Splintering the Enemy - some observations for campaigners.
From
GLOBAL INFORMATION OF COAL SEAM GAS.
Okay,
you've got your cause. It's the greatest scourge since the slave trade,
and it needs to be stopped. The government isn't listening and it
appears there are vested interests pushing their agenda.
What next?
Naturally,
you need to protest. But beware: the organisation pushing their desires
are fully aware people will object to what they're doing. They know,
probably better than anyone else, exactly what the negative consequences
are for their push. They've done their homework, and have reams of
research answering anticipated objections. They can release this
gradually over a long term so it gives an appearance they constantly
have all the answers, and this pesky little Greenie group doesn't know
what they are talking about.
Let's pause a little and make
some assumptions for this article. I will refer to the organisation
(almost always a publicly listed company) trying to do something
objectionable as the "Pusher", and they are promoting their "push".
Campaigners will be known as protestors, which is not so ambiguous.
There
are several big advantages a Pusher has. They are normally large,
driven by the profit motive, and united. That last point is the focus
of this article. Almost all statements coming from the Pusher are
issued centrally, in an organised manner.
Some lazy
members of the press won't even investigate and write their own story.
Once they strike up a relationship with a Pusher, they'll often simply
reproduce their press releases word-for-word, and they'll take home
their paycheques for being a "journalist". The Pusher, encouraged by
this, might become aware of the fact, and even include some minor
objections in their press releases, so that coverage obtained looks less
than uniformly positive, and thus reduces the suspicion of readers.
This
is all going on in the corporate world of the Pusher. They'll have a
legal department, media relations department, loads of experience
dealing with the press and a lot of money. A lot more resources than a
protest group will ever be able to muster.
The battle with
protestors is always one where the two competing sides are most
definitely not on a level playing field. Protestors can only watch on
with awe at the resources a Pusher has at its disposal. And you might
be thinking "what's the point - I can't possibly compete with that -
I'll just give up now and get back to my usual life". I'd say a lot of
protestors end up doing exactly that.
And don't the
Pushers know it? A corporation has another advantage - longevity. The
record for a human is 116 years. But there are some corporations in the
world that have been in existence for several centuries. They have
long-term goals, and even if something gets banned now, then in twenty
years time it might start reaping benefits for the Pusher, so a few
useful procedures taken at this point in time might end up paying off in
a decade or two. It might be worth it, because a corporation has
longer term goals than a human. It's a very common practice, for
example, for a company being sued by a person they've made sick to delay
all their actions using legal and other methods, and then wait for the
opponent to die. That normally shuts the protestor up completely.
But
the main advantage a Pusher has over the protestors is a united voice.
Press are required to only deal with the media relations officer of the
company. Strict guidelines are developed in what can and can't be
said. But the main thing is that these statements will be reported in
the media as "Pusher said..." or "A spokesperson for Pusher told us..."
And all the media coverage is centred on the one point.
Compare
this to protest groups. On Facebook, there are, for example, over 1,000
pages opposing the operations of companies wanting to exploit Coal Seam
Gas reserves. Without going into the merits of the issue, this by its
very existence, is a major barrier to the protestors. There isn't a
united voice against the cause. There are thousands.
A
Pusher will see this and use it to their advantage. It's not one united
voice standing up against the Pusher's cause, it's an array of
fractured groups, with a vague common purpose, but little else in
common. So the technique of divide and conquer is something the Pusher
can employ. They can even get this advantage with absolutely no effort
on their part, when individual groups protest about EACH OTHER and how
they are going to do deal with it.
An interest group
should have one objective (ie to oppose whatever they want to oppose)
and NO MORE, otherwise it de-focuses their efforts. It's normally
difficult enough to get enough volunteers to do mundane things like
stuffing envelopes, or turning up early on Saturday morning to man the
Sausage Sizzle stall.
In a regional area with a small population, you
might be lucky to get enough people to do this effectively for one
group. Yet the ponderous thing is that in a small country town, you
might see three or four "splinter" groups set up protesting against the
same thing, simply because one group does not like another group's
efforts.
