One of the most important legacies of the Occupy Movement is the positive impact it has had on political discourse. In light of what at face value seems to be a thorough routing of formal organizations of Occupy, and a similar erosion of its public appeal, it has nonetheless had a significant impact on political debate, globally. These effects are still evident today, despite the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, the Occupy Movement was not mentioned by either presidential candidate in any major speech or policy announcement during the recent 2012 US election.
Typically my approach to papers is to highlight what I see to be a problem, then offer a critical analysis that highlights a range of taken for granted practices, which are seen as unrelated but in fact perpetuate, or constitute, this practice, and then propose normative options that can be used to overcome the problem. Given the optimistic tone I am bringing to this paper I want to turn this approach on its head by addressing not a problem but a solution, namely what Occupy has achieved. I will be addressing initially what I see as a new political language and then turning to what I think can be described as a novel political form. Following this, rather than offer a critique I will counter some of the critiques of the Occupy Movement, specifically the accusation that the movement lacks a clear message and accompanying program of reform. Rather than a weakness, this is one of its strengths. Finally, rather than offering solutions, I conclude by highlighting what I see as the central problem that Occupy must overcome if it is to live up to the high ideals that it has set for itself. This is the problem of not being able to move beyond longstanding disagreements that prevent the ‘left’ from engaging what is traditionally understood as the ‘right’ of politics.
A new political language
Substantiating the claim that the global Occupy Movement has created a new political language is obviously a major assertion that would require a longer paper than I am offering here. There is however significant evidence that of the conceptual rhetoric contributing to the popular political lexicon in recent years, the offerings borne by the Occupy Movement have been the most vital. Towards establishing this claim, the Global Language Monitor's 2011 ‘Word of the Year’ list placed ‘Occupy’ as the most used trending word in the English language.Footnote1 In addition, rounding out the top 10 was also the word ‘99%’ (a key term of the Occupy movement). This suggests that two key terms of the Occupy Movement have resonated above and beyond all others in the algorithms that monitor global discourse.
This Occupy rhetoric has not only proliferated, it exerts significant political influence. It is in this sense being employed as a critical conceptual tool, rather than just empty rhetoric. Republican strategist Frank Luntz stated that the Occupy Movement is ‘having an impact on what the American people think of “capitalism”’ and has necessitated the Republican Party developing ways of employing this language to suit their message.Footnote2 Accordingly, Tea Party-affiliated elements of the Republican Party have begun to adopt the rhetoric of Occupy. The central rhetoric of the Tea Party is an anti-Washington libertarian sentiment. For the purposes of the Republican electoral strategy it is vital that the Tea Party does not adopt a platform that is against corporate greed. As such, the suggestion from the spin doctors within the Republican Party is that the Tea Party ‘shouldn't be occupying Wall Street, [they] should be occupying Washington’.Footnote3 There is an interesting moment of potential left–right synergy that the Republican Party is seeking to resist, a point that I will return to in concluding this paper.
This Republican spin is not designed just to co-opt the Occupy message but is required to actively deflect a new flank of criticism directed at their core message. Throughout the election, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was highly susceptible to criticism, not only from those within the Democratic Party but also from amongst his own ranks during the presidential primaries, on account of his tremendous wealth and ruthless business acumen, which saw many businesses savaged in the pursuit of massive profits. ‘Wall Street’ has become a ‘four-letter word’ amongst much of the electorate in the recent US presidential election. Unrestrained capitalism and excessive profits is seen as increasingly immoral in light of the global financial crisis (GFC). Equally, however, ‘socialism’ also remains an even worse ‘four-letter word’ – a taboo topic. Even ‘liberal’ remains consonant with repressive state intervention within much of mainstream US political discourse.
Somewhat awkwardly, ‘deficit’ is also a ‘four-letter word’. Public policy is finding it increasingly hard to avoid these political swear words and attempting to plot a course through these taboo topics leaves politicians with very little fiscal room to maneuver within the current alignment of political realities. This dramatically limits the range of acceptable policy options that can be used to address the current state of social and financial crisis. This policy and rhetorical dead end is one of the chief Occupy Movement criticisms of the contemporary malaise. Finer points of fiscal policy aside, criticizing greed and inequality is now more common, despite there being electorally acceptable tools to address it. We can see here the indelible mark that has been left on the terrain of political discourse by the Occupy movement.
