Alright y'all welcome back to the show It's anti-war radio I'm Scott Horton and One thing beneficial about being a libertarian is I stay anti-war when Democrats are in power and you know it actually seems to me like it would be difficult to be a liberal or a Conservative and have to flip and flop and carry around so much cognitive dissonance seems like it would be stressful, you know Why not just be against all of them equally all the time without exception, and then you're always right, you know Not to deal with the burden of the blood on your hands from cheerleading mass murder But you know I don't know I guess if you can identify with a politician doing the mass murdering and that satisfies a greater psychological need somehow a More important one than how you might feel if the killing were to stop Anyway, so what's fun about this is we've all seen since Barack Obama got elected The kind of disillusion of the anti-war movement.
I mean, there's no doubt that over there at world can't wait that they're not waiting They haven't changed one bit right Deborah sweet at anti-war comm we haven't changed one bit But where are all the people where where's the audience?
Where where's the audience for world can't wait for anti-war comm where'd they go?
What happened well we can all you know, uh invoke our anecdotes and our you know, medium-term memories and and Tell some stories, but michael t.
Heaney and fabio rojas Did a study It's called the partisan dynamics of contention demobilization of the anti-war movement in the united states 2007 through 2009 and i'll tell you now a quick way to get to it Uh would be from this abc news article have war protesters been betrayed by obama?
And they have a link right to the study here.
So now i'm interested Let's see what the social science shows about partisanship And the anti-war movement welcome to the show.
Michael.
How are you doing?
Thank you for having me.
It's great to be here.
I really appreciate you joining us.
Uh, so I guess give us some numbers because after all well, let's start with where you start out here Uh in 2002 2003 there were massive anti-war protests i'm telling you in austin, texas It was huge mungus february and march, especially on the 15th of those two months Huge protests and and in the heart of texas and then there were millions of people protesting all around the world against the invasion of iraq but it seemed like We couldn't stop it.
We knew we couldn't stop it really and once we failed to stop it A lot of people went home right then but since um, absolutely I was in that group of people that was out on the streets.
Um, I remember the first time that I heard In 2002 someone say that uh, president bush had plans to invade iraq.
My first response was well, he can't do that Um, and then before I knew it I found myself on the streets of washington dc Marching on the white house.
Um, I was part of the march in january 2003 Of hundreds of thousands of people that marched on capitol hill And just believed that we had to do something to stop the president and the administration what they were doing That if enough of us got together that they that they surely would listen Yeah, that was funny.
I never thought that part but I I still well, no, I I guess that's not really true I mean, I really did think that if enough people who could just see through it I mean there were a lot of people who were against it who knew that saddam hussein osama bin laden were different and whatever who Who weren't really going for it, but who still didn't come outside and I remember thinking that you know Enough of us really just did insist they wouldn't be able to ignore it that it could at least be delayed somehow something but You know as big as those protests were the american people really fell down on the job then feeling from being on the streets And there's something about being there with hundreds of thousands of people With just a sea of people who are united in their opposition to something Just having this really strong feeling as you walk by these august buildings in washington dc That they have to listen to us.
It's just a very strong emotional Reaction that one has to being in that kind of environment Well, and it's fair right for people, you know average people who know better who are against it after they fail to stop it No matter how hard they try the republicans have their way and launch this war and then make the whole thing The worst disaster could possibly be and stay for years and years and years people feel pretty hopeless What's the point of participating if you can even figure out how to participate a good avenue?
To participate then, you know, what's even the point if your very best efforts can't stop the very worst thing, you know It's not like you're going to be able to call it off any sooner either and people really do just kind of shrug and leave it to others Right.
Well, one of the things that we know about Why people participate in protest is they participate in protest because they feel like their voice is not being heard And also because they feel a strong sense of threat So a large part of what was happening during the bush years was not only that people disagreed with the policy That was definitely a necessary condition But also there was a strong feeling that they weren't being listened to through the normal channels And also that not only was george bush and the administration doing this one thing that was wrong But there was the possibility that they would do a lot more things that are wrong.
All right.
Well, so then I guess a lot of people I'd have to say, you know, just I don't even think it's a matter of opinion I think just objectively they were had they fell for it and thought that they had an avenue to express that very same sentiment in political power and that was supporting barack obama And he hasn't done a thing to undo the wars The most unwarlike thing he's done is abide by the timetable that george bush signed with nouri al-maliki for withdrawal from iraq And even now they're pushing to stay there And yet the anti-war movement certainly in terms of street protests and so forth is nowhere to be found Well, i'm not sure that people who voted for obama.
That's an overstatement.
There's somewhere to be found, but they're small compared to before Well, I think that people who voted for obama.
I wouldn't say that all of them Believe that he would simply bring an immediate end to the war Um, I think that many people believed that he would be better than bush on this particular issue And that um in particular they found him less threatening than they found bush So one of I think that the state of many people who were in the anti-war movement or at least were in 2007 2008 but are not now is the feeling that While they still disagree with obama's positions on the war They don't feel that acute sense of threat that they felt during the bush years um, well, and so does it just come down to Uh tall dark and handsome versus short and stupid and cross-eyed and back ass words No, I think it's I think it's more than that.
I think that it has to do with um, they also look at What he's doing in the context of a larger agenda, you know So there's part of what also happened was early in obama's term.
You had new issues come to the fore So for example, you had the health care issue come to the fore and many people Saw the obama health care plan as an opportunity to make some significant improvements In u.s.
Health care policy, which I know that haven't been on the table in a long time So part of what happened is that people shifted their attention to other issues um, they also saw for they also I think saw a difference between A president who was starting new wars and a president who was managing wars that already existed And perhaps they drew a line there Well, I guess you guys are going to have to follow up now that obama's starting more wars I mean, he really did expand the pakistan.
