville, Virginia, which Kessler arranged with white identitarian Richard B. Spencer. That first Unite the Rights rally, which killed advocate Heather Heyer and injured 35 fellow counter-protestors, was meant to oppose the removal of Confederate monuments and, according to Former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke, “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump” to “take our country back.” Duke, who believes that not just the President — who, failing to specifically denounce white supremacists, blamed “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville — but that “most Americans embrace” the majority of the causes he has advocated, was scheduled to the speak at the Unite the Right 2 rally.
Yet the event was met with brevity and a paltry showing. Several prominent far-right individuals, despite having played instrumental roles in the Charlottesville rally, have publicly and repeatedly dissociated themselves from Kessler. Likewise, Vice News chronicled, Kessler has sought to deflect blame for last year’s violence and to depict the neo-Nazis alongside whom he fought in 2017 as out-of-left-field misrepresentations of the alt-right movement. (Yet Kessler simultaneously organized a rally to commemorate this savage bigotry.)
Yet the event was met with brevity and a paltry showing. Several prominent far-right individuals, despite having played instrumental roles in the Charlottesville rally, have publicly and repeatedly dissociated themselves from Kessler. Likewise, Vice News chronicled, Kessler has sought to deflect blame for last year’s violence and to depict the neo-Nazis alongside whom he fought in 2017 as out-of-left-field misrepresentations of the alt-right movement. (Yet Kessler simultaneously organized a rally to commemorate this savage bigotry.)
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The second Unite the Right rally was, as Vox deemed it, a “pathetic failure.” According to the permit he received from the National Park Service, Kessler had reserved a space in Lafayette Park, located directly north of the White House, to accommodate between 100 and 400 people. (The New York Times characterized the permit as one of the “routine First Amendment demonstration” variety; however, it is perhaps worth mentioning, as Vox noted, that though the First Amendment protects “[g]eneric racist chants,” the same constitutional safeguards do not apply to “slurs aimed at specific people,” which could be regarded as “fighting words” — words whose “very utterance,” the Supreme Court defined in 1942, “ inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”)
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But only a couple dozen white nationalists showed up, and, “dwarfed by thousands of counterdemonstrators,” “police officers and representatives of the news media,” they chose to embark on the march route two hours before they had planned to do so. Their “white civil rights” rally ended when it was supposed to have started. The thunderstorm that rolled through Washington 30 minutes prior likely didn’t help, and Kessler himself attributed the sparse turnout to “an atmosphere of intimidation.”
“There were a lot of people who were at last year’s rally who are very scared this year,” he said to the twenty-some extremists he led, The New York Times reported. “They felt like last year they came to express their point of view. They were attacked. And when they fought back, they were overly prosecuted.” (In the same speech, he also said that he did not want counter-protesters “using violence to shut down the speech of people they disagree with.” Yet Kessler organized a rally where attendees marched with semi-automatic weapons and referred to Heyer’s death therein as “payback time” for a “fat, disgusting Communist.”)
“There were a lot of people who were at last year’s rally who are very scared this year,” he said to the twenty-some extremists he led, The New York Times reported. “They felt like last year they came to express their point of view. They were attacked. And when they fought back, they were overly prosecuted.” (In the same speech, he also said that he did not want counter-protesters “using violence to shut down the speech of people they disagree with.” Yet Kessler organized a rally where attendees marched with semi-automatic weapons and referred to Heyer’s death therein as “payback time” for a “fat, disgusting Communist.”)
A more important factor, however, was that since the first Unite the Right rally, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, and other ideological associates have failed to unite the right. In the wake of the brutal disaster that was Charlottesville, The New York Times detailed, they have demonstrated their inability to “agree on a leader or a particular brand of intolerance” and succumbed to “infighting and schisms.”