What is missing is trust. There's always more
than one way to skin a cat. In fact, the way Pushers work, you need to
be able to attack from various fronts. But a group needs to trust its
members will do the right thing. The members also need to trust the
group to do the right thing. Without that trust, unity is gone.
A
lot of arbitrary decisions get made by local groups in undertaking
tasks. Certainly you need to agree on a plan of action and carry it
out, but that plan may well include things that you, personally, don't
think will work, or reckon might be using the wrong methods. But often
you reach a point in time when you need to do SOMETHING.
The decision
on what exactly that something is might be a very difficult value
judgment.
A group is made up of a disparate number of
people all with varying talents, abilities and available time and
resources. Obviously people are going to think differently and come up
with different answers to the same question. But deep down they all
believe the same thing, ie that Pusher is an evil force and needs to be
stopped.
You need to step back and look at the motivation
behind each person's actions. It is to protest against the Pusher.
You're home and hosed with that alone - try not to complicate it, and
leave it at that.
What it becomes is XXXX is going to
protest against Pusher by doing YYYY.
I don't think we have any place
doing YYYY, I'd rather do ZZZZ, so I'm going to object to XXXX and go
off and join AA instead, and give XXXX a spray for coming up with such a
stupid idea in the first place.
Keep thinking like this and your
visits to AA might become more frequent, or the requirement of a court
order.
But what it means is the efforts are de-valued. It
makes it difficult to protest because "always the same people turn up
and no-one else ever joins in", plus not only is the Pusher working
against you, but groups who have exactly the same stated intent are also
working counter-productively.
In this case who are your enemies? It'd
be a lot quicker to list your allies.
Pushers jump on
this opportunity. Despite the validity of a message that a protest
group might have (eg if Pusher keeps doing this, then all aquatic life
with 100 km will die) the Pusher can simply point out that ah yes,
that's what XXXX says and they did YYYY, but another group has instead
said KKKK and rejected XXXX's statements completely. They can do this
with little or no effort on their part.
All your energies
protesting, all your valid arguments, are all not so much lost, but
their effect is substantially reduced. If your Pusher can say that, and
you're not even starting to explore the validity of your arguments,
what is the point in protesting at all?
When groups spend
time countering each other's activities, that time is completely wasted.
Indeed, it's worst than wasted as it will probably reduce the
effectiveness of other campaigns, and consume the meagre resources
protest groups have.
Before you question someone or a
group's efforts, ask yourself the motivation behind their actions. If
these motivations are based on hate and violence, then perhaps you do
have a valid reason to object to that group. But that's a rare extreme
case. People in protest groups are motivated by a disdain of what
they're protesting about, and they react by doing whatever they can do
within their power. Their motives are usually kind-hearted and come
from deeply within their hearts. They only have malice for the pusher,
not other protest groups.
So if you think a group might be
doing the wrong thing, don't have a look at the details of a protest,
look at the motivation behind it. You need to trust the fact that other
group is doing exactly what your group is doing, only using different
methods, and different resources. It's quite valid to object to a
protest motivated by the wrong reasons, but I'd put it to you that that
would never be the case for a small locally based protest group.
Splintering
the protest group into a fragmented and disorderly rabble is EAXCTLY
what the Pusher will want. It might happen with no effort whatsoever on
the Pusher's part, but it WILL affect the effectiveness of your
actions. Don't do it.
(Peter Deane)
My yarn on this subject.
Good bit of writing, a little hairy in the XXXX and AA and YYYY etc but if you re read that a couple of times you will get his drift there.
Nothing has changed in groups and or teams since I studied this as a subject at TAFE. People do inevitably pull together in the face of adversity. But there is good old human nature and all of my years in soccer showed me this also. I have much experience with committees and working in teams, it isn't easy ever. This is the reason a lot of people don't want to get involved is because this always happens and I mean it ALWAYS seems to happen. Human Nature see.
I think it is a tool that is used in close groups and it is done with the help of what I have learned is called and Agent Provocateur a french word for trouble maker.
I was well schooled in this by Lock the Gate people. I had never heard of that term before then though even though in Groups and Teams work I studied how people respond in situations.