I personally find it very disconcerting Yeah, well, I mean he expanded the pakistan war far beyond what george bush was doing But that hasn't really gotten the kind of coverage doesn't really count as starting a new war They just started calling it af pak one big war Well, that's definitely that's definitely a part of it Is that part of what's happened is that the the wars that the united states are involved in?
Has really become a much less salient issue.
It's receiving less attention from the media People are paying attention to it less and that's part of the reason why people are less mobilized to action on the issue Yeah.
All right.
Well, so can you give us some numbers uh and kind of break this down?
I'd like to get my head around exactly, uh who dropped out and who's who we can still count on, you know what we did was we Showed up at anti-war protests all of the major national or nationally coordinated anti-war protests between january 2007 and december 2009 And we brought with us a group of four to ten students at each protest And equipped with clipboards Um, and we conducted somewhere between 100 and 600 surveys at each At each event, uh in total we went to 27 different events over the three years And we conducted uh, 5 000 surveys of people participating Wow.
All right.
So what'd you find out?
Well, what we found out first of all is that the composition of who changes the who attended the protests Changed quite considerably during the period of the study Um during the first two years of the study between january 2007 and september 2008 we found that um About 40 to 50 percent of the people who participated identified strongly with the democratic party And the percentage of people who identified with the third party was really only about 10 percent Now, of course most of the people who participated said that they didn't have a partisan orientation So about 50 percent 40 to 50 percent of the people in the study are sort of rejecting the idea of partisanship through the whole period but what happens after 2008 Is that the percentage of people identifying with the democratic party who are participating in protests really drastically?
Decreases so it goes from the 40 to 50 percent level down to only about 20 percent of the participants identify with the democratic party Now, of course, this is devastating because um The democratic party is the mass object of the left This is what people who think of themselves as liberal or progressive The average citizen who thinks of themself in this way Many of these people identify with the democratic party.
So you've got very large numbers of people who's who um, Who were participating but no longer are participating And the reason that we attribute to this is we look at the reasons why people participate And the motivations that they have and basically what we find is that In the obama years, there's a decreased sense of threat by people who are on the liberal side of the political spectrum and it's this decreased sense of threat that Explains the decreased participation of democrats in the anti-war movement and is a very important explanation for why the numbers of people Participating in protest decreased.
Yeah, and now, uh, i'm, sorry if I missed it.
Did you say?
Overall how badly the numbers have decreased not just in terms of yeah democrats So starting, you know, it's impossible to judge exactly how many people um participate in a protest So we don't make any effort to count the actual number of people But rather what we did was we had our team arrive at a consensus about what we thought the order of magnitude of each Event was right.
So basically was this an event that had millions of people hundreds of thousands of people tens of thousands of people Thousands of people etc And what we found was that uh protests that took place between 2003 and 2007 That many of these events Had um orders of magnitude in the hundreds of thousands But what happens uh, the last event that was of that magnitude for the anti-war movement was a protest on capitol hill In january 2007 actually what proved to be an absolutely beautiful day in the middle of january in washington Um had something on the order of a hundred thousand people plus or minus a few thousand But after that the numbers begin to decrease they almost immediately fall to the low tens of thousands um in 2008 and by 2000 By 2009 the protests are really in the thousands or even many of them in the hundreds so Once the democrats start obtaining electoral success The people who identify with the democratic party stop participating in these protests in a large way or they people who identify with the democratic party Decrease their participation part Proportionately more than people who are allied with other groups So is there an earlier study then about 2003 through seven?
Well, fabio and I also did a study from 2004 through 2005.
Oh, I said we attend so we attended.
Um, We attended the republican national convention protest in august 2004 And then all of the major protests that took place for the next 12 months ending with a protest in washington In september 2005 and we found that the percentage of people who participated in those protests Was about 40 percent democrat.
So we see we see basically this from around our evidence shows that from around september 2004 until around january 2007 You see about 40 of the protests being made up of democrats But then the bottom of that basically falls out once obama is nominated Yeah, well, you know what bums me out about this is there was a very top-down clear channel sort of talking point That uh people on the right, you know, george bush supporters out, you know in the society not necessarily the political class But maybe the talk radio audience really uh Would say well, you just don't like george w bush And so then it was you have a personal problem with this guy because of something that's personally wrong with you And then that changed the whole conversation from yeah But what's so despicable about them and let me count the ways kind of thing and it was really effective And now i'm looking at this and i'm thinking they were all right pretty much It's a combination of those two things, you know I I believe that the overwhelming majority of people who participated in these protests were sincerely And unquestionably against the wars and the foreign policies that were being pushed by the administration But it was the presence of bush as president That made these events seem all the more threatening, right?
Um And you know part of what's happening now why people are not more outraged by what's happening in libya And why people are not more outraged with what's happening in pakistan and afghanistan is that um That they don't they don't see they don't see the threat that comes from the obama administration.
So it's hard to perceive that um You could think about one way of sort of thinking about the psychological difference is that george bush is a lot like a storm And barack obama is more like a flood And when a storm comes, you know thunder and lightning come and when the thunder and lightning starts It raises our sense of fear And so we react to that sense of fear and attempt to protect ourselves But barack obama is more like a flood in the sense that you have sort of slowly rising water And one of the things you find when you're in a flood is you think well, this is water This is no big deal.
This is not really that dangerous But as the water slowly rises All of a sudden you find yourself being threatened in a way that you didn't realize that you had that Right.
All right.
Well, we'll have to leave it there.
We're out of time But I really appreciate your time on the show today and and this important work All right, everybody that's dr.
Michael Oh, yeah, sure thing, uh, michael t.
Heaney uh from the university of michigan and he co-wrote the partisan dynamics of contention demobilization the anti-war movement the united states 2007-9
