this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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That's pretty much what the subject of the Bevins' book I mentioned is about, it's called "If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution", the movements he analyzed (sometimes having been there in person) had pretty much that configuration too, and that has strenghts and weaknesses that ended up driving said movements into, for example, in Brazil, proto-bolsonarista politics, in ukraine, the maidan, in egypt, the sissi coup etc.
It's a paradox because it's precisely that leaderless, low comittment (dip in and dip out), directly democratic (in the essence of rejecting representation) of these movements (and I assume in serbia too) that leads MORE PEOPLE to participate, it's just that he makes a point that because there isn't a leader, or a representative, eventually that can develop a political vacum where people DO start looking for someone to represent them and carry their aims, because that vacum has to be filled.
It's also a fact that most of the time there already absolutely are leaders of the movements, they're just neither appointed not public, but there for sure are people who are well connected inside the movement (in some cases in control of the social media accounts that schedule the protests) to exercise more control over them than your average low comittment protestor, but because this hierarchy isn't revealed, and there aren't institutional ways to participate in it, some nasty people or nasty politics can come out on top, sometimes by just literally beating up leftists into being driven out...
So yeah it's complicated.