Politicians are terrified of clarity. They treat language like a minefield rather than a tool for communication. The recent hand-wringing from Green Party leadership regarding protest slogans isn't a masterclass in diplomacy; it is a clinical study in the failure of nerve. When Zack Polanski suggests he would "discourage" specific chants while simultaneously opposing march bans, he isn't taking a stand. He is performing a high-wire act over a vacuum.
This isn't about one slogan. It is about the fundamental misunderstanding of what a protest is supposed to do. If you are "discouraging" the very energy that brings people to the streets, you aren't leading a movement. You are managing a PR crisis.
The Myth of the Clean Protest
The "lazy consensus" in modern political commentary suggests that for a movement to be legitimate, it must be polite. We are told that activists must curate their language to avoid offending the most sensitive person in the room. This is a lie. Protests are, by definition, an eruption of the unheard. They are messy. They are loud. They are frequently offensive to the status quo.
When party leaders try to sanitise the streets, they strip the movement of its teeth. Polanski’s middle-ground approach—wanting the right to march but fearing the words spoken during the march—creates a sterilized version of activism that achieves nothing. It satisfies the liberal urge to "do something" without actually risking anything.
The False Binary of Bans vs. Discouragement
The current debate is framed as a choice between authoritarian crackdowns (bans) and "responsible leadership" (discouragement). This is a false choice.
Banning marches is a direct assault on democratic health. On this, Polanski is technically correct. However, "discouragement" is a soft-power version of the same impulse. It signals to the public that the government—or the political elite—gets to decide which grievances are valid and which words are acceptable.
If a slogan is truly hateful, the law already has mechanisms to deal with incitement. If it is merely provocative or open to interpretation, then the role of a leader is not to wag a finger at the protesters. The role of a leader is to engage with the underlying material reality that drove those people into the rain in the first place.
The Logic of Selective Outrage
Why is "globalise the intifada" the breaking point for the political class? To some, it is a call for violent uprising. To others, it is a call for universal resistance against perceived oppression. By focusing on the linguistics, politicians avoid talking about the policy.
I have watched political organizations spend six-figure sums on "sensitivity training" and "messaging audits" while their actual legislative impact remains zero. They focus on the tone because they have lost the ability to argue the substance. When you can’t fix the housing crisis, the climate collapse, or foreign policy disasters, you police the vocabulary of the people who are angry about them. It is a distraction technique disguised as morality.
The High Cost of the "Safe" Center
The center ground is a graveyard for bold ideas. By trying to appease everyone, the Greens and similar parties are alienating the very base that gives them relevance.
Imagine a scenario where a labor union was told they could strike, but they were "discouraged" from using words that made the CEO feel uncomfortable. The strike would fail. Power concedes nothing without a demand, and a demand that has been focus-grouped into oblivion is no longer a demand. It is a suggestion.
The "nuance" that the competitor article missed is that this isn't a debate about antisemitism or Islamophobia or public order. It is a debate about the ownership of anger.
Expertise vs. Optics
As someone who has navigated the backrooms of policy shifts, I can tell you that the people in power don't care if a protest is polite. They care if it is disruptive.
If you spend your time debating the semantics of a chant, you are doing the government’s work for them. You are self-policing. You are ensuring that the disruption remains contained within "acceptable" boundaries.
- Fact: Public Order Acts already provide the police with sweeping powers to arrest for "harassment, alarm or distress."
- Reality: Politicians calling for further "discouragement" are asking for a cultural shift toward self-censorship.
The most effective movements in history—from the Suffragettes to the Civil Rights movement—were told their language was too radical. They were told they were alienating potential allies. They were "discouraged" by the Polanskis of their era. They won because they ignored the advice.
The Strategy of Disruption
If the Green Party wants to be a serious political force, they need to stop acting like a high school ethics committee. They need to decide if they are a party of the establishment or a party of the movement. You cannot be both.
The "discouragement" strategy is a tactical error for three reasons:
- It empowers the opposition: It confirms the right-wing narrative that these marches are inherently dangerous or radical.
- It fractures the base: It creates an internal hierarchy of "good" protesters and "bad" protesters.
- It ignores the cause: Every minute spent explaining why a chant is problematic is a minute not spent explaining why the status quo is terminal.
The Cowardice of the "Warn"
The competitor article notes that Polanski "warns" against march bans. A warning is a weak rhetorical device. It suggests a lack of agency. Instead of warning against bans, leaders should be making the positive case for absolute freedom of assembly, regardless of how "difficult" the language becomes.
The moment you concede that the state has a right to be "concerned" about the specific wording of a protest, you have already lost the argument against the ban. You have admitted that the speech is the problem. Once you admit the speech is the problem, the ban becomes the logical "solution" for an authoritarian government.
Stop trying to curate the revolution. Stop trying to make dissent palatable for the Sunday morning talk shows. If the chants are loud, if the language is sharp, and if the slogans make you uncomfortable, then the protest is working.
The obsession with "discouraging" language is the ultimate sign of a political class that has plenty of opinions but no actual power. They want to control the one thing they can—the words of their own supporters—because they have no control over the systems they claim to oppose.
Pick a side. Either the streets belong to the people, or they belong to the censors. There is no middle ground. There is no "polite" way to demand a total overhaul of the global order.
Stop policing the anger of the people you claim to represent.
