Today the day all of us that have years doing our little things for the cause of diversity are on a roll. The BLM has electrified pretty much everybody around everywhere, Maybe our moment has come! Maybe we will get to write “we are haunted by a ghost…” and get to help the next revolution, the one that will evict racism once and for all…
Or maybe not.
Revolutions and big demonstrations of massive rejection to something horrible, happen. They will happen again with or without an organization behind. People do get fed up with bad things, frequently. But how do you ride that wave? In the recent history of my readers we have the M15 in Spain, which in many ways made possible the current and first government of a left wing coalition in Spain, with all the faults that it might have. Or the many and various Arab Springs, which topple several regimes, and strengthen others.
And then we have the smaller revolutions, inside political parties like GroenLinks.
So we remember the Halsema revolution, which lurched a traditional left wing party into a liberal-left wing course, again with all the contradictions, problems and advantages that such movement brought. It is not for nothing that Halsema herself is today the mayor of Amsterdam. And we also know the Klaver revolution, which has electrified our party with a whole new generation of enthusiasts, and a message that, now and then, makes political capital of the biculturalism of Jesse himself.
Are there things to learn from these incidents in our recent history?
I believe that there are a few. Here some:
1) When in Spain millions went into the street and demonstrate, a team of people with highly skilled communicators capitalized the energy of the protests, creating in a short time, a fairly rigid and well controlled organization. Still today, the rhetorical prowess of Iglesias and the lack of internal democracy of his party Unidas Podemos are noticeable.
2) The Arab Springs toppled regimes that we saw as monolithic. They were not, or they were indeed monsters with clay foot. The discomfort of the people did and does accumulate, and traditional leadership can loose control in the blink of an eye. For many of us, the use of social media to spread information was surprising. Protesters being capable of communicate with each other horizontally spread protests and brought them beyond any possible control of the regimes involved.
3) Halsema was debated by many of her party members, who never manage to make a scratch in her rhetorical shield. In the internal debates of GroenLinks in the noughties was always a guilty pleasure to see her framing of opponents as old fashioned and disconnected left wing dinosaurs. Yet her message was nor that shocking nor that different: all left wing parties were reviewing their ideas since the late nineties, becoming more open to classic liberal ideas. If anything, GroenLinks was the last of the bunch to modernize. Change was certainly due.
4) Klaver has made his political capital offering a friendly and compassionate face to the aggression and doomsday scenarios of the dutch radical right. After a decade and more of hearing Wilders and his cohort warning us of a Muslim tsunami that will wash out all the hard won freedoms of the west, it is certainly refreshing to hear a young politician calling his stupid bluff out.
By now I hope to have made clear that the persons that have capitalize moments of massive unrest had invested great effort in their communication strategies, in their image, and in the framing of their opponents. Of course, there is plenty more going on. In another moment would be interesting to write and to think about the coalitions that our known revolutionaries established with the old guard that they publicly despise, in order to cement their gains. Also interesting is to analyze how our leaders did inspire a minority first, and how that first success escalated in broader wins. But for now, the questions to ourselves might be: are we really thinking and being effective in our communication? Have we got horizontal and flexible platforms for spreading the message? Have we got our frames updated? Have we found our equivalent of gorgeous Angela Davis, sharp Femke or friendly Jesse? Or are we so convinced of our rightfulness that we believe that it will be ok no matter what?