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Except that I’ve never ever seen this drive more people to support these causes. In fact, it’s almost always a negative publicity to the point that it would often do the cause better to not protest at all. Your protest blocked a road, now everyone is pissed because they were late to work, or missed a flight, or other activities they needed to get to. Are people talking about the cause as in “does this idea have merit” or in terms of “what a bunch of inconsiderate losers making people late for work and making people miss their flights. It’s negative at least around me. People outright cheered when the people blocking roads in Europe got pushed out of the way by SUVs or were manhandled to the side of the road by outraged drivers. Not one person seeing the souping of the Louvre paintings got curious about the cause, they were upset about the destruction of the art. So on net, it’s more likely to turn people away.
I am aware of such cases. In one case because people cared, were willing to take being late or risking beating or prison sentence or being thrown out of work and take minor risk of being assassinated by regime - but they were not aware that such opinion was widely shared.
So protests sparked strikes and so on.
Note that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_warning_strike_in_Poland basically failed - despite 12 million people participating in strike - in country that had 36 million people! Imagine 111 million people on strike in USA! Strike included regime television, all TV went out for 4 hours.
But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Polish_strikes were final trigger for regime change.
On other side: for minor issues even minor protest can cause results, especially for local government issues when noone really opposes them. Or opposing group will happily go away and try to take less defended victim rather than fight this specific battle. In sufficiently minor cases things as simple as single person mailing local government can work.
Other model: it is demonstration of power and one step away from armed mob/uprising/terrorism. This also sometimes works. Sometimes by progressing into outright revolution.
See Ukraine in 2014 (president run away, no full scale civil war*) or how Tzarist Russia ended (ended in a full scale civil war).
*or ended in a civil war if you treat what happened in East as civil war rather than Russian invasion.
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How old are you, roughly speaking?
Because this was famously, visibly effective in a few historical situations. The Civil Rights movement is in living memory.
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It's often negative in the short term, but there are a lot of small causes that the news just doesn't care about and wouldn't mention if it weren't that some people made themselves a nuisance. It's a long term play, to not let your cause be forgotten or ignored. It's better to make people angry about you than let them ignore you.
For those specific examples, climate protestors have full elite backing now, the strategy is different. It's intimidation, they're used by the elites to show what they are willing to destroy if people don't bow down.
Hasn’t climate protest worked because the earth has actually gotten warmer the last 20 years so it feels true?
PETA hasn’t taken off. The only real change in that space is picking up some rationalists.
And environmentalist have benefited from tech costs curves while nothing like that has kicked in for PETA (cheap lab meat).
Something being true doesn't explain the dynamic he's describing. On one hand there's plenty of things that are true and feel true, and are opposed by the elites, rather than having their full backing. On the other hand the climate protest movement offers no solutions, and as he said are only used as a way to consolidate power, and to show what the elites are willing to destroy.
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The term often used is "demonstration" rather than "protest". This is because by existing, these "demonstrations" demonstrate the power of those running them, and thereby convince all involved they'd better get in line.
If they don't actually have that power, sure, they get pushed out of the way and they lose. But anyone messing with these "protestors" will certainly receive the full force of the law, while the "protestors" will be handled with kid gloves, so it is clear they do have the power.
I think this captures the tenor of many protests. It's about power and intimidation. We can burn your buildings, tear down your monuments, loot your stores, and YOU are powerless to stop us.
Demonstrations have worked this way forever, going all the way back to ancient Rome, but perhaps most saliently in the street battles between fascists and communists in Weimar Germany.
Winning hearts and mind is one way to gain power. But any good communist knows that silencing and intimidating your enemies works much better. Here in America, we're so used to the MLK/Gandhi model which is designed to appeal to the hearts of a kind and powerful master. But demonstrations which carry the threat of violence are far more typical. I mean, would you dare to carry a drawing of Muhammad around Columbia's campus right now?
That said, I don't think these protests will go very far. The establishment is NOT on the side of protestors as they were during BLM. Even in San Francisco and Seattle, protestors are being charged for blocking traffic. If any protestors attempt real violence, they will be prosecuted.
Jews are still sacred in America.
Jews are just a white ethnicity now. Sacredness is gone.
What they do have is power.
They also have a strong in-group bias which is a huge reason that power exists in the first place.
Is there evidence they have more of an in-group bias than any other minority?
They have more in group bias than other whites.
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