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Abstract

This article examines how working-class activists challenged and overcame political fear narratives during the anti-water charges campaign in Ireland (2014–2016), with specific focus on the ‘sinister’ narrative, an attempt by the government and its supporters to frame working-class protestors as violent, irrational and extremist. Rather than subscribing to the position that political fear is ubiquitous or the reflection of a general societal malaise, this paper follows Jeffries’ argument that political fear is mediated, contested and contradicted. While political fear operates most effectively when targeting expectations for normal living, it is these same expectations that offer fertile ground for opposing fear threats. Drawing on interviews from activists, this paper shows how the ‘normal living’ becomes a key context in which ‘deviance framing’ around class and gender can be reappropriated/reframed by activists, particularly through the deployment of counter spectacles and through the reframing of what constitutes legitimate emotional responses to government-initiated fear threats. Finally, while political fear can have an individualising effect, this paper demonstrates how subjective and individual acts of transgression are mediated through a collective and community lens as the crucial element in overcoming political fear.

Keywords

political fear resistance working class power sociology

Introduction

Fear has taken on the mantle as a defining characteristic of social relations in contemporary times. It is ever-present in news media, advertising, consumer advice, cultural commentaries, as well as embedding itself in multiple political narratives. In the sphere of political engagement, fear has a long history (Kapust, 2008), it can be understood as both productive and as a social good (Johnson et al., 2020), or alternatively, as Keane (2001) suggests, ‘fear eats the soul of democracy’ (p. 22). Political fear can be conceptualised as an unintended outcome to events and processes that sit outside of any consideration of agency, an approach that Jeffries (2012) refers to as ‘unidirectional’ or a reification of ‘cultural reproduction’. However, another interpretation, and the one adopted here, is to view political fear as a strategic and deliberate exercise in power that is targeted at particular social groups and communities, with the purpose of creating conditions of quiescence. Moreover, individuals and communities can and do contest political fear, providing the focus for this discussion, which examines the experiences of working-class activists in challenging political fear narratives in the course of the Irish anti-water charges campaign between 2014 and 2016.

The campaign itself emerged in 2014 as a result of Irish government efforts, through a state-owned utility, Irish Water, to introduce domestic water charges. This measure was a consequence of the 2008 economic crash and the subsequent ‘bailout’, which created an unprecedented level of Irish public debt, with a resultant series of brutal, austerity budgets and economic hardship. As well as becoming an effective ‘line in the sand’ against austerity for many, the introduction of water charges was tainted by accusations of corruption, coupled with a real fear that water charges would usher the privatisation of domestic water services (Hearne, 2015). The campaign, which focused on both non-payment of charges and the prevention of the physical installation of domestic water meters, was largely centred in working-class housing estates in Cork and Dublin (Cox, 2017). While local campaigns were relatively autonomous, a number of national days of action, involving the local groups, trade unions and political parties, under the Right 2 Water moniker, resulted in mass protest marches, drawing tens of thousands of people on to the streets. At the same time, the non-payment campaign resulted in boycott levels that were estimated at over 70% (The Journal, 2016). The ultimate success of the campaign was demonstrated in the Irish 2016 general election, where 90 out of 158 representatives to the Daíl [Irish national parliament] identified themselves as opposing water charges. Soon afterwards in 2016, water charges were suspended and then abolished. However, charges of ‘excessive usage’ of water were controversially introduced from April 2017.

