Ready for revolution—the psychology of protest

Archival audio: France, May 1968. A nation of strikes, of violence, a country paralysed across its length and breadth. The simmering of unrest amongst its student population rapidly boiled, it boiled over. Citizens from every walk of life, from every class…

Lawrence Saha: The students began to build barricades in the streets against the police, and it created a situation on the 13th of May where you had over a million people participating in this quite extensive protest.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: I'm going now back to France.

Interviewer: Would you go to Paris?

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: Yes.

Interviewer: It is necessary to be in Paris?

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: Well, it's not necessary. It shows a point now to show that everybody can do everything what we want and not what the government wants because we don't recognise anymore this government.

Interviewer: You don't think you'd be more useful outside of France?

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: No. We have now to continue the fight and I think we shall now show how strong we are against such police and government oppression.

Interviewer: What do you think the French police will do when they get their hands on you, if they do?

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: Well, I think they will bring me back to the border.

Interviewer: Peacefully?

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: Well, I don't think peacefully but it doesn't matter.

Lynne Malcolm: Daniel Cohn-Bendit, known as Red Danny, was a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in Paris. This was recorded after he'd been deported from France and was trying to get back into the country illegally.

Hello, I'm Lynne Malcolm, with All in Mind. Today, as part of RN's programs to mark the 50th anniversary of the May '68 riots in Paris, we reflect on the psychology of protest. We look at what drives individuals to stand up for their cause and take to the streets, and how the process of protest has changed. Lawrence J Saha is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Australian National University. He recalls the volatile civil unrest in France in May '68.

Lawrence Saha: It became very complex and it also became very extensive and politically the French government began to be quite alarmed at all of this. De Gaulle himself thought that his government was in danger and he left Paris and that created a stir as well because people felt that, well, without De Gaulle, that the government itself would collapse. As a result, the Sorbonne was closed, Nanterre was closed, the students were battling against the police. The workers had come into the battle to partly support the students but then also to take up their own grievances which they had about the conditions in factories and things of that nature, so it began to spread throughout France.

Lynne Malcolm: It was a massive upheaval throughout the country, but De Gaulle soon returned to France, the violence settled and the Gaullist party was re-elected in June. Lawrence Saha:

Lawrence Saha: So on the surface it doesn't look like there was a political revolution, but in retrospect people are calling it a social revolution. They called it a social revolution because, as has been said many, many times, nothing would ever be the same afterwards. The relation between university students and the government, the way the universities operated, the workers' unions and things of that nature were virtually changed irreversibly. This is why sociologists like Alain Touraine, a French sociologist, he argued that this was not a normal social movement, it was not a normal protest movement, not at least normal in the sense of what had happened before in history.

And his main point was that for the first time you had people from quite different walks of life, you had university students who at least in France are considered to be very privileged, combining with the workers, the working class, and this was the first time this had ever happened. So he regarded this as kind of an irrevocable change in the way both protests and also social movements would, in the developing society, you might say, the way societies were changing, that these would be the new type of protest, that people would combine and cut across these social divisions for common purposes and that these kinds of movements would be quite different from what had happened previously.

Today I think most people would agree with Touraine. We can look at some of the more contemporary protests, some of the more recent ones are really made up of quite disparate groups. There are very few protests that are made up of homogeneous groups anymore.

But going back to some of the earlier concerns about riots in particular is this one about whether or not people, in a sense, behave quite differently than they normally would behave, you know, as individuals. Why do people, for example like the students in the Paris revolts, why did they begin throwing cobblestones at the police? Why did they build barricades in the streets, when these people came from backgrounds, particularly the students, which were very privileged? And these were the sorts of things that you wouldn't normally expect people from these sorts of backgrounds to do.

And some of the sociologists have said, well, look at the clothes that these students are wearing, these are fashion clothes. They've got Gucci shoes and they've got leather sports jackets and things of this nature. These are not rowdy ruffians, these are well educated young people. So why would they behave like this, what would compel them to take these sorts of actions?

