Lesson Eight – Western World Mass Social Movements

Introduction

Mass social movements in the Western World date predominantly from the nineteenth century. Over the last 200 years they have had a great impact on our politics and have often defined the parameters for our public debate. Since they will continue to do so we need to understand them if we are to understand how our social and political system works.

This slide lists the major mass social movements from the 19^th Century to today.

Overview of Mass Social Movements

All Mass Social Movements arise out of popular discontent. They always begin as a struggle against some injustice or wrong that affects a large body of people.

Effects have causes. Mass social movements cannot appear out of thin air or because someone thinks it’s a good idea. For example, Christianity is trying to be a mass social movement in the 21^st century and failing. Actual mass social movements happen because a significant portion of the population is moved by injustice, or mass discontent, to demand changes to their society. Let’s look briefly at each of these movements.

The chartists demanded a fair distribution of income and decent working conditions for the working class. They did so in response to virtual slave conditions and violent repression of the working class. This is the origin of the trade union movement which continues with us today despite repeated attempts to close it down. The chartist movement was banned in Britain and early chartists were sent as convicts to Australia.

The abolitionists demanded an end to the slave trade. The slave trade was a major economic activity in the 19^th Century and laid the economic foundation of Australia and the United States (as it became). In economic terms it was the nearest thing to the oil trade today. This struggle became a factor in the American civil war. The slave trade, although much reduced, continues today. The abolitionist movement is now an artifact of history.

The suffragettes demanded votes for women but were also concerned for legal and economic rights. In Britain at the time a woman was legally extinguished when she married. She became the property of her husband and ceased to be a legal entity for the purposes of owning property or divorce. To put that in context rape within marriage only became a crime in Tasmania in 1986, since you can’t rape what you own. Even in recent times juries have been very reluctant to convict for rape in domestic cases. In the Australian Public Service in the 1970’s women had to resign when they married. It is only in the last 30 years or so that actual equality in employment has been law in this country. Feminism continues to be a world-wide movement thought its demands have changed considerably over time.

The anti-segregation movement arose in the US in relation to the treatment of Afro Americans in that country and gained worldwide support.  The struggle was popularised by the Rev Martin Luther King and immortalised by his assassination.   At issue were laws that excluded Afro Americans from “white” schools, businesses, public transport, rest rooms etc. While inequality remains there is no longer formal segregation in the United States and the anti-segregation movement has ceased.

The anti-apartheid movement gained world-wide support to address much the same policies in South Africa in the 1980’s. Apartheid in South Africa is now ended and the movement has too.

The peace movement and the campaign for nuclear disarmament arose from the nuclear posture of the United States and its allies during the cold war. The world then faced a very real threat of nuclear annihilation and the arms race was out of control. There was no plebiscite or public in-put into the expenditure of trillions of dollars and policies which put cities in the cross hairs of a nuclear exchange. The peace movement sought to change this. There was also an attempt to compel the United States to adopt a policy of non-intervention in foreign conflicts. Chief of these was the Vietnam War. The peace movement wished the US to withdraw from that conflict. Elements of the movement openly campaigned for a communist victory for North Vietnam. This represented a generational shift away from the trust the public had in governments to prosecute wars up until the 1960’s. With the break-up of the Soviet Union the peace movement largely dissipated.

The environmental movement arose from concerns about pollution, over population and resource depletion. These concerns were formally enunciated by the ‘Club of Rome’ in 1972 with the publication of Limits to Growth. However, most commentators date the origins of the movement to the publication of the book ‘Silent Spring’ in 1962. Silent Spring exposed the harmful effects of DDT and other chemicals in agriculture and challenged the popular narrative that technology can solve all our problems. Species extinction and the disappearance of wilderness and nature remain ongoing concerns of the movement. While much has changed the basic challenges as outlined by the Club of Rome in the 1970’s are still with us and so is the environmental movement. Meanwhile humans continue to find ways to harm nature. The climate change thesis was first mooted in the 1970’s but the science was established in the 1990’s and has been confirmed since. Ocean acidification is an additional concern that arises from increasing atmospheric CO2. Genetically modified organisms present problems across the environmental, social justice, and geopolitical spectrum. Other challenges will doubtless arise.

The gay liberation movement dates from the early 1970’s.  At issue was the criminalisation of sodomy and the marginalisation of people who were not fully heterosexual.  Convicts were transported to Australia for sodomy and in some countries today sodomy carries prison sentences of many years.  You may recall that the Malaysian opposition leader was conveniently accused of sodomy and arrested. People who faced discrimination and incarceration for getting their physical and emotional needs met determined to change things. Since the 1970’s the gay rights movement has continued to add acronyms – the most recent one I saw was GLBTI +2.  The movement is now trying to re-model society in fundamental ways.  We will look specifically at this movement later.

In many ways the campaign for Indigenous rights dates from the frontier wars that took place between Indigenous people and Europeans in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.  In the United States treaties were made and broken. In Australia we perpetrated a myth about terra nullius until this was overthrown by the High Court in the Mabo case and we were forced to legislate. Indigenous people were classified as fauna and denied the vote in Australia. There were different histories in other countries but common themes. The lower socio-economic status of Indigenous people in most parts of the countries mentioned is the reason why this remains a live issue. It would be stretching truth to say that Indigenous rights is a mass social movement.  However in Australia there was mass social mobilisation for an apology for the ‘stolen generation’.

You will see on the slide that I have listed Darwinism/eugenics and fascism as mass social movements. Let me explain. The reason why Indigenous people were treated as they were is because they were not considered human since the evolutionary tree had people of colour pegged close to the apes but put Europeans at the top. Similarly and Afro-Americans were denied the vote and segregated because they were not considered fully human. In the 19^th Century Tasmanian Aboriginals were murdered, pickled, and shipped to Britain as examples of the missing link. They remained with the British museum until political pressure forced the museum to return them recently. Why would you give rights to non-humans?

This reflects the title of Darwin’s book Evolution by natural selection and the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. Darwin provided a supposedly scientific justification of the racial views of the European elites which led inevitably to the idea that evolution would be helped by removing genetically inferior stock – the mentally handicapped, the disabled, the criminally inclined, poor people generally, and certain races. This was known as the eugenics movement and it enjoyed wide popularity and quasi-official support in the Western World. It therefore qualifies as a mass social movement. The German Nazi’s adopted these concepts and fused them with another mass social and political movement – fascism. Fascism refers to the unity of State and corporate power but was nationalistic in outlook. It was seen as an alternative to the free-wheeling capitalism which created the Great Depression, and to Communism. In the 1930’s the fascist movement took power in Spain, Italy and Germany but was also highly influential in Britain and America. Hitler fused these movements and took them to their ultimate conclusion in his Third Reich. After the destruction of the Reich the eugenics movement was discredited but fascist governments continued in Spain, arose in Greece, and were supported by the United States in much of central and South America until the end of the cold war.

I said earlier that all mass social movements arose in response to injustice. This may seem like an odd thing to say about fascism but in reality people in desperate situations will gravitate to leaders and ideologies they see as helping them. That is why in free and fair elections the Palestinian people voted for a known terrorist organisation Hezbollah. There was mass unemployment and hunger in Europe in the 1930’s and many people saw fascism as a workable alternative to the failure of free market capitalism which caused factories to stand idle while workers went hungry.