The Unite the Right 2 rally might have been a “total dud,” but it might also have been a “public relations victory,” The New York Times proposed. According to The Washington Post, violent demonstrations are generally half as effective as peaceful ones, but the deadly Charlottesville rally spawned inordinate media coverage on the anticipation of its successor. This excessive attention seemed to prophesy that the Schutzstaffel would storm the Oval Office, but there weren’t enough alt-right protesters to hurt a gadfly on the wall.a
The Unite the Right 2 rally might have been a “total dud,” but it might also have been a “public relations victory,” The New York Times proposed. According to The Washington Post, violent demonstrations are generally half as effective as peaceful ones, but the deadly Charlottesville rally spawned inordinate media coverage on the anticipation of its successor. This excessive attention seemed to prophesy that the Schutzstaffel would storm the Oval Office, but there weren’t enough alt-right protesters to hurt a gadfly on the wall.a
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Such hype sends the message to the public that the alt-right is, in and of itself, more important than it really is. As The Washington Post summarized, Norwegian journalist Vegas Tenold, who spent several years embedded within the KKK and two other extremist groups, argued that, by obsessing over “the pageantry of extremist groups,” we risk overlooking unchecked police power, private prisons, and other “more mundane, structural causes of inequity and racial polarization.” As Trump ushered a slew of white nationalists into his administration, a widespread fear emerged that the alt-right posed as an “existential threat to democracy and racial progress.” The media has capitalized on this anxiety and, in doing so, granted the alt-right a facsimile of power that, in an anti-mimetic fashion whereby life imitates art, serves to give the movement genuine power. Indeed, many journalists and scholars have worried that reporting on white supremacists can normalize their extremist and hurtful ideology. “What’s crucial for the fate of the alt-right is not the demonstrations,” political scientist Thomas J. Main told The New York Times. “They are a political movement that is concerned with influencing the way people think, and there are a lot of signs that their ideas continue to penetrate mainstream media and political culture.” According to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, the number of hate crimes in the 10 largest American cities last year has climbed to a decade high. And “mainstream politicians and pundits,” says The New York Times, are promulgating discriminatory rhetoric and endorsing immigration limits, trade protections, and other policy positions held by white nationalists. |
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White supremacist rallies are not the only protests to have been empowered by the actions of Trump’s administration. The frequent racism, xenophobia, and misogyny of the President’s speech and positions have inspired critics to gather publicly in numerous displays of opposition; one percent of the United States’ population attended the Women’s Marches the day after his 2017 inauguration — “the largest – and most peaceful – day of protest in US history,” The Independent recounted. As New Yorker staff writer Nathan Heller discerned, liberals and conservatives alike have placed their faith in publicly “demanding change” during “moments of sharp civic discontent” for centuries.
“The First Amendment enshrines such efforts, protecting ‘the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’ From the Stamp Act boycotts of the seventeen-sixties to the 1913 suffrage parade and the March on Washington, in 1963, protesters have pushed proudly through our history,” he writes.
But is this really what democracy looks like today? Is a march more than just a photo op or pat on the back that lets participants feel like they’ve made a difference simply by expressing their outrage, anxieties, and values?
Attendees often preach to the choir but for a demonstration to be effective, The Washington Post found, its message must “resonate for more people than just the core supporters.” Moreover, the chants of protesters often fall on the deaf ears of legislators and other policy makers. Yes, as Atlantic staff writer Conor Friedersdorf acknowledged in an article for The Los Angeles Times, “displays of opposition” make “an important civic statement,” but protestors can take actions beyond taking to the streets in order to more directly and effectively change the nation’s political climate. Friedersdorf advises that Trump critics “work to dominate the 2018 midterms,” for instance; flipping the House of Representatives from red to blue could advance the investigation into Trump’s corruption and hinder the realization of his domestic agenda.
Further denouncing the potency of protest, Heller outlines several points made by political theorists Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, the authors of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, a book first published in 2015. According to Heller, Srnicek and Williams opine that protest “ignores the structural nature of problems in a modern world.”
“This is politics transmitted into pastime—politics-as-drug-experience, perhaps—rather than anything capable of transforming society,” Srnicek and Williams write.
“The First Amendment enshrines such efforts, protecting ‘the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’ From the Stamp Act boycotts of the seventeen-sixties to the 1913 suffrage parade and the March on Washington, in 1963, protesters have pushed proudly through our history,” he writes.
