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
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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.
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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.
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