When, and with What Consequences, Do Protest Movements Become Violent - Essay Example

Name: Professor: Course: Date of Submission: When, And With What Consequences, Do Protest Movements Become Violent In the contemporary international governance, liberty and freedom of expression are considered capstone elements of democracy, which underline political settings across Europe that has been in practice for many years. Accompanying the globalization wave has been an increase in experiences and expectations the electorate in the developed world regarding the role of the civil society and the scope for democratic participation have become highly diversified. Such developments have continued to spark a series of protest movements ranging from social, political, and even industrial protests. Social and political protest movements are attributed to mistrust that develop among the high profile political figures, the discontent by the people on national political entities, and the inevitable democratic awareness bolstered by higher education (Larres 2009). These factors continue to give rise to frequent waves of mobilization as well as a significant shift towards active participation in political transformations. Changes in democratic systems and structures across Europe have constantly ushered in transformative forms of political articulations. European nations have experienced various social movements pursuing other agendas such as the development of politically sensitive civil society, nationalism, and separatists groupings (Bracke 2007). Despite the strong stances against physical violence in most social movements in Europe, isolated protest movements have resulted to significant disrepute for social movement in the modern society. To some extent, social movements have been viewed as threats governance anchored on democratic rules; as well as raising concerns over the national government’s sole unchallenged privilege of using force on protesting citizens without concern for illegitimacy of such actions. Contrary to negative attributes on social movements in modern Europe, earlier movements were characterized with an element of constructiveness with exclusion of some right wing and leftist extremist movements. Violent protest movements often result in numerous adverse consequences including deaths, destruction of property, and failure to accomplish the movements’ objectives. This paper explores various European protest movements to establish circumstances under which they turned violent and the consequences. Political Violent Movements Various groups such as anti-abortionists, left wing and right wing political organizations sometimes may believe that their goals cannot be achieved through normal political interactions. Such believes often resort to political violence to try achieving their goals. Political violence may be neither random nor uncontrolled, but a tactical response to what are perceived as unacceptable political circumstances that cannot be otherwise addressed (Larres 2009). When conventional forms of political competition fail to resolve political conflicts, affected groups turn to political violence of various kinds and intensities. Political violence outbreaks have one thing in common in which they are rarely random or spontaneous, but typically initiated, although rarely personally carried out by identifiable political leaders. The notion of political violence includes a range of activities, such as violent demonstrations, looting, riots, sabotage, group conflicts, terrorism, rebellion and revolution. Industrial violent movements often include mass demonstrations that disrupt normal social economic activities, and they may involve go slows at work places, raising barriers across crucial traffic carriers, and outlawed wildcat strikes and obstruction of premises. Some of the recent protests experienced across Europe included the Euro-protests in which construction workers, truck drivers, and farmers among other groups expressed some of the dissatisfaction with the EU concept through participation of in EU-wide protests. Such protests involved different tactics including employment of low-level political violence to try to influence important political decisions. The protests developed because their perpetrators believed that important decisions were being taken supranational by non-accountable EU bodies (Haynes 2005). Over the years, Europe and the world at large have seen occupational groups joined in the streets by a growing range of activists with diverse goals, including students, environmentalists, peace marchers and anti-racist groups among other movements. Revolution movements have been experienced in different circumstances; and they differ from other forms of protest movements because they combine both violence and political change. Revolution brings about a fall of government or a change in the governing regime. One of the notable revolution protest movements include the anti-communist, which were mostly non-violent that occurred between 1989 and 1991(Haynes 2005). Protests against Communism in Eastern Europe As Eastern and central European societies brought within the Soviet sphere of influence, the communist leaderships sought to consolidate their authority. Such actions saw widespread arrests of clergy in 1951 and 1953; among them the Polish Primate Cardinal Wyszynski (Graubard 1993). State authorities established some measures to control the actions of the church, particularly through recruitment of patriotic priests’. Such priests and other church control measures were put in play with the aim of dividing loyalties. The renewal of King Kazimierz’s vow by the imprisoned Wyszynski provided a cultural frame within which the Poznan riots were interpreted. The Poznan riots formed the first significant protest against the communist regime. Owing to the party divisions and the presence of foreign journalists in the city for a trade exposition, workers from the Cegielski factory that had been frustrated by the authorities to engage with their demands marched to the city