|
Disruptive Protesters We're getting used to scenes like these. Last month, 150 jeering, chanting protesters shouted down U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson, preventing him from finishing an address on U. S. policy in Iraq at the Humphrey Center. Brandishing a bull horn and bass drum, the protesters justified their actions by invoking their passionate concern for "peace and justice." Not to be outdone, on March 17, demonstrators "stormed" a Minneapolis School Board meeting for the second time in a month, driving elected officials from the room. This time, they represented -- not the Progressive Student Organization -- but a prominent establishment group, the Minneapolis NAACP. The demonstrators -- who oppose community schools and support mediation in the NAACP's "educational adequacy" suit -- were acting in concert with an "action plan," which calls for "personally embarrass[ing] and humiliat[ing]" board members to force their resignation. To the pounding of "Aztec" drums, protesters insisted that their fervent commitment to "equal education" justified such tactics. For the most part, public officials reacted tepidly -- even admiringly -- to these incidents. Ambassador Richardson praised protesters: "[A]t least those of you that are protesting are engaged, and I know you care about our country. And I salute you and I wish you the best." Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton noted she was happy to see so many people come down for the school board protest, and hoped it motivates more constructive action. What's going on? Are these protesters just idealists who are a little gutsier than the rest of us, "concerned citizens" impelled to stand up for their beliefs? History is illuminating here, for shouting down speakers and disrupting meetings have been common tactics in the 20th century. Contrary to popular opinion, they were not pioneered by tie-died baby-boomers in the Sixties. Rather, they were a central feature of the most potent ideological movements of the 1920's and 30's. Consider the following scenes. In Europe in the 1930's, a group of people who claimed to have a vision of a better world stormed into universities, disrupting classes and silencing professors. Their parliamentary representatives deliberately transformed debates into riots. Their leader -- jailed earlier for breaking up an opponent's meeting -- had assured police, "It's all right. We got what we wanted -- Ballerstedt did not speak." Indeed, he insisted, "we will prevent ... all meetings or lectures that are likely to distract the minds of our fellow citizens." Meanwhile, in 1934, another group staged a huge rally in Madison Square Garden to protest the killing of Viennese workers. Matthew Woll of the American Federation of Labor and New York's progressive mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, were scheduled to speak. Protesters flooded in, beating a big bass drum. "For the honor of the heroic Austrian workers," they shouted, Woll and "the wage-cutting, strike-breaking Mayor LaGuardia must not be permitted to speak." The meeting broke up in chaos. The aim of protesters in both incidents -- as here in Minneapolis -- was to silence rational discourse and confuse opponents, and thus to achieve political influence far beyond their numbers. The perpetrators of the first incident, of course, were Nazi Brownshirts, led by Hitler, of the second, the American Communist Party. Obviously, Minneapolis agitators don't share the ultimate aims of Nazis or Communists. But the disruptive tactics they have chosen were developed and perfected by authoritarian movements of both right and left. Hitler explained the effectiveness of such tactics in "Mein Kampf:" "The determined gangster is always in a position to make political activities and efforts impossible for decent people." (Hitler viewed Communists as gangsters, and himself as a "decent person," because he had the "true welfare" of the German people at heart.) Why have Minneapolis demonstrators adopted such unsavory tactics? It seems that --like authoritarians -- they believe they hold the one true vision of the public good, and thus have the "right" to break rules that stand in the way of progress. In "Crime and Punishment," the Russian novelist Dostoevsky set forth the classic exposition of this worldview. Raskolnikov, his protagonist, insists that there are two kinds of people: "ordinary people," bound by the law, and "extraordinary" people -- set apart by their passionate vision of a better world. "The 'extraordinary' man," Raskolnikov proclaims, "has the right ... to permit his conscience to overstep certain obstacles" -- moral or legal rules -- "in the event that his ideas (which may be salutary for all mankind) require it for their fulfillment." We Americans are suckers for the high-flown language of "concern" and "commitment." We don't realize that, as social commentator Eric Hoffer pointed out, authoritarian demagogues always speak the language of the visionary and the idealist, in part, because it justifies their "will to power." Presumably, the Minneapolis demonstrators prefer to see themselves as the spiritual heirs of Martin Luther King, not Mussolini. But passive civil disobedience, like King's, has nothing in common with the bullying tactics of the Brownshirts. King did not silence others. He showed respect for the law -- even while breaking it -- by willingly accepting the consequences. Protesters may argue that, unlike the Brownshirts, they have not used violence, only intimidation and verbal abuse. But in America, such tactics generally suffice to silence law-abiding opponents. If "ordinary people" -- like supporters of community schools -- also began to storm school board meetings, violence might quickly follow. Fanatics -- preoccupied with lofty ends -- are always impatient with the messy, dithering democratic process. But history teaches that ends and means are intimately connected. The American Revolution succeeded because it placed process -- checks and balances, the rule of law -- at the heart of the democratic experiment. The French Revolution, which did not, ended in terror and the guillotine. By organizing the school board disruptions, the Minneapolis NAACP has displayed contempt for the democratic process. Minnesota citizens should be wary of entering into mediation with such a group, thereby giving it a major voice in Minneapolis children's education. Indeed, what better argument could there be against mediation than that people like these protesters support it? -- Katherine Kersten is a director of Center of the American Experiment inMinneapolis. |