“The people want the fall of the regime” was the slogan made famous by the Arab Spring. In 2011, what the people wanted, they often got, as authoritarian governments were toppled in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
The lesson of that year looked similar to that learnt in Europe in 1989: if enough demonstrators come out on to the streets, they can become an irresistible force for change — though the political order that eventually emerges may not always reflect the protesters’ aspirations.
In 2020, however, people power looked less of an unstoppable force. There were plenty of popular demonstrations across the world this year, but few have led to clear political victories for the protesters.
Why might street protests be losing their power? Two trends seem to be emerging. One is that authoritarian governments are getting better at repression. And in the case of broad-based social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter, diffuse aims make it harder to define success.
In Hong Kong the pro-democracy movement that, at its height, brought millions of people on to the streets has been crushed by the passage of a new national security law drawn up in Beijing. Two young leaders of that movement — Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow — were jailed this month. In Belarus, months of mass protests following a flawed election have failed to dislodge Alexander Lukashenko as president. In Thailand, the military-backed government continues to resist demands for constitutional reform.
There have been deaths and disappearances inflicted on protesters in Belarus — but, elsewhere, official repression has avoided mass street violence. Troops were not deployed on the streets in Hong Kong. Instead protesters have been arrested and jailed, with ringleaders tracked using social media and surveillance technology.
The international political environment also matters. In Egypt in 2011 or the Philippines in 1986, US-sponsored autocrats found that support from Washington was withdrawn in response to popular pressure. But in Belarus, the key outside power is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which has every interest in seeing street protest movements fail.
China is the sovereign power in Hong Kong, and the Thai military increasingly looks to Beijing rather than to Washington. Ironically, Russia and China — two countries that were once seen as the sponsors of world revolution — have now become deeply reactionary in their response to popular movements that threaten established power.
By contrast, the Black Lives Matter movement against racial injustice and police brutality was perhaps the biggest social protest movement seen in the US for decades. It brought millions of people on to the streets: impressive, given that BLM took place in the middle of a pandemic.
But widespread support for the BLM did not necessarily translate into an easily actionable agenda. The Democrats would not endorse a demand to “defund the police” during the 2020 election. However, the movement sparked a broader demand for racial justice whose effects are likely to play out in business and society over the course of many years.
Here are some of the movements that defined the year:
US: Black Lives Matter seeks racial justice
The police killing of George Floyd in May sparked protests across the US and around the globe. Video of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, being pinned down for more than eight minutes by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, went viral.
It sparked outrage in big US cities, as well as smaller towns and suburbs where people had not previously protested against police violence en masse.
Floyd’s death reignited long-simmering tensions over racial injustice in the US and breathed new life into the Black Lives Matter movement, which started after George Zimmerman was acquitted for the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager.
Thailand: Students march for reform
Thailand’s youth protests began after a court banned Future Forward, a popular opposition party, in February. The dissent went online during lockdown from March, then resurfaced outdoors from July.
A “Free Youth” movement, drawing on the legacy of past democratic uprisings and pop culture iconography, demanded the resignation of ex-junta leaders, a new constitution and an end to the harassment of dissidents. Radical students then made formerly unutterable demands for reform of the monarchy.
Older supporters have joined in, as have schoolchildren. But the protesters have not yet been successful in securing any of their core demands. Police have opened lèse majesté (royal insult) cases against more than two dozen protest figures. The students are digging in, too, and promising more action in 2021.
Belarus: Lukashenko’s flawed election
Enraged by authoritarian leader Mr Lukashenko’s claim to have won re-election in a deeply flawed vote in August, tens of thousands Belarusians flooded on to the streets in protest. The biggest demonstrations in the capital, Minsk, drew as many as 200,000 people — and for a brief moment Mr Lukashenko’s opponents hoped his autocratic 26-year rule was coming to an end.
But Mr Lukashenko’s security forces responded savagely. Tens of thousands of Belarusians have been detained, many have been injured and several have died. At the height of the protests, Mr Putin, the Russian president, pledged to support Mr Lukashenko. Combined with the crackdown and freezing winter conditions, Mr Lukashenko has been able to cling to power.
