My answer is going to be unsatisfying—entirely vibes. While there are still significant sections of the populace that have left-over affection for anything that looks like the Civil Rights movement due to how valorized that movement is and how much change it affected, this is seriously waning. The non-effectiveness of movements that just copy the aesthetics are slowly making them look more like cargo-cults that copy the form but without an understanding of the substance that made them successful.
As more people dismiss protestors as performance without substance, protests start getting more awful to get anyone’s attention. Destroying social value and public goods for a cause no one else cares about grows increasingly irksome. When major lawlessness threatens people and sets fire to city blocks in the name of activism the good will drains away pretty rapidly. Now the cargo cults are just destroying stuff without any path to how that’s supposed to make things better.
It’s an ongoing change. We’re only seeing the start of it. But IMO its pretty undeniable that a decent percentage of the population thinks of activists as default harmful, and a preference cascade is just over the horizon.
There had been a study comparing the effects of moderate protests vs extreme protests, in hypothetical situations (the study participants would e.g. read a fictional article describing the activities of a protest group), and concluded that “Extreme Protest Actions Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements”:
How do protest actions impact public support for social movements? Here we test the claim that extreme protest actions—protest behaviors perceived to be harmful to others, highly disruptive, or both—typically reduce support for social movements. Across 6 experiments, including 3 that were preregistered, participants indicated less support for social movements that used more extreme protest actions. This result obtained across a variety of movements (e.g., animal rights, anti-Trump, anti-abortion) and extreme protest actions (e.g., blocking highways, vandalizing property). Further, in 5 of 6 studies, negative reactions to extreme protest actions also led participants to support the movement’s central cause less, and these effects were largely independent of individuals’ prior ideology or views on the issue. In all studies we found effects were driven by diminished social identification with the movement. In Studies 4-6, serial mediation analyses detailed a more in-depth model: observers viewed extreme protest actions to be immoral, reducing observers’ emotional connection to the movement and, in turn, reducing identification with and support for the movement. Taken together with prior research showing that extreme protest actions can be effective for applying pressure to institutions and raising awareness of movements, these findings suggest an activist’s dilemma, in which the same protest actions that may offer certain benefits are also likely to undermine popular support for social movements.
My answer is going to be unsatisfying—entirely vibes. While there are still significant sections of the populace that have left-over affection for anything that looks like the Civil Rights movement due to how valorized that movement is and how much change it affected, this is seriously waning. The non-effectiveness of movements that just copy the aesthetics are slowly making them look more like cargo-cults that copy the form but without an understanding of the substance that made them successful.
As more people dismiss protestors as performance without substance, protests start getting more awful to get anyone’s attention. Destroying social value and public goods for a cause no one else cares about grows increasingly irksome. When major lawlessness threatens people and sets fire to city blocks in the name of activism the good will drains away pretty rapidly. Now the cargo cults are just destroying stuff without any path to how that’s supposed to make things better.
It’s an ongoing change. We’re only seeing the start of it. But IMO its pretty undeniable that a decent percentage of the population thinks of activists as default harmful, and a preference cascade is just over the horizon.
There had been a study comparing the effects of moderate protests vs extreme protests, in hypothetical situations (the study participants would e.g. read a fictional article describing the activities of a protest group), and concluded that “Extreme Protest Actions Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements”:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338562538_The_activist’s_dilemma_Extreme_protest_actions_reduce_popular_support_for_social_movements
It could be that moderate protests are useful. It would be an interesting test of a group: whether it’s able to consistently avoid extreme behavior.