A History of Protests

We begin by exploring protests in the ancient world, stop in Medieval England, and come to the present day.  We also explore the mindset of protests today.  

Transcript

A History of Protests

June 2025

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

James Baldwin

“I wish to suggest that ample opportunity does exist for dissent, for protest, and for nonconformity. But I must also say that the right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.” 

Hubert H. Humphrey, senator and vice president.

Protests are always a mixed bag for me.  On the one hand, I love the concept of going out there, practicing my free speech rights, and telling the man where he can go and stuff his you know whats.  I am a strong advocate for free speech and, let’s say, not shy about expressing my opinions on a wide range of subjects, especially history and politics. And when I ponder some of my unfiltered thoughts, I consider the concept of “seldom correct but never in doubt.”  In fairness, I try to be always correct with history, but when it comes to movies and culture?  

I have been uncertain about a few issues, and that includes the concept of protests.  Having been involved in everything from marching in solidarity with the students protesting Chinese autocracy in 1989 to counter-marching against the teacher’s union and in support of Scott Walker in 2010.  There is an adrenaline rush to these things.  You are there with thousands of like-minded souls, seemingly making a difference, with your voice being heard.  Heady stuff.  And is that the actual reason I and others enjoyed protesting?  And note the seeming to “making a difference” part.  

And therein lies my issue with protests as they are constituted today.  Am I marching for a cause, or about me?  My beliefs, my need to express my opinions regardless of what those opinions might be?  There is an interstate highway-sized line between protesting for that which is an important thing and that which is an exercise in personal id.  

Today, we will explore a series of historical protests and then examine what protesting looks like today, not just in the US but in other global environments.  

Historical question:  What is the difference between protests that exist to correct an unjust ill and those that exist to provide the protesters with some form of identity and personal fulfillment?  

Ancient and Pre-Modern Protests

One of our challenges is discerning the differences between protests, which agitate against the state or other entities, and a general rebellion.  In this case, we will omit the circumstances wherein a general or member of the royal court led some form of an overthrow. One way to look at this is as a group wishing to change a policy, law, or edict rather than a regime change or a thirst for wielding power.  Now, most historical protests emanate from a sense of powerlessness, but I am not talking of some sulky son putting a dagger into his dear old dad.  

This is also not directly about riots.  Those tend to emanate from an uncontrolled mob.  Certainly riots can come from protests that get out of control but I believe, perhaps naively, that the majority of those who either organize protests, or participate in them, want to see riots or even the partially more benign, looting.  Simply put, protests tend to be legal (excluding the blocking of traffic or Van Gogh induced vandalism) looting and rioting are illegal.  Again, this could be some barely left innocence on my part.  When a group sets out to protest something, there are those who will wish to see the protester thwarted.  Thousands, or tens of thousands, passionate people marching in the streets can quickly turn from emotion to violence.  But trying to focus on those whose goal was nonviolent change.  

Though modern protests often conjure images of organized marches or civil disobedience, the roots of protest extend far deeper in human history and look a lot different. In ancient civilizations, resistance often took the form of rebellion or mutiny, driven by oppressive rule or economic hardship.

According to the Global Non-Violent Action Database, of the earliest known protests occurred in Ancient Egypt around 1152 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses III, in the New Kingdom era. (BTW, this is the third Ramses; it was his predecessor, Ramses II, who achieved fame in Exodus and of whom I still think Yul Brenner was my favorite actor to portray him.  Workers at the royal necropolis at Deir el-Medina went on strike due to delayed wages—possibly the first recorded labor strike in history. 

In his book, The Gracchi: The Lives and Legacies of the Brothers Who Attempted to Reform the Roman Republic, Charles Rivers provides insights into Republican era Rome.  One of the hallmarks of Ancient Rome was the centuries-long class conflict between the patricians, who originally wielded the most power, and the plebeians, also known as the plebs.   The plebs frequently engaged in collective actions, known as the “Secessions of the Plebs,” to demand political rights and social reforms.  Later, under the two Tribunes of the Plebs, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchi, it was not so much patrician vs. Plebeian, but rather the general population vs. the ruling oligarchy. For all the trappings of the Republic, oligarchic rule was the norm.  The problem with the Gracchi’s political movement is that it soon grew to violence, “The Gracchi brothers were arguably the first to systematically rouse the Roman mob to violence, using their leadership of the Populares to try to achieve their political purposes,” notes Rivers.  Later, one protest, upon the death of Tribune Publius Clodius, turned violent and burned down the Roman Senate house.  