But is this really what democracy looks like today? Is a march more than just a photo op or pat on the back that lets participants feel like they’ve made a difference simply by expressing their outrage, anxieties, and values?
Attendees often preach to the choir but for a demonstration to be effective, The Washington Post found, its message must “resonate for more people than just the core supporters.” Moreover, the chants of protesters often fall on the deaf ears of legislators and other policy makers. Yes, as Atlantic staff writer Conor Friedersdorf acknowledged in an article for The Los Angeles Times, “displays of opposition” make “an important civic statement,” but protestors can take actions beyond taking to the streets in order to more directly and effectively change the nation’s political climate. Friedersdorf advises that Trump critics “work to dominate the 2018 midterms,” for instance; flipping the House of Representatives from red to blue could advance the investigation into Trump’s corruption and hinder the realization of his domestic agenda.
Further denouncing the potency of protest, Heller outlines several points made by political theorists Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, the authors of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, a book first published in 2015. According to Heller, Srnicek and Williams opine that protest “ignores the structural nature of problems in a modern world.”
“This is politics transmitted into pastime—politics-as-drug-experience, perhaps—rather than anything capable of transforming society,” Srnicek and Williams write.
Progressives might not be the ones wearing Make America Great Again hats, but, according to Srnicek and Williams, they are “mired in nostalgia.” Petitions, occupations, and strikes, they postulate, cannot be modernized for today’s globalized world of social media.
Heller incorporates Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest in order to explain this phenomenon. The book’s author sociologist Zeynep Tufekci “believes that digital-age protests are not simply faster, more responsive versions of their mid-century parents,” but “fundamentally distinct.”
“[W]ith this speed comes weakness,” Tufecki notes. (Dutch sociologist Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, however, depicted the media as “active actors” who regulate and magnify protest’s influence on “political and public agendas.”)
Tufecki invokes the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a symbol of the civil rights movement that she considers “a masterpiece of control and logistics,” for use an exemplar of old-school strategization. The boycott, which occurred after African-American activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, was set to last for a day. It continued for over a year. Parks, without even one angry Facebook post, transformed into “a focal point for national media coverage” because local organizers “bided their time, slowly planning, structuring, and casting what amounted to a work of public theatre.” The Atlantic perceived that though social media draws large crowds, the common lack of “a well-oiled and more-permanent organization capable of following up on protesters’ demands” through less exciting, but necessary, “political work” diminishes modern protesters’ ability to generate actual change.
Heller incorporates Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest in order to explain this phenomenon. The book’s author sociologist Zeynep Tufekci “believes that digital-age protests are not simply faster, more responsive versions of their mid-century parents,” but “fundamentally distinct.”
“[W]ith this speed comes weakness,” Tufecki notes. (Dutch sociologist Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, however, depicted the media as “active actors” who regulate and magnify protest’s influence on “political and public agendas.”)
Tufecki invokes the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a symbol of the civil rights movement that she considers “a masterpiece of control and logistics,” for use an exemplar of old-school strategization. The boycott, which occurred after African-American activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, was set to last for a day. It continued for over a year. Parks, without even one angry Facebook post, transformed into “a focal point for national media coverage” because local organizers “bided their time, slowly planning, structuring, and casting what amounted to a work of public theatre.” The Atlantic perceived that though social media draws large crowds, the common lack of “a well-oiled and more-permanent organization capable of following up on protesters’ demands” through less exciting, but necessary, “political work” diminishes modern protesters’ ability to generate actual change.
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Heller categorizes protest as a means of acting out our fantasy for expressing our “personal politics”; many of us, “whose days are filled with chores and meetings,” yearn to become the virtuous revolutionaries of yore, but Heller urges us to forget about our “cool attire” and “clever signs” and instead write letters and call senators. Left-leaning activists and historians, political scientist Mark Lilla declares in his book The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, have exaggerated the importance of social movements, but “governmental process,” Heller surmises, might be “the powerless person’s best bet” to fight the system.The age of folk politics in which we can be the anti-establishmentarian heroes of our escapist dreams is no longer.