So there have been a lot of early sociologists who have actually talked about things like the group mind, that when a person is a part of a crowd, a person loses a sense of their individualism, they lose a sense of the controls over their behaviour, and they begin to act in what you might call a primordial manner that would go against even their upbringing. And so people like Gustave Le Bon who was one of the first sociologists who analysed the French Revolution and he talked about the crowd psychology, after him Freud talked about the group. He basically says that what happens in Freudian terms, the superego is lost and the superego being that part of the self that controls our behaviour. He says that in a crowd situation that can be lost, and our primordial instincts come to the surface, so we begin to behave in a much more basic sort of way. So these were the ways that some of the early theorists actually thought about these events. Contemporary sociologists don't really see it quite that way. Particularly they see these kinds of demonstrations as processes and these changes occur over a period of time.

Lynne Malcolm: Emeritus Professor Lawrence J Saha.

Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg: I still remember, journalists kept on asking me the question; 'Oh, people don't protest anymore, right? They are satisfied, there is nothing to complain about anymore.' But it's not true. In fact I've seen several datasets since then that very, very clearly show that at the moment the levels of protest are as high as in the roaring '60s, but the kind of protest has changed.

Lynne Malcolm: Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg is Professor in Sociology at the Frei University in Amsterdam. She studies the social psychology of protest.

Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg: In the '60s we saw relatively more riots. Nowadays we see relatively more anti-government demonstrations. So some of my colleagues would call that the normalisation of protest. And there is a broader variety of people that take onto the streets. So in the '60s of course the students and so on and of course we see students in the streets nowadays but we also see the farmers and we also see the more post-materialist issues that bring people onto the streets, so higher educated people.

Lynne Malcolm: What is the age of protesters in modern times? Are they younger or older?

Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg: It's about the same as it was in the '60s. So young people are overrepresented in protest, but depended on the issue, also dependent on the context, the so-called roaring '60s generation is there in every protest. So, for instance, we had a demonstration about eroding early retirement rights in the Netherlands. Well, then the average age is relatively high, as you can expect related to the issue. But we also had an anti-war demonstration which is typically an issue of the '60s and '70s with the Vietnam War of course. And then we saw two generations represented.

Lynne Malcolm: Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg and her colleagues have been running a large Protest Survey since 2009. They've attended demonstrations in 18 countries, surveying around 20,000 protestors, organisers and police officers. They're particularly interested in why some individuals involve themselves in protest and take to the streets.

Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg: What is very, very important is that people are embedded in networks. In networks, friends, but also online nowadays, family, organisations, because in these networks people talk politics. So if you have an individual problem, it needs to be translated into a collective problem, it needs to politicise. That is the first step that is really important, and that happens in the networks, they mobilise consensus; aha, so this is what is going on, this is why I am so extremely angry about A or B. And then when the consensus is formed and is mobilised, then people can be mobilised for action. They kind of amplify people's motivation. So if you want to go to a protest, because you want to change the state of affairs, then combined with anger it makes people willing to protest.

And then identification is also important. You need to have the idea that your group that you are heavily committed to, that you heavily identify with, something is happening to your group and that is what makes you indignant and extremely angry.

We have ideology. So you have the idea that there is a state of affairs that is morally wrong or is against your norms or values. Most important, it is about that you want to show that you don't take it any longer and that you want to express your view. So, taken together, these five motives, so to say—embeddedness, emotions, instrumentality, identity and ideology—are very important in a constellation bringing people to the streets.

Lynne Malcolm: Jacquelein Van Stekelenberg.

You're with All in the Mind on RN, I'm Lynne Malcolm. As part of RN's programs to mark the civil uprising in 1968 in Paris, we're discussing the psychology of protest, and how protest behaviour has changed.

Olga Khazan is a staff writer with the Atlantic magazine. She wrote an article in early 2017 called 'The Psychology of Effective Protest'. At the time there were many protests going on. There was a women's march, a science march and a range of different demonstrations all related to the resistance movement against President Trump.

Her attention was particularly drawn to a protest at the University of Berkeley California which turned violent, involving fires and smoke bombs. It prompted her to investigate whether violent protests are more effective.

Olga Khazan: The media likes to cover these violent protests because they look really splashy and obviously show that something kind of big is happening. But the problem is that these more violent or protests that involve vandalism actually aren't very effective. When protests involve something like vandalism or protesters behaving in a violent way, people who aren't already on the side of the protesters actually have a hard time identifying with those actions. People tend to think of themselves as pretty moderate and pretty conformist, so to speak, in a good way, and they don't see themselves as disrupting the social order. So when they see protesters supporting a cause, behaving in a way that they would never think to behave, it actually lessens their support for the cause.