Communism similarly arose from mass discontent with conditions of extreme inequality and oppression in 19^th Century Europe and Russia. It was at base a plea for social justice which speedily evolved into social injustice. Communism is no longer a mass social movement in the Western World but still controls significant populations in Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and China.

Basic Observations on Mass Social Movements

Mass Social Movements are complex, diverse, factionalised, and change over time.

Having established that mass social movements arise from injustice and popular discontent, what happens after that is usually a measure of chaos. Movements are not organisations but usually contain organisations. By definition they have no formal structure or leadership although charismatic leaders such as the Rev King or Nelson Mandela do arise. Movements being human endeavours are inevitably flawed as are their leaders. For the record King was a serial adulterer and Mandela was a terrorist with blood on his hands.

People with different values join common movements. For that reason strategies and agendas change over time.  There is usually a good deal of conflict within movements and movements can splinter. Usually the divide is between pragmatists and ‘true believers’ and it usually comes down to strategy, but base power plays are also part of the scene. Every scene will also have its lunatic fringe and a great deal of energy is expended by community leaders in keeping the nutters under control. For all these reasons we should not stereotype or caricature mass movements, nor should we judge them by their extreme elements. Movements are invariably complex. A couple of examples:

In the 1970’s a number of environmentalists including the Club of Rome argued that the environmental crisis was so urgent and the likelihood of anyone choosing lower living standards so remote that authoritarian measures would be required.

By the 1980’s it was obvious to community activists that in fact authoritarian regimes were the worst offenders and when people had a say about their communities they chose sustainable options. More direct democracy and community involvement in decision making is now seen as the solution to the environmental crisis. This is the official policy of Green parties around the World and I know that in Australia Bob Brown and Christine Milne are personally committed to it.

Nevertheless the Club of Rome and associated groups have used the United Nations to push ‘Agenda 21’ which is an authoritarian prescription for global government in place of national and local decision making.

Where the women’s movement is concerned the suffragettes and pioneer feminists advocated for the interests of working and middle class women – to vote, divorce, gain education, participate in public life, own property, control their fertility, and be get equal pay. They wanted greater equality within marriage.

There is a strong strand of thought within Western feminism today that wishes to destroy marriage as an institution believing it to be oppressive. This strand wishes to remove any gender differentiation in society and have children raised predominantly in institutions. Their vision of a liberated women appears to be one of a unisex corporate entity whose children are parented elsewhere while their partner or partners of either gender do pretty much whatever they want.

These values are not widely shared by women activists in the developing world and I suspect that the pioneer women of the nineteenth century would consider many Western activists unhinged. Like all movements, the women’s movement is diverse.

What Makes Movements Succeed

Let’s now look at what makes social movements succeed or fail. We will look at the Peace and nuclear disarmament movement as an example of failure, the environmental movement as an example of modest success, and the gay rights movement as an example of improbable stunning success.

Peace and CND Movement – big support little success

This movement appealed to popular fear and discontent over military expenditure, foreign wars, and nuclear posturing from the 1960’s onwards. During the Vietnam War the anti-draft and anti-war movement was successful in stopping the draft. It arguably hastened the withdrawal of ANZUS forces from Vietnam and as a result handed victory to the Northern Communist forces. To that extent it fulfilled its stated objectives.

However the Peace movement more generally failed to achieve any measurable real world outcome. It arguably had zero effect on US, British, or Australian foreign policy from the end of the Vietnam War. It did not stop a single war. It did not reduce military expenditure. It did not prevent nuclear weapons testing. It did not ban the bomb. It may have encouraged the SALT 1 and 2 arms reduction treaties negotiated by the US and the Soviets but it did not hasten the end of the cold war; this despite the support of literally millions of people. Why?

Mass movements cannot achieve anything simply by complaining. They have to come up with solutions that are acceptable to the middle bulk of the population. They must also convince the elites that the solutions they propose will be less painful for the elites than the alternative. That requires clear headed strategic thinking. The peace movement has proved itself unable to do this. Specifically:

• The movement failed to acknowledge that the Soviet Union was a military threat to the West and to developing countries
• Consequently it advocated unilateral disarmament without acknowledging that this would in-fact encourage a Soviet invasion of Europe
• This painted the movement and its supporters as fools
• The movement was effectively white anted by leftists who emphasised Western World atrocities but ignored Communist ones
• On the whole the movement was mindlessly anti-military seeing all military personal as part of the problem
• This painted them as traitors
• Leaders emphasised the horror and expense of war but failed to come up with a set of policies that the broader public and their representatives could support
• In most instances activists were too intellectually lazy to actually study the topic, understand techno-strategic policy, and find workable solutions.

This happened because the peace movement had and still has three core beliefs. They are:

1. All the world’s problems in international relations are caused by the West, and in the domestic sphere are caused by white people
2. It follows that if the West and white people are exceptionally nice to everyone else there will be no more war, racism, or violent conflict
3. If you treat people well they will treat you well – like they won’t invade your country, drop bombs on you or take your women as sex slaves
4. Pacifism is thus a solution to war

Since none of these beliefs is founded in observed historical reality they could not lead to policy formulations that would work. Without workable policies the movement could not promote a convincing narrative. The proposed solution – unilateral disarmament, was thus unacceptable to the majority and strongly opposed by elites. While some left leaning academics did attempt to find better solutions to the security issues of the day, they were mostly drowned out by ideological voices.

Others advocated non-solutions. Noam Chomsky is one example. Chomsky happens to be one of my hero’s for speaking truth about power. He has spent much of his long life documenting, exposing and excoriating American foreign policy. However his solution to Communism, terrorism and mass migration is for the US to essentially dissolve itself into freely associating anarcho-syndicalist collectives. Unsurprisingly, despite being one of the foremost academics of the 20^th century in the English speaking world, few people take him seriously outside of his day job as a linguist.

The peace movement thus became irrelevant. A quasi-religious fundamentalist adherence to these three beliefs ensures it remains irrelevant. Allow me a recent example. The author of this course campaigned for ten years together with a number of defence professionals and others against Australia’s purchase of the American Joint Strike Fighter. In short the plane is an expensive lemon and we need an air force that can actually prevail against modern threats. Cost effective options are available. Each of the now five Parliamentary inquiries into the issue in Australia has attracted a huge amount of technical and strategic analysis. Each presented an opportunity for the peace movement to suggest cheaper and more practical alternatives for Australia’s defence than the Joint Strike Fighter offers. None of these opportunities was taken. The Medical Association for the Prevention of War forwarded a submission to the most recent inquiry. The submission was well researched and made a number of important points but failed to address the terms of reference. Specifically it failed to promote an alternative defence option for Australia. Having stated that they are not a pacifist organisation the Association asserted that: “Australia’s security needs would be better and far more affordably addressed by using at least some of this expenditure to greatly increase our foreign aid and our diplomatic efforts towards the resolution of conflicts”[1]. This statement is true in isolation but without an actual proposal for how to defend Australia it translates as: It’s our fault the Japanese bombed Darwin because we didn’t have enough diplomats.

The Western World peace movement is now populated by ideologues or ‘true believers’. As such it now represents a triumph of belief over analysis.

