Protests: Accentuating the Positive

FIRST THEY CAME

By Martin Niemöller

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller, the author of these lines, was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor who co‑founded the Confessing Church in opposition to Nazi control of Protestantism. A former U‑boat commander and early Hitler supporter with nationalist beliefs, he turned against Nazi interference in church affairs, leading to his arrest and imprisonment in Sachsenhausen and Dachau from 1938 to 1945. After the war, he expressed regret for his silence on Nazi atrocities, became a pacifist and anti‑nuclear activist, served as president of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau and the World Council of Churches, and is best remembered for his poem First They Came—a timeless warning against indifference to injustice.

I am tempted to amend Pastor Niemöller’s verse somewhat in light of the genocide currently unfolding, and add the following:

And then they came for the Arab Palestinian—

The women, the children, and the elderly non-combatants—

And I did not speak up

Because I was not one of these.

So, when they came for me

There was no one left

To speak for me.

This is precisely why the protests happening today all over the so-called free world are so vital. In country after country, a new generation—call it Gen Z, Gen A, or what you will—is standing up and saying “NO!”. It is a generation prepared to be arrested, denied legal rights, brutalized, and criminalized. Yet, it remains determined to stand up, refuse to be silenced, go to jail if necessary, and insist on the fundamental right to protest, to disagree with the state, and to speak freely. All that the state has managed pathetically to do so far—be it in India or France—is to unleash massive force to squelch these voices. But the voices refuse to be silenced.

An important focus of my writing on protests, in the context of tracking the illiberal turn of contemporary liberal democracies, has centered on the state’s coercive responses—specifically how the state apparatus mobilizes the mighty force of policing to suppress dissent. However, despite its validity, analyzing protest through the single lens of state repression misses a fundamental truth: protest as a courageous and defiant assertion of the democratic spirit of the people. This is an equally vital lens through which these global demonstrations must be viewed.

Across the countries that call themselves democracies, there are remarkable examples of public rejection of anti-people measures and demands for action to support the marginalized and the vulnerable:

• France: Mass mobilizations against so-called pension reforms and economic precarity, reflecting a public refusal to let executive decree erode long-standing social protections.

• Spain and Italy: Dynamic civic movements challenging the failure to deal with housing crises, fiscal austerity, and the systematic erosion of social safety nets.
• India: National demonstrations led by young people exposing mass-scale voter suppression and defending constitutional values, secularism, and agrarian livelihoods against overreaching authority.

While local catalysts range from economic hardship to structural inequality, the core impulse remains uniform: citizens taking to the streets to insist on accountability.

To justify their heavy-handed crackdowns trampling democratic rights and freedoms, governments have invoked a tired playbook of authoritarian narratives. Peaceful assembly is rarely acknowledged as a legitimate expression of grievance. Instead, states default to predictable tropes. They make allegations of a “foreign hand” or shadowy external actors, launch smear campaigns framing protests as covert attempts at unlawful regime change, and engage in xenophobic scapegoating—such as blaming “lawless migrants” or outside agitators—to undermine public sympathy. Under the guise of restoring public order, the state deploys tear gas, pre-emptive detentions, and paramilitary force, seeking to criminalize the basic right to assemble.

Beyond physical force, the modern state relies on massive, invasive surveillance to silence dissent. State monitoring has moved from targeted security measures to totalizing control. A stark example of this digital panopticon came to light in a Newslaundry interview with Mehr Choudhary, who provided policy advice to the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) as head of policy at the Center for Justice & Peace (CJP) / SFLC.in. Mehr left her studies at Harvard to join the protest movements led by the CJP. In the interview, she described being picked up by police from a quiet, out-of-the-way spot where she was having breakfast. She had turned off the location feature on her mobile phone, and yet, the Delhi police knew where she was. What does it say about the reach of the surveillance state when an individual can no longer control the location settings of their communications devices to ensure privacy?

Yet, focusing exclusively on state overreach offers an incomplete picture. Analyzing, cataloguing, or criticizing policing tactics, judicial overreach, and the misuse of surveillance technology are important, but they do not constitute the full story. Of equal, if not greater, importance is the public refusal to submit to coercion, the resistance to force, and the determination not to take no for an answer. The state’s reactionary brutality is not a sign of absolute strength; it is a defensive reaction to a public that refuses to remain passive.

We must not lose sight of the positive side.

As the liberal state slides into illiberalism—deploying high-tech spyware like the Israeli-developed Pegasus alongside brute physical force—a new generation is refusing to yield. We are witnessing a profound generational conflict: an aging, often octogenarian political elite relying on outdated paradigms of top-down control versus a young, decentralized generation standing up for democracy, equality, and the rule of law. Utilizing digital coordination, decentralized networks, and creative forms of civil disobedience, this new generation operates in spaces that security apparatuses struggle to comprehend, let alone contain.

At their core, these protests are an assertion of the current generation’s insistence on key fundamental demands:

• Uncompromising Democracy: Insistence on participatory governance over executive overreach.
• Fairness and Equality: Total rejection of systemic discrimination and economic marginalization.
• A Livable Future: Refusal to let entrenched interests compromise long-term economic, social, and environmental stability.
• Digital Freedom: Demand for a surveillance-free society where civil liberties extend fully into digital spaces.

It is easy to become despondent when watching the machinery of the state crack down on peaceful citizens. Yet, as the Indian historian Mukul Kesavan noted in a recent interview with Karan Thapar on the Indian YouTube channel The Wire, these persistent acts of public defiance are the very reason why we should have hope. Against the dark backdrop of state-sanctioned violence and authoritarian consolidation designed to maintain power, these protests serve as a powerful reminder that democracy does not reside merely in ballot boxes or government halls—it lives in the courage of ordinary people who step into the streets to defend it.