Lynne Malcolm: Can you describe the study by Robb Willer at Stanford University on moderate and extreme protest tactics?

Olga Khazan: Yes, so this is a sociologist at Stanford who looked at different types of protests and how they influenced people and how they cause people to support this fictional group. So they found basically that these participants identified less with a fictional group of animal rights protesters who broke into an animal testing facility than they did with a group of protesters who just marched peacefully. And they felt more support towards a Black Lives Matter protest (that's another big movement that we've had here) if they read that the protesters just chanted some slogans than if they encouraged violence against the police. So basically people were like, oh yeah, I support these protesters who are behaving in a more moderate way.

Lynne Malcolm: And the research also looked at a video of a moderate anti-Trump protest. What was found there?

Olga Khazan: Yes, so in this moderate anti-Trump protest, the protesters held signs and they chanted. And they were also, by comparison, shown a news report about an extreme protest where there was a traffic jam and they blocked some Trump supporters from getting where they needed to go. And so people who were shown the extreme protest, that protest that caused a traffic jam, actually supported Trump more, and that's actually something that happened among both conservatives and liberals. So no matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, you kind of are repulsed by these really extreme protests, even if they agree with you on principle.

Lynne Malcolm: And what was the reason the extreme protesters were dissuasive?

Olga Khazan: Well, it's basically that we just can't identify with them. I don't think of myself as someone who can break into an animal testing facility or who would get violent, so when I see people, other people doing that, I can't identify with them, and because of that I think I disagree with them, I disagree with their movement.

Lynne Malcolm: Another study Olga Khazan came across was by Omar Wasow at Princeton University. He looked at the civil rights protests of the 1960s.

Olga Khazan: Yeah, so Wasow basically found that in the 1960s the non-violent civil rights protest did increase support for Democratic candidates who supported civil rights. But the violent protests that occurred during that same time actually increased support for Republicans, and that is actually what might have tipped the 1968 election for Richard Nixon.

Lynne Malcolm: So from your research, what would you conclude is the best way to protest from maximum influence?

Olga Khazan: We've had so many protests here in DC. I've seen some protesters actually choosing a track where they would wear suits and behave in a really calm way and be really forceful but calm and moderate and do your marching and chant but don't cause any problems or any disturbances, and I actually think that's smart because then people will hear your message, they will see what you stand for and they won't necessarily see those acts of violence which can be so off-putting.

Lynne Malcolm: So how can this apply to the current situation in America under the Trump regime where there's quite a lot of political mistrust and dissatisfaction?

Olga Khazan: Yes, so I think for the most part the resistance protests have been pretty on point as far as these findings. They haven't gotten violent and they have been pretty moderate. They have been very patriotic and polite, and that is good strategy if you want to gain allies among people who are also dissatisfied with President Trump but they are not necessarily ready to be seen as vandals.

Lynne Malcolm: So should the protesters focus on the individual—Trump—or is it more important to continue to focus on the issues?

Olga Khazan: So there are different theories about this. One strategy would be to focus on the issues at hand because once Trump leaves office, either because he doesn't get re-elected or his term comes to an end or whatever happens, you are going to have a lack of an enemy to fight against. So if you support certain policies, then you are going to have a much more long-lasting movement because it's going to outlast whatever president happens to be in office.

Lynne Malcolm: Wasow, the researcher we talked about before, in his 1960s study suggested that the best approach is to welcome all comers to your cause. How would you suggest that that applies to the current political situation?

Olga Khazan: Yes, so this really means potentially embracing some Trump voters, even if you are in the resistance. People who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump might be people who you would want in your coalition because they clearly are persuadable and they are people who at one point agreed with you on the fundamentals and they could still be persuaded over to your side.

Lynne Malcolm: And what would you say is the overall psychological theory behind this analysis of effective protest?

Olga Khazan: I think we've known and civil rights leaders and others have known for a really long time that nonviolence is the answer. This really just underscores that. It shows us why nonviolence is so much more effective than violence.

Lynne Malcolm: Olga Khazan, writer for the Atlantic magazine in Washington.

So how would you say protesting has changed, especially since the widespread use of social media and digital technologies in protest?

Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg: Yes, yes, I think this is a very interesting one.

Lynne Malcolm: Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg from Frei University

Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg: In the literature there are two camps, roughly speaking. One will say everything has changed and it brought democratisation and it brought different people to the streets, and now we are living in great times. And there is another group which will say, no, no, no, it's not like that, in fact nothing has changed and it's just a super-sizing effect, it's still the same people who protest, but for them it's easier. And I clearly belong to the first group, but at the same time I still do see that organisations and networks, also the face-to-face organisations and the real-world organisations are still very important in bringing people to the streets, to mobilise people.

For instance, in 2011 what we saw at the Tahrir Square, we conducted a study in January 2011; how were these people mobilised. As you know, this was called a Facebook revolution in Egypt, and we could see that the people who were there at the Tahrir Square, indeed a part of them were mobilised via Facebook. But community organisations were very, very important in bringing people to the streets. So the people who were there were mobilised via Facebook, but definitely not all of them. So even if a revolution is called a Facebook revolution, we see that real-world organisations and face-to-face networks are important, and especially if there are risky actions. Well, Tahrir Square was definitely a risky and costly action to undertake.

So that is very important if we talk about the influence of social media. Then how it has changed, collective action, what social media did, it made communication cheaper, faster and easier. It's also called the super-size effect. So nowadays it's not only organisers and organisations who can mobilise for action, but normal citizens like you and me, we can mobilise consensus, so shall we have a flash mob tomorrow at 8 o'clock at the great square? And since that is easier, the types of protests are also changing. Organisations use social media as well, so unions for 1 May marchers have mobilised via social media as well.

Second, what we see is that there are more counter-demonstrations. So if, for instance, extreme right is mobilising, then the extreme left will mobilise too. And the third is that we see more flash mobs, so-called spontaneous demonstrations. And especially the last two types of demonstrations are complex in terms of policing, because both of them tend to end up more easily in violence. And I was at a seminar a few months ago related to the new type of demonstrations and policing, and the level of democraticness. The question is, if you have these flash mobs, which tend to end up in violence easily, what you see is that it is more difficult for the police to safeguard the safety for the protesters, but also for the bystanders. So in that sense, protest is changing due to social media for the good, because more people protest, and also a broader variety of people are protesting. But at the same time, the protests tend to get out of hand more easily.

Lynne Malcolm: Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg notes that we have learnt more about the process of protest since the 1960s. Protests are generally more regulated by both the organisers and the police. However, it's difficult to measure how effective protest is.

Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg: I can give you an example. For instance, Occupy, it's very often said that it was not effective at all. But in fact that is not true. I have seen a beautiful study of a PhD in Boston and she studied whether the word 'inequality'…after all, Occupy was about inequality, the 99%, right?...whether the word 'inequality' was more used before Occupy or after Occupy, and it was more used in the media, but also in the political arena. So yes, it was effective in terms of bringing it to the public opinion and to the political arena, but we can clearly state that inequality is not solved. But for me, social change starts with awareness. So yes, there was definitely an effect.

So if we talk about effect it's important to be aware of what is effect. It is hard to distract the effect of campaigns or protests from different effects in a society. We are in a messy society in which a lot of issues and a lot of things happen at the same time. So it's very hard to distract the effect of one single campaign. And I think the #MeToo is a perfect example of that. A lot of people ask me again, like, was it effective, and why was it suddenly effective? And especially if you know that in 2006 there was a community organiser, her name was Burke, in Chicago, and she set up an organisation for violence against young women in the suburbs of Chicago. And it was with the same name, #MeToo, and it didn't go viral, whereas in 2017 it did go viral. But still it is very, very hard to disentangle why this one hashtag got viral and went all over the world, whereas this organisation in 2006 was contained. So in that sense, our area of study is extremely interesting but also…well, the real word is 'messy'.

Lynne Malcolm: Jacquelein Van Stekelenburg is Professor in Sociology at the Frei University in Amsterdam.

You'll find more information on the All in the Mind website, and look for the May '68 tile on the RN homepage for more on the radical movements of 1968. This includes a look at the changing dynamics of global protest movements by RN's Future Tense.

Thanks to producer Diane Dean and sound engineer Andrei Shabunov. I'm Lynne Malcolm. Bye for now.