Having said that, some including Chomsky, have argued that mass public opposition to Western countries overtly invading other countries, prevented a US invasion of Latin America and a repeat of the US wars in South East Asia in that hemisphere. According to this view the establishment was forced underground to back dictators and terrorists by more covert means.

How might things have been different and what can we learn from this experience?

The challenge for the peace movement was to find a solution that was both acceptable to the majority and achievable in the context of the Cold War. That would be one that fell somewhere between unilateral disarmament and an endless arms buildup. Not an easy task.

If I could hop into a tardis and return to the sixties as spokesperson for the CND, I would introduce the peace movement by talking about the communist threat and the Soviet annexation of Eastern Europe. Having thus gained credibility I would start asking the awkward questions about how many nuclear bombs we needed, what a minimal deterrence would look like, and what asymmetric technologies were available.  I would not seek to ban the bomb. I would seek fewer and smaller bombs. I would encourage the use of soft power to gain influence among non-aligned States in preference to backing insurgencies, unpleasant dictators, and terrorists. I would urge cooperation and cooption of leftist governments rather than military coups. I would point out that aircraft carriers are pretty useless and conventional submarines are quieter. But I would do so recognising that military investment was absolutely necessary and we should support our troops.  I would advocate domestic defence industry and national service over expensive foreign platforms. I would suggest that fair wages and working conditions in the West would counter soviet subversion more effectively than an army of spies. I would argue that all these actions are patriotic.

Had the peace movement put its idealism in its back pocket and approached things this way it might have re-direction billions of wasted dollars, rolled back poverty, helped stabilise fragile counties, and pushed back both communism and fascism around the globe. Even today, if the peace movement had advocated keeping the F-111 in preference to buying the Superhornets it could have saved enough treasure to fund all the aid and diplomacy it could wish for – but advocating for a bomber would contradict its fundamentalist beliefs in pacifism as a solution to war.

I have used the peace movement as an example but there are others. The occupy Wall Street movement, communism in Australia, and the religious right, are stand out examples of failed movements.

Importantly they all failed for the same reasons. An a-priori adherence to beliefs not founded in social reality prevented them from finding or advocating workable and acceptable solutions to real world problems.  Consequently they were unable to gain mass popular appeal or win a place at the policy table. Instead their adherents retreated into sub-cultural groups pursuing an imagined utopia.

Key Learnings

So our key learnings are:

• Complaints are not enough, you need solutions
• The solutions you advocate must be grounded in material/social reality
• To find solutions you need to know something about the topic you are campaigning on
• Emotion is important but cannot substitute for analysis
• You need to be flexible in your thinking if you want to be taken seriously as an adult in the policy room
• It is better to compromise and get something than to insist on having it all your way and get nothing
• ‘True believers’ are need at the start of a campaign but practical people need to do the negotiating toward the end

Environmental Movement – ongoing success and enduring growth

These lessons were learned early on by the environmental movement. Let’s now look at that movement.

The environmental movement was a peer of the peace movement and was populated by much the same people. Greenpeace for example was formed out of concerns about nuclear testing and this continued to be a major focus for the organisation into the 1980’s.

Both movements adopted a philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience which drew explicitly from the teachings of Ghandi and the example of Martin Luther King. Both movements were responding to a sense of immediate crisis. Both expressed their struggle in existential terms. However the environmental movement has continued to grow and make measurable achievements in public life whereas the peace movement has atrophied. Why so?

The environmental movement from the outset used well established cultural motifs and national ideals to promote its cause – nature conservation. After all, what is America without the Rockies, Canada without the woods, Australia without the outback, or Britain without countryside?  Romanticism was widely used to promote the preservation of iconic species and their habitats from extinction. The movement drew on people’s innate sense of place and their identification with place to create an emotional connection.  When I was a Wilderness Society activist we used these methods very consciously.

In parallel the movement continues to address immediate local concerns such as air and water pollution, land degradation and loss of amenity. The movement thus remains a ‘bottom up’ movement but one which is able to link local issues to global concerns. The slogan ‘think global act local’ is not just a slogan but an actual operational model.  So while the movement has elites like the Agenda 21 crowd, its forward momentum comes from local concerns and often nationalistic concerns like the Great Barrier Reef.

The peace movement in contrast gained traction with local concerns over the draft and over military bases but lost traction on the bigger issues that seemed less immediate. It had fewer cultural values to draw from. War in fact is a cultural value and a deeply imbedded part of national identity. Since the Western world has been shaped by war we lack cultural motifs or universal values that affirm pacifism. Pacifism and disarmament was not a cultural value that made sense to the masses, particularly in the context of the Cold War.

The environmental movement has similarly struggled to get solid progress on issues like global warming whose major impacts will likely be felt one hundred years from now, and on geographically distant concerns like de-forestation in PNG.

A major point of difference is that the environmental movement has been much more successful in finding and promoting believable alternatives. ‘Solar not nuclear’ is an effective slogan. It contains within itself both the problem – nuclear, and the alternative – solar. The alternative is technically feasible and thus believable. The peace movement never came up with ‘conventional not nuclear,’ and ‘end war’ contains the problem but not the solution.

In fairness to the peace movement there is another point of difference. From the outset the peace movement was up against the military industrial complex which has some of the best minds, unlimited funds, and huge access to power and information.  It was not a winnable fight.

The environmental movement on the other hand side stepped the military. Even military men need national parks. In fact, conservation is patriotic. In the sixties through to the nineties the corporate right was unable to put up a coordinated resistance to a movement that spoke good sense and appealed to core values. Consequently the movement was able to make huge progress on national parks, pollution, threatened species, whaling and sustainable fisheries. That changed in the nineties and the empire struck back with fake ‘astro turf’ fake community organisations, a plethora of think tanks and institutes, long term sophisticated public relations campaigns, and huge investment in political funding and lobbying, not to mention the odd conspiracy theory. Multinational free trade agreements are now a calculated attempt at rolling back the achievements of the last four decades.

Basic Strategies of Mass Social Movements

Mass social movements seek to get attention to their issue by creating system stressors which demand a response from the establishment. Examples of system stressors include:

• Withdrawal of labour and union lock-outs
• Mass civil disobedience – Ghandi made salt, blockades, occupy streets, people of colour enter white only areas, tax resistance, draft resistance, mass trespass e.g. Pine Gap
• Create cultural resistance – music, media, publications, teach-ins, etc
• Information leaks and public exposure – wikileaks, break-ins (animal rights), document abuses

In his book From Dictatorship to Democracy – A Conceptual Framework for Liberation 4th Ed,  The Albert Einstein Institution, May 2010, author Gene Sharp lists 98 non-violent strategies used to create system stressors and undermine authoritarian regimes. Many of these strategies are used by social movements in Western countries today. A complete list is included in your materials.

If successful these actions galvanise public discontent leading to mass recruitment. This in turn can create mass social organisations to further the agenda of the movement and foster leaders.

Once a movement has leaders that are accepted as broadly representing the movement a political strategy is possible. Without a political strategy the movement will simply run out of energy and dissipate or dissolve into internal faction fighting – the Australian Democrats being a local example, the Occupy Wall Street movement being another. Strategies are dictated by circumstance. The Wilderness Society for example backed Bob Hawke and an extension of Commonwealth powers in 1982 against the Tasmanian government. It did not do so out of any particular love for the Australian Labor Party or for centralism. It did so because there was no practical alternative and Hawke offered a deal.