We jump to the Middle Ages, where a protest by the barons of England against King John in 1215 takes place.  Magna Carta is tricky.  Kings fighting nobles was not exactly novel, but the concept of placing a permanent curb on kingship itself made what began as a protest and turned into a revolt something special.  The concept that the law was above the monarchy, or any single individual running things, provided the basis for the government that we, and nations throughout the world, would instantly recognize.  But it was probably not a protest that we would identify.  

About 160 years later, an event would come to pass that has modern parallels.  In medieval Europe, peasant revolts were common, especially during times of feudal exploitation or famine. The English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, spurred by poll taxes and economic inequality, challenged the very structure of feudal society despite being brutally suppressed.  Part of what prompted the peasants was the death of so many during the black death of 1346-8 meant that power uniquely transitioned to labor. Before the 14th century, nobles had swords but also had many replaceable bodies.  I have produced an entire podcast on this revolt and noted that unscrupulous landlords were attempting to re-enslave free laborers (also known as villains) to save money on their wages. This created an overall feeling of exploitation by local authorities during economic decline.  They still had the weapons in 1381, but when each peasant was precious, it changed things.  The peasants did not wish to challenge the monarchy directly but instead looked to the King for redress against his ministers or overmighty nobles.  

Although the seeds of the Enlightenment and the rise of liberal philosophy transformed protests from reactive outbursts to ideologically driven movements, it was not just humanism and the ending of Feudalism.  As more industry and trade came online, it meant that people no longer had to toil endlessly in the fields to feed themselves and their superiors.  It became less about famine and oppression and more about a better life.  People began to assert the right to self-governance, freedom of expression, and equality.  

The English Civil War (1642–1651) and the Glorious Revolution (1688) were marked by significant political and religious protests that ultimately shaped the development of parliamentary democracy. The American Revolution (1775–1783), famously preceded by the Boston Tea Party, was a protest against British taxation and imperial control, culminating in the birth of a new nation based on democratic principles.

The French Revolution (1789) marked one of the most profound protest movements in history, in which mass mobilizations of the working classes and the bourgeoisie overthrew a monarchy and introduced concepts such as liberty, fraternity, and equality. Though later violent and chaotic, it became a blueprint for political revolution.

In the 19th century, the Chartist movement in Britain advocated for universal male suffrage and political reforms. At the same time, numerous labor protests emerged in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, demanding improved working conditions, higher wages, and shorter working hours.  Another of these was the Luddite movement.  Reacting to industrialization, British textile workers protested against the introduction of new machinery during the Industrial Revolution. These workers, fearing job losses and a decline in their craft, destroyed machines like mechanized looms. While often portrayed as simply anti-technology, the Luddites were primarily reacting to the economic and social upheaval caused by industrialization, which threatened their livelihoods and traditional skills. The Luddites were led by a mythical figure named Ned Ludd, who was said to be a young apprentice who destroyed a knitting frame.  Ludd was a precursor to the charismatic leader who would deliver the oppressed.  Though the movement was short-lived, it left a lasting legacy, with “Luddite” becoming a term for those who resist technological change. However, the term is often used in a more general sense than the movement’s original context. Richard Conniff, writing for Smithsonian notes, “As the Industrial Revolution began, workers naturally worried about being displaced by increasingly efficient machines. But the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines,” says Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites. They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices.”  This demonstrates that what we think of certain protests may not always match the aims of the protesters, or even the outcomes they truly wish to achieve.  

Coxey’s Army was a protest march of unemployed workers led by Jacob S. Coxey, who marched from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., in 1894, during the Depression of 1893. The marchers, officially named the Army of the Commonwealth in Christ, aimed to petition Congress for a federally funded public works program to create jobs for the unemployed. Though the march was unsuccessful in achieving its immediate goals, it is remembered as the first significant popular protest march on Washington and a precursor to later social movements.

What was so significant about Coxey’s protest was that, for the first time in US history, protesters were not targeting local or state governments or a specific geographic area or organization. Instead, they went to Washington, DC.  The first, but not the last, march to do so.   

The 20th century was the golden age of protest, fueled by advances in communication, transportation, and political thought. The protest became a vital tool in both democratic and colonial societies.

Most Americans are familiar with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, led by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., who employed nonviolent protest to dismantle segregation and secure voting rights. Events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955) and the March on Washington (1963) played a pivotal role in shaping public policy and opinion.  Despite the false claims of critical race theorists and some educational reformers, the civil rights movement has been taught in American schools for at least the past 70 years.  Less well-known were adjacent movements, such as the Black Panthers, which were less averse to violence than King.  Also present were the Nation of Islam and the African First movements.  These latter three get less press because of statements such as this from Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael, “In order for nonviolence to work. Your opponent must have a Conscience. The United States has none.”

