Class 10: Aspects of Social Movement Activity
Counter-mobilisation and countermovements
The Sticker War
A Serbian antifa named Stefan waged a similar campaign on his own in 2012: When he came upon wheat-pasted posters from the fascist Serbian Action in his neighborhood of Belgrade, he immediately tore them down … and noticed them back up again an hour later. He retaliated by plastering antifa stickers all over the Serbian Action posters … only to find Serbian Action stickers in favor of “Traditional courtship in marriage” and other conservative slogans plastered on top of his stickers in response. Every day for six months Stefan battled with an anonymous fascist for control of his neighborhood. About four months into the conflict Stefan saw a guy putting up a sticker down the street as he got off the bus. The two locked eyes but Stefan wasn’t sure if this was his nemesis. In any event, Stefan persisted, and eventually the Serbian Action propaganda ceased to appear. He simply outlasted them.
p121: The street art campaigns, whether posters or graffiti, ultimately serve to designate space as antifascist (Creasap 2016; Gerbaudo 2013; Waldner and Dobratz 2013). An antifascist tag or sticker in a dive bar signifies the space as welcoming to activists and hostile to fascists. Antifa posters or stickers on lamp posts or walls in a community show that at minimum there is an active militant antifascist group operating in the area.
Vysotsky, S. (2020). American Antifa: The tactics, culture, and practice of militant antifascism. Routledge.
Countermovement emergence
Countermovements become more likely when…
- an originating movement shows signs of success
- that success includes threats to existing interests
- (elite) allies are available to support counter-mobilisation
Countermovement emergence - critical events
When movements create or exploit critical events, they also encourage countermovements
critical events, for movements, can be government or state actions, accidents/incidents, large or conspicuous demonstrations
what were the critical events for your movement?
did they provoke counter-mobilisation or countermovement?
Countermovement emergence - threats to interests
- countermovements are more likely to emerge when there is a threat to interests, especially of large numbers of people and/or powerful persons or groups
- \(\hookrightarrow\) that is, especially threats that run along cleavages
- e.g., abortion rights in religious countries (religious-secular cleavage)
- \(\hookrightarrow\) that is, especially threats that run along cleavages
- mass media tends to seek out opposing interests to a movement’s claims (for ‘balanced coverage’) \(\rightarrow\) encourages countermovements
a countermovement emerging?
an active countermovement campaign, LGN
- countering organisations: Laut gegen Nazis (with Jung von Matt advertising agency)
- campaign: ‘Recht gegen Rechts’ - a series of legal actions against right-wing extremists
- action: file copyrights for neo-Nazis slogans
- e.g., copyrighted “VTR LND”
- then, companies using the copyrighted material must (a) stop, (b) report past sales, (c) pay share of revenues or fine
Triadic contention
- movements and countermovements form part of the opportunity structure of each other
- constrains the strategy and tactics available to movements and countermovements: demands (incl. frames), arenas (incl. targets and levels of action), tactics (institutional/demonstrative and/or direct action) (Meyer and Staggenborg 2008)
Triadic contention
- but the state is usually the most important creater of opportunity structure
- which state authorities are involved?
- what are those authorities’ posture?
- passive or active? (is the state mediating?)
- neutral or partial
