On November 5 every year, the British celebrate Guy Fawkes Night. Fawkes attempted to blow up the Parliament building back in 1605. Not only was his plot foiled, he was taken in chains to the Tower of London, and quartered. To this day, children carry that poor man?s effigy around town, collecting pennies before burning it up ceremoniously. What should we read into this, Britons? attachment to their institutions or to fierce spectacles? A bit of both, as G-20 protesters demonstrate.
Some protesters carried a dead canary to signify the Canary Wharf recession, while others burnt banker effigies. An anarchist newspaper showed some dancing around a fire with the slogan, ?How to keep warm in the credit crunch: Burn a banker!? A University professor was suspended for saying, ?we?re going to be hanging a lot of people from lampposts?.
The obvious comparison is with Seattle ten years ago. The WTO meeting that year was paralysed by around 40,000 protesters calling for a greater regulation of the economy, with the most radical demonstrative wings even calling for the nationalisation of banks. Those protests did see David slaying Goliath. The talks were shut down, and the global agenda substantially shifted, with the Internet?relatively new in 1999?acting as an important mobilisation tool. But the G-20 meeting only saw some 4,000 protesters, and that?s just one sign of how protest demographics are shaping up differently.
First, the significance of social networks like Twitter and Facebook has increased exponentially. The former has enabled flashmobbing, the impromptu gathering of large numbers of people at specific locations at short notice. Facebook was most prominently mobilised by the G-20 meltdown group, some of whose members converged around the Bank of England arrayed as the four horsemen of the apocalypse. But precisely the public nature of social media has enabled authorities to police the current protests better than ever before, keeping them contained and confined.
Second, many of the Seattle concerns have now been mainlined. The WTO itself has sponsored a history project as a tribute to the many facets of that ?multi-faceted and historical set of world events?, drawing together incredibly diverse constituencies to effect an effective mobilisation. And few of today?s G-20 summit leaders would question the Seattle protest platform of poverty reduction, human rights and fairer trade agreements.
Most importantly, ideological categories have become far more muddled. Yes, the Financial Fool?s Day brand has particular mileage in today?s context. As do slogans like Eat the Bankers, Banks are Evil, Abolish Money and 0% Interest in Others. But are some of legitimate leaders not making similar calls?Nicholas Sarkozy has threatened to abandon G-20 if it doesn?t hand out adequate hammering to the bankers. Yes, the graffiti spray-painted across the Royal Bank of
Scotland building?Class War and Thieves?represents real anger against a government that has injected more than 40 billion pounds into ailing banks and insured more than 585 billion pounds of risky assets, while three million people looking at unemployment (by the end of the year) feel little relief. But what are the protesters who have been quoted as saying that they decided not to chant Smash Capitalism because it?s done a good job of smashing itself really saying? Are they actually celebrating the smash, or is theirs just a poignant cry of having been let down? These are distinct phenomenon.
Another protester has rued that even if he could have broken through the Royal Bank of Scotland?s vaults, he doubted that there was much in there. Perhaps, it is this that is being mourned. That the credit crunch has left everyone strapped for cash, that leverage ran out of love. Not the existence of leverage itself.
Of the many April Fools? tall tales, one was perpetrated by the normally stodgy US National Public Radio in 1992, announcing that Richard Nixon was running for a second presidential term, ?I didn?t do anything wrong, and I won?t do it again.? Listeners were taken in in droves. Perhaps that?s all that the protesters are asking for, another bull run, another good game.
renuka.bisht@expressindia.com
