The legitimacy of protest

Protest is a deeply democratic act – it is the exercise of people power to highlight a wrong to be righted by those most able to do so (e.g., government or other authority, company or land owners (Klandermans, 1997).

For unknown reasons, this millennium has seen an unprecedented frequency and diversity of protest (Bevins, 2023; Brennan et al., 2020; Ortiz et al., 2022; and see www.worldprotests.org for visualisations). There is protest regarding income inequality (e.g. Occupy, yellow vest), discrimination and disadvantage (e.g. MeToo, Black Lives Matter), the climate crisis (e.g. Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion), civil liberties and rights (e.g. 'Arab Spring', 'woman - life – freedom' movement in Iran), and Covid-related policy.

This millennium is also characterised by political polarisation, distrust, incivility, and violence (see Bevins, 2023; Brennan et al., 2020) fed by partisan media consumption (e.g. Riddle et al., 2020; for general discussions, see Bevins, 2023; Castells, 2012).

Is protest yet another sign of a dangerous divisiveness in our civic life? For instance, recent protests and counter-protests in London challenged the typically solemn commemoration of the end of WWI hostilities on Armistice day (Townsend et al., 2023). The hundreds of thousands who marched in London were viewed as either calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to protect Palestinian civilians, or as anti-Semitic supporters of Hamas (Bland, 2023).

Similarly, the 1,000 counter-protestors were viewed as either patriotic protectors of national heroes or as far-right white nationalists spoiling for a fight. However they were viewed, protestors and counter-protestors alike believed their cause to be righteous and their actions legitimate.

As protest calls out a believed wrong in the hope that it can be righted, divisiveness is not its central aim (Klandermans, 1997; Teixeira et al., 2020). Where protest divides people into polarised camps that flout civil discourse and human rights, protest is made divisive. And it is made dangerous – to protestors, counter-protestors, police, and, potentially, to the society as a whole.

In other words, protest is made dangerously divisive by how it is handled (see the work of John Drury and colleagues; and US Crisis Monitor, 2020). The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement for racial equality has been quite divisive, and on rare occasions dangerous, for precisely these reasons (Leach & Allen, 2017; Leach & Teixeira, 2022).

Black Lives Matter

The BLM movement is one of the largest examples of popular protest in recent times, with about 82 million participants in the U.S. alone (Ortiz et al.,2022). Participation peaked around the world after the May 2020 videotaped police killing of George Floyd. Protests in the UK occurred throughout the country, from Porthleven to Shetland (see tinyurl.com/52h5nrb6).

Similar to the 2011 'riots' after the police killing of Mark Duggan in Tottenham (Drury et al., 2019), the BLM protests in 2020 were often linked to more local examples of believed racism by the police or others.

In Bristol, for instance, a BLM protest toppled a statue of infamous slave trader Edward Colston. This was no angry mob. In contrast to the popular view of protest as the rampaging of a crowd infected by hysteria (Drury et al., 2019) the protestors in Bristol were quite purposeful (Siddique & Skopeliti, 2020; more generally, see Drury & Reicher, 2009; Klandermans, 1997; Thomas et al., 2022; van Zomeren et al., 2012). They organised to remove the heavy statue and rolled it hundreds of metres to the harbour, near a bridge dedicated to slave Pero Jones.

Whatever one's view of the use of the Colston statue in the Bristol protest, it was designed to be a highly symbolic assertion of people power against what was taken to be an anachronistic racism that did not fit these Bristolian's image of themselves, their city, and their society.

By toppling the statue and displacing it from the centre of public life, the protestors aimed to topple and displace racism itself. In the shadow of Pero's bridge, this was an assertion that BLM meant more to these Bristolians than does the statue of a notorious slave trader.

Of course, in addition to being deemed illegal by authorities who prosecuted several of those responsible, there was opposition to the aims and actions of the protest (Olusoga, 2020; de la Mare, 2021).

This argued that Colston is a legitimate representation of Bristol's (and Britain's) history, deserving of its prominent place in public life. Opposition to the actions of the protest argued that legal means of petition were the only legitimate way to protest and ultimately displace Colston (despite years of failed attempts).

In the end, in Bristol, this particular BLM protest was divisive, but not dangerous. It did not result in violence or disruption. It did, however, spark a serious debate about the legacy of slavery and its connections to contemporary racism and inequality (Olusoga, 2020). Surely this was one of the aims of the Bristol protest, and it is difficult not to view it as successful in this regard.

BLM has evoked strong support and opposition globally (for reviews, see Leach & Allen, 2017; Leach & Teixeira, 2022). Some who oppose BLM see it as illegitimate because they believe that the movement values Black life more than other life and thus believes that it is 'racist'.

Some who oppose BLM see it as illegitimate because they disagree with its defining premise that Black life is devalued by the police, by the government, and by society at large (Teixeira et al., 2022).

Other opposition to BLM is based in the belief that its tactics are illegitimate because they are too confrontational, destructive, or violent (Teixeira et al., 2023). Like a lot of protest (Drury & Reicher, 2009; Riddle et al., 2020), BLM protest has been portrayed as violent and destructive in the news and other media despite strong evidence to the contrary (Leach & Teixeira, 2022). Portraying protest as violent or destructive is a powerful way to undermine its legitimacy.

Not in and of itself dangerous and divisive

It is therefore crucial that the discussion of protest is informed by verifiable facts regarding size, aims, and tactics, rather than by hearsay or partisan spin, and psychologists have a role to play in this. Another role is explaining that passionate commitment to protest is not in and of itself dangerous or divisive (van Zomeren et al., 2012).

Human beings can be emotional and committed without being irrational, disrespectful, or violent. Indeed, from a systems perspective, it is possible that healthy debate sparked by protest is a key driver of ethical, social, and political improvement in society (Drury & Reicher, 2009; Leach & Bou Zeineddine, 2021).

The process of moral improvement, however, is not always straightforward. It can be psychologically painful to confront moral shortcomings, especially in public (Leach & Iyer, in press).

Clinically oriented psychologists may be particularly adept at teaching us to use empathy and compassion to understand protestors and counter-protestors as decent human beings who typically believe in the righteousness of their cause and the legitimacy of their actions.

In the end, the only way to keep divisiveness from tearing us apart is by sharing a model of constructive disagreement that keeps us together. Couples, family, and group therapy offer powerful examples in this regard given their emphasis of ground rules for engaging in constructive conflict.

Given our field's commitment to well-being, then, psychologists have every reason to engage in the important work of helping us all see the legitimacy of (Black Lives Matter) protest aimed at righting wrongs in the service of promoting individual, group, and societal well-being.

Professor Colin Wayne Leach (Barnard College, Columbia University) studies status and morality in identity, emotion, and motivation. He has authored over 100 publications and co-edited Psychology as Politics (2001), Immigrant Life in the U.S. (2003), The Social Life of Emotions (2004), and Societal Change (Journal of Social & Political Psychology, 2013).

Dr Catia Teixeira is based in the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. Her work revolves around intergroup relations and focuses specifically on social inequality and social change, power dynamics and the psychological experience of privilege in the face of collective protest towards more equality.

Dr Shaunette T. Ferguson (Columbia University, New York) is a computational social scientist specialising in network science. She explores the mechanisms driving social systems and their interplay with dynamic phenomena. Her work focuses on unravelling how local interactions culminate in collective outcomes, employing advanced computational models to decode complex social behaviours.

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de la Mare, T. (2021, December 22). Edward Colston 'sentenced to death' as statue thrown in harbour, court told. The Independent. 
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