Giorgos Venizelos interviews Cristina Flesher Fominaya on participation, institutionalisation and the right-wing backlash to the squares movements of 2011-12.
Giorgos Venizelos: More than 10 years have passed since the so-called movements of the squares were first observed. Their proliferation in the southern European periphery, the northern coast of Africa and the United States generated a lot of research focusing on their new forms of protest, organisation and language. What have we learned since?
Cristina Flesher Fominaya: The movements of the squares mobilised millions of people, not just during the encampments but in a sustained trajectory of mobilisations for several years afterwards. Scholars have tried to make sense of what happened in the intervening years, and of course there have been new developments following the original events, such as the development of new political parties or the resurgence of older ones.
One clear characteristic of these movements has been their preoccupation with democracy. This is an ever more present concern in the context of the pandemic and the role of misinformation in weakening the ability to respond effectively to the threats posed, as well as increasing polarisation.
The experience of municipalism as a result of the movements is another key area, as are the resurgence of feminism and feminist economics; the collective learning produced by the movement; the generation of social capital as a result of the squares experience; and the role of the movements’ media ecologies in forging a legacy of civic engagement and communicative practices.
To me, the most important impact of the movements lies in the resignification of democracy and its recasting as a central problematic rather than a naturalised notion that is taken for granted. These movements emerged from a global financial crisis, but we are now in a world where cascading crises are challenging us profoundly. Our ability to address them is tied intrinsically to our democracies’ robustness and ability to innovate.
GV: Is institutionalisation necessarily detrimental for such movements, or can we perhaps think of successful experiences in some parts of the world?
CFF: I am not sure I agree with those who argue that the trajectory of such parties was disappointing. In Spain, the fact that they governed the major cities of the country at all was a miracle given the stronghold established parties had had up until that point.
City governments under Manuela Carmena and Ada Colau, for example, demonstrated incontrovertibly that it is possible to have an explicitly feminist agenda that transforms the lives of citizens for the better. They instituted important changes in urban policies and showed that a progressive agenda can be implemented successfully while massively reducing public debt and increasing transparency. They have also had an important influence on city governments elsewhere and in international forums.
Of course, many movements want and expect their every demand to be immediately implemented. For this reason, movement-parties will always be doomed to fail. Heterogeneous and complex movements like 15-M rarely, if ever, have a unified or clear set of demands, so you can never please everyone. New movement-parties are supported with such enthusiasm, in part, because of their initial indeterminacy: everyone can imagine and ‘hang’ their own particular issue and vision on to the new yet-to-be-created party. Once the party formalises policy, many people will be disappointed.
Cases like Syriza are very different. Syriza didn’t emerge from the squares but rode the wave of energy generated in the squares to gain electoral benefits. Such types of movement-parties have a firmly established party logic prior to this, which is much less elastic and open to change and experimentation. Institutionalisation of parts of movements can have a negative effect in co-opting leaders or sucking energy from movements to formal political arenas. But this can also be because movements have already reached an impasse or ran out of steam by that point, leaving some people looking for new options to realise their goals; while others retreat back into more submerged movement spaces. Meanwhile, new actors and movements bubble up and the cycle continues.
GV: We have observed new political issues and struggles emerging – for example around climate change. Are we likely to observe mass climate action? What are the prospects and obstacles?
CFF: 15-M argued that real democracy means placing life over capital. Sadly, our world is still governed by a logic that places capital over life. There has been some forcing of a shift in priorities in the context of the pandemic, but the threat (and reality) of climate change has not yet provoked this.
I would like to be hopeful, but the increased criminalisation of protest in current UK legislation, much of which is deliberately targeted against climate activists, makes it difficult to see those kinds of governments taking any kind of meaningful action. They would rather spend their energies silencing dissent from people trying to save the planet. Of course, the UK is just one current example of this.
GV: We have recently observed the proliferation of right-wing protests, movements and discourses, such as Donald Trump’s supporters storming into the Capitol in January 2021 – an unprecedented event in US politics. During the pandemic we witnessed anti-vaxx and no-mask protests, backed by the right and clashing with the police. Where are right-wing grassroots politics headed (organisationally, in terms of wider appeal, etc)?
CFF: Social movement scholars have largely ignored right-wing movements, for understandable reasons. We need to understand them better. They are very effective at recruitment, mobilisation and especially disinformation for political purposes.
The pandemic has provided stark evidence of how these movements can literally pose a threat to democracy and life through the propagation and mobilisation of no vax and conspiracy-drive movements. It would be overly simplistic to categorise no vax and conspiracy theorists as ‘right-wing’, but right-wing actors have played a key role. On the other hand, one must not ignore leftist and progressive movements that emerged during the pandemic, advocating for universal healthcare access and forging solidarity.
Cristina Flesher Fominaya is Professor of Global Studies at Aarhus University and expert in European social movement and politics.
Giorgos Venizelos researches left and right-wing populism and radicalism. His new book Populism in Power: Discourse and Performativity in SYRIZA and Donald Trump will be out in March 2023 with Routledge
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