Political Activism in Europe (re: Tour de France incident)

Great Debates
1

For those that haven’t heard, there was a little trouble on the most previous leg of the ongoing cycling event, the Tour de France.

http://espn.go.com/oly/tdf2003/s/2003/0715/1580829.html

Protesters ran out in front of the group of cyclists that included American hero Lance Armstrong. But their protest had nothing to do with cycling.

Now this sort of thing strikes me as absolutely bizarre, compared to the typical style of American protesting. For one thing, this “radical farmer” actually went out and destroyed other people’s private property and got himself jailed. This is something we expect in the States with riots and college students whose schools lose in nat’l sports title games. But from political activists? Anyone who did that here would be labelled as a terrorist, not merely an activist.

Civil disobedience is not unknown here, but at least over the last 100 years or so, it’s been mostly nonviolent, with a small handful of nuts who cross the line but never receive a groundswell of open support. Our environmentalists might stand in front of a bulldozer, but they wouldn’t take a bat and smash up a logging mill. Our animal activists perhaps go the furthest towards violence against others’ property, spray-painting fur coats and such, but they’d wear any arrests as badges of pride. I can’t see them running out in the middle of a sporting event to protest the arrest.

Most telling, the tour officials saw this as merely a “normal race incident”, and didn’t invalidate the stage results. It certainly seems as if populist political activism and the accompanying protests are far more of an everyday occurance in Europe. It seems like practically any time we get news out of Europe, there’s some big populist protest going on. It also seems like it’s a little more…direct…than the sort of activism we have here in the States, for the most part.

Am I imagining this, or is there a real difference, and what are it’s causes if there is?

2

I heard about this too, and am probably as confused as you are.

This is just my WAG, but perhaps it is because France (and many other continental powers) have a more recent experience with intolerant government, and thus still have the notion (perhaps founded) that the best way to enact change is to be more vocal. In addition, the “more extreme” political parties have more power (due to coalition government, proportional representation, and other factors), so more extreme political activities may be less frowned upon.

No, I have no evidence to back this up.

3

Civil disobedience is certainly mainstream here.

I have no idea if grassroot US juries are switched on enough to understand the notion of ‘perverse verdicts’ but that’s what aids many causes here – kind of like an OJ verdict but on issues of conscious / morality / common sense / ethics, etc. Ignore the evidence, return a ‘Not Guilty’ and, thus, give government policy / corporations a bloody nose.

Also makes deciding whether to try and bring the prosecution a very tricky often political game.

‘Not Guilty’s’ that come immediately to mind involve Greenpeace activists destroying GM crops and people breaking into a military compound and busting up some planes due to be exported to, I think, Indonesia.

4

Judging by your name, I’d assume ‘here’ is the UK?

Unfortunately, that happens in the US, but not so much in civil disobedience cases, which (if sent to trial) usually incorperate damage to civil or private property, assaults, and other crimes of a high and aggrivated nature. What comes to mind here, more often than not, are civil suits brought against companies (such as the 1990’s campaign against RJR Nabisco, and the current ones against McDonalds and Kraft Foods (a division of Phillip Morris USA, Inc)) and frivolous suits (the McDonalds coffee in the crotch incident comes to mind.)

Again, in the US, prosecution is often a matter of the extent of damage and whatnot. Moreoften than not, if it is a peaceful civil disobedience, such as a sit in or a rally-without-permit, it will merely be broken up by police. Only if the protesters or activists resist and refuse to disperse will arrests happen, and more often than not only small fines are levied.

I remember in 1986, when I lived in Rome, NY, because my father was a B-52 pilot on Griffis AFB, some GreenPeace ‘protesters’ came out and damaged 5 aircraft to the tune of $14 million. It seems that the base CO was given orders from higher command NOT to open fire on the protesters, and to wait for civilian authorities to apprehend them. Mind you, this was at the height of Regan era Cold-War rhetoric, and Griffis did have signs “Use of Deadly Force Authorized” posted. Unfortunately, I believe that the GreenPeace bastards would have been given a not-guilty verdict if tried AFTER being fired upon by USAF SP’s. In any case, each member of the group who was caught, if I recall correctly, got 5 years in Ft. Levanworth federal penitentary (SIC).

5

I watched Tour de France today too, and thought of exactly the same as you. I came to the conclusion that given the choice between living in an uncommitted community versus a committed or impassioned one, and where interest groups sometimes do bizarre stuff, I’ll take the latter any day, - you never know when you need it.

However, France is a bit special when it comes to political activisim, and especially Tour de France has been the target of such (they get on the tv, and it’s difficult to control the route).

Most European countries got a substantial group of activists, something which I think it’s good. They have the ability to organize demonstrations quickly whenever something fishy happens (when facist Le Pen made it to the second round in the latest presidential election in France, there were a lot of people in the streets demonstrating the same evening.) Only a fraction is violent though, but they are the ones that get on television. Usually demonstrations are non-violent, and rarely is other people’s private property destroyed. But you don’t see that on tv.

On the other hand, having watched some of the things happening during the Florida recount, I’m not so sure America and Europe is so far apart, maybe it’s only different types of issues that people get upset about.
Stemba, interesting read, I’m pretty sure that if US military personell shot and killed an activist who wasn’t holding a weapon it would be an outcry like never seen before. It would certainly have been the end to that military base.

6

Here in the US, they call that “jury nullification”, and it’s highly frowned upon. In civil cases, jury nullification cannot be accomplished without the silent cooperation of the judge, because if the facts are such that only one outcome could reasonably be reached by the jury, the judge can issue a directed verdict. He can also overturn verdicts after the fact on the same basis. Judges can give directed verdicts against the gov’t in a criminal case, but not against the accused, which is what makes OJ-type stuff possible (though, IMHO, I think the LAPD was so sloppy with that evidence that they deserved to lose it, if only to get them to shape up…and to the OJ jury, I think it was a moral issue, a response to the erosion of civil liberties resulting from police oppression.)

