It’s Never The Right Time To Protest

Tragedies should not be politicized; politics should be done at the right time, in the right way, conducted through the right channels. These nostrums and bromides are familiar; they are trotted out as reminders of the Right Way, the Virtuous Way, for those who protest, who engage in political struggle, who notice the events taking place around them are not bizarre outliers caused by mysterious forces beyond our control, but are instead manifestations of deeper and systemic social, economic, and ideological problems requiring sustained political engagement for their resolution. These invocations of a supposed normative order attached to the means and methods of politics–as I noted in posts responding to claims that those protesting police brutality understand and perhaps even internalize the perspective of the police, or that Palestinian activists express themselves in very particular ways, using approved and banal forms of political speech–serve to constrain and oppress and unproductively channel activist forces and energies towards political cul-de-sacs where they will fizzle out safely. They are the noises the signals of activism contend with in order to make themselves heard and understood.

These calls are not new; it has always been thus. As the Algerian feminist Marie-Aimee Helie-Lucas noted in the context of feminist struggles in ‘Third-World’ and post-colonial contexts:

It is never, has never been the right moment to protest … in the name of women’s interests and rights: not during the liberation struggle against colonialism, because all forces should be mobilized against the principal enemy: French colonialism; not after Independence, because all forces should be mobilized to build up the devastated country; not now that racist imperialistic Western governments are attacking Islam and the Third World, etc.) Defending women’s rights “now” (this “now” being ANY historical moment) is always a betrayal-of the people, of the nation, of the revolution, of Islam, of national identity, of cultural roots, of the Third World. [quoted by Gayatri Chakravarti Spivak in “French Feminism Revisited”, Feminists Theorize the Political, Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. 71.]

The mechanisms of reaction to resistance are rich and varied; they take many forms; they take on many virtuous guises. They bid activists look hither and thither for guidance from ideals and objectives that are mere distractions. They claim occult compulsions should stay activists’ hand and feet and quieten and attenuate their voices; they suggest activist commitments are betrayals of other causes, ones whose claims should be recognized as more pressing, more demanding of their passions and energies.

But reaction is reaction. Its aims are always the same . It seeks only one outcome and it directs itself towards it with unflagging energy and passion and creativity: the preservation of existing orders of power. When the smoke clears, and when all the homages have been paid to the various idols it bids the activist worship and be in thrall to, the reactionary wishes to see the world as it was: configured and arranged to sustain its position at the top of the Great Political Chain of Being.