“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country from his government.” Edward Abbey
Public protest has a powerful allure. The crowd gives confidence and strength; the shouts, chants and raised fists generate adrenaline. “How good bad music and bad arguments sound when we march against an enemy”, said Friedrich Nietzsche.
Many political leaders have understood the “power of the street”, “of the public square”. Benito Mussolini launched a “march on Rome” in October 1922, 100 years ago. Pressure from hundreds of thousands of Blackshirts led to the resignation of Liberal Prime Minister Luigi Facta and il Duce’s seizure of power. The march recalled the “triumphs,” the parades commemorating the military victories of Julius Caesar and other rulers and generals of ancient Rome.
Gustave le Bon understood it before. In 1895 he published La Psychologie de foules (The Psychology of Crowds) in which he noted: “While all our old beliefs are tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are crumbling one by one, the power of the crowd is the only a force that is not threatened and whose prestige is continually growing. The age we are about to enter will truly be the age of the multitudes.”
And it has been. Not only Mussolini, but also Hitler and Stalin, and many other dictators, have used the force of the masses to achieve or maintain power. While it is true that protests in the streets have also served to overthrow dictators, when opponents take power through the impulse of the crowd, they often end up becoming dictators themselves.
The left in our country, long banned or ruled out of democratic access to power, gained strength in the streets. The 1968 demonstrations shook the country; that of the Polytechnic of 1971, which led to the Halconazo, left a mark on the government of Luis Echeverría; Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas protested in the streets for the electoral fraud of 1988 and Andrés Manuel López Obrador himself made the protests the platform of a movement that would take him to the Presidency.
It was not, however, the street protests that gave us democracy, but the electoral reforms, in particular that of 1996, which took place when López Obrador was national president of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. López Obrador himself acknowledged this in a 1997 interview, in which he pointed out the creation of an autonomous IFE as great achievements of his management in the PRD, without an “umbilical cord” with the Ministry of the Interior, and with elected councilors with ” the opinion of the opposition parties.
López Obrador has been the owner of the streets and public squares in recent decades. His sit-in on the Paseo de la Reforma in 2006 did him significant political damage, but other mobilizations projected him as a national leader. That is why today he makes fun of his critics and invites them to occupy the Zócalo, to make them look ridiculous in comparison.
Democracy, however, should not be the ability to fill streets or squares. Many people do not manifest themselves, but that is not why they should be stripped of the power of suffrage. López Obrador is today the most powerful president of recent decades, not because he has had great convening power, but because he knew how to win the vote of the citizens. Today we see a political movement that seeks to stop an electoral reform that he promotes to strengthen his party. The protest is understandable, but the real way to stop it is not to organize marches but to get more votes.
Women
Mohamed Akef Mohajer, a spokesman for the Ministry of Virtue and Vice, said yesterday that the Afghan government did everything it could, but “unfortunately the rules have been violated.” The unit has thus had to prohibit women’s access to gyms and parks.
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