The purpose of these strategies is to force the establishment to the negotiating table. In this mass social movements differ from revolutionary causes. Revolutionaries want to overthrow the establishment not negotiate with it. Mass social movements want to persuade the establishment, white ant it, and maybe one day become it.

Researchers into cultural transition have found that that culture is directed by those who influence seven key pillars (or ‘mountains’ – pick your preferred analogy) of society. They are:

• business
• government
• media
• arts and entertainment
• education
• the family and religion
• science and technology

Hesselgrave notes:

‘It takes less than 3-5 per cent of those operating at the tops of a cultural mountain to actually shift the values represented on that mountain. Mountains are controlled by a small percentage of leaders and networks….In sum, between 150 and 3000 people (a tiny fraction of the roughly 23 billion people living between 600 B.C. and A.D. 1900) framed the major contours of all world civilisations. Clearly, the transformations were top-down’.[8]

For that reason any successful social change movement will:

• target thought leaders and cultural change agents in all seven spheres
• infiltrate influential businesses and institutions
• build extensive mutually supportive networks for change

The GLBTI movement is a stellar example of this strategy in action.

In reality movements with far reaching radical agenda’s cannot achieve success within a couple of election cycles. Instead they adopt an incremental strategy. Sometimes this is an intergenerational strategy. The Forest Campaign in Tasmania started in 1973 and achieved some of its core objectives in 2013, 40 years later. The gay rights campaign in Australia began in the 1980’s.

A movement with an incremental strategy hopes that each campaign, each crisis, each set of system stressors will yield some positive result, some ground for the movement. It is time consuming, exhausting and there are setback but overtime things move in the direction desired of the movement. The technical term for this is ‘thesis – anti thesis – synthesis’. The established state of affairs is the thesis. The contrary campaign is the anti-thesis. Through conflict these fuse to become the synthesis; but thing have moved in the right direction. The process then repeats. This is called the ‘Hegelian dialectic’ after the German philosopher Hegel who described it.

If the campaign is entirely successful the anti-thesis becomes the new thesis. The radical agenda becomes just the way things are. The radicals become the establishment. Power transfers. Abortion in Australia is a striking example of this. Once illegal and marginalised this practice now has sacrosanct status. It is an unassailable right about which there is almost universal consensus in politics, the media, medical circles and within the educational and intellectual establishment. Questioning the practice usually amounts to professional and career suicide. Anti-abortionists are considered cranks and fringe dwellers. They do not have a place at the policy table. The abortion industry and friends totally controls the public narrative. That is what victory looks like. The pro-abortion lobby won.

Now let’s look at a movement that has used the Hegelian dialectic very successfully to achieve its objectives.

GLBTI Movement and Friends

The gay liberation movement, now known as the GLBTI movement, has used the Hegelian dialectic model with great success through five distinct but overlapping phases. Based on the current trajectory and current trends it appears that a sixth phase in the offing in coming decades.

In the most recent survey in Australia approximately three per cent of the population identified as other than heterosexual. Becoming a transformative mass social movement with three per cent of the population has to stand as one the greatest achievements in social campaigning in world history. It is therefore very worthy of examination.

Phase I – Gay Rights are Civil Rights

The thesis that the gay movement was confronted with was the Judea Christian view that homosexuality is aberrant, sinful, disgusting, and something to be kept out of public view. More charitably it was tolerated socially to a certain extent but it was not seen as something that should be endorsed, celebrated or promoted, particularly to children. It was listed as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of psychiatry until the early 1970’s.

To counter this, the movement needed a simple anti-thesis. It adopted from the outset a single clear message: “no one chooses to by gay. No one who is gay can become straight. Sexuality is fixed at birth.” This was repeated until it was widely believed.

This anti-thesis is of course demonstrably untrue since many people have ceased being gay and some people have ceased being straight. A good example of the latter is the ‘Lesbian until Graduation’ fad in US Colleges. To what extent leaders in the movement believed the anti-thesis is unclear since at least some gay organisations and individuals openly recruit. However it was necessary at the time.

Adopting this anti-thesis allowed the movement to position itself in the tradition of the civil rights movement. After-all, if you can’t help being gay then how is that different from being black? The anti-thesis aligned the gay movement with a powerful straight lobby group and thus broadly won the support of the social left. Three per cent suddenly became a slim majority. Gay rights had now become human rights. Therefore people who opposed whatever the gay movement was advocating were ipso facto opposed to human rights. Anyone who opposes human rights is by definition a bad person and anyone who supports them is by definition a good person. The world then divides neatly into good supporters and bad opposers.  Gay rights has now become for the social left the fulcrum of a person’s individual morality and political purity.

Having positioned the cause as an extension of the civil rights struggle the movement adopted the same tactics as civil rights campaigners had in the past. System stressors were used to demand legal and political recognition from the establishment. In Tasmania gay rights activists copied the ‘freedom rides’ that Afro Americans and their white supporters once took through segregated parts of small town in the Southern US. This was for the same purpose – to draw out the more reactionary elements and gain sympathy for the cause. Trespass and public protest were also used. Celebrity endorsement helped as did public displays such as ‘Dikes on Bikes’. Underground and alternative subcultures were flaunted at the mainstream. Behind the scenes political lobbying was intense and strategic. The most important and significant victory was the de-listing of homosexuality as a condition in the DSM. This removed a key plank of the thesis – that homosexuality is aberrant.

Now that homosexuality was no longer an illness or a choice the movement could appeal to core cultural values of non-interference with private matters, tolerance, and libertarian ideals. “What consenting adults to in the privacy of their own bedrooms is no one else’s business” was the catch cry of the 90’s. Against the backdrop of imprisonment and marginalisation this had significant public appeal.

In light of this appeal sodomy between consenting adults was legalised, there was a re-set of relations with police, and public acknowledgement of homosexual relationships became acceptable. The message broadly in Australia was that gay adults simply wanted to be allowed to live out their lives as they saw fit.

This approach astutely concealed the rest of the movement’s agenda while laying the foundation for it.

Phase II – Anti Discrimination

In this phase the movement sought to strengthen the initial anti thesis by attacking anyone who deviated from it. Organisations, counsellors, and practitioners that provided help to people wishing to change their sexuality, and individuals for whom this had proven successful, were and are subject to vitriolic abuse.  Religious and traditional people who insisted that homosexuality was a moral choice were treated to the same vitriol.

Since homosexuality was now legal it could be positioned in the anti-discrimination legal stream. This gave the gay movement a powerful legal weapon to protect their own interests in preventing discrimination and further helped to normalise homosexuality the culture.  A key plank of normalising homosexuality was the legal recognition of same sex relationships. Again the appeal was to basic community standards of fairness. At issue were the rights of long term couples to inheritance, property and superannuation on separation, and crucially the right to adopt. The former issues were resolved quickly and with few objections. So far the anti-thesis has prevailed, but adoption remained controversial.

Phase III – Mandatory Endorsement

Once homosexuality was established as normal in the culture and as legally valid the anti-thesis moved from an appeal to tolerance to a demand for endorsement. The anti-thesis now demanded that homosexuality be celebrated and endorsed. This would take a number of forms.

