On 6 June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) conducted aggressive raids in Los Angeles, sweeping up gainfully employed workers with no criminal record. This led todemonstrationsoutside the Los Angeles federal building. During these protests, David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) of California, was arrested alongside more than 100 others – leading to even larger demonstrations the next day.
Donald Trump responded on 7 June bysending federal troopsto Los Angeles to quell the protests without consulting Governor Gavin Newsom and, in fact, in defiance of Newsom’s wishes. This dramatic federal response, paired withincreasingly aggressive tacticsby local police, led to the protests growing larger and escalating in their intensity. They’vebegun spreadingto other major cities, too.
Cue the culture war.
On the right, the response was predictable: the federal clampdown was largely praised. Hyperbolic narratives about the protests and the protesters were uncritically amplified and affirmed. On the left, the response was no less predictable. There is a constellation of academic and media personalities who breathlessly root for all protests to escalate into violent revolution while another faction claims to support all the causesin principlebut somehow never encounters an actual protest movement that they outright support.
For my part, as I watchedWaymo cars burningas Mexican flags fluttered behind them, I couldn’t help but be reminded of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In the documentarySociology Is a Martial Art,he emphasized: “I don’t think it’s a problem that young people are burning cars. I want them to be able to burn cars for a purpose.”
It is, indeed, possible for burning cars to serve a purpose. However, it matters immensely who is perceived to have lit the fuse.
It’s uncomfortable to talk about, but all major successful social movements realized their goalswith and through direct conflict. There’s never been a case where people just held hands and sang Kumbaya, provoking those in power to nod and declare, “I never thought of it that way,” and then voluntarily make difficult concessions without any threats or coercion needed. Attempts at persuasion are typically necessary for a movement’s success, but they’re rarely sufficient. Actual or anticipated violence, destruction and chaos also have their role to play.
Civil rights leaders in the 1950s, for instance,went out of their wayto provoke high-profile, violent and disproportionate responses from those who supported segregation. Leaders like Martin Luther King Jr had an intuitive understanding of what empirical social science now affirms: what matters isn’t the presence or absence of violence but, rather, who gets blamed for any escalations that occur.
The current anti-Ice protests have included clashes with police andoccasional property damage. Melees, looting and destruction are perennially unpopular. Then again, so were civil rights-erabus boycotts, diner sit-ins and marches. In truth, the public rarely supportsanyform of social protest.
Something similar holds for elite opinion-makers. In the civil rights era,as now, many who claimed to support social justice causes also described virtuallyanydisruptive action taken in the service of those causes ascounterproductive, whether it was violent or not. As I describe in mybook, civil rights leaders across the board described these “supporters” as the primary stumbling block for achieving equality.
The simple truth is that most stakeholders in society – elites and normies alike, and across ideological lines – would prefer to stick with asuboptimal status quothan to embrace disruption in the service of an uncertain future state. Due to this widespread impulse, most successful social movements are deeply unpopular untilaftertheir victory is apparent. Insofar as they notch successes, it is often in defiance of public opinion.
For instance, protests on US campuses against Israel’s campaign of destruction in Gaza weredeeply unpopular. However, for all theirflawsandlimitations, the demonstrations, and the broader cultural discussion around the protests,didget more people paying attention to what was happening in the Middle East. And as more people looked intoIsrael’s disastrous campaign in Gaza, American support plummeted. Among Democrats, independents and Republicans alike, sympathy for Israelis over Palestinians issignificantly lower todaythan before 7 October 2023. These patterns are not just evident in the US but also acrosswestern Europeandbeyond.
The Palestinian author Omar el-Akkadnotesthat when atrocities become widely recognized, everyone belatedly claims to have always been against them – even if they actively facilitated or denied the crimes while they were being carried out. Successful social movements function the opposite way: once they succeed, everyone paints themselves as having always been for them, even if the movements in question were deeply unpopular at the time.
Martin Luther King Jr, for instance, waswidely vilifiedtowards the end of his life. Today, he has a federal holiday named after him. The lesson? Contemporaneous public polls about demonstrations tell us very little about the impact they’ll ultimately have.
