Yves here. Tom Neuburger’s discussion of the growing political influence of TikTok, particularly among the young, helps explain why the officialdom is eager to considerably constrain it, as well as control speech on other platforms, as the Twitter Files and existence of other soi-disant disinformation initiatives show.
While Neuberger is correct that these platforms can create large groups who have common views and purpose (witness Black lives Matter, which got its momentum on Twitter before Democratic party forces co-opted it), it’s hard to see how the US gets from that to French-level revolt. There are so many forces operating against it.
First is that France is proud of its 1789 revolution and I strongly suspect also covers the failed 1848 rebellion (among other things, the backdrop of Flaubert’s L’education sentimentale) and its 1871 Paris Commune. Other countries have not hesitated to substantially recast their histories in the interest of social engineering. French readers are encouraged to pipe up, but at least when I was young, this did not seem to be the case.
Second, by contrast, America has long been focused on commerce and individual prosperity (see de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America). Post our Revolutionary War, rebels have been member of out groups (laborers, immigrants, women, blacks). Our histories seldom celebrate them, particularly if their campaigns get rough.
Third, neoliberalism has weakened community ties, which also weakens organizing muscle. Neoliberalism has also gutted social safety nets. That in combination with employers seeking workers with narrow skills and experience means that even in an apparently tight labor market, prospective employees with an arrest record for protesting will be at the back of the hiring queue. While this post includes talk of GenZ having nothing to lose….I don’t mean to sound cynical, but really? My time in the Deep South has given me a window on real poverty, as in people facing the real prospect of living in their car, which may still be only a waystop to living in the streets. And yes, it gets below freezing here in the winter. By contrast, participants in the old French uprisings often recognized they really were risking serious injury and death. And the bloody history of labor organizing in the US has been written out of most histories. Goons like the Pinkertons and the Henry Ford private army would lynch labor leaders, with the police turning a blind eye.
Finally, the US, unlike most European countries, does not have a single city that is the seat of government and the center of commerce. Being able to seriously disrupt such an important hub can give protestors leverage that is harder to achieve in a country with multiple loci of activity.
Shorter: forming large-scale communities seeking change is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective protests. I’m skeptical the other conditions exist or can be ginned up, at least in the US.
Unfortunately, and it would be much better if I were proven wrong, yours truly has long thought that response to greater income disparity and deteriorating conditions at the bottom would be more individual rather than organized and politicized violence.
And even if the US does see large-scale, organized protests, our police has been militarizing for a while and has been upgrading its implements, witness the robot dogs.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
I don’t agree with the tweeter’s reason why TikTok is under threat (third sentence), but the rest of his statements are true, especially the last: “Gen Z is fierce and unstoppable.” I don’t think they’ll go down polite. Full video below.
I want to start writing some pieces around repair, focused on fixing what’s clearly breaking down. I’ll do this in chunks, however. Starting with this, the idea of “critical mass.”
The Virtues of Critical Mass
First, a taste of what’s needed to fix our world, or at least the American part of it. One of the absolute necessities will be critical mass, a Sixties-style revolt against “things as they are” that’s also large enough to be self-regenerating.
Think of a gas-fired motor. Before electrical starters were added to cars, the motors had to be cranked by hand to get them started, turned by hand until they “caught” and rotated automatically, each turn powering the next.
Some lawn mower motors are like that as well, or used to be. Same with public revolt expressed in demonstrations.
Millions of people turned out in 650 cities to protest the Iraq War on February 15, 2003. It did no good. Not enough people, not enough disruption, no persistence at all. Result: No critical mass.
In contrast, Bernie Sanders and his crowds, in city after city, month after month, reached critical mass in both 2016 and 2020. That size and persistence almost powered him to the nomination twice.
Bernie Sanders speaks in Wisconsin in 2019
It took the combined effort of many elites to keep him from being elected.
Or consider the list of protests against the Vietnam War, hundreds in number. Those disappeared by the time Nixon was on the ropes, not for the War, but for crimes against other elites (like breaking into Democratic headquarters). But the protests did their job, first driving Johnson to retire, then keeping pressure on Nixon till he fell.
Another side of “critical mass” is disruption. Witness what the French — the derided “surrender monkeys” of Bush-era fame — are doing today [photo not included due to copyright protection]:
This is how people who really don’t want to be messed with show their displeasure. If they keep that disruption going and at that scale, the government will cave. If it doesn’t, it won’t be a government that’s still a republic.
So ingredient number one for successful revolt — critical mass.
Critical Mass Today
Where will critical mass come from today? A lot of places, but social media is one. Enter TikTok, to a great many people’s surprise.
Consider first the video below. If you have time, listen all the way through.
This video has 2.8 million views as of this writing. And it isn’t a political channel. She mostly “toks” (is that what they do over there?) about her personal life, like discovering that for her, “bi” could mean “gay.” It’s a fun channel, a real Gen Z mashup. But note that her few political “toks” — I’m just making words up here — get 10 times the viewage of most of her others.
Here are a few more from TikTok, courtesy of this Twitter thread. This onehas three million views, and it is from a political feed:
So does this one:
‘Nuff said?
Critical mass is just one of the pieces needed to spark the Next American Revolt. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
Acting French
The people with nothing to gain from solving our problems and all their possessions to lose — the octo and nonagenarians in charge of it all (you know who I mean) — have yet to face the full anger of people with nothing to lose if they fight back hard.
The ground’s being laid.
If I were an octo in charge, I’d be concerned. What if they start to act French, these Gen Z types, while you’re still on the earth?
