ACFM Trip 39: Protest

Novara Media

Philosophy, News, Politics, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2023

⏱️ 104 minutes

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Summary

Millions have protested against the bombing of Gaza by taking part in marches, boycotts, sit-ins and other demonstrations. But what difference does it make, either to the world or to ourselves?

The gang confront a contentious topic in this Trip. Do “A to B” marches ever achieve anything? What about joining hands around an RAF base? Digging up roads? Refusing to pay your taxes? Is squatting a form of direct action?

They discuss Irish hunger strikers, Montgomery bus boycotters, Greenham Common women and the people that Suella Braverman calls “hate marchers”, with music from Lowkey, the Plastic Ono Band, Steel Pulse and more.

Find our ever-expanding playlist on Spotify by searching “ACFM”.
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Music: Rolling Stones – Street Fighting Man / Dylan – Masters of War / Samba extract / Public Enemy – 911 is a Joke / Lowkey – Ghosts of Grenfell / Steel Pulse – Handsworth Revolution / The Plastic Ono Band – Give Peace A Chance / John Lennon – Working Class Hero

Book: Charles Tilly – Social Movements: 1768-2004

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. PRS licence number: LE-0016481

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an epic.
0:02.0	This is action. Welcome to ACFM, the home of the weird left. I'm Nadia Eidel and I'm joined as usual by my friends Kia Milburn.
0:28.6	Hello and Jeremy Gilbert. Hello. And today we are talking about protest.
0:36.1	So guys, why are we talking about protest at this moment?
0:40.1	Kia?
0:41.1	Well, I mean, the obvious reason the principal spur to us talking about protest at the moment, it's a
0:46.3	perennial topic, but why are we talking about it now? It's I think the huge protests that have been taking place around the world but particularly in the UK
0:55.7	against the Israeli war on Gaza.
0:59.2	Pro ceasefire protests, you put it that way perhaps, you know, they've been of a size. a 700,000 perhaps, on the largest March in London a few weeks ago to record now, like simply
1:16.1	huge numbers, definitely the biggest protests since the February 15th, 2023, 2003, anti-Iraq war protests.
1:28.0	That's something we need to think about basically.
1:30.0	That's the principle spur for me.
1:32.0	I'd also say there's a huge wave of anti-protest laws and anti-protest rhetoric spreading right across probably across the world
1:41.1	but particularly prevalent in Europe and the UK at the moment and that needs getting into like why is that happening now why is that the thing of the moment?
1:49.0	I think I'm interested in a more general sense as well as thinking about protest as a
1:53.2	concept rather than I mean sometimes when you say protest people use the word
1:58.7	protest and what they mean is like demonstrations in the street and obviously that's only one kind of
2:06.0	protest it's only one physical form of protest and there's a whole set of ideas implied by the idea of protests which might want to be unpacked,
2:15.2	like the question of who are you protesting too? What does it mean to protest rather than to rebel or revolt or ignore or withdraw.
2:26.0	And I think all that stuff is particularly put into relief by a situation like this one, which like the Iraq War demonstration 20 years ago is an example of
2:39.2	people feeling very very strongly very intensely about an issue, which obviously has a real moral dimension to it.
2:46.7	And yet really it's an issue, the nature of which makes it very difficult for ordinary citizens to exercise any real agency around.
	...

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