Today’s version of progressive activism, in its favoring immediate and transient actions over the fulfillment of long-term goals and systemic change, appears to parallel the love for instant gratification that glues us to our smartphones. The Women’s March in 2017, Heller thinks, made “no specific demands,” “produced no concrete outcomes,” and “held no legislators to account.” |
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Yet Heller finishes his article by identifying the demonstration’s saving grace: “[I]t offered solidarity on a vast scale.”
Reporter Dan Kopf for Quartz analyzed a 2011 study done by researchers at Harvard University that, unlike the majority of Heller’s piece, affirmed the effectiveness of protest. Kopf concedes that “protest does not work because big crowds send a signal to policy-makers,” but emphasizes that “protests gets people politically activated.”
Kopf explained that evaluating a protest’s efficacy is challenging because it’s hard to tell whether a change following a protest was triggered by the protest or the unpopularity of a policy of which the protest was a symptom. (For example, since January 2017, there has been an unprecedented number of first-time female candidates running for office, but is this trend due to the swearing in of an anti-feminist leader or the largest single-day demonstration in American history that occurred 22 hours later?)
Following the 2008 financial crisis and the Barack Obama’s first presidential inauguration in January 2009, Kopf narrates, the Tea Party, championing decreases in government spending and taxes, coalesced into a new conservative movement. Their first major day of protest was April 15, 2009; more than 500 distinct “Tax Day” rallies were held nationwide. The Harvard researchers discovered that “in places where it rained that day, the turnout was, on average, 60% lower than at other similar locations,” which led them to recognize that they could use the presence or absence of rain to measure whether a protest actually had an impact.
Reporter Dan Kopf for Quartz analyzed a 2011 study done by researchers at Harvard University that, unlike the majority of Heller’s piece, affirmed the effectiveness of protest. Kopf concedes that “protest does not work because big crowds send a signal to policy-makers,” but emphasizes that “protests gets people politically activated.”
Kopf explained that evaluating a protest’s efficacy is challenging because it’s hard to tell whether a change following a protest was triggered by the protest or the unpopularity of a policy of which the protest was a symptom. (For example, since January 2017, there has been an unprecedented number of first-time female candidates running for office, but is this trend due to the swearing in of an anti-feminist leader or the largest single-day demonstration in American history that occurred 22 hours later?)
Following the 2008 financial crisis and the Barack Obama’s first presidential inauguration in January 2009, Kopf narrates, the Tea Party, championing decreases in government spending and taxes, coalesced into a new conservative movement. Their first major day of protest was April 15, 2009; more than 500 distinct “Tax Day” rallies were held nationwide. The Harvard researchers discovered that “in places where it rained that day, the turnout was, on average, 60% lower than at other similar locations,” which led them to recognize that they could use the presence or absence of rain to measure whether a protest actually had an impact.
“According to their research, rallies in congressional districts that experienced good weather on Tax Day 2009 had higher turnouts, which led to more conservative voting by the district representative and a substantially higher turnout for the Republican candidate in the 2010 congressional election. Specifically, every additional attendee at a Tax Day rally led to somewhere between 7 and 14 additional votes for the Republican in the next election,” Kopf writes.
The researchers suggested that this finding was attributable to the way the protest moved attendees because if “the protest itself made the difference,” they reasoned, “then the effect of a larger protest would dissipate over time as policymakers forgot about it.” The difference in political outcomes, though, amplified over time; larger turnout left an enduring impression on “voting, political contributions, ideology, and future participation in the Tea Party movement,” Kopf concluded.
If this statistic holds true, the recent Unite the Right rally’s low turnout should hopefully signify little to no political outcomes that benefit white nationalism.
The researchers suggested that this finding was attributable to the way the protest moved attendees because if “the protest itself made the difference,” they reasoned, “then the effect of a larger protest would dissipate over time as policymakers forgot about it.” The difference in political outcomes, though, amplified over time; larger turnout left an enduring impression on “voting, political contributions, ideology, and future participation in the Tea Party movement,” Kopf concluded.
If this statistic holds true, the recent Unite the Right rally’s low turnout should hopefully signify little to no political outcomes that benefit white nationalism.
