A common thing one hears from those skeptical of nonviolent civil resistance is that it would require a “charismatic leader” of some sort to really work—a Gandhi or a King, or the like. Of course the historical record hardly supports this; the assassinations of Gandhi and King spelled disaster for their movements, while less-centralized uprisings in places like Serbia and—this year–Tunisia and Egypt were startlingly successful. Still, this misconception seems to thrive.
In an extraordinary piece of reporting today at NPR, Deborah Amos describes what’s going on now in the already five-month-long effort to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. There are no leaders, nor do the protesters want any:
The banners and the slogans are remarkably similar, from the city of Dera’a in the south, to Hama on the central plain, to the eastern desert town of Deir Ezzor. Even in the capital of Damascus, the chants are the same: “It’s time for President Bashar al-Assad to go.”
Yet there are no leaders directing the chants at these rallies. There is no national leadership, even behind the scenes, says Rami Nakhle, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, the LCC, the most well known of the groups opposing the regime.
“Actually, we are doing our best not really to have leaders, because the classic leadership concept is really not working with this uprising,” said Nakhle, who is operating from Beirut in neighboring Lebanon.
On the one hand, they recognize that having specific leaders could make the movement more vulnerable. But there are other, more cultural reasons, too:
But there is something even stronger at work, said Nakhle. This Syrian generation has grown up under an authoritarian system and distrusts any kind of leadership.
“If some leader or some person starts to behave as a leader, the crowd will knock him down,” he said. “Everybody really feels anger towards leadership and authority on them.”
Yet Syrian resisters, Amos reports, also realize the downside of this approach. When it’s time to negotiate, who will represent them? When the international community wants someone to ally with, who will they choose? For the moment, as the situation remains violent and unpredictable, Syrians have little choice but to consign themselves to some uncertainty:
“There is an internal process, a process that is taking place in the street, which we will have to wait to see what happens there,” [human rights monitor Wissam Tarif] said. “No one can control that. The real show is taking place on the ground with the protesters. And they will decide. No one else.”
Movements that use civil resistance successfully must learn how to plan, organize, mobilize people, coordinate and sequence tactics, and maintain discipline. While great leaders have instilled these capabilities in nonviolent movements, there is no reason why they cannot be acquired by many people in movements today from sources other than order-giving, heroic leaders.
This learning can come from veterans of other movements, from resources on the internet, from books and films, by trial and error, from past political and social activity within the society, and from equivalent experience in other walks of life. Success in civil resistance is usually a function of the effectiveness of a movement’s strategy, but it’s conceivable that strategy can develop consensually and iteratively from within a dispersed cohort of those who are planning actions.
While it seems to be true that there are no central leaders in the Syrian resistance, it is likely that it has a large and distinct cohort of organizers, whether or not they are publicly visible. They may come from the ranks of known or previously inconspicuous dissidents, people who would have joined a true political opposition if one had been allowed, and talented individuals who rose in the ranks since the uprising began. The very existence of these agents of activity within a movement means that no movement is “leaderless” at the level of that action, though it may not begin with top-down concerted political direction.
From the standpoint of the history of civil resistance, it will be interesting to see whether we are now entering a period in which classic central political leadership is no longer necessary for successful political and social movements — whether a directively “bottom up” and not just a participatory “bottom up” dynamic of action is sustainable.
One of the many false notions about nonviolent struggle is that ordinary people in a politically oppressive or even subdued society can’t figure out how and when to engage in resistance without outside help and even inspiration. That’s of course nonsense, usually promoted by the threatened regime and its apologists. The people who compose the ranks of those who take decisive action in a movement — through strikes, boycotts, protests and civil disobedience — are those who own the movement. It would well represent the justice that a movement can bring about for its leadership to have been found throughout its ranks and not at the level of a presupposed elite.