Anti-Trump Protests: Civil Movement, Social Movement, or Unrest of the Losers?

Since Donald Trump's inauguration as President of the United States on January 20, 2016, protests against him have continued in various cities across the U.S. and even in other countries. The largest of these occurred the day after the inauguration under the title Women's March, which drew millions. On the day of the inauguration, protests in Washington D.C. included acts of vandalism such as car burnings and shop window breakages by some demonstrators. Another example was the gatherings of several hundred to several thousand people at various airports on January 27, following Trump's anti-terrorism order that banned citizens from seven countries. Protests at the University of California, Berkeley (February 1, 2017) quickly turned violent, aimed at preventing the speech of Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor at Breitbart (a clear violation of free speech). What is the nature of such protests as gatherings and marches? How are they organized? What are the demands and goals of the participants? Can the protesters achieve their demands? Nature: Non-civil. The protests following Trump's visa ban for citizens of seven countries are not civil protests (in the non-violent sense aimed at securing civil or fundamental rights). In the airport protests, the demonstrators did not resort to violence, but they were defending the privileges of those who are not present in the United States, and no rights were taken away from them nor was there any discrimination against them. The issuance of visas for non-American citizens is a privilege, not a right. Thus, these protests are sometimes revolutionary and sometimes political, not civil protests aimed at acquiring rights or removing privileges. Those who participated in these protests were demanding an illegal request unless we base our argument on open-door policies and a borderless world. Even in Articles 13 and 14 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, there is no right to obtain a visa from other countries. The Women's March was also not rooted in a social movement focused on women's rights and demands. In this gathering and the subsequent march, no specific demands for advancing women's rights were raised other than responding to Trump's behavior and rhetoric during the election campaign and prior. In recent years, active women in the United States have typically emphasized equal pay for equal work, paid maternity leave, abortion rights, pursuing sexual harassers in various environments, especially in the military, and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals, which were not significantly addressed in this march and gathering. Very few speakers at the event addressed these issues. The slogans and placards were mainly against Trump to fuel political enthusiasm. Among the protesters against Trump, there are revolutionaries who oppose the current political, economic, and social situation, anarchists, reformists, and those pursuing specific demands. When these groups come together, they weaken each other's pressure points, and the main claimed voice is less heard. Protesting within the framework of the U.S. Constitution is a legal right of all citizens, but not every protest is necessarily a civil protest or carries the demands of a social movement. These protests, apart from informing that there is a group opposing the Trump administration (which everyone knows) and providing hope to the losers, have no other function. The issue is not just the limited impact of these protests, but in the long term, they create problems for Trump's opponents. Goal: "No to Trump". The timing and nature of the protests indicate that the losers of the 2016 election want to empower and give hope to their social base with these movements and prevent the actions of the elected government. A significant portion of the protests on inauguration day was blind revolutionary riots, merely opposing capitalism and the established political system. The Women's March the day after Trump's inauguration was anything but a women's march; it was a movement without a clear program and goal (other than "No to Trump") and thus was ineffective or minimally effective. In this protest, anyone who opposed Trump's election was present. The voice that observers heard from outside was to stop the Trump administration and bring the situation to Trump's impeachment, which is a negative goal and not a positive demand that could be turned into law and policy. Social media in the 21st century has made mobilization in free societies easy. For this reason, only a few hours after Trump's anti-terrorism order, people showed up at airports. The existing protests are both well-organized and adequately funded. Just one day after Trump's entry ban for citizens of seven countries, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) received $24 million in donations, while the organization's annual fundraising capacity is around $4 million. However, a social movement or civil protest requires more than organization and financial resources for mobilization (as formal and mechanical factors); it needs a specific goal and mission. The civil rights movement of the 1960s, the women's suffrage movement of the 1910s, the marriage equality movement in the last two decades, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the "Black Lives Matter" movement, and the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 70s may have faced many organizational and funding limitations, but they pursued specific goals such as ending racial discrimination, women's voting rights, marriage rights for LGBTQ+ individuals, reducing class gaps, stopping police shootings of African Americans, and avoiding attacks on other countries. Some of these goals have been achieved, some have not, or have led to some compromises, but they have given direction to the respective movements and united the movement's supporters. The threat of Islamism is not less than that of communism and fascism for a significant portion of American citizens, and this sense of danger is not properly understood by Muslims and leftist groups active in the protests. It seems that leftist groups fueling these movements (including some Democrats) are heading down the same path that led to their defeat in the 2016 elections. The "No to Trump" movement has sufficient organization and funding but does not know exactly what it wants. This movement is waiting for actions from the Trump administration to say no to them, a message that was sent in the elections by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, which did not bring the White House to them.