School curriculum would not be changed to teach and promote gay marriage and gay parenting. Homosexual practices would become core curricula in sex education. Homosexuality would gain a certain celebrity status. School counsellors working with confused teens would no longer be expected to steer them back to a healthy heterosexuality or help them clearly define their sexuality. Rather students presenting as other than exclusively heterosexual would be referred to the relevant sexual minority community for induction into that community, or as some would have it, for grooming and recruitment. Positive discrimination and mandatory representation across social organisations could now be campaigned for. Any counselling approach that discouraged experimentation could be closed down. In its place we have “International Day against Homophobia”.  It is not sufficient to have a day that celebrates homosexual people, their accomplishments, lives and contribution to society. There is a sharp political edge. Since homophobia is not listed in the DSM that actually translates as “International Day against people who are against a certain political agenda”.

In the words of Bill Clinton, “intolerance will no longer be tolerated”. The genius of this is that anyone who disagrees, however politely, with gay activists is now type case as an intolerant bigoted bad person opposed to equality and human rights. On the other hand closing down businesses, sacking staff, dismissing people from courses of study, and subjecting people to vitriolic abuse is now seen as upholding tolerance. It is this genius that allows GLBTI organisations to designate any NGO that opposes them as a ‘hate’ organisation.

This shift has allowed the gay movement to open up a new front against that part of the church which maintained the thesis. The logic of the anti-thesis makes Christianity as it has been traditionally understood a hate crime because it endorses only one form of sexuality and only legitimises one form of sexual expression.  Specifically the church defended a key remaining plank of the thesis, namely marriage. Marriage was still an exclusively heterosexual institution. Moreover this arrangement enjoyed widespread popular support and was vigorously defended by the church. Homosexuality could not be considered fully normal or morally and socially equal if it was excluded from this foundational institution. Therefore the best way to cement the anti-thesis was to re-define marriage to encompass homosexual relationships.

Phase IV – Re-defining Marriage

The gay movement was now positioned to re-define marriage. This is significant because such a proposal would have had no chance of success 20 years earlier. The movement was fortunate that there was no clear thesis for keeping marriage exclusively heterosexual. Arguments about procreation were easily dismissed since many heterosexual marriages have nothing to do with procreation and procreation does not depend upon marriage.  Arguments about the sacrament of marriage are relevant only to those who believe in sacraments. The movement could truthfully point out that the real objection was visceral and related to the original thesis about homosexuality being not very nice. By now this was be definition bigoted, intolerant and opposed to human rights etc.

The real objection to gay marriage was that it would legitimise homosexual couples adopting children; this being a problem because children need a mother and a father. That thesis had already been substantially undermined by the feminist movement and we will return to it later.

In response to confused arguments about traditional marriage the movement adopted a simple anti-thesis that marriage was about ‘love not laws’ and so any loving relationship between two people should be considered marriage. It was a simple message appealing to universal values – that we should love and accept one another. A raft of concerns and objections were raised mostly by religious people who indicated that they would not recognise gay relationship and wished some legal protections for adhering to traditional beliefs. Instructively the gay movement re-assured everyone that religious people and institutions would remain unmolested. Nevertheless the ACLU vigorously campaigns against legal exemptions for religions reasons.[2] Marriage has now been re-defined in numerous jurisdictions but the traditional definition is still the norm for the vast majority of the world’s peoples.

Where marriage has been re-defined to include gay couples retribution has been swift. In the UK the movement moved to force Catholic adoption agencies to adopt to homosexual couples. The church refused and Catholic adoption agencies have been de-funded in Britain. Businesses that provide wedding services have been sued and closed for refusing to provide services to same sex weddings. In France attending anti-gay marriage protest can lead to jail and officials refusing to solemnise gay weddings face five years jail. While incidents are isolated a pattern of discrimination and harassment of persons who oppose the GLBTI agenda in general and the re-definition of marriage specifically is emerging. They include:

• Being suspended from employment
• Being suspended from study
• Being put out of business
• Pastors having their sermons subpoenaed for vetting by the civil authorities
• A parent being arrested for objecting to his child being subject to homosexual material at school
• Persons being sued for letterboxing material critical of homosexuality
• A pervasive atmosphere of fear and self-censorship in public life
• Verbal abuse from the highest level of office against anyone who objects to same sex marriage
• International pressure against countries that do not already endorse same sex marriage – notably Russia

Tellingly many of these incidents have been provoked by gay activists. There is no reason to target Christian cake shops for gay wedding cakes but they have been targeted by gay activists who, on being refused service and referred elsewhere, have sued. A counselling service in Hobart experience entrapment by a gay activist who led the conversation then complained about the advice given. Collectively these behaviours can only be understood in terms of revenge. The anti-thesis has become the thesis and the victim has become the bully.

Phase V – Agenda against Gender

The movement is now resiling from its original anti-thesis that sexuality is fixed and unchangeable and therefore no one chooses to be gay. Ironically the movement has now largely adopted the position for which it so vehemently condemned the church – that sexuality is fluid not fixed and that for many people homosexuality and other forms of sexual expression is a choice. This is a foundational shift in the anti-thesis. Had this been admitted or advocated thirty years ago the movement would have been rejected out of hand by the mainstream. The timing of the new anti-thesis is thus instructive. It is also closer to the truth and reflects the new learning in brain science and the research on brain plasticity. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) website states:

“LGBT people become parents in a variety of ways, including adoption, foster parenting, donor insemination, surrogacy, and from previous heterosexual relationships.” [Emphasis mine][3]

The logical conclusion of this anti-thesis combined with cultural rejection of traditional values is that homosexual recruitment is both possible and legitimate. Since it is both possible and legitimate it should be allowed on campus. While activists still object strongly to the term, a recruitment mindset is evident in the material for schools that is supported and produced by the ACLU[4] and GLSEN.[5] The Safe Schools Coalition in Australia uses similar materials and approaches. Since mass recruitment is part of the strategy for any mass social movement the latest attempts to re-write aspects of school curricula and to remodel aspects of the school experience speak of an attempt to move beyond influence to control.

Cultural resistance to same sex parenting remains perhaps the last serious hurdle to gay emancipation as understood by the GLBTI movement. This hurdle has proven resilient for self-evident reasons – same sex parents cannot offer a child both a mother/child relationship and a father/child relationship. Therefore if same sex parenting is to be accepted as equal to heterosexual parenting concepts such as ‘mother and father’ must be made redundant. A further anti-thesis is now required. Against the thesis that every child has a natural right to a mother and a father is the anti-thesis that gender has no relevance to parenting and no objective meaning or significance. That’s a big statement. However it is essential to the movement’s agenda that it prevail.

To facilitate this, focus shifted to transsexuals and cross dressers as a means of blurring gender boundaries.  Since the movement had won the right to educate children on sexual matters cross dressing and questioning of gender mores could now be introduced to schools. Returning to the civil rights agenda, gender distinct rest rooms were now discriminatory in the way that white only rest rooms once were. Cross dressing men should now be allowed into women’s toilets. The purpose clearly is not to help cross dressers relieve themselves but to break down gender norms.

