The freedom and ethics of protest in a time of pandemic

The Andrews government in Victoria has come under criticism across a number of online sites and news outlets for the significant arrests at anti-lockdown protests, the extensive police presence at dissident gatherings, and the use of search warrants to curtail the activities of protest organisers and persistent agitators.

Some of the anxiety driving recent protests in Melbourne and Ballarat relates to reasonable personal and community concerns about the impact of sustained lockdown on work, business and social life and protest seems a rational means to raise public concerns about the politics of viral transmission reduction measures, and police powers during the COVID-19 State of Emergency.

Other drivers of protest, however, have been described by Assistant Police Commissioner Luke Cornelius as circulating "batshit crazy" conspiracy theories by a "tinfoil hat-wearing brigade". They rely on scientifically inaccurate and factually incorrect ideas that COVID-19 is caused by 5G mobile networking or that the pandemic is a conspiratorial lie planned by Bill Gates and other liberal elites as part of some kind of world takeover. Others, drawing on 'sovereign citizen' discourse, are based on the false premise statutory law has no bearing on individuals. The protests themselves have become an amalgam attracting a range of far-right, anti-establishment, populist and conspiratorial views from among the disenfranchised.

Recent weeks have seen a police crackdown on individuals using social media to organise, incite or encourage protests, including police raids on the home of one woman in Ballarat and one prominent anti-government agitator in Melbourne.

While it might be right to prevent protest gatherings for the risks they presently create, it's important to ask if such police crackdowns and an anti-protest stance are an unnecessary curtailment of free speech and cultural expectations about freedom to assemble, given the long-recognised history of protest marches, vigils, pickets, direction action and rallies in promoting public discourse on important issues in Australia.

Some of the criticism of the arrests of those organising on social media, including that coming from overseas media and the Human Rights Watch, have rightly opened questions about free speech and freedom to gather that demand we think this through by shifting the focus from rights to ethics.

The ethics of the Right to Protest

Given the historical value of protest, should we support an idea of 'freedom' to protest per se, whether on behalf of issues of social justice or those with less social and more selfish individual demands at the core?

Politics and partisan-aligned distinctions have not, of course, been the reason for a crackdown of anti-lockdown protests under Stage-4 containment while others, such as the Black Lives Matter protest in June, was not as harried by government and police. Rather, timing and the risk to the community more broadly are the key factors making the anti-lockdown protests both illegal and unethical while the earlier Black Lives Matter protest on 6 June (of which there is no evidence it contributed to any viral transmission) was allowable.

It is helpful to think through what might be 'ethical timing' and 'ethical conditions' for a protest.

My most direct experience of protest culture in the 1990s in Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria occurred long before a pandemic and in conditions designed to protect life. Non-violent direct action events, rallies and marches among protests in the 1990s and early 2000s were about promoting liveable lives, equality and social harmony, whether they were creating awareness of the ethical problems of, for example, One Nation's racism (during Pauline Hanson's first iteration as a politician), fighting for social and health equalities for gender- and sexually-diverse minorities, participating in the 'People for Cities' movement to prevent the excesses of gentrification in inner-city Perth and its impact on the inner-urban poor and homeless or the S11 anti-corporate and anti-globalisation protests during the 2000 World Economic Forum meeting in Melbourne.

What marked socially-progressive protest culture was not only what the protests stood for, but the practice of protest: direct action public events were marshalled by organisers to ensure no harm would come to any person-whether that was protesters, bystanders, counter-protest agitators, the police, or others. Rehearsals of marshalling were often conducted prior to the day.

That is, while the protests might create deliberate inconvenience, draw attention to social and political issues, promote alternative ideas or demand policy and popular change, the aim was always to minimise risk. This is something which has been noted in Melbourne protests leading back to those organised in opposition to the Vietnam War.

The difference between these and the anti-lockdown protests is that the latter do not retain the ethics to protect life, ensure safety of all and promote community wellbeing.

Mobility and the Right to Gather

COVID-19 has opened serious questions about any idea of a right to mobility-to move with freedom through public spaces. Lockdown provisions under a state of emergency have required people to reduce gathering for one simple reason: it risks further transmission of the virus, and that transmission results in injury and death to others.

A socially-progressive ethics demands that we recognise vulnerability and act without violence towards the vulnerable. That is, from an ethical perspective, while I might strongly desire to socialise and gather in protest, it would be an act of 'violence' to do so because it puts other people-including those I will never know and never meet-at risk, as I may unwittingly cause a transmission from one person to another to another. That person may infect someone whose health vulnerability means an infection will result in death.

An ethical perspective begins with acknowledging that we live in a society of bodies, all of which are vulnerable to disease and some more frail than others. It demands that no matter how important a protest gathering might seem, it is absolutely unethical to put lives at risk by gathering. Remaining immobile (at home) is painful, but in present circumstances it is the only ethical response to pandemic.

Vulnerability in Reverse

While there is a viable need to curtail protests that would otherwise cause harm (infection) to others by furthering the community transmission of SARS-CoV-2, and while it is absolutely ethical to disavow protest gatherings that will cause social harm, it is unhelpful to mock or dismiss protest organisers for their ignorance.

Much social media was filled with the mocking of a young pregnant woman from Ballarat who was arrested for attempting to organise a local anti-lockdown protest but demonstrated only limited understanding of the laws under which she was arrested and confessed to not being engaged with politics, policy and information.

Likewise, the arrest of serial agitator James Bartolo resulted in a significant online pile-on from those who mocked his conspiracy theory ideas. Such mocking is not only unhelpful (since it bolsters the outsider feelings among those why buy into such ideas) but drives people who hold unpalatable ideas into more obscure online spaces where they cannot be reached by those of us who need to help change their minds. It also encourages greater defiance, including defiance of life-saving lockdowns, mask-wearing and other highly important health measures.

One of the reasons conspiracy theories spread so quickly is because there is a substantial need for people for those who have experienced limited opportunities for quality education to form all-encompassing views that help make sense of the world. Reality is actually mundane, there is no grand plan behind the scenes in any organisation or government, and incompetence and contingency are not only common but normal-but this is not always easy to deal with, and those who are more vulnerable due to a lack of critical skill, knowledge or insider information should not be mocked for turning to conspiracy theories as a ways of feeling more comfortable with the world.

Indeed, alienating those who have chosen the unethical path of organising or attending anti-lockdown protests are only further alienated when mocked. Conspiracy theories that may be "batshit crazy" are a problem, but it is unhelpful to sustain adversarial tribes of those "in the know" and those who believe conspiracy.

Even more so is doing anything that reduces freedom of speech-not because there is a 'right' to hold dangerous ideas, but because the only way to dispel them is through open dialogue and talk.

We have an excellent opportunity in our online culture to do the right thing: reach out, educate, explain, argue and try (even if in vain) to understand each other for the good of a social future in which we can have both freedom from infection and freedom to maintain an ongoing discussion about what kind a future of free speech and freedom to gather might look like.