Protests and Coherence

News coverage of the G20 meeting in Toronto, like that of most coverage of protests by the mainstream media, has been condescending and dismissive. And although I'd like to say that there's a plain, commonsense message that the protesters are trying to get across that is just being ignored or suppressed, the truth is that there really is no one simple point that this multitude of people is trying to convey. The protesters are made up of representatives of a number of different interests. While all of the protesters are presumably opposed to the G20 and their policies in some fashion, among the various interests being represented there may be a few that are not only inconsistent with those of the other protesters, but possibly even a number that contradict each other. I don't doubt that there may even be a number of tinfoil hat, Alex Jones, anti-New World Order types who are protesting what they think is a global elite trying to wipe out half the world's population by promoting the homosexual agenda, and doing so in the same general vicinity as people advocating greater recognition of gay rights.

Among the issues the protesters wish addressed are debt amnesty, rights of indigenous peoples, corporate globalization, workers' rights, women's rights, and environmental degradation. It's essentially a grab bag of concerns held by those suspicious of anyone who has more money and power than they do. That's not to say that there's anything necessarily wrong with being suspicious of the wealthy and powerful, and it's not that these aren't legitimate issues. The problem is that when so many groups come together at once you can't expect the media to be able to get a complete message across. The best they can do is pull a few quotes from random people in the crowd which will rarely be fairly representative of the positions of all the people that those giving quotes intend to speak for. These protests produce little more than an inarticulate cacophony.