In their attempt to break down gender norms the movement has once again made common cause with another movement – the feminist movement. Elements of the feminist movement argue that gender has no relevance to family arrangements, parenting, or the workforce.  This again gave a fringe dwelling minority mainstream status. Academics have taken que and are now producing research arguing that sexuality and gender are social constructs.[6]

Language is a powerful form of control and agenda setting so it us unsurprising that they gay movement has inventing new language. ‘Heteronormative’ is now a word. It implies that heterosexuality is not normal.  If heterosexuality is not normal it follows that the traditional family is no objective legitimacy or relevance to parenting. Any combination of ‘significant others’ will do just as well. It is vitally important to the movement that this anti-thesis prevail because without it they are faced with the inherent limitation, some would say contradiction, that a same sex union cannot re-produce, and that roughly 97 per cent of the population is heterosexual.

If accepted, this anti-thesis would mark the most profound shift in social consciousness in history. Since this is unlikely to happen in a couple of election cycles an inter-generational strategy is required. It makes sense for the movement to then focus on influencing and cooping young people who are the future decision makers, and whose values are still forming. In that context programs like the Safe Schools Coalition have significance and purpose beyond their stated aim of making schools safer for and more accepting of sexual minorities.

Phase VI – The Flood Gates Open?

At this point let’s consider whether there will be a phase six. Suppose the movement succeeds fully. At this point there are no longer sexual norms. There is no longer gender. There is no longer family in the tradition sense. A man and a woman may live together and have a baby but they will not be mother and father but significant care giver #1 and significant care giver #2. Gender and sexual orientation are matters of personal preference and completely fluid. Children are taught this in mandatory school curricula and encouraged to experiment as youth. Alternative views are censored and suppressed. What next?

In public policy it is easier to open doors than to close them. If you open a door wide and leave it open you can’t always control what walks in.

Supposing there is a ‘next’ the only thing left to ‘liberate’ are relations with relatives, children and animals. In that context I note social research calling for a more tolerant view of adult/child relationships. The American Man Boy Love Association and its equivalent associations overseas are also pushing this agenda. This organisation has been represented by the ACLU.[7] Adult child themes are becoming more prevalent in mainstream pornography and pornography. The sexualisation of children through marketing is rampant. The outlines of a new anti-thesis are emerging. This anti-thesis essentially marks a return to the cultural values and sexual mores of pre-Christian Greco Roman/Canaanite culture.

In that context I note the following:

• If, when homosexuality was removed from the DSM in the 1970’s, you had cautioned that concepts such as ‘father’ ‘mother’ and ‘marriage’ would be re-defined as a consequence you would have been considered hysterical. This is now happening.
• Persons who warned in the 1980’s that legalising sodomy would lead to children being recruited by gay activists were considered hysterical. This is now happening.
• Persons who warned in the 90’s that allowing homosexual activists into schools would result in attempts at recruitment and gender bending were considered hysterical. This is now happening.
• Persons who warned that re-defining marriage would open the door for an authoritarian agenda were considered hysterical. This is now happening.
• I will be considered hysterical for predicting that the next wave if ‘liberation’ will seek to legitimise relations with children, but it is happening.

Summary and Conclusion

The gay liberation movement adopted a Hegelian dialectic model to achieve profound societal changes by incremental stages over time. In doing so it used existing social constructs to forge alliances with mainstream movements that gave it influence beyond its numbers. During this campaign the movement has adopted three distinct anti-thesis’. They are:

• Sexuality is fixed. No one chooses or can change their sexuality. Therefore homosexuality has to be accepted as normal.
• Sexuality is not fixed but is a matter of personal choice and those choices must be endorsed.
• Sexuality and gender are societal constructs which have no objective meaning or significance.

If taken to their logical conclusion these latter two anti-thesis’ will move society in the direction of pre-Christian Greco Roman/Canaanite society which celebrated all forms of sexual expression. However, where that society was broadly accepting of religious and social diversity the GLBTI movement is highly intolerant and authoritarian. As such it represents a peer threat to anyone who does not support its anti-thesis’.

Strategies for Defeating Mass Social Movements

Unsurprisingly those with an interest in the status quo have developed numerous techniques for defeating mass social movements. Some of these are outlined here.

Address Legitimate Concerns

We learned at the outset of this lesson that mass social movements arise from injustice and dissatisfaction. It follows that the most effective way to defeat a mass social movement is to address its concerns. There are two approaches to this. One is to genuinely address the concern and then try to adapt to or control the outcome. The abolition of apartheid and the Northern Ireland peace process are examples of this. The other is to address enough of the concern to destroy the movement’s momentum and head off any radical changes while protecting your core interests. This is the approach that European leaders took to dealing with socialist and communist movements in Northern Europe in the post war period.

Example 1 – European Socialism vs Communism

Communist movements used the Hegelian dialectical model to move society in the direction of a pre-revolutionary state. The strategy was to sow mass discontent until enough of the masses would accept social ownership of the means of production as the only solution to class injustice. This would open the door to a revolutionary take-down of the capitalist model. In the aftermath of the War Northern European leaders could not counter this by openly supporting fascist models of control. Nor could they resist demands for more equal distribution of wealth and opportunity. Whether by intent or coincidence what emerged in Northern Europe were various models of social democracy. Capitalism and inequality remained but it was moderated by high taxation which was re-invested in public goods such as public education, national broadcasters, public health, funding for the arts, public infrastructure, public nature reserves, libraries, art galleries and so on.  This sharing of public goods created a dramatic increase in living standards, a new middle class, and upward mobility. In addition wages were generally increased and unions developed significant power. This allowed for the creation of a consumer society which drove sixty years of economic growth. This left existing class structures intact but undercut the politics of class envy. It was this mix of personal freedom and private property, of social re-distribution and economic success, which provided an anti-thesis to communism.  This confronted communist regimes with a dilemma. Their core argument was that freedom should be traded for the security, prosperity and equality that Communism was supposed to bring. However across the border were people who were more prosperous, reasonably secure, and free. It is no coincidence that the Berlin wall was built to keep its people in rather than to keep foreigners out.

Once communist regimes could no longer hide the comparison from their people their populations rejected communism and the Soviet Union dissolved itself. Thus it was European socialism, not American militarism, which ultimately defeated the USSR. Observing this the Chinese Communist Party chose a different strategy. They would remain in power but engage in a mix of State and private capitalism. There would be little freedom but much economic growth. In effect the ruling party abandoned Marxism for classical fascism meaning the unity of State and corporate interests within a country.

Example 2 – Regional Forests Agreement

In Australia the regional forest agreements (RFA’s) were touted in the nineties as the solution to the conflict over native forest use and conservation. This process happened because of mass protest and civil disobedience directing at ending industrial logging in high conservation value forest. The Federal Keating Labor government wished to prevent this becoming an election issue. The Federal Government therefore approached the States to develop a process of evaluation of the ecological status of contentious forests and some ambitious conservation targets. In theory the process was to be objective and scientific. In reality it was flawed because it involved trading forests identified scientifically as requiring conservation to meet the conservation targets against vague criteria of ‘economic/community’ benefit. In addition the conservation movement was sidelined in the process and the advice of partisan State forest agencies accepted uncritically.