Another influential rhetorical concept of the Occupy Movement is its key slogan: ‘we are the 99%’. A lot of caution needs to be exercised in regard to how this term is used in order to avoid it becoming a hollow assertion. Viewed up close in its deployment at occupied sites around the world, its usage can be seen as problematic. Too often ‘the 99%’ has functioned as a declaration of a democratically determined legitimacy that the movement simply does not have. Even if those who are sympathetic with the movement but never attend in person are included amongst its numbers it would not come close to those who are, or would prefer to be, part of the super-rich. Deployed in this way it is the 1% that has the numbers, not the 99%.
This hollow assertion of legitimacy could be seen in a number of instances at Occupy Melbourne. I was confronted by the limits of this slogan on the day of the eviction of those occupying Melbourne's City Square. The police had kettled in the core protesters through the deployment of temporary fencing and were proceeding with arrest or detention using overwhelming force and numbers. A small number, however, slipped the net, and, followed by a few sympathetic supporters, spilled into the central shopping area of Swanston St and Collins St in the middle of the lunchtime rush. As they roamed around the mall chanting ‘we are the 99%’ into faces of the lunchtime shoppers, I distinctly recall the glazed bemusement amongst several hundred passers-by when confronted by 20–30 outraged occupiers. The ratio of the 99% was turned on its head; the mathematics simply did not support the passion of their clarion call. Furthermore, the semiotics of the slogan was only further muddled upon further reflection. Were the overwhelming numbers of happy consumers part of the 1% or part of the 99%?
Such a statement needs to be an expression of solidarity and collective aspiration rather than a false legitimacy claim. Expressed in this way, ‘we are the 99%’ would surely encompass a more nuanced understanding of the structural context in which people – students, workers, businessman, migrants and the unemployed – find themselves. It should also be attentive to the myriad of ways people may be made complicit with the system that the Occupy Movement critiques, either unknowingly or because there is no alternative. The bemused looks of the Bourke St Mall lunchtime shoppers does not make them supporters of the 1%, or even necessarily at odds with the goals of Occupy. Whether or not people gave explicit support to the movement should not impact on the pursuit of a more just system for all.
Indeed, beyond the immediate confines of the occupied sites, the rhetoric of the 99%, or more specifically the greed of the 1%, has increasingly encountered a more common usage in news reporting The validity of the term does not pertain to its legitimacy claim but rather to its ability to resonate as a concept amongst the wider public – even amongst those that do not support Occupy – that critiques excessive profit and greed at the expense of others. Occupy in this sense has been effective in retaking some discursive territory even as it is unable to maintain a presence in the dispersed physical spaces.
A novel political form
The Occupy Movement has given rise to a novel (although not new) political form. The physical space of the Occupy Movement has been significant in creating a corporeal unity in the face of longstanding division within the left. Progressive politics has long been hamstrung by the fact that the many interests and groups of the left do not communicate or coordinate effectively with each other. Quite often they cannot even talk to each other, the political terminologies they use and the strategic trajectories they envision are incommensurable and may as well be written in different languages. The wide variety of groups that have been involved in the protests highlight the importance of physical space to simply be together. Solidarity around a broad issue creates a movement in lieu of a common language.
The solidarity was at times quite abstract. I saw this in the largest of the protests against the crackdown on Occupy Melbourne. It is worth noting the phrasing of this last sentence, as this event was not an Occupy Melbourne event per se, rather it was a public rally to support the right of occupiers to not be physically removed by police. This rally was the most widely attended and not only in numbers but also in terms of demographics. Many people I spoke with did not consider themselves on board with the agenda of the Occupy Movement, but were happy that it was there and were angry that it had been broken up in the way it had. It was in many instances the traditional liberal ‘I defend their right to say it’ kind of rationale.