So, howcanwe predict the likely impact of social movements?
The best picture we have from empirical social science research is that conflict can help shift public opinion in favor of political causes, but it can also lead to blowback against those causes. The rule seems to be thatwhoever is perceived to have initiated violence loses: if the protesters are seen as sparking violence, citizens sour on the cause and support state crackdowns. If the government is seen as having provoked chaos through inept or overly aggressive action, the public grows more sympathetic to the protesters’ cause (even if they continue to hold negative opinions about the protesters and the protests themselves).
The 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles are an instructive example. They arose after King was unjustly beaten by law enforcement and the state failed to hold the perpetrators to account. In public opinion, the government was held liable for these legitimate grievances and outrage. As a result, the subsequent unrest seemed togenerate further sympathyfor police reform (even though most Americansfrownedon the unrest itself).
Stonewall was a literal riot. However, it was also widely understood that the conflict was, itself, a response to law enforcement raids on gay bars. Gay and trans people were being aggressively surveilled and harassed by the state, and beganpushing back more forcefullyfor respect, privacy and autonomy. The government was the perceived aggressor, and this worked to the benefit of the cause. Hence, today, the Stonewall uprising is celebrated as a pivotal moment in civil rights history despite being characterized in auniformly negative fashionat the time.
This is not the way social movements always play out. If the protests come to be seen as being motivated primarily by animus, resentment or revenge (rather than positive or noble ideals), the public tends to grow more supportive of a crackdown against the movement. Likewise, if demonstrators seem pre-committed to violence, destruction and chaos, people who might otherwise be sympathetic to the cause tend to rapidlydisassociatewith the protesters and their stated objectives.
The 6 January 2021 raid on the Capitol building, for instance, led tolower levels of affiliationwith the GOP. Politicians who subsequently justified the insurrectionperformed especially poorlyin the 2022 midterms (with negative spillover effects to Republican peers).
The protests that followed George Floyd’s murder were a mixed bag: in areas where demonstrations did not spiral into chaos or violence, the protests increased support formany police reformsand, incidentally, theDemocratic party. In contexts where violence, looting, crime increases and extremist claims were more prevalent – where protesters seemed more focused on condemning, punishing or razing society rather than fixing it – trends moved in theopposite direction.
Yet, although the Floyd-era protests themselves had an ambivalent effect on public support for criminal justice reform, the outcome of Trump’s clampdown on the demonstrations was unambiguous: itled to a rapid erosionin GOP support amongwhiteAmericans–likely costing Trump the2020 election. Why? Because the president came off as an aggressor.
Trump did not push for a crackdown reluctantly, after all other options were exhausted. He appeared to be hungry for conflict and eager to see the situation escalate. He seemed to relish norm violations and inflicting harm on his opponents. These perceptions were politically disastrous for him in 2020. They appear to be just as disastrous today.
Right now, the public isspliton whether the ongoing demonstrations in support of immigrants’ rights are peaceful. Yet, broadly, Americansdisapproveof these protests, just as they disapprove of most others. Critically, however, mostalsodisapprove of Trump’s decisions to deploy thenational guardand themarinesto Los Angeles. The federal agency at the heart of these protests, Ice,is not populareither. Americans broadly reject the agency’s tactics of conducting arrests in plain clothes, stuffing people in unmarked vehicles, and wearing masks to shield their identities. The public alsodisagreeswith deporting undocumented immigrants who were brought over as children, alongside policies that separate families, or actions that deny due process.
Employers, meanwhile, havelobbied the White Houseto revise its policies, which seem to primarily target longstanding and gainfully employed workers rather than criminals or people free-riding on government benefits – to the detriment of core US industries.
Even before the protests began,there were signsthat Americans were souring on Trump’s draconian approach to immigration, and public support hasdeclined rapidlysince the protests began on 6 June.
Whether the demonstrations ultimately lead to still moreerosion of public support for Trump or continued declines inpublic support for immigrationwill likely depend less on whether the demonstrations continue to escalate than on whom the public ultimately blames for any escalation that occurs.
At present, it’s not looking good for the White House.
Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. His book,We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, is out now with Princeton University Press. He is a Guardian US columnist