The RFA process complicated the simple messages used by the conservation movement, re-directed the movement’s energy, and dissolved its forward momentum. It stymied the conservation movement from making forests an election issue, sidelined it, tied it up in bureaucratic process, and fed the narrative that the movement was insatiable because it would never accept compromise. An argument about forests became an argument about process.

The process itself was largely subverted by industry and failed to deliver the key outcome desired by the movement, at least in Tasmania. That was an eastern extension of the World Heritage boundary to encompass much of the tall wet eucalyptus forests and rain forests of Western Tasmania. Instead the RFA delivered a raft of small but important areas while leaving the central issue unresolved. The RFA did not defeat the movement but it did deflect it.

Physically Eliminate

At the other end of the spectrum authoritarian regimes can simply kill or intimidate their enemies. After World War II Spain retained a fascist government; so defeating the left required little strategy. They were rounded up, tortured, murdered, and thrown into mass graves. This strategy was followed by rightist governments throughout Central and Southern America into the 1980’s with the enthusiastic support of the United States and the government of Margaret Thatcher. This tragic history encouraged extremist movements which met with state repression fueling a decades long cycle of violence. Importantly though, class structures remained intact and key natural resources remained available to Western companies.

In the previous century in North America resistance to the abolitionist movement watered the seeds of civil war. Ultimately is was the slave owners who were eliminated but things could have ended very differently.

Information War and Counter Groups

In between these two extremes a lot happens. Developing a counter narrative to the target movement and creating credible sounding organisations to propagate that narrative is now the standard tactic to defeat mass social movements. These tactics are complex and are undertaken by elements of the state including the secret services and private interests. They include:

• Creating think tanks and institutes with impressive sounding names to produce quasi-academic papers and pronouncements that re-inforce a particular world view and skew information.
• Creating non-government organisations that do similar work but also recruit paid staff and genuine volunteers to the cause. Because these are seen as community organisations, and in-fact, may develop community networks, they are seen as credible. The Forest Protection Society is a local example.
• Hire ‘experts’ to counter specific claims with ‘science’. This tactic was used by tobacco companies to deny a link between tobacco and cancer, industry funded institutes to deny a link between carbon and climate change, and certain companies to deny any health or environmental concerns from genetically modified organisms.
• Fund political parties and candidates – usually discretely.
• Create friendly societies and social clubs, often directed at youth, to further political causes. This tactic has been used by Zionists, Islamists, Communists, anti-communists, and gay rights activists.
• Infiltrate influential organisations – universities, political parties, and media organisations. This tactic was used extensively by the KGB and is now used extensively by the CIA. Bob Santamaria’s movement is a local historical example.

Subversion and Intimidation

Infiltration, subversion and assassination have been used since the peasant’s revolt of 1382. This tactic was used extensively by the American State against social change movements in the 1960s and 1970s. At the time it was called Counter Intelligence Program or CounterIntelPro. Any credible history of social change movements of the period will recount how activists were targeted. In the 1990’s CounterIntelPro re-surfaced when the FBI car bombed two EarthFirst! Activists and then arrested them for carrying a bomb. The activists survived and eventually won a civil suit against the FBI. The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents is a more local example. Some years ago in Northern Tasmania, a bomb without a detonator was placed under a bridge with a misspelled ‘EarthFirst’ banner on it days before a State election. The local Green Party candidate narrowly missed out on winning a seat. The subsequent police investigation found no evidence of involvement by the green movement. However there were numerous acts of violence and intimidation directed towards environmental activists over a period of decades which were seldom reported in the press and about which the police showed little enthusiasm.

Take-over and Incorporate

Incorporation is the ultimate form of subversion. Radical movements can be tamed if their leaders can be bought with the offer of a seat at the table and a respectable job in a mainstream political party. Alternatively if they can be tempted to ‘reasonable compromise’ that appears to their supporters as ‘selling out’ then key leaders can be removed from a movement. This happened to the Australian Democrats through the seduction and defection of Cheryl Kernot to the ALP, and the compromise made by the next Democrats leader Meg Lees with John Howard in the Goods and Services Tax. As a consequence the party moved from being the third force in Australian politics to having no members in Parliament – today the party barely exists.

The Labor party in Britain became a mini Tory party and acted as a foil against the Left for the period of the Blair government. The Australian union movement remains coopted by the Australian Labor Party whose key economic policies are controlled by the NSW right faction which believes in free market neo liberalism and privatisation. Former Anti-Nuclear Party leader Peter Garrett approved an extension of a uranium mine as a minister in the ALP government.

Thus far co-option has been resisted by the Australian Greens. However the Greens themselves have been taken over by the far Left and the GLBTI movement which has prevented them from gaining mass appeal and relegated them to being a fringe of the Labor Party.

Advice for Parties, Movements and Social Change Agents

If you want to move public policy in a particular direction you need a credible coherent explanation of what is wrong and what needs to be done to fix it. As obvious as that sounds there often is very little connection between the problem as described and the solutions proposed by a raft of movements, interest groups and small parties. Indeed, they often contradict. We saw this in the example of the peace movement. We saw how the environmental movement has continued to make progress with a consistent message based on real world evidence. We saw how the gay rights movement has progressively changed the narrative to move their agenda forward.

A useful exercise is to read the policies on the websites of micro political parties. Many of the policies advocated by Christian based parties have no connection to the stated problem or make it worse. Cutting penalty rates and reducing or abolishing minimum wages to help families is a good example. See further Family First, and the Australian Christians.  On the positive side, the Sustainable Australia Party has a series of coherent connected policies.

Organisations with a narrower focus tend to have clearer more focused policy positions. The Australian Conservation Foundation is a good example.

In conclusion, emotion and appeal to idealism or discontent are essential tools in the early stages of a movement. However at some point movements have to move beyond value statements and deal in evidence based policy.

References

[1] See submission number 50 here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Foreign_Affairs_Defence_and_Trade/Joint_fighter/Submissions

[2] https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/two-stains-our-nation-anti-lgbt-bills-pass-michigan-and-north-carolina

[3] https://www.aclu.org/issues/lgbt-rights/lgbt-parenting

[4] https://www.aclu.org/library-lgbt-youth-schools-resources-and-links

[5] http://www.glsen.org/

[6] Ellis and High argue that sexual orientation might be more appropriately taught as “an aspect of culture and identity” (Ellis and High 2004, pg. 11).^[2] Ellis, Viv; High (April 2004). “Something More to Tell You: Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual Young Peoples”. Journal of Adolescence 30 (2): 213–225. doi:10.1080/0141192042000195281

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/0141192042000195281/abstract;jsessionid=16E293570F48F06C4BEC25FB87B12A8D.f01t01

[7] According to Conservapedia: “In September 2000, the ACLU represented the North American Man/Boy Love Association when the parents of Jeffrey Curley, who was raped, tortured and murdered by two men, filed a $200 million federal lawsuit for wrongful death. John Roberts, the executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU stated, It’s not a real popular case, but the First Amendment issues are clear” See further here: http://www.caringforourchildrenfoundation.org/remembering-jeffrey-curley-is-pedophilia-becoming-mainstreamed/

Curiously the ACLU does not seem to have the same enthusiasm for defending the First Amendment rights of people who object to same sex marriage.

