Unpoliced protests leave crowds free to act out and discredit their organizers

Evidence

Then in October, a crowd of people from Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority gathered in front of the Maspero television building in downtown Cairo to protest the destruction of a church in Upper Egypt. SCAF forces crushed the demonstrators, killing at least twenty-four people. Government tanks rolled over their bodies, while state media blamed the protesters for inciting violence. This was the exact same type of brutality that had inspired the uprising in the first place. But the Egyptian revolutionaries only really had one arrow in their quiver: they could try to take Tahrir Square again. All types of protests took place in 2011 and 2012, but unless they forced the country to a halt, again, they remained demonstrations. Unless they could oust SCAF and replace it with a new revolutionary government, they would have to rely on negotiations and conversations until the planned elections. But the Square was splintered into a number of small groups, which made them easy to ignore. If SCAF wanted to dialogue with civil society, the Muslim Brotherhood stood out as a single coherent organization with a reliable base of support. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 302 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

This response has been in many ways surprising. While Muslims are more aggressively targeted, as I’ve shown, both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama participated in surveillance of Muslims. Yet there were no protests at airports when Bush prevented Muslim noncitizens from twenty-four countries from entering the United States immediately after 9/11. The covert ways in which the Obama and Bush administrations implemented these policies did not incite protest. Both Bush and Obama utilized rhetoric that made it appear their policies were targeting not Muslims but terrorism. … In contrast, the public today is more aware that Trump’s overt anti-Muslim and Islamophobic rhetoric is racist toward Muslims. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 480 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Digital protest crowds behave like swarms that cannot be organized durably — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 343; Ultra squads disciplined by hand-gesture command awed loose protest crowds — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 347; Expanded protest crowds can blunt original organizers’ political messaging. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 409 (+2 more)

Related

• A protest movement’s splintering makes its demands easy for rulers to ignore (similarity 0.85)
• Expanded protest crowds can blunt original organizers’ political messaging. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• A protest movement’s splintering makes its demands easy for rulers to ignore #corroborates (0.82) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 302
• Covert framing, not policy substance, determined public protests #qualifies (0.75) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 480