In my last post, I talked about climate activists gluing themselves to famous paintings as a method of agenda setting, or getting into the news to influence the kinds of things on people’s minds. As the saying goes, the media doesn’t tell you what to think, but it does tell you what to think about, and so these demonstrators try to influence what people are thinking about by being disruptive enough to make the news. My discussion last time was focused on how you can adjust your media use to avoid having your agenda set by others. But now I want to look at it from the activists’ point of view.
If you care deeply about a cause, then you’ll want to find the most effective way to advocate for it. And it turns out that the most effective way to draw media attention is to do something controversial or disruptive. But being disruptive can also undercut public support for your movement, which creates an interesting trade-off called the activist’s dilemma: do you stick to mainstream actions that avoid controversy to build support, or do you do something disruptive and spend your public goodwill in exchange for media attention? It’s a balancing act, and it’s not always clear where the right balance lies.
Movements will often find the balance by having two separate arms with different focuses: a controversial arm that can make the news, and a noncontroversial arm that can raise goodwill for the movement. Here’s how it looks for climate activism:
Radical groups such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion perform disruptive protests, like stopping traffic or defacing famous artworks, so that the words “climate change” are in the news, and therefore on people’s minds.
Meanwhile, more moderate organizations such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club take a more moderate approach.1
And here’s the same pattern in animal activism:
Radical groups such as PETA do a bunch of controversial things to make the news, like handing out fliers titled “Your mommy kills animals” to children whose mother is wearing a fur coat. Or making parody Pokemon games where abused Pokemon fight against the humans who enslaved them.
Other organizations like the Humane Society quietly work with legislators and businesses to actually achieve change.2
This "good cop/bad cop" strategy lets movements benefit from both approaches, even if it’s completely unplanned. The radical flank makes moderate demands seem reasonable by comparison, while the moderate organizations can denounce the radicals and still benefit from the increased attention they’re drawing. We saw this same dynamic with civil rights organizations in the 1960s, where Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent approach seemed more palatable when contrasted with more radical groups like the Black Panthers, and it seemed to work well for them.
Even though this arrangement works, it feels pretty scummy. Radical groups shouldn’t get away with doing these kinds of things without some kind of consequence! And they don’t get away with it, many of them get arrested or fined. But, here's my hot take: I think that we shouldn't retaliate against a whole movement just because the radical arm does something controversial. Basically, “Consider the message, not the messenger”. If we dismiss an entire cause based on its most extreme voices, we risk ignoring valid concerns.
This sunscreen on my counter has no connection to Hitler whatsoever.
The genetic fallacy is a logical error where you dismiss a claim because of who said it, instead of evaluating it based on its own merits. More broadly, people experience a spiteful instinct that makes it really hard to agree with someone they dislike. Let’s take this to the extreme. Imagine that Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Osama bin Laden, and the rudest person you know all tell you that you need to start wearing sunscreen. Would you ignore them out of spite, or would you wear the sunscreen? I want to be the kind of person who would wear sunscreen, even if it’s Hitler giving that advice. (Being better at wearing sunscreen is one of my goals right now.) Good advice is good advice, no matter who says it, and spite rarely leads us anywhere useful. This comes up in politics: sometimes even your most hated political opponents have good ideas. And it also applies to social movements: some causes are worth supporting regardless of how you feel about the people behind them.
The activist’s dilemma highlights a tough strategic reality: activists have to balance the need to gain public attention with the risk of losing public support. My opinion is that, even if some members of a cause do things that are offensive, the cause itself can still be worth supporting. It’s human nature to want to reject the entire movement out of spite, but spite is rarely a good reason to make decisions.
Finally, the activist’s dilemma is only a dilemma because we, the public, give our attention to things that are shocking and controversial. So I want to reiterate the importance of my previous post on setting your own agenda. Disruptive protests won’t work if you don’t pay attention to them!
My preferred climate charity is called Clean Air Task Force, which focuses on evidence-based methods of saving lives by decarbonizing our energy systems.
My preferred animal charity is called The Humane League (no relation to the Humane Society). They focus on using effective, evidence-based methods to stop the abuse of animals.