Take me to your leaderless cause

Demonstrators make their feelings known during a march for the Tea Party movement in Washington. Picture: AFP Source: The Australian

I am referring to a series of global developments that have surfaced over recent years and had considerable social and political impact.

I think the new protest genre was first and perhaps best illustrated in the rise of the conservative Tea Party movement in the US in late 2008. Here was a protest movement response to outrage at taxpayer-funded largesse being heaped upon a flawed corporate America.

"We the people have had enough" was more or less the catchcry of the Tea Party. This movement was leaderless at its inception, as indeed it remains today, despite the fact many aspiring and flailing politicians have tried to attach their brand to the Tea Party's ascension.

However, it could be argued this "leaderless" Tea Party movement was in fact preceded by the rallying around climate change as a popular cause.

True believers had been gathering around climate change for years, but it wasn't until the first decade of the 21st century that it connected with the mainstream (although much less so in the US than in Britain and Australia). To be sure, there are any number of public figures who can be readily associated with the climate movement - Tim Flannery is a good example in Australia - but in the early years this, too, was merely a popular idea that caught the imagination of many.

The movement was well under way when failed US presidential candidate Al Gore took the concept of climate change, packaged it and pitched it to the masses via his 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth.

So successful was this cause with the middle class that it has been critical to the rise of the Green movement both in Australia and elsewhere over the past decade. But my point is that, as with the Tea party movement, the climate change movement emerged from the will of a people who believe - rightly or wrongly - that they can influence the future. This modern way of thinking might stem from the fact that many adults under the age of 50 - Generation Xers and Ys - do not see the hindrances of previous generations. No one today sits back and waits for leadership on an issue. If there is injustice then outrage will follow with full fury either from an individual or from the collective.

Combine access to and proficiency with social media with a sense of entitlement to a future that is not imposed by a regime or a way of thinking and you have the makings of a velvet revolution: a soft but seismic shift in the way people think.

This is powerful and threatening stuff for politicians caught on the wrong side of tectonic shifts. Perhaps that's why modern politicians are so addicted to polls and focus groups; they fear a wind shift that might expose them to a predator.

But the 21st century rise of leaderless popular causes is much more than the doings of the idle middle class in the rich and feckless West.

The idea of the modern protest movement was given new impetus this year with the rise of the Arab Spring. Popular protest movements surfaced and changed regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya within 12 months. And there is further popular and social media-facilitated dissent in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen.

Consistent with the modern genre of protest movements, the Arab Spring movement has no single identifiable leader urging Continued on or strategising the way forward. Osama bin Laden's legacy is not the damage he inflicted on the West. It was his ability to inspire what is effectively an asymmetric anti-US response from a wider disaffected Muslim community.

Causes without a leader are the latest fashion in protest movements. And perhaps beyond leaderless causes the next logical step is for a leaderless cause to emerge that has no objective. The point being merely to protest about something nefarious and omnipresent. Meet the Occupy Wall Street movement that surfaced globally last month, including in Sydney and Melbourne.

Here is a leaderless protest movement that seems to have caught the imagination of a generation. Although the objectives of this group remain somewhat unclear, they are clearly concerned about "corporate greed".

I see a link between the conservative Tea Party and the youthful Occupy movements. The Tea party believes that government has lost touch with middle America. The Occupy movement believes the corporate world no longer represents the majority. The catchcry of the Occupy movement is that they represent the 99 per cent of the community that is not wealthy.

The global financial crisis has created a market for dissent: Tea Party for the conservatives and the Occupy movement for the progressives. They even appeal to disparate demographic groups.

All of this is, of course, a wonderful addition to the democratic discourse. As indeed are the revolts of the Arab Spring. But I can't help wondering why the same sense of injustice that inspires the climate change movement, that propels the Tea Party and the Occupy group, never protests against atrocities in totalitarian regimes.

I have a great idea. Let's occupy Sydney's Martin Place and Melbourne's Federation Square until the Australian government and Big Business (for they are surely in cahoots) "do something" about the human rights abuses in North Korea.

According to the Amnesty International Report 2011 there are human rights abuses in North Korea including arbitrary detention, torture and ill treatment leading to death and executions. No? No takers?

Clearly, my idea of protest and dissent in the 21st century doesn't appeal to Western sensibilities. Government and business need to understand that shifts in modern thinking and priorities can be both fickle and lethal.