Everyone I know (i.e. the people in my Twitter feed) is staring at colourful graphs about sea ice, or global average temperatures, or else sharing footage of Just Stop Oil protests (a real “ACTUP” vibe, btw, for anyone old enough to remember the late 1980s). Or they are sharing “the cat should wear a bell” articles, or wittering on about using the right “frame” while ignoring the structural power to dominate the airwaves and brainwaves. [see tweet here and a good piece by David Roberts here.]

And the thing that really matters? Or, rather, could have mattered? Tough social movements (made up of a variety of organisations and individuals, of different size, scope, perspective, but all kinda pulling in the same-ish direction) that forced states to protect people and the environment? On that topic… Nothing. Nada. Silence. Crickets.

This short post is me spitballing why this so. Expect gross generalisations and repetitions of things I have written before, ad nauseam.

Why don’t the politicians talk about it? Why don’t the media? Why don’t the think tank wonks? Why don’t the academics? Why don’t the activists?  For each of these, I’ll map out what (gross generalisations alert!) motivates them, rewards them. What are the cognitive/institutional barriers that prevent them from seeing what is obvious. Finally, what would happen to anyone “in” that tribe who tried to break ranks and talk about the elephants in the room.

In the last draft of this I was going to list things “we” could do. Or could have done. Because it is all over bar the ‘adapting’/screaming/starving/dying. But why bother? Srsly? Why bother talking about what could have been done, what still needs to be done when it is too late to stop the catastrophes?

Comments welcome, of course.

Politicians

What motivates/rewards them: the getting and keeping of power, within their party and – of course – controlling the state – opportunities for “changing things” and/or enriching themselves and making sure their post-politics life is as comfortable as possible

Cognitive and institutional barriers that prevent them from seeing: Extra-parliamentary activity is usually seen as a threat – the ignorant masses trying to stick their nose into the business of professional politicians – or an inconvenience, forcing their party to go fishing for votes that should be, ‘by rights’, already in the bag.  Labour especially fears/distrusts the new social movements, since they are often offering frames that either take time to be ‘absorbed’ into the mainstream (feminism, gay rights etc) or really can’t easily be absorbed at all (environmental concerns)

What would happen to them if they started to speak up/act out about the need for vigorous social movements.: “You’re risking your seat by palling around with the eco-loons.  The Daily Mail will start smearing you and we will lose the swinging voters. So shut up or ship out.”

Merely sharing a platform with some people becomes Thoughtcrime and is punishable by all sorts of crap. This has, as intended, a chilling effect…

Mass media

What motivates/rewards them: Money (for the owners) and career opportunities (front pages, pay rises, nicer beats) for the hacks doing the grubby work.

Cognitive and institutional barriers that prevent them from seeing: Much of politics is about the relatively-easy-to-describe-understand ‘horse race politics’ –  who’s up, who’s down, who said what to who. People leaking and counter-leaking.

What would happen to them if they started to speak up/act out about the need for vigorous social movements.: 

“Have you gone hippie?  Do you still want to work at this paper? I’ve had one of our major advertisers on the phone asking why you did a positive piece about those lunatics who knocked five per cent of their share price with all their stunts last year.”

[See also

“Put Me in, Coach? Referee? Owner? Security? Why the News Media Rarely
Cover Movements as Political Players” by Edwin Amenta, Neal Caren and Amber Celina Tierney
in the book “Players and Arenas: The Interactive Dynamics of Protest” (eds) James M. Jasper, Jan Willem. Amsterdam University Press. (2015)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16vj285.13

Think tanks

What motivates/rewards them: Pumping out reports and draft legislation that is useful to (often un-named) funders and donors.  For individuals, parlaying time as a policy wonk into being able to get a gig as a pundit, and/or winning pre-selection for a winnable parliamentary seat.

Cognitive and institutional barriers that prevent them from seeing: Policy and politics is all about what think tanks and – at a push – state bureaucracies – think should be done. The exchange of received “widsom” and “ideas”, the circulation and recombination of personnel and rhetoric. If you haven’t been to the right schools and universities, if you don’t talk in the language of cost-benefit analysis and policy optimisation, but instead about such loose things as values and -worse – you hold views that would interfere with the accumulation of wealth and prestige – then you might as well be from Mars.

What would happen to them if they started to speak up/act out about the need for vigorous social movements.: 

“You’re fired. You’re not serious and you’re damaging our brand. Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out.”

The politicians, mass media and think tankers all have a deep fear and loathing of the idea of organised working class people insisting their needs are met. The whole neoliberal project over the last forty years – pursued happily enough by almost everyone in the above categories – has been about making sure that policy-making is insulated from the masses. Why celebrate their return?  Meanwhile, there are two groups which, nominally, claim to disdain neoliberalism, and want something else, something better.  On we go with the sweeping generalisations – 

Academics

What motivates/rewards them: Getting papers published (in arcane language, appearing behind paywalls, for the most part) so they can become tenured, a professor and then a professor whose brilliant thoughts are quoted by the OECD etc.

Cognitive and institutional barriers that prevent them from seeing: they tend to have spent their whole lives as academics, and are so captured by the rituals that they don’t even see them anymore (goldfish, water, blah blah).  “Stakeholder engagement” means getting a pat on the head from a civil servant or politician, and getting mentioned in a report or white paper, so that “impact” can be shown to the next grant application committee.

What would happen to them if they started to speak up/act out about the need for vigorous social movements.: They would do themselves enormous reputational damage, being seen as “too political.” The invites to address select committees, appear on think tank panels etc would dry up.  Professional rivals would use the perceived “going native” aspect to undermine their position.

Activists

What motivates/rewards them: feeling useful/powerful and getting a morale boost/buzz from the next protest.

Cognitive and institutional barriers that prevent them from seeing: when you’re neck deep in the swamp wrestling alligators, it’s easy to forget that you came to drain the swamp. Admitting that bold brave tough social movements are not merely an accretion of people willing to come to repeated marches/rallies/photo-ops would mean having to admit that much of what passes for ‘movement-building’ is simply busy work that mobilises (briefly) and that activists tend not to be very good at building long-lasting organisations that stay usefully “radical.”  Far easier to talk about the next demo, and do some hand-wringing about “getting the framing right” – the mythical incantations that will involve millions of atomised citizens taking ‘action’ (what IS that action – writing to their MP? Buying an EV?) to save the world.

What would happen to them if they started to speak up/act out about the need for vigorous social movements.: “You’re saying that all my hard work over decades has been futile? Thanks for that.  Get out, and no, you’re not getting a reference from me.”

And look, in any of these categories, hardly anyone has experience of trying to get a grassroots group off the ground, and keep it going. And that’s a very very rare experience.  And without that, without knowing how hard it is, it’s easy to blithely throw around words like “movement” or civil society.”

So, look, these days my eyes slide down the pages/screens of speeches by politicians, think tank wonks, journalists  academics, activists . I see all the right words about urgency this, emergency that, transformation this, transition that.  They tell me the world is burning (it is) and that action is essential (it was).  And none of them – I mean NONE of them – foregrounds 

1. The need for social movements that can resist co-optation repression, exhaustion
2. What would need to be done to help the organisations that make up such social movements to thrive.

Because they don’t know. And they don’t even know that they don’t know. And we’re too close to the actual non-metaphorical apocalypse for me to waste my time anymore. Ya basta.