In brief: the No Kings protests are meaningless political theater. Protests alone do nothing. They must signify more substantial action before anyone in power cares about them, and there have been no serious organizational efforts to expand the protests into coordinated action.
One of the greatest protests in US history was the Montgomery bus boycott. Everyone remembers Rosa Parks sitting at the front of the bus and her arrest, but the part that people then forget is that the boycott lasted a year and two weeks. Some of the additional context that gets lost is that in 1955, buses were far more important to the poor, Black community than they are today. It was a terrible burden on both the community and many individuals to refrain from using the bus for a year and two weeks. But it fucking worked. The Montgomery bus boycott was a significant factor that led the US Supreme Court to hear a case about racial segregation. In 1956, it ruled that racial segregation was illegal in the Browder v. Gayle case! It didn’t fix racism, obviously, but it created an enduring legal change. During the boycott, rallies and marches also took place. I’m not saying they had no place, but not the place of pride.
There was also backlash. Someone shotgunned Martin Luther King Jr.’s house, some men beat up a black girl getting off a bus on Christmas Eve, some assholes used rifles to attack buses (and in one case shot a pregnant woman through both legs,) and five churches and the home of a white pastor who dared side with the boycott were bombed. The bombers would later be acquitted in a court of “law.” Bus service was suspended because of the violence, and the city moved to strengthen segregation in other areas, basically disallowing black people to meet except in private or at church. And the specific issue? In practice, in the short term, most Black people in Montgomery returned to sitting at the back of the bus. It was only during the 1970s – fifteen years after the boycott – that it became common for Black people to sit wherever the hell they wanted.
But it did work. It was, however, hard. And dangerous. The protestors faced violent attacks, including downright random violence against teenage girls and pregnant women, as well as legal action. However, it was critical in getting the law to acknowledge that racial segregation was illegal in an enduring court decision.
Yesterday, a couple of million PO’d Americans milled around city hall for an afternoon. Now what? Why does the Trump regime stop sending that organized crime ring called ICE on paramilitary raids? I see people taking victory laps when they haven’t even started the damn race. Standing in front of city hall does nothing.
(Though, we are already seeing the backlash in the form of murdered Democratic politicians in Minnesota. Here’s a fnord: liberals have protest rallies. MAGA sends in the Marines.)
But everyone likes a good call to action, right? As both a historian and a futurist, I spent some time thinking about how we could modernize the Montgomery bus boycott. Part of the context in Montgomery was that it targeted city infrastructure that was necessary to everyone but primarily financed through Black people. It was a city service that had an oversized effect, allowing the poor, marginalized Black community to be heard. Yes, the boycotters suffered, but so did the city. The city relented because of practical considerations. It was going broke.
Then I thought to myself, what is an industry where, if liberals all over the country and allies from all over the world boycotted this one industry, it would get people to sit up and pay attention. It came to me at once: social media. By boycotting products owned by Meta (including Facebook and Instagram,) Alphabet (including Google and Facebook,) and X and TikTok, the tech bros that are financing Trump and his sick ideology, largely for short-term political reasons that run contrary to their stated beliefs, would have many billions of reasons to withdraw their support from Trump. It would remind all of them that their business model relies on the continued content creation of the people and hold them to account for their beliefs. Here’s how:
1. The direct revenue hit to social media. The US market is the biggest market for all of these companies – they get between a third and half of their income from North America – so large-scale disengagement would have a dramatic effect on their bottom line.
2. Due to the importance of social media to advertisers, particularly businesses catering to liberal markets, they would have a financial interest in putting pressure on social media firms to get back those users.
3. It would have global visibility due to the significance of social media. Everyone would know about it, and it would affect everyone on social media.
4. Scalability. I know that people from all over the world want Trump to suffer, from all over the world want to stop the rising tide of American authoritarianism! This would allow everyone, everywhere, to participate!
5. Moral pain. Most of the tech bros who run social media are, themselves, center-left. They are consciously choosing the authoritarian Trump over what they know is right because they are fearful of Democratic attempts to legislate social media. The plan would be to convince them that the financial pain they suffer by supporting Trump is aligned with their stated values.
6. The outsized influence of social media moguls. Social media companies are some of the largest, most profitable companies on earth. Their leaders are some of the most recognized people in the world. Getting them to change, to withdraw their support for Trump and his policies, and to act according to the dictates of their conscience to support democracy would be a real blow to authoritarian despot wannabes not only in the US but all over the world. It would show them all that the people still retain the power to affect the biggest corporations, the richest people. It wouldn’t be simply a material blow (though it would also be that) but a massive symbolic blow.
And here’s where the fun comes in! This could – and should – be coupled with a program of financial disinvestment. Most social media firms are publicly traded. A boycott would cause a share price drop, anyway, so additional pressure to disinvest in social media would not be simply a political decision but a good financial one, too!
It would not be easy. First, it would require a widespread acknowledgment of the algoloop trap and algofog. In other words, to face our addiction to social media. Second, we would need to beat that addiction, at least in the sense of deferring it to other platforms. Third, of course, since so much of so many people’s lives are algoloop trapped, it would mean, for instance, no more family updates on Facebook. It would mean losing out on the sense of connection with your friends on X. Fourth, it would need to happen for a long time. Months, maybe years. It would be hard. And, frankly, on its own, it won’t be enough, just like the Montgomery bus boycott wasn’t, in isolation, enough. But it would be a hell of a start, and it stops the pattern of performative protests that mean nothing. It could be social media activism that bites and bites hard.
Not to mention that the companies and people who participated would face various forms of backlash. But all meaningful protest is hard! If something could be solved by something so simple as showing up on a rainy Saturday afternoon, the rising tide of Trumpist fascism would have been stopped long ago! For protest to work, you’ve got to be willing to suffer, and you’ve got to be willing to let other people suffer. That’s the way it works. Protest without pain is nothing but theater.