While on one hand such support can be disparaged as glib and ‘meta’ (‘my concern is their right to have a concern’), there was a momentary coalescing of the radical politics of the Occupy Movement with the moderate progressivism of traditional liberals. A momentary coalescence that adds up to a firm statement against not only the actions of the police but also against a particular interpretation of local by-laws that were used to clamp down on this novel form of protest. This wider ‘meta-support’ for the Occupy Movement also generated a level of immediate ‘mesa-support’ in the form of a greater public understanding of the issues that to a degree transcended the disagreements within progressive politics.
Occupy and its peripheral protests can be seen as an emergent (although not unprecedented) political formation. I view them as a series of publicly visible, geographical manifestations of the digital networks of online outrage that circulate through the social media channels of left-leaning denizens in the face of the inability of governments to address climate change, resource depletion, corporate greed and political violence. Occupy has effectively highlighted not only terminologies but also potential form through which these networked sentiments can be more than just howls of private outrage.
In an era of highly divisive (but still strangely bipartisan) party politics in developed Western states the occupations and protests can function as something of an intellectual opposition. This is particularly the case within the US, the UK and Australia, but no doubt equally in many other countries. To use the language of Margaret Thatcher, there is no alternative to neoliberal capitalism within the current electoral landscape of Anglophone nations. In Australia, for instance, the federal Treasurer Wayne Swan can be seen as someone who is trying to sidle ever so gently towards something like a social democratic position but in the act of doing so has become bogged down in conflicts with mining interests. Furthermore, the effects of his policies are being drowned out by the chorus of outrage from those within the Australian Labor Party who decry their loss of electoral salability to the Green Party, yet for some reason at the same time try to chase votes on the ever more crowded political landscape of the right.
In this context, Occupy and the related media coverage it has generated is one of the few popular forms where a non-neoliberal future can be imagined. There is in this sense an effective collusion between the major parties to preserve the status quo. The idea of an extra-parliamentary opposition is not new. 1960s Germany, for instance, saw the rise of the New Left to oppose the effective collusion between the German Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats.
No need for a simplistic message
There is something at the level of form that is also important about not having defined messages. And it is on this basis that I reject the criticism that the Occupy Movement lacks a singular message or a unifying set of solutions. For starters, I have demonstrated thus far that Occupy has been able to have a significant impact without having to resort to simplistic messages. Indeed, I have suggested that when the movement has resorted to simplistic messages, as in the case of the legitimacy claim of the 99%, it has undermined its cause. The problems to which the Occupy Movement draws attention to are all complex problems that defy simple solutions. Giving in to the demand for a political program will only reproduce familiar debates and stifle the future potential for innovative thinking.
The demand for a readymade cogent political platform is a disciplinary move that ought to be resisted. It seeks to diminish the role of the Occupy Movement as an alternative opposition, and force political discussion back into the boundaries of parliamentary divisive bipartisanship. The following logical implication of such calls reveals them to be somewhat sinister from a democratic perspective. It seems to suggest that people have no right to protest either rhetorically or literally in any critical sense unless they have a fully costed set of policies to solve the crisis they have identified. It is almost as if we should not admit to a crisis unless it has a solution. The construction and costing of policies is something that takes time and the concerted efforts of entire bureaucracies to do. Even with these tools, the major parties often fail to effectively create and implement policies.
What if nascent movements do not have the resources to develop fully fledged policy? What if the scope of ‘realistic’ solutions does not address the current problem? Should the claims of nascent movements be ignored or silenced while pressing problems are not addressed? Because that is what the criticism that the Occupy Movement is illegitimate because it does not have a singular message implies.
For Occupy to have a message and a solution at such an early stage is simply too divisive. This has long been the problem of progressive politics. A message and a solution gives a wide range of people who broadly agree with each other (especially at the level of ethos) something to vehemently disagree with and causes people to move into negative dialogues. I suspect that this is often what is at the heart of the call for the Occupy movement to propose solutions to the problems it highlights; critics believe that by pointing to the complexity of solutions, they will avoid the need to constructively engage with the problems.