That’s how it is here in the States. You can probably buy a dozen novels at the airport terminal in which juries acquit somebody because they felt the crime was morally justified even if not legally justified (as in Grisham’s A Time to Kill, where the jury struggles whether to acquit a man who killed his daughter’s rapist.) But I’ve never heard of this being done in cases where the issue seems so benign, like genetically-enhanced foods.

In essence, I think jury nullification should only be exercised when the law in question is severely out-of-step with the background norms of the people. Here, I imagine a farmer destroying genetically-enhanced crops would be seen as no more than a businessman using force to destroy his competition, the sort of act the law is designed to punish. In short, it’s not an issue that would raise even a fraction of the moral outrage that would be required before juries thought to nullify laws. Even if genetically-enhanced foods posed as severe a threat to farmers here as it may in some European countries, it’s not the sort of threat that would create public outrage, merely a natural consequence of technological progress requiring the market to adapt and evolve as it always has.

I suppose Europeans have a much broader and less person-centered concept of what is unjust than we do.

7

Don’t get inbetween a French farmer and his protest. Being in a country where farmers are routinely trod on by governments, I find it quite refreshing to see them standing up for themselves. Deregulation of the dairy industry here has decimated communities and has effectively restricted lifestyle choices. People who just want to make enough money to raise their families on small properties are not able to do so anymore - you either have to be huge and cost efficient, or else you are tossed out on your ear. Personally, I find the loss of lifestyle choice to be one of the saddest elements of ‘economic rationalism’. More power to the French who are actively fighting this change in lifestyle.

As a little anectdotal story, my husband and I met with French farming protest enthusiasm first hand. We were in Provence a couple of years ago, hired a sweet little Mercedes A Class that had difficulty getting above 70km/h, and drove in to a gorgeous village called St-Remy-de-Provence. We wandered around, did a little shopping, then sat down at a cafe to enjoy the fine Provencal cuisine.

As we were walking back to our car we were bemused to see a great pile of green pears flooding through the village square. We at first thought a farmer had lost his load, but as we were driving out of the town, we came across piles of apples, pears and oranges at each subsequent intersection. It was quite funny trying to navigate through all the fruit. At the final intersection we came across a far more nefarious dumping… a giant mound of horse crap. I mean, this pile had to be about 15 feet across and at least 6 feet high in the middle. The traffic was starting to bank up because the first car to come across the crap was a very large, very clean Uber Mercedes, driven by a lady with very pouffy hair.

Well, it soon became obvious that said pouffy-lady was not willing to endure a little horse crap on her sweet French tires. We were the third car in the queue, and being a country girl now living in our largest city, I was not going to attack this problem in a namby-pamby fashion. I sized up the space between the cars and the footpath, nudged my way past an old Puegeot, and got alongside pouffy-lady (who was by then applying lipstick). In the manner of the French, I gave a little toot-toot, a smile and a wave, then gunned that little car engine and drove straight at the edge of the great dung pile. The little car hit the dung edge at about 40km/h, lifted up about 1 foot in the air on the driver’s side, then plopped back down with a satisfying thump. Obligatory horse crap spraying up in our wake. More toot-tooting and waving ensued with other cars at the intersection, and with much smiling and laughter all round.

Overall, it was a thoroughly pleasant day that reinforced why I love France and its people as much as I do.

8

This was not a violent protest. The Confédération Paysanne activists disrupted the Tout de France, but they didn’t hurt anyone or damage anything. The chose the Tour de France because it is France’s largest sporting event, and this guarantees important media coverage.

José Bové is something of a popular hero for many people in France, and this is because he is more than just an eccentric who campaigns against GM crops. His original concern was for the detrimental effects that globalisation in the form of the GAT and the way that the CAP is currently run (although they’re finally getting round to reforming it) has on small farms and traditional agriculture. He is right in that these are productivity-focused and massively favour large exploitations which produce enormous amounts of produce, and pretty much destroy small-scale production of higher quality or specialised goods. This in turn damages the natural environment which is after all not natural at all, but formed by centuries of agriculture.

This appeals to a country which sees its food as a central, and indeed essential, part of its cultural identity. The loss of genuine regional foods or their subverting by non-traditional producers and retailers genuinely angers people. This has been reflected in recent years by the fact that France is far ahead of most other EU countries in providing the consumer with the exact origin of foodstuffs, and the wide-ranging Appellation d’Origine Controllée system, which is now applied EU-wide.

Finally, France has a long tradition of political activism in the form of strikes, direct action and mild civil disobedience. It is not people’s natural instinct to side with the Powers That Be, and many of us firmly believe that there is a duty to resist unjust or bad law. After all, we have had four revolutions in 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1870. We are a Bolshie people.

At a more emotional level, José Bové is Asterix, the little guy who resists the imposition of a lifestyle by a far greater power that he cannot hope to destroy. He’s in the tradition of Jean Valjean, Vercingétorix, Charles de Gaulle, Cyrano de Bergerac. We love a good anti-establishment hero. There has been a large campaign asking Chirac to grant him a Presidential Pardon on 14th July. Chirac actually just reduced his sentence from 10 to 6 months. This was an attempt to find compromise between his law and order political platform and keeping the Popular Masses happy. Of course, there is not really any possible compromise on this.

I guess what I’m trying to say in a rambling sort of way (I allow myself to be a bit carried away sometimes) is that whereas not everyone agrees with all of Bové’s ideas, quite a lot of us really like his style.

FREEEEEE JOSE BOVE! FREEEEEEE JOSE BOVE!