Horizon

I wonder if these kinds of shock protests are more about getting the die-hard activists fired up than any serious attempt at reaching out to the public, given that surely some people in the organization must realize that such tactics are unlikely to elicit much sympathy.

Exactly, that's been my theory for some time, except that I don't believe people within realize how ineffective their tactics are. Many similar tactics have been all but proven useless, yet they are still used constantly by all kinds of groups (like, for instance, whoever is in charge of driver's ed curricula). On top of that, "radical" organizations tend to be hermetic and I think they don't really understand how non-radicals think.

Then there is the romance of being the few brave souls raging in a sea of injustice. This self-image makes it more satisfying to shock and offend the others than to recruit them. Perhaps it's unfair to say and I certainly couldn't prove it, but I do think this is a big motivator for some (most?) of these people.

Anyway, I'm with you, Ben. I think a nice fusilli with olive oil, lemon pepper and lots of prosciutto tonight.

uh...that was supposed to be lemon comma pepper.

They could well be fantasy enactment, similar to the anecdote Lee Harris relates in "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology":

A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of anti-war protest. To me the point of such protest was simple — to turn people against the war. Hence anything that was counterproductive to this purpose was politically irresponsible and should be severely censured. My friend thought otherwise; in fact, he was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington, and which in fact became one.

My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason — because it was, in his words, good for his soul.

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy — a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent anti-war demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view — for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics, but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.

Although on a similar topic,, I wonder whether this Freedom Walk, link c/o Martha's site, isn't a more low-key version of the same. Is this really about servicemen and women, or is it about pampering the self-image of Patriots who couldn't be dragged within a thousand miles of a firefight? I wonder what the troops actually think about this kind of thing. I know from my research that a lot of WWII vets resented the windy homecoming receptions they got from civilians who wouldn't have given them the time of day before the war.

I've often wondered the same about the thing with magnetic ribbons on cars. Among other things, the color yellow doesn't seem complimentary of the military or appropriate for volunteers. But regardless, it seems like ritual exercise -- almost a public devotion. And a few dollars sent to manufacturers in China rather than spent on sending batteries or beef jerky to Iraq.

At least the magnetic ribbons and rallies aren't actually counterproductive, as the PETA demonstration seems to be.