Leaderless movements that cede representation get represented by opponents
Evidence
If you care about the ends (not just the means) of your protest movement, then you can’t cede the power of representation to some external actor, wrote Turkish political scientist Cihan Tuğal. Certainly not to your antagonist. … To sum up the dynamic at work here—in Egypt, in Turkey, and indeed across the mass protest decade—Tuğal paraphrased one of Marx’s most famous lines, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “Those who cannot represent themselves will be represented.” — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 443
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Vacated political power draws whoever is waiting in the wings to fill it — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 842; A leaderless mass movement can outflank its own nominal leaders’ proposals — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 506; Local protest movements can aggregate into a national politics without top-down coordination — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 620 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Local protest movements can aggregate into a national politics without top-down coordination
#qualifies(0.80) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 620 - Representation requires organic cohesion, not merely formal delegation from masses to leaders
#expands(0.80) - A leaderless mass movement can outflank its own nominal leaders’ proposals
#expands(0.75) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 506 - Representation of the Other is an act of domination without consent
#exemplifies(0.70) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 60 - A social movement can potentially exist without its participants knowing they belong to it.
#complicates(0.70) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1192