Activism

Activism means an undertaking policy favoring direct action. It is a form of militantism, one of whose terms can defy the law, in respect of shares which may be considered violent.

The term activism is also used in a weakened sense, not provided by the dictionary to describe an activity or a political commitment that we would like to emphasize intensity. It is then used to describe a form of militantism.

Means of action

Political activism is expressed through methods ranging from absolute non-violence – like the Indian leader Gandhi in twentieth century – to mass and “blind” violence.

Shares without physical violence

These actions originally based on the principle of non-violence, even though they may also lead, according to the reaction of their opponents strategy or their promoters, to violence:

• Civil disobedience by abstention: refusal to provide identification documents, refusal to participate in public institutions, business or private groups boycott, etc..
• Civil disobedience by obstruction: sit in and die in, blocking, obstruction of traffic, of the operation of public or private organizations, interpositions against housing or land evictions, human chains, role as a human shield, harboring of persons wanted by the police or illegal, etc..
• Moral pressure and dramatic gestures: hunger strike, escalating public monuments ..
• Illegal strikes, interruptions of gas, electricity, water.
• Wild propaganda (wild posting, stickers, spam, etc.).
• Actions on the Internet referred to as hacktivism.
• Nonviolent demonstrations.
• Happenings, temporary autonomous zones theory
• Petition.

Violence against property

• Direct appropriation of property (individual flights, spectacular operations in shops, company casting…), sit-ins, etc..
• Degradation or destruction of property, public or private.
• Sabotage of public or private property, including certain types of hacktivism.

Violence against persons

• Suasion by blackmail and threats against political, economic, religious or otherwise responsible persons
• Suasion by harassment of individuals or organizations, defamation, false bomb threats, operations of destruction  of branding or use of defamation, etc..
• Sequestration of economic or political responsibles.
• Physical interposition against the operation of public organizations, especially against police operations, or private, especially against the operation of enterprises.
• Acts of terrorism.
• Street actions, urban warfare, intimidation operations and demonstrations of force.
• Approach areas of nuclear tests, presence of railroad tracks … to dramatic political suicide (such as those monks in Vietnam).

History of the activism means

The levers of political activism have evolved over time.

The principle of manifestation and strikes, and violent means considered illegal in the first half of the 19th century, gradually allowed by law and supervised in the second half.

At the end of the 19th century, political terrorism has become a means of political action in itself fairly systematically used internationally by the anarchist movement.

Violent action is in turn become a mode of action of ultra-nationalist groups of the late 19th century, then giving birth to the twentieth century violence squadristi in Italy or the groups of SA Nazi in Germany.

Gandhi, in the context of the fight against British colonialism in India, theorized and developed forms of non-violent activism, notably based on civil disobedience. Subsequently, the corpus of non-violent activism techniques was developed: sit-ins, boycotts, hunger strikes, etc.. These actions have been widely used especially by the Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the years 1950-1960 under the leadership of Martin Luther King.

The 1960s saw the emergence of festive happenings techniques (“flash mobs” organized on the Internet are the heirs) and the 1990s, the Internet-related technologies, allowing the diversion of such message, the broadcast of the message on a large-scale or the site “attack” (congestion, sending computer viruses, etc.) being referred to as hacktivism. They are also the heirs of situationism.

The rise of mass media, image and sound, emotion vectors, direct (radio, television, Internet) and public (public opinion) has opened new avenues for activism. A symbolic action and powerful images can thus constitute sufficient leverage to put pressure on a state or business for which the brand has no price. This does not preclude further development of commando operations with very specific goals, such as anti-abortion commandos or anti-GMO commandos.

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Materials translated and adapted by Nicolae Sfetcu from the Wikipedia under the GNU Free Documentation License.