Protests are still taking place, albeit in decentralised form, in recent weeks to make it harder for security services to stamp them out. Opposition leaders hope that when the weather improves in the spring, the temperature of the protests will rise again too.
Poland: Anti-abortion opposition
The women’s rights protests that rocked Poland this autumn were triggered when a Constitutional Tribunal ruling paved the way for the country’s abortion laws — already among the strictest in Europe — to be tightened further.
The announcement sparked a furious backlash. Hundreds of thousands of Poles came on to the streets in towns and cities across the country. Following a huge protest in Warsaw at the end of October that drew about 100,000 people, the government backed down, preventing the ruling from coming into force by simply refusing to publish it.
That decision leaves Polish women in limbo. The abortion rules have not officially been tightened but some doctors are now reluctant to perform the procedure because of the legal uncertainty surrounding it. There is also the risk that the government could try again.
Hong Kong: China’s security law crackdown
Beijing’s imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong was aimed at extinguishing the 2019 pro-democracy movement in the city. While it has partially achieved its aim — street protests have been all but crushed — it has sparked international retaliation against China from the US, the UK and others, and raised questions over the future of the rule of law on which the Asian financial centre depends.
Under the new law, crimes ranging from secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign elements are punishable with up to life imprisonment.
Critics say the legislation’s wording is vague and that it violates the political, civil and legal freedoms guaranteed to the territory on its handover from the UK to China in 1997. The government has backed up the law with the arrest of high-profile activists while forcing others into exile.
Germany: Anti-mask protests
What started last spring as quirky, scattered protests against Germany’s coronavirus regulations has become a more radicalised movement. Some protesters insist they remain non-violent, and have legitimate concerns over the legal basis for pandemic measures. But they are rallying alongside a wide spectrum of hippies, neo-Nazis and conspiracy theorists.
The main organising force is a network that call themselves “Querdenker”, or lateral thinkers. They shocked the country in August, when protesters at a large rally in Berlin tried to storm the Reichstag. Many carried flags of the far-right Reichsbürger movement, which rejects the legitimacy of the postwar German state.
Since then, the protests have become more violent. Several policemen were injured at rallies in Leipzig and Berlin. One group among the protesters unnerved Germans by comparing themselves to Holocaust victims or Nazi resistance fighters. Federal and state intelligence agencies have issued warnings and put some of Querdenker chapters under surveillance.
US: Anti-lockdown protests
Starting in April, thousands of Americans in more than a dozen states participated in protests against the coronavirus stay-at-home orders that had shut down large parts of the US economy.
Many of the protesters were “ruby red” conservatives who bristled at what they saw as government over-reach. But in some places they were joined by moderates from the business community who fretted that the measures were resulting in tens of millions of people losing their jobs. Far-right extremist groups, such as the Proud Boys, were highly visible participants.
Some of the biggest protests took place in the industrial Midwestern state of Michigan, where Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer faced fierce criticism from not only her Republican constituents but also the president. In October, federal and local prosecutors in the state charged 14 men with conspiring to kidnap Ms Whitmer as part of a militia plot ahead of November’s US election.
Lebanon: Anger at state corruption
Lebanon’s nationwide protest movement, which erupted in October 2019, toppled prime minister Sa’ad Hariri’s government within weeks. The overthrow of the entire political class — deemed corrupt by protesters — seemed imminent.
The leaderless demonstrators were largely driven off the streets in 2020 by coronavirus and economic hardship. But the catastrophic port explosion in August, which killed around 200 people and injured thousands, brought protesters roaring back.
Thousands thronged the capital, blaming state incompetence and negligence for allowing some 2,750 tonnes of explosive chemicals to languish in central Beirut for six years. Security forces cracked down violently, eventually deterring demonstrators. So did a sense of futility. After the government resigned, parliament eventually returned the previous premier, Mr Hariri.
Additional reporting by Lauren Fedor in Washington, James Shotter in Warsaw, Nicolle Liu in Hong Kong, John Reed in Bangkok, Erika Solomon in Berlin and Chloe Cornish in Beirut