This summer, NIAS was a powerhouse of knowledge on revolutions and social movements. A large number of expert scholars came together in our attic for our summer workshop on this topic: Revolution Theory, Social Movement Theory: Bringing Them Closer.
Among the guests was renowned researcher Donatella della Porta, who was thoughtfully interviewed by Marcel Wiegman and Madelief van Dongen of Amsterdam daily newspaper Het Parool. Read the interview – it couldn’t be more timely.
Sharing some quotes:
Donatella della Porta is one of the most important European researchers of social movements. She is a professor of political science at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received honorary doctorates from six universities. Now that the Israeli army has launched an offensive on Gaza City and activists are preparing for new confrontations, her work is more relevant than ever.
Her point: if protesting is made impossible, if demonstrations are preemptively banned out of fear of public disorder, if protesters are turned into criminals, then all is lost. “Then you run the risk that people will remain silent and turn away from politics. A democracy can only truly be a democracy if it allows people to express their critical viewpoints.”
(…)
What do you mean by the criminalization of protest?
“That protest and freedom of expression are brought under criminal law. It’s a difficult issue, because protests often involve minor legal violations to draw attention. But criminalizing protest is a violation of civil rights. It’s a growing phenomenon. You see it in Germany, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators are being arrested, but also in the UK, where social movements have been declared fair game. That undermines trust in the government and the police. The criminalization of protest is also counterproductive. If you treat demonstrators as criminals, you push them to the margins. There’s a high chance that the protest will then go underground.”
