Reflections onThe Strategy of Social Protest

Abstract

Strategy examined the experience of a representative sample of challenging groups in American society from 1800 to 1945. I have often wondered, in the 15 years since writing it, whether the results would be the same for a sample of challenging groups since the end of World War II? Much has changed, and the answer is not simple or obvious. This essay reexamines the major arguments of Strategy, treating it as an open question whether they still hold or need revision to explain the experiences of more recent challengers. Two profound changes in American society since 1945 have created a radically different environment for challengers and I will continually return to them in different sections of this essay. The first centers on the rise of the national security state and particularly the sophisticated covert action capability that is part of it. The second centers on the rise of television, and with it, a much more central role for the mass media, affecting the strategies of both challengers and authorities. Neither, of course, is completely new. Pre-1945 challengers experienced company spies and agents provocateur, but compared to overt repression, covert action to disrupt and demobilize a challenger was rarely of any significance. The expansion of the intelligence apparatus since 1945 has added sophisticated new ways of attacking challengers to the social control repertoire of authorities. As Donner (1980:xii) notes, None of the manifold excesses of the past can compare in scope and intensity with the secret war waged