The lack of a singular message has already allowed some unholy alliances to form. One that comes to mind was the Australian media personality Eddie McGuire's support for the aims of the Occupy Movement. The public face and former CEO of Rupert Murdoch's Nine Network suggested that ‘our politicians, instead of fighting for their own jobs, need to start building some sustainable industries for the unskilled Aussie workers as our manufacturing industry blows off the map’.Footnote4 We can see here the linking of parochial working class concerns – traditionally the concern of Australian nationalists – with the more cosmopolitan framing of the Occupy Movement. It is easy to disagree with people at the level of stereotypes and aesthetic aversions but harder when we take into account underlying sentiments and common causes.
I take instruction from William Connolly in this regard, drawing from his observations of what he describes as the ‘evangelical-capitalist resonance machine’.Footnote5 The resonance machine is a process whereby contradictory and potentially competing interests coalesce with one another and strengthen the cause of the other side. Such a process, he argues underlies the strength of the political right in the US in the decade after 9/11. The social and economic vision of the George W. Bush-era right is built around evangelical Christianity and neoliberal capitalism respectively. These visions should not be so complementary given that the traditional social values at the heart of Christianity are being radically eroded by the economic policies of privatization and speculative investments. Binding these views is a seemingly illogical adherence to a common ethos, loosely grounded in libertarianism. Connolly's suggestion is to limit the focus to the underlying ethos before attempting to create a political paradigm and policies.
To conclude, I return to the question of the relationship between the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party in the US. I think there are some politically important commonalities between the two, although it is important not to overstate this or overlook differences. The Tea Party is a very organized, bureaucratized and hierarchical political organization. It has multiple fund-raising political action committees, or ‘SuperPACs’, which have access to millions of corporate dollars. The Occupy Movement, to the extent that it still exists as a formally constituted political body, does not have access to such funds, is globally dispersed and insists upon a flat, non-hierarchical governing structure. The two movements are in this sense very different. They do, however, broadly share concerns that separate them from the policies of most major parliamentary parties. Writing for the libertarian website World Net Weekly, David Hanson lists the following commonalities:
| • | they know something is deeply, intrinsically wrong with the current economic system; | ||||
| • | they are willing to publicly organize and speak out against economic injustice; | ||||
| • | they distrust the mainstream media; | ||||
| • | they oppose corporate bailouts, which dump debt on the middle class; | ||||
| • | they blame lobbyists and secret backroom deal-making in Washington for rampant corruption.Footnote6 | ||||
If we take seriously the call of ‘we are the 99%’, the Occupy Movement must somehow learn how to encompass the common concerns of the Tea Party's base. Drawing on Connolly's pragmatic pluralism, which is receptive to changing and emergent political forms, future directions for the Occupy Movement need to be highly receptive to the moments of common ethos, even if it does not fit with preconceived ideas of what progressive politics ought to look like. Disagreement should not preclude common political action but nor does there need to be any kind of formal merger or coalition. At present the criticisms made by the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party are seen as competing, seeking to draw the parliamentary bipartisanship out to the left or the right respectively. This is essentially, however, just a modulation of politics as usual. Rather, these twin criticisms should be received as a challenge to the confidence of the current approaches, as a signal that received wisdoms and status quo should not just be taken for granted. This is the problem that the Occupy Movement faces if it wants to help create the conditions for a genuine reform agenda.
Notes on contributor
Robin Cameron is the program manager of Human Security research and research fellow in the Global Cities Institute at RMIT. His research interests focus on post-9/11 foreign policy and security, in particular the effects on social order and local practices of regulation.
Notes
1 http://www.languagemonitor.com/911/top-words-of-2011/ (accessed November 12, 2012).
2 http://www.salon.com/2011/12/01/gop_message_man_frightened_to_death_of_occupy/ (accessed November 12, 2012).
3 Ibid.
4 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/maybe-it-is-time-for-us-to-take-a-good-hard-look/story-e6frfhqf-1226180356395 (accessed November 12, 2012).
5 W.E. Connolly, ‘The Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine’, Political Theory 33, no. 6 (2005): 869–86.
6 D. Hanson, ‘Wedding of the Century: Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party', WorldNetWeekly, October 4, 2010, http://www.wnd.com/2011/10/351945/ (accessed November 12, 2012).