My Take | Why we protest – because everyone else is doing it

Many plausible theories and causes of the recent protests in Hong Kong have been proffered. One explanation is rarely discussed, though I think it warrants serious attention. It is that the world simply has been experiencing more protests in recent years, and Hong Kong’s are part of that trend. Of course, every protest has its own reasons and dynamics internal to its locale. But we shouldn’t ignore global trends and macro-causes either. It’s widely recognised, for example, among economists and social scientists that practically all developed economies have experienced significant economic inequalities, though they also have their own domestic causes. Likewise, to understand better, we need to recognise protests as an emerging force of global politics. According to the “Global Protest Tracker” database developed by the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there have been more than 230 significant anti-government protests in over 110 countries around the world since 2017. In other worlds, more than one in two countries worldwide have had at least one significant anti-government protest in recent years. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic that started last year, almost every month of 2020 had more protests worldwide than that of 2019, except for February and September. Protests erupted in democratic and non-democratic countries alike; and many ended in violence, whether from protesters, police or more often, their clashes. Huge demonstrations roiled places as diverse as Chile, Hong Kong, Iran and Lebanon. France and the United States have had long and multiple protests in major cities. According to the Tracker database, there was one new significant anti-government protest every four days in the first half of last year. Virtually any number of grievances can start a protest, though most usually have deeper causes. Rampant corruption started months of protest in Bulgaria and Venezuela. Demands for democratic reform fuelled the “Million Man March” in Sudan in 2019 and 2020, and electoral fraud in Belarus last year. Both corruption and vote rigging in Kyrgyzstan were the trigger. Meanwhile, demonstrations in Peru had been over an unpopular presidential impeachment. “Black Lives Matter” protests spanned across the United States over police brutality and racism. Anti-lockdown protests from the pandemic were recorded in 26 countries, including the US, Britain, Bolivia, Israel, Serbia, Uganda, Brazil and Malawi. At least 20 killed in Myanmar as civilian leader vows to support ‘uprising’ In 2019, there were the violent protests for Catalan independence in Spain, those of the “yellow vests” in France, and of course, our very own “yellow” protesters in Hong Kong. Why this global rise in protests? Demonstrators around the world learn from each other and sometimes even coordinate their protests. For example, the so-called Milk Tea Alliance, named after a popular drink in Hong Kong, includes like-minded activists from the city, Thailand, India, Taiwan and now those in Myanmar’s anti-coup movement. People have always felt injustice, frustrations and discontent. But today, more than ever, social media makes it so easy to share experiences, and to organise protests against any number of villains or bad governments, whether real or perceived. Jimmy Lai’s lawyer questions police’s lack of crowd dispersal plans in 2019 rally However, realising the goals of the protests, such as ending corruption, removing illegitimate politicians and achieving justice, usually proves far more elusive. But why does social order break down in a particular time and place? Well, engineers have long known that instability is built in, and can build up, in shabbily constructed structures such as bridges and buildings. But they can’t predict exactly when a collapse will occur or what may trigger it. Of course, it’s always easy to tell or reconstruct “likely stories” to explain why something happens at the time and in the way it does – after the fact. That’s what “experts” such as many social scientists and pundits like yours truly do for a living. But practically no one can predict when and where a social crisis will occur – or if they do, convince people to act on it ahead of time. Myanmar coup: police threaten deadly force as monks, nurses join protests This has significant implications for both domestic and international politics. People with axes to grind, politicians with hidden agendas, countries that are going at each other’s throats – they can all exploit those protests for their own purposes and goals, often unstated. Thus Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, once described the often violent and destructive protests in Hong Kong in 2019 as “a beautiful sight to behold”, yet denounced the one-day riot in January at the US Capitol as an attempted coup. Like the mainstream Western news media, British Home Secretary Priti Patel inevitably called Hong Kong protesters “pro-democracy activists”, even as many were acting more like rioters and arsonists. They were, for a long time during 2019, demonstrating specifically against an extradition bill proposed by the Hong Kong government. In a similar way, protesters in Bristol were fighting against the draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which aims to considerably expand the powers of police and prosecutors, not unlike Hong Kong’s national security law. Judge clears Hong Kong student of riot charge over lack of evidence Yet, Patel tweeted that “thuggery and disorder by a minority will never be tolerated” in Bristol. As they say, when the shoe is on the other foot … As citizens, we have no choice but to try to understand social unrest and disturbance, in our own society and others. We may think protests are easy to understand – but only because we project our own values and beliefs on them. We should, at least, try to be intellectually humble to admit the limits of our own understanding, and realise any conclusions we may have reached as provisional.

My Take | Why we protest – because everyone else is doing it

There really are a lot more protests around the world today. For all our exceptionalism, Hong Kong has been part of a global trend