Moving from protests against racism, a worldwide protest movement emerged against colonialism.  Between 1492 and the mid-1900s, European colonies occupied vast swathes of the world, spanning from South America to Asia to Africa.  The end of these colonies came amidst anti-colonial protests in nearly all of these places. India’s independence movement, spearheaded by Mahatma Gandhi, employed civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) to resist British colonialism, culminating in independence in 1947. Similar movements spread across Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, with varying degrees of success and violence.

The labor movement grew stronger in industrialized nations, demanding rights that are now considered standard: weekends, safe working conditions, and minimum wages. The May Day protests and the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in 1886 became symbols of global labor solidarity.

Women also mobilized in waves. The suffragette movement in the UK and US fought fiercely for the right to vote, using protests, hunger strikes, and marches. Later, the second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 70s addressed workplace discrimination, reproductive rights, and gender equality.

Student protests emerged globally, most notably in Paris (May 1968), where students and workers nearly paralyzed the French government. In the United States, students protested the Vietnam War, contributing to a broader anti-war movement that challenged US foreign policy.

In authoritarian states, protests were often met with extreme repression. The Hungarian Uprising (1956) and the Prague Spring (1968) in Eastern Europe were brutally crushed by Soviet forces. However, continued dissent eventually contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the aforementioned Tiananmen Square student protest?  Ruthlessly crushed by the government, and we have seen nothing like it.  Knowing Xi Jinping, we are not likely to see anything similar while he is in power.  

The 21st century has witnessed a transformation in protest tactics driven by globalization and digital communication. Social media, smartphones, and global news networks have made protests more visible and contagious.

The Arab Spring (2010–2012) began with the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor and led to widespread revolutions across the Arab world. Though results varied—from democratic reform in Tunisia to civil war in Syria—demands for dignity, jobs, and freedom drove the protests. Sadly, this was a case, and we shall explore this more later in the podcast, wherein the optimism of the movement has led to little actual inclusion of individual rights in the Middle East. 

In Spain, the Indignados Movement and the US Occupy Wall Street (2011) responded to economic inequality and political corruption. The rallying cry “We are the 99%” became a symbol of growing frustration with the elite’s control of wealth and economic power.

And, of course, there is climate change, powered through mass youth mobilization. Protests have brought climate change to the forefront of global political agendas.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, sparked by police killings of unarmed Black individuals in the United States, became a global movement against systemic racism. The death of George Floyd in 2020 prompted protests in over 60 countries.  Of all these movements, I believe that the BLM ones are founded on the weakest ground.  I do not mean that leftists will abandon using the cudgel of racial politics (Carmichael was utterly wrong; white liberals have plenty of consciences, too much perhaps), but instead, it began in 2014 with the death of Michael Brown, a man who was aggressively fighting for a police officer’s gun when it went off after he had robbed a convenient store.  Even the Obama Justice Department did not find fault with the police officer.  And George Floyd?  A career criminal ran into a bad cop.  That was it.  But that is not what the world heard or experienced.  

And now, we will pivot to women and protests.  Women’s protests have continued globally—from #MeToo in the United States to large-scale demonstrations in Poland, India, and Latin America for reproductive rights and against gender-based violence. In the information age, it was inconceivable that women could be permanently excluded in a similar way to how they had been for the previous 4,700 years of human history, where physical might dictated preeminence?  According to Kim Parker, writing for Pew Research, “the % of adults age 25-34 in America today with college degrees breaks as follows: 45% for women and just 39% for men.  Though low-income people obviously participate in protests, they are not the organizers.  It is the affluent who either have the time for preparation or are a permanent activist class living on donations.  And this is not exactly novel.  Back in ancient Rome, both of the men of the people, the Gracchi, were nobles themselves. 

And yet, women are increasingly the centerpieces and driving forces behind modern protests today.  

Speaking of these, Claire Lehmann, in a piece entitled When Women Are Radicalized, writes, 

“Surveys have found that attendance at climate demonstrations in cities around the world tends to be about 60 percent female, and recent American progressive movements—such as Black Lives Matter and the Gaza encampments, many of which were supported or led by the female-founded Jewish Voice for Peace—have likewise been launched and sustained by women.”

