Ted Nugent recently wrote an editorial in The Washington Times detailing how the Millennial generation has had an abysmal track record when it comes to mobilizing itself into meaningful political action, and then proceeded to talk about the good old days of the 1960s and '70s when there were real political movements among the youth of the United States. Despite my disgust at his destructive political views and tremendous ignorance regarding economic and social issues, I am inclined to agree with him on the first point.
The Millennials are awful when it comes to meaningful attempts at social change. The June 30 response to Nugent by Greg Nasif, entitled "Millennials: More engaged than you think," merely added more fuel to my belief that most so-called college activists are, in fact, terrified of social change and are ineffectual armchair activists who mistake talk and a virtual Internet presence for meaningful participation in the real-world battlegrounds where change is effected.
How can anyone claim they actually contributed to anything by sitting around on their laptop? I visited www.avaaz.org, as mentioned in Nasif's article, and it's literally just a depot for Internet petitions. How is this real activism? Any feel-good petition could be posted there, and is sure to acquire a large number of signatures from "activists" sitting far behind the front lines. Signing the petition means nothing, because it is entirely safe. Nothing has been risked, nothing will be gained. One could make a petition on Avaaz that's about ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. One could get 500 million people to sign it; it would fail. Governments the world over don't care about armchair activists at all; words are not actions. Without any sort of mobilization of the population to demonstrate the power of a popular movement, activism is sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I'm more than a little confused as to why this kind of completely inactive activism is something people find admirable. Why not fight police in the street if your cause is just? Why not interrupt political events if they are against your cause and violate the ideals you believe in? Is it because those things are — to borrow a phrase from Nasif — "downright barbaric?" All of the people in the Third World battling for their lives against repressive regimes are disgusting barbarians based on this assessment.
Philosophical non-violence is the purview of the privileged. There are rebel groups all over the world battling in the face of oppression. Would you support them if they organized sit downs and hunger strikes (and then get shot)? The Arab Spring worked as it did due to a very specific set of circumstances. This leads me to the definition of "meaningful protest," and why the recent "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" — also mentioned by Nasif as a form of his own activism — does not fit into this model in any way.
The rally was soulless consumerism at its finest. It was something allowing young liberals to congregate and say "I was there!" There were no goals, and there was no real point. Some people came out to show support against a conservative bogeyman and for some things approaching real issues. But most came out to congregate around corporate media and pretend that this meeting was important, though it had meaning in no other sense than through filling their own collective egos.
Do you think the protesters and supposed revolutionaries in the Arab Spring managed to overthrow their regimes through strategic clicks on an online form? In fact, a tremendous majority didn't use Facebook or Twitter or other social media; they actually went out and protested. Technology is a useful tool. However, many people today attempt to use it as a substitute for actual action. Signing online petitions and "liking" things on Facebook as a replacement for activity is a convenient illusion for the privileged. While I have my own issues with Arab Spring, at least they went out and did something. Armchair activism cannot and will not accomplish what civil rights protesters did in the 1960s and '70s, and while Ted Nugent looks back on those decades with a rose-tinted lens, he has a point about America's youth today. If you aren't willing to even argue and be passionate about your political and moral beliefs, then you'll be left by the wayside while the real activists and revolutionaries change the world.
Thomas Bradtke is a senior history major. He can be reached at tjbradtke at verizon dot net.
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7/15/2011
Guest column: Faux activism - Opinion - The Diamondback - University of Maryland
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