Post-Failure Activism

How to protest when the catastrophe has already happened

Social movements are created from three elements: a New Tactic, Contagious Mood and the Right Time. Two of these elements—a new tactic and contagious mood—are under the control of activists while the third—the right time—is not. Today, I want to share some thoughts on the first element: the new tactics I believe will be instrumental in creating the next great social movement.

First, though, let’s pause for a moment to assess the current state of activism in order to situate ourselves within the history of protest. This will help us clarify the types of new tactics that will prove most useful in creating a novel movement.

In very broad strokes, we can divide the recent history of protest into eras beginning with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. During this time, tactics included organized marches, sit-ins, boycotts, and civil disobedience. The 1970s and 1980s saw a rise in more disparate movements, including women's liberation, anti-nuclear protests, and LGBTQ rights movements. The tactics during these times expanded to include things like consciousness-raising groups. By the 1990s and early 2000s, the anti-globalization movements brought about tactics that aimed to disrupt the functioning of elite society by blocking major global summits. Come 2010s, the advent of social media drastically changed the landscape of activism. Movements like Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and Black Lives Matter rose to prominence using social media and hashtags to mobilize and coordinate actions, spread information rapidly, and connect like-minded activists across the globe. The high water mark for this era of activism was the unprecedented rapid spread of Occupy’s protests to hundreds of cities worldwide within weeks.

Each era was defined by new tactics that tested out new theories of change. Sometimes the theories of change behind these new tactics were clearly articulated, such as in Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail or Kathie Sarachild’s “Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon.” Other times the theories of change were more of a cultural tendency than a rationally articulated argument. In any case, we see that each era of protest is demarcated by a shift in tactics that gives people new hope in the possibility of social change.

It has been over ten years since the last significant era of protest. The Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter have receded into the past. The tactics of those movements, if proposed today, would fail to attract much enthusiasm.

The fact that old tactics cease to work is nothing new. There is, however, something significantly different about the current era of protest. Unlike previous eras, today’s activism is defined by being post-failure.

Post-failure means that today’s activism takes place after the failure of protest. In other words, unlike previous eras of protest that were mobilizing in order to avert a catastrophe, for our era of protest the catastrophe has already happened. This is most clear with environmentalism: environmentalism failed, the climate collapse has already started and is too late to stop. But it is also true of the other significant battles that defined the activism agenda for the last 80 years: the catastrophe befalling Postmodern Civilization has already happened.

The post-failure era of activism presents a landscape that is different from what activism was designed for in the past. Given that, I believe we will see a change in tactics along with a shift in priorities and targets. This shift in activism can be outlined as follows:

Social Mobilization, Not Protest

Unlike past eras where the primary objective of activism was to organize protests in order to highlight grievances, this era will be defined by movements that demonstrate the capacity to mobilize huge numbers of people to carry out seemingly impossible tasks. Imagine, for example, the tremendous creative energy that was on display during Occupy Wall Street—1,000+ encampments, tens of thousands of active participants, millions of dollars of donations, endless media coverage, etc—being applied to a collective work project: a global climate lockdown to drastically reduce carbon emissions, for example. The goal of activism will no longer be to influence elected representatives but instead of coordinate complex social action among millions of dispersed participants worldwide.

Cryptocurrencies and AI

Whether you like it or not, the new era will be defined by two technologies: cryptocurrencies and Artificial Intelligence. Just as Occupy Wall Street was the first global social movement to organize via Twitter, the next great social movement will be the first to rely heavily on crypto and AI.

Cryptocurrencies will prove necessary because the new movements will not fit into preexisting categories and will not be eligible for the traditional funding routes—NGOs and philanthropies. Instead, these movements will rely on the same funding mechanisms that have allowed meme cryptocurrencies to go from 0 to market caps of millions. These meme cryptos don’t promise anything other than being part of a meme-based community. Similarly, each new era movement will have a token whose value increases as the movement gains prominence, thereby rewarding early advocates. This will eliminate funding gatekeeping and enable more direct, equitable distribution of resources.

AI will be immensely useful on many fronts from content generation to campaign ideation to community management and mentoring. The challenge will be to find, jailbreak or build AI models that have not been neutered for activists by their corporate creators.

Meta-Political Targets

Above all, the biggest change in the new era of activism will be a shift in priorities and targets. From the Civil Rights Movement to Occupy Wall Street, protests have largely focused on the ideological concerns established by the earliest leftist radicals: a mix of French and American Revolutionary thought with Marxism. The new era of movements will tackle concerns that do not fit within that old paradigm. In fact, this will be the first major difficulty that new era movements will face: the targets they are mobilizing around are meta-political and don’t “make sense” from an older perspective.

For example, the world outside of Earth will become a far greater concern. This could manifest as movements to establish settlements off-Earth or to disclose the existence of extraterrestrial life. Space represents the next frontier, not just for exploration but also for the imagination of activists.

Further, there will be an increasing sense among activists of needing to break out of current mental frameworks entirely. This may involve a radical reconsideration of the nature of consciousness, the possibility of multiple realities, and the questioning of human-centric viewpoints. Activists might advocate for giving rights to non-human entities, whether it be AI, animals or plants. The essence of this activism would be to redefine existence beyond the anthropocentric worldview.

In such an era of activism, metaphysical and philosophical concerns could become just as prominent as material ones. How to live amidst an unstoppable collapse will become a orienting question.

The notion of what constitutes a 'successful' movement may also change. In previous eras, success might have been tied to policy change or significant shifts in public opinion. In the post-failure era, success will be about achieving massive change through collective action. Results will be prized above all else.

Conclusion

Somewhere in the world today a young, unknown activist is devising a protest. They were barely in elementary school when Occupy Wall Street grabbed the world’s attention. For them, the last decade has been a time without a global social movement punctuated by pandemic, climate catastrophe and signs of civilizational collapse. They are angry and passionate. They are not just Internet-native, they are crypto-native and AI-native as well. And from this person a activist meme will be released that’ll capture the world’s attention, giving birth to a new global social movement that looks so unlike anything that came before it that old activists like us will initially dismiss it. But we will be proven wrong and the movement will change everything.