The Romanian Protests: An “Occupy” Movement that Changes Perceptions in the Long Run

When the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon began in Zuccotti Park in New York at the end of September last year, the news was featured in the bizarre section, nobody paid much attention to it and the whole idea seemed to be on the verge of ridicule.

The protesters had initially gathered without a common purpose; their slogans were wide and varied, their focus ranging from the abolition of the banking system to increased taxation of the wealthy and more benefits for regular people. In the following months, Occupy, which was more of a rebellion than a protest movement, continued, grew and extended to other cities in the U.S. and even the world. None of the protesters’ demands were put into practice — it was not even possible to do this — yet the movement was ingrained in the collective consciousness as an exercise of egalitarianism and a symbol of Everyman’s rebellion against a system that had become too large and too overbearing. Thousands of protesters, irrespective of social category and level of education, camped and marched in New York and in other American cities until winter, when the core of the protest was disbanded by the intervention of the police, who cleared the park. However, the movement reverberates still, and smaller Occupy demonstrations continue to this hour, even though they are more symbolic in nature. They showed how far the movement could go, as the notoriety of the phenomenon reached all strata of the society. It remains to be seen whether the Occupy movement will resurface with the arrival of spring, or whether it will go down in history only as a form of “sămănătorism” [Editor's note: Romanian anti-capitalist movement of the early 20th century] of the beginning of the 21st century.

A great part of the U.S. population sympathized with the Occupy movement, yet remained skeptical as to the practical aims of the manifestations. Others politely ignored the protesters they passed by every day. No politician, however, had the audacity to refer to the protesters using offensive and insulting language. Descriptions such as “the inept and illiterate slums” or “lowlifes” used for a group of people who are publicly expressing their discontent would promptly disqualify a U.S. politician. Even if only out of political correctness, the mayor of New York promised the protesters protection, the Democrats, led by Obama, took turns praising the protesters’ legitimate aspirations to a better life and the Republicans saw the protests as an expression of people’s dissatisfaction with the state’s disproportionate interference in society and excessive spending.

The social movement that is taking place now in Romania is closer to the social and anti-government movements in Europe (England, Greece), whose “clear” objective is the removal from power of the current leaders, a political class perceived as being corrupt and having lost its grip on reality. The quick manner in which the movement appeared and propagated itself invites reflection, as well as a comparison to the Occupy demonstrations, since it is the country’s longest and most extensive movement since the 1989 revolution. The movement is no longer about communist and neo-communist attempts at watering things down or accusations that “the protesters are being instigated by a political faction.” It is ridiculous to claim that the protesters were allowed or encouraged to engage in violent behavior on Sunday evening as part of a diabolical plan. This is rather a mass movement with no concrete and unitary political objective and without an agenda, whose ultimate purpose will be that of raising people’s consciousness from the status of inept spectators or referees with no alternative during elections to that of active “players.” And it also serves as a warning for all governments that abuse of power and lack of interest in the population will not go unnoticed.

The psychological experiment known as “the hundredth monkey effect” refers to a sudden change in the way a reality is approached, a change that is transmitted instantaneously in the collective unconscious when a critical number of participants is reached (a hundred as a generic number). The phenomenon was observed by Japanese researchers who were studying a group of monkeys on an island in the Pacific in the 1950s. At one point, a young monkey washed a potato before eating it; the practice spread rapidly in the entire colony by observation and learning. What is more, the practice instantly reached even the monkeys on the nearby island, although there was no direct contact between the two colonies — and all monkeys became “emancipated” instantaneously. The way in which this new behavior propagated remotely continues to amaze scientists.

In addition to the moral that “one does as the others do,” which is specific to the collective unconscious, another idea surfaces: Once a threshold is crossed, there is no going back, because the consciousness of qualitative change becomes the norm and is passed to all members of a society.