centers to compel the government to address their grievances (Herbert 2003). Despite the protest starting in a non-violent manner, the movement later resulted into a three days street-fighting leading to deaths of many people. The protests stormed government buildings with the demand for the release of Wyszynski. His imprisonment experiences and the Poznan riots aftermath formed the basis for interpretation of the oppressions that people were going through. The church fought a war against national vices and supported the need to embrace Christian values. Government authorities formed a strategy through which they would attempt to disrupt the church efforts but majority repeatedly backfired, reinforcing local and national oppositional solidarities (Herbert 2003). Although various intellectual groups were involved in the fight towards the end of the communist regime, their mode of activity as well as their basic orientation failed to meet the standards of intellectuals in the classical revolutions. Their participation in hastening the process of the breakdown of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe played a crucial role in intensifying the element of principled protests in all the revolutions. The popular protests were not just a protest against wrongdoing by authorities but also a demand for redress, for better behavior. With the exception of Romania, the process was relatively bloodless, nonviolent and where violent demonstrations occurred they were from a competitive perspective, very limited (Graubard 1993). In addition, there was no such extolling of violence either in Eastern Europe or in the USSR itself. Nevertheless, a Romanian case that involved vigilante group of miners who had previously deployed suppressive mechanisms in the aid of the government agencies in controlling demonstration surpassed protest movements’ record by demolishing the parliament complex. The miners were expressing their dissatisfaction with unregulated rise in prices, and their effort pushed the government to dissolve. Similarly, same eventuality befell the Albanian regime that included the demise of the communist authorities; and caused significant civil tension. Civil Rights Movements in the 1960s and early 1970s Europe experienced the reappearance of revolutionary violence towards the end of 1960s whose aftermath violence led to its recognition as a revolution in paradise. With the exhaustion of the ideological conflicts of the first half of the century, full employment, and achievement of structures of parliamentary democracy everywhere in non-communist Europe except in Greece and Iberian Peninsula, people had widely anticipated the end of all civil movements. All the non-communist European nations had achieved these factors through a violent revolution that had taken place before reemergence of the 1960s revolution (Bloxham & Gerwath 2011). The late 1960s and 1970s marked a period of changed political developments particularly the emergence of leftist political followings that was distinct from the Soviet Union communist ideologies. The new political wave comprised of members that propagated and executed acts of revolutionary violence, initially targeting objects and later turning onto defenders of industrialism, the financial systems, government forces, and politicians. The left-wing groups emerged from the peaceful extra-parliamentary protest movements of the 1960s that had sought to overcome what many of their activists viewed as organized aggression supported by capitalism. The violent protests were attributed to lack of democratic accountability and the actions of state authorities to suppress violently the former colonial subjects in the Third World, especially in Vietnam. The structural and real violence were perceived by majority of the protesters as a sign of enhanced grassroots democracy, and reduced state control over the people’s affairs. Extra-parliamentary movements across Europe were based on the idea of pushing for limited state control and increased democracy at the grassroots levels. The experiences of protest events in the late 1960s, most notably the heavy-handed police reactions in some parts of Europe led to the recognition of the structural violence roles on the actualization of revolutionary violence (Larres 2009). Europe experienced numerous violent clashes ranging from the frictions between students and police in Nantarre and Paris to the battle of the Valle Giulia in Rome and the accidental shooting of a student protestor by a police officer during a demonstration in Berlin. The harsh responses by the police during these demonstrations were perceived as violation of the demonstrators’ democratic rights (Malley-Morrison 2009). Such harsh reactions served to strengthen the belief and the assumptions about the inherent violence of capitalist systems. Student protestors in France capitalized on the long tradition of revolutionary opposition to go against the state brutality. They claimed that their demonstration actions were aimed at liberating Paris. On the other hand, in Germany, prominent left-wing activists justified their violent actions through assertions that non-violent protest strategies had failed. They pointed to the non-violent protests led by veteran human rights preachers like Mahatma Gandhi and Luther King; that had been brutally executed for their stances on democracy in leadership. Additionally, the peaceful ways of seeking freedom and an end to impunity was declared impractical at the time by a team of radical Italian student activists, which appeared to applaud and promote the concept of violent protest movements through their brave songs and slogans. In Particular, the Italians advanced the violence with arms protestation modes via their infamous Violenza song, which was loudly chanted during clashed with law enforcers. Violence in Return for Violence Most non-violent protest movements turned violent through the adoption of the violence in return for violence in their demonstrations. State security forces particularly played a critical role in