[8] Hesselgrave, D 1995, ‘Contextualisation that is Authentic and Relevant’, International Journal of Frontier Missions Vol 12:3 Jul-Sep 1995, at pages 7-8. See also:

Spencer-Oatey, H 2012, What is culture? A compilation of quotations http://www.warwick.ac.uk/globalpadintercultural

Wallnau, L. & Johnson, B., 2013. Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate. Kindle ed. Shippensburg (PA): Destiny Image Publishers

Materials

Non-violent methods of civil disobedience by Gene Sharp as listed in From Dictatorship to Democracy – A Conceptual Framework for Liberation, 4th Ed, The Albert Einstein Institution, May 2010.

The methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion

Formal statements

1. Public speeches 2. Letters of opposition or support 3.  Declarations by organizations and institutions 4.  Signed public statements 5.  Declarations of indictment and intention 6.  Group or mass petitions

Communications with a wider audience

1. Slogans, caricatures, and symbols 8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications 9.  Leaflets, pamphlets, and books 10. Newspapers and journals 11. Records, radio, and television 12. Skywriting and earthwriting

Group representations

1. Deputations 14. Mock awards 15. Group lobbying 16. Picketing 17. Mock elections

Symbolic public acts

1. Display of flags and symbolic colors 19. Wearing of symbols 20. Prayer and worship 21. Delivering symbolic objects 22. Protest disrobings 23. Destruction of own property 24. Symbolic lights 25. Displays of portraits 26. Paint as protest 27. New signs and names 28. Symbolic sounds 29. Symbolic reclamations 30. Rude gestures

Pressures on individuals

1. “Haunting” officials 32. Taunting officials 33. Fraternization 34. Vigils

Drama and music

1. Humorous skits and pranks 36. Performance of plays and music 37. Singing

Processions

1. Marches 39. Parades 40. Religious processions 41. Pilgrimages 42. Motorcades honoring the dead 43. Political mourning 44. Mock funerals 45. Demonstrative funerals 46. Homage at burial places

Public assemblies

1. Assemblies of protest or support 48. Protest meetings 49. Camouflaged meetings of protest 50. Teach-ins Withdrawal and renunciation 51. Walk-outs 52. Silence 53. Renouncing honors 54. Turning one’s back

The methods of social noncooperation

Ostracism of persons

1. Social boycott 56. Selective social boycott 57. Lysistratic nonaction 58. Excommunication 59. Interdict

Noncooperation with social events, customs, and institutions         

1. Suspension of social and sports activities 61. Boycott of social affairs 62. Student strike 63. Social disobedience 64. Withdrawal from social institutions

Withdrawal from the social system

1. Stay-at-home 66. Total personal noncooperation 67. Flight of workers 68. Sanctuary 69. Collective disappearance 70. Protest emigration (hijrat)

The methods of economic noncooperation: (1) Economic boycotts

Action by consumers

1. Consumers’ boycott 72. Nonconsumption of boycotted goods 73. Policy of austerity 74. Rent withholding 75. Refusal to rent 76. National consumers’ boycott 77. International consumers’ boycott

Action by workers and producers

1. Workmen’s boycott 79. Producers’ boycott

Action by middlemen

1. Suppliers’ and handlers’ boycott

Action by owners and management

1. Traders’ boycott 82. Refusal to let or sell property 83. Lockout 84. Refusal of industrial assistance 85. Merchants’ “general strike”

Action by holders of financial resources

1. Withdrawal of bank deposits 87. Refusal to pay fees, dues, and assessments 88. Refusal to pay debts or interest 89. Severance of funds and credit 90. Revenue refusal 91. Refusal of a government’s money

Action by governments

1. Domestic embargo 93. Blacklisting of traders 94. International sellers’ embargo 95. International buyers’ embargo 96. International trade embargo

The methods of economic noncooperation: (2)

The strike symbolic strikes

1. Protest strike 98. Quickie walkout (lightning strike)

Agricultural strikes

1. Peasant strike 100. Farm workers’ strike

Strikes by special groups

1. Refusal of impressed labor 102. Prisoners’ strike 103. Craft strike 104. Professional strike

Ordinary industrial strikes

1. Establishment strike 106. Industry strike 107. Sympathetic strike

Restricted strikes

1. Detailed strike 109. Bumper strike 110. Slowdown strike 111. Working-to-rule strike 112. Reporting “sick” (sick-in) 113. Strike by resignation 114. Limited strike 115. Selective strike

Multi-industry strikes

1. Generalized strike 117. General strike

Combinations of strikes and economic closures

1. Hartal 119. Economic shutdown

The methods of political noncooperation

Rejection of authority

1. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance 121. Refusal of public support 122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance

Citizens’ noncooperation with government

1. Boycott of legislative bodies 124. Boycott of elections 125. Boycott of government employment and positions 126. Boycott of government departments, agencies and other bodies 127. Withdrawal from government educational institutions 128. Boycott of government-supported organizations 129. Refusal of assistance to enforcement agents 130. Removal of own signs and placemarks 131. Refusal to accept appointed officials 132. Refusal to dissolve existing institutions

Citizens’ alternatives to obedience

1. Reluctant and slow compliance 134. Nonobedience in absence of direct supervision 135. Popular nonobedience 136. Disguised disobedience 137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse 138. Sitdown 139. Noncooperation with conscription and deportation 140. Hiding, escape and false identities 141. Civil disobedience of “illegitimate” laws

Action by government personnel

1. Selective refusal of assistance by government aides 143. Blocking of lines of command and information 144. Stalling and obstruction 145. General administrative noncooperation 146. Judicial noncooperation 147. Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents 148. Mutiny

Domestic governmental action

1. Quasi-legal evasions and delays 150. Noncooperation by constituent governmental units

International governmental action

1. Changes in diplomatic and other representation 152. Delay and cancellation of diplomatic events 153. Withholding of diplomatic recognition 154. Severance of diplomatic relations 155. Withdrawal from international organizations 156. Refusal of membership in international bodies 157. Expulsion from international organizations

The methods of nonviolent intervention

Psychological intervention

1. Self-exposure to the elements 159. The fast (a) Fast of moral pressure (b) Hunger strike (c) Satyagrahic fast 160. Reverse trial 161. Nonviolent harassment

Physical intervention

1. Sit-in 163. Stand-in 164. Ride-in 165. Wade-in 166. Mill-in 167. Pray-in 168. Nonviolent raids 169. Nonviolent air raids 170. Nonviolent invasion 171. Nonviolent interjection 172. Nonviolent obstruction 173. Nonviolent occupation

Social intervention

1. Establishing new social patterns 175. Overloading of facilities 176. Stall-in 177. Speak-in 178. Guerrilla theater 179. Alternative social institutions 180. Alternative communication system

Economic intervention

1. Reverse strike 182. Stay-in strike 183. Nonviolent land seizure 184. Defiance of blockades 185. Politically motivated counterfeiting 186. Preclusive purchasing 187. Seizure of assets 188. Dumping 189. Selective patronage 190. Alternative markets 191. Alternative transportation systems 192. Alternative economic institutions

Political intervention

1. Overloading of administrative systems 194. Disclosing identities of secret agents 195. Seeking imprisonment 196. Civil disobedience of “neutral” laws 197. Work-on without collaboration 198. Dual sovereignty and parallel government