One of the more pernicious aspects of recent movements is the co-option of children.  After seeing repeated legislative failures, the Climate Change movement turned 15-year-old Greta Thunberg into their spokesperson. 

Lehmann adds, “A “Gus” Thunberg who encouraged children to skip school would be more likely to be called in for detention than invited to the U.N. Thunberg’s trajectory illustrates a broader pattern: Radical behavior from young women is not just tolerated but actively encouraged through awards, platforms, and institutional support. This creates a feedback loop. The incentive structures that rewarded Thunberg so handsomely for her climate activism have since encouraged her to expand into pro-Palestinian activism. “If you, as a climate activist, don’t also fight for a Free Palestine and an end to colonialism and oppression all over the world,” the now 22-year-old activist declared at a demonstration in Milan last year, “then you should not be able to call yourself a climate activist.” 

This demand for ideological purity across unrelated causes is a hallmark of female radicalism and a characteristic of how “intersectionality” is employed in activist cultures. What began as a framework for understanding different forms of disadvantage and how they can overlap is now a litmus test for moral conformity—not only on issues like climate and Gaza but also on heavily charged topics like abortion, where deviation from the dominant view is treated as betrayal. While generally not coercing people through violence, female radicals coerce through threats of shaming and social exclusion.” And yet behind the scenes of many protests, especially those of pro Palestine, we find male operators such as Mahmoud Khalil's whose role in Columbia University’s 2024 protests placed him in the public eye. On the front lines of negotiations, he played a role in mediating between university officials and the activists and students who attended the protests.

Whether men or women Modern protest increasingly occurs online. Hashtags, viral videos, and digital organizing have amplified voices and helped mobilize global solidarity. While effective in drawing attention, digital protests also face challenges such as misinformation, surveillance, and the short attention span of their audience.

So consider these recent movements, from environmentalism to climate to digital to BLM to women’s movements.  Have they moved the needle in any significant fashion?  You might say climate change, but it was Richard Nixon, all the way back in 1970, who created the EPA out of concern for what industry was doing to the environment.  And it was after Nixon that the environmental movement was anxious about global COOLING.  One might say everything from electric vehicles to solar stations is a sign of climate change effectiveness.  However, these technologies were already in place before the mass protests, the Paris Accords, or whatever inanity was emerging from the Conference of the Parties.  In fact, the first solar panel was conceived in 1883 and in the 1950s, when solar panels were used to power the Vanguard spacecraft.  

I would argue that the civil rights movements of the 1960s were effective.  But since then?  BLM, or other black leaders such as Ibram Kendi, have been revealed to be grifters, and their movements and opinions discredited.  And Palestine is in a weaker position, and Israel is a stronger one than at any point since the inception of the latter in 1948.  Even Sunni Gulf states now want to play ball with Israel.  Part of this has less to do with any movement and more to do with a massive miscalculation on Oct. 7, 2023, in which Hamas murdered 1,200 innocent Israelis.  Whatever civilian Palestinians are killed today is always seen in that light.  All of the pro-Palestinian protests must contend with the date wherein more Jews were murdered than at any time since the Holocaust.  

Yet protests continue unabated on all of these subjects.  Unlike a business that has to show a profit, those organizing protests have no ROI, no scorecard, or grade on the impact.  Attention is the primary determinant of success, and in that, there have been many victories, but attention is fleeting.  Is there any real change?  But I believe there is another, more powerful incentive of which attention is a part.  

I will save all the backing statistics (they are there) for the fraying of our traditional pillars of society.  The personal identification that Americans used to take in their community, marriage, family, Nation, and religion have all been in severe decline over the past 50 years.  Something has to take its place.  One piece of evidence is the idolatry now showered on political operatives such as Obama and Trump.  Not even FDR or JFK enjoyed a rump group of Americans providing such worship and iconography.  But another is identification with a cause.  And not even the actual cause itself but rather the INVOLVEMENT in the cause for personal fulfillment.  This is one of the few ways I can reconcile members of the LGBTQ community with Palestine when the majority of Palestinians would condemn these groups to the point of violence.  It is the only one I can note, as Lehmann does, with a Greta Thunberg jumping from Climate to Palestine and quickly associating the two as one.  It's about the protest; the cause is secondary.  

One theory may link all of these as anti-Western, and there is the smell of Socialism and even Marxism at the center of these.  But wanting rights for African Americans or a clean environment is not anti-Western.  Communist nations had an awful environmental history.  However, it is the dissolution of those societal pillars that has left a vacuum.  And nature abhors a vacuum.