triggering violence in most of the peace protest movements held across Europe. After numerous harsh encounters with the police, several movements changed their slogans to demand for violence in return for violence leading to a spark of violent demonstrations in different parts of Europe. In Italy, the inclination to the use of actual violence was further reinforced by a wave of neo-fascist violence directed against labor-movement institutions from 1969 onwards. In German, the violent actions of the Red Army Faction (RAF) emerged as result of shoot-outs with the police (Bloxham & Gerwarth 2009). The militia group had the sole intention of freeing their imprisoned comrades but the actions of the police shoot-outs and arrest of group’s leadership resulted in violent confrontations. According to Bloxham and Gerwarth (2009), large scale demonstrations within Catholic areas by groups demanding greater civil rights for the Catholic population in Europe were met with repression by the predominantly Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (the RUC). The Catholic populations were also repressed by a counter-mobilization of the Protestant population against what they perceived as utter disrespect for the being of the state of Ireland. The riots led to tens of deaths, almost 1,000 gunshot wounds, and other injuries among unaccountable property damage. The British government deployed troops in the affected areas to control the situation but this resulted in worsening the situation. The troops were viewed by the Catholic population as an oppressive force resulting to creation of ‘No Go’ areas barricaded against the British by some Catholic working-class neighborhood. In addition, the violence against the police and the army escalated rapidly from stones, to improvised bombs, nail-bombs, and full-scale gun battles from what was an initially non-violent Catholic movement (Larres 2009). The state forces met force with force with one provocation referred to as the ‘bloody Sunday’ resulting in killings of unarmed civilians in Derry after the police and the army attempted to break up a civil-rights demonstration. The events of the Bloody Sunday turned the once non-violent civil-rights demonstration into a decade of violence. The Anti-Iraq War Protests The summer of 2003 experienced emergence of flash mobs in New York City, Seattle, Minneapolis, and San Francisco organized through emails and other social media networks. Thousands of American protesters called for the withdrawal of the military and ushering of a new liberated Iraq. After about one year, about 400,000 anti-Iraq war protesters marched down the streets before the opening of the Republican National Convention to push for similar demands (Malley-Morrison 2009). The protesters openly exposed anti-war and anti-president Bush slogans as well as coffins to pay tribute to American soldiers killed during the war. With chants of ‘no blood for oil’, critics of the war expressed their moral opposition to the war in Iraq with little or no impact on the invasion. In different parts of the world, the demonstrations turned violent leading to deaths of some demonstrators by state security that responded to control the demonstrations. Violent protests also marked the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006, as protesters tried to break police barriers to reach the building where Rice was meeting with the foreign ministers to express their dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq (Bracke 2007). The U.S. government and allies turned a deaf ear on the issues raised by protesters leading to increased agitation that resulted in violent demonstrations in some cases. In Rome, the protests resulted in destruction of property in the Union Square as security arms attempted to break the demonstrations. In this case, the main cause of the violence was the manner in which security agencies attempted to stop the protests. Although not many deaths were reported during the anti-Iraq protests, property destruction emerged common as well as detention and injury of many protesters. Conclusion Protest movements have become a common way of expressing dissatisfaction among the public on political, social and economic issues. Europe has particularly experienced a series of protest movements since 1945, all with different objectives and goals. Although most protests are initiated as peaceful demonstrations, many turn into violent confrontations due to many factors. Various groups such as anti-abortionists, left wing and right wing political organizations sometimes may believe that their goals cannot be achieved through normal political interactions. The sparks of violent movements have been attributed to poor responses to break demonstrations, failure by the government or targeted institutions to address issues raised by the movements. Protesters have turned into violent actions through assertions that previous non-violent movements failed achieve their goals as well as application of a common principle of meeting force with force especially from the state security responses. Violent protest movements have resulted in deaths of innocent people, destruction of property, injuries and detention of participants without formal trials. References Bloxham, D & Gerwath, R 2011, Political violence in twentieth-century Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Bracke, M 2007, Which socialism? whose détente?: west European communism and the Czechoslovak crisis, 1968, Central European University Press, Martonvasar. Graubard, S 1993, Exit from communism, Transaction Publishers. London. Haynes, J 2005, Comparative politics in a globalizing world, Polity, London. Herbert, D 2003, Religion and civil society: rethinking public religion in the contemporary world, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. New York. Larres, K 2009, A companion to Europe since 1945, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken. Malley-Morrison, K 2009, State violence and the right to peace: Western Europe and North America, ABC-CLIO, New York. Read More