{"id":1800,"date":"2018-07-19T15:23:57","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T15:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/?p=1800"},"modified":"2018-07-20T09:13:12","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T09:13:12","slug":"carnivalofresistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/2018\/07\/carnivalofresistance\/","title":{"rendered":"#carnivalofresistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

In January 2017, upon the inauguration of Donald Trump, a\u00a0petition to the British Parliament reached over 1,8 million signatures<\/a>, asking for the prevention of the\u00a045th President of the United States to the United Kingdom. A few weeks later, after debating the petition in Parliament, the Government responded that it “believes the President of the United States should be extended the full courtesy of a State Visit. We look forward to welcoming President Trump once dates and arrangements are finalised.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As a response, the Carnival of Protest<\/a> was organised. ‘Dump Trump<\/a>‘ was a major slogan.<\/p>\n

\"\"
photo by Eleftheria Lekakis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The\u00a0Trump Baby<\/a>\u00a0(a 6 meter tall helium filled inflatable baby with ‘a malevolent face and tiny hands’) was\u00a0crowdfunded\u00a0<\/a>and much controversy about its flights ensued.<\/p>\n

\"Trump
copyright: https:\/\/twitter.com\/TrumpBabyUK<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Friday 12 June 2018,\u00a0250,000 people took to the streets of London<\/a>. We were among them, joining the protest in Oxford Circus and marching, singing, moving and clapping all the way to Trafalgar Square.\u00a0This was a densely visual protest event.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was fantastic to see such a diversity of signs – both their in their content and form \u2013 critiquing Trump in irreverent, angry, loving, satirical, hopeful, reflexive, dismissive, fantastically rude and even typically polite \u2018British\u2019 ways. This wide spectrum of tone and sentiment was perhaps indicative of why Trump, despite being a figurehead that stands largely outside the population’s influence, still brought so many thousands of people to the street.<\/p>\n

\"\"
photo by Eleftheria Lekakis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though unsurprisingly largely \u2018left\u2019-leaning, in many ways it felt like all kinds of notes from the political \/ cultural register came together in the visual protests, in ways rarely seen in response to more domestic issues.<\/p>\n

\"\"
photo by Eleftheria Lekakis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is difficult to think of another protest where the Queen was somewhat perplexingly invoked as a point of symbolic dissidence (\u2018The Queen does not approve your policies\u2019) alongside dinosaurs, China, tiny hands, planet earths, hearts, gas masks, babies (both orange and caged), Handmaids (with Trump depicted as Handmaid Ofputin standing out), RuPaul and representations of refugees.<\/p>\n

\"\"
photo by Eleftheria Lekakis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
photo by Eleftheria Lekakis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
photo by Luke Robinson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
photo by Eleftheria Lekakis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
photo by Tanya Kant<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The heterogeneity of the visual protest could perhaps be critiqued as a little incoherent and even superficial \u2013 seemingly legitimising criticisms that anti-Trump protesters oversimplify and overlook many of the UK\u2019s own policies that don’t just echo but pre-exist and actively reinforce the racism, fascism, anti-immigration, misogyny and regressive environmental policies being protested as problems optimised in Trump.<\/p>\n

\"\"
photo by Tanya Kant<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this sense the rally\u2019s speakers helped to confront the hard questions that were somewhat inevitably diluted in the protest\u2019s fantastic visual diversity. The speakers, once again very eclectic in their stances and topics, helped to reinforce the value of resisting Trump as an international figurehead whilst highlighting the just as alarming domestic, historical, institutional and systemic parallels closer to home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Carnival of Protest might be over but the fight against Trumpism (hard-selling hard-shelled economic and racial supremacy disguised as patriotic populism) around the world continues.<\/p>\n

by Tanya Kant and Eleftheria Lekakis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In January 2017, upon the inauguration of Donald Trump, a\u00a0petition to the British Parliament reached over 1,8 million signatures, asking… <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2TCNp-t2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1800"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1841,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions\/1841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/activistmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}