What is of particular interest for this article stems from the government’s responses to the campaign and its attempts to frame protestors, particularly those from working-class communities, as inherently ‘sinister’. Previous to this, fear narratives were deployed by the government and its supporters to sell the idea of domestic water charges as a means of protecting against the threat of water scarcity (Clinch and Pender, 2019). Later, the government resorted to fear as a means of ensuring compliance with a far more pronounced threat when the then environment minister Phil Hogan directly threatened to reduce nonpayer’s water pressure to a ‘trickle’ (O’Carroll, 2014). The sinister narrative quickly emerged after protestors prevented the Taoiseach [Irish prime minister] from exiting the opening of a sports centre in Dublin in November 2014. In the aftermath, members of the government, the Gardaí [Irish police] and sections of the news media readily linked working-class activists to violence and political extremism (Power et al., 2016). Future Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, was quick to suggest that the water protest movement now consisted of ‘people protesting legitimately and reasonably’ and a ‘very sinister fringe’ – ‘They abuse the Gardaí, they break the law, they engage in violence . . . ’ (Irish Independent, 2014). Shortly after, an attempt to ‘slow walk’ the Tánaiste [deputy prime minister] from an awards ceremony at a community education centre in the Dublin suburb of Jobstown reinforced the ‘sinister fringe’ narrative (Cusack, 2014), where campaigners were linked to dissident republicans, opportunistic criminals, and, in one memorable case, compared to ISIS by a political representative in the national parliament (O’Halloran, 2014). According to one former government minister, the protestors represented ‘nihilist left politics’ that ‘. . . will only help undermine the fabric of true democracy’ (Rabbitte, 2017).

The sinister narrative served as a crude and ultimately ineffectual attempt by the government and its supporters to divide the movement between an unruly, dangerous mob from working-class communities, and the ‘reasonable people’ (Power et al., 2016: 270), ‘genuine’ protestors who did indeed have justification for marching in the streets against the nature of the imposition of charges (McConnell, 2014). While the sinister narrative had a negligible impact in terms of overall support for the campaign, it bore real effects, as will be seen, particularly with respect to the threat of criminalisation of working-class activists. In the days after the Jobstown protest, 27 protestors were charged with various offences, including ‘false imprisonment’. The subsequent cases proved something of a fiasco where the trial collapsed with the presiding judge instructing the jury to discard Gardaí testimony (Gallagher, 2017). However, the threat of criminalisation, along with the vilification of working-class protestors, stood out as key fear narratives that protestors were forced to confront.

This article begins by attempting to locate political fear and resistance within existing literature. While the politics of fear has acquired something of a ubiquitous status in contemporary politics, the convergence of politics, power and emotions has proven to be a relatively recent area of research interest within sociology (Heaney, 2011; Tudor, 2003) and social movement studies (Eyerman, 2005; Jasper, 2014). Moreover, a critical exploration of resistance to the politics of fear remains somewhat underdeveloped (Jeffries, 2012) and it is here that this article seeks to make a contribution to what is an emerging field of sociological study. As a strategic exercise in power, political fear specifically targets expectations of ‘normal living’ (Debrix and Barder, 2011). The exact question of whose expectations of normal living becomes a key feature of this research where the government and its supporters rely upon a process of ‘deviance framing’ (Gitlin, 1980) of protesters in order to promote the narrative that working-class campaigners pose a significant threat to the general public’s expectations of normal living. At the same time, expectations of normal living derived from the campaigners’ perspectives offer resources for communities to challenge those fear claims that are targeted against them.

In this context, mediations and reappropriations of the everyday (Jeffries, 2012) play a crucial role in the fight against fear. This is achieved primarily through the deployment of counter spectacles (McCrow-Young and Mortensen, 2021) and reframing/undoing processes (Spears et al., 2012) that challenge both the classed and gendered nature of the sinister narrative. Collective responses to fear, where ‘community’ forms an integral part of normal living, offers the most vital element in fighting fear threats. Finally, this research offers a focus on how emotional responses to fear threats are legitimised and effectively weaponised for strategic, political gain, where fear threats are framed as a public good and anger expressed by activists, is portrayed as overly emotional and potentially dangerous. While such a move constitutes an attempt at hegemonic domination, it is also supremely ironic, given that anger, along with fear, is routinely deployed by political parties and elites for their own interests.

Background to the Research

This article cites interviews that were conducted between September 2020 and March 2021. Initially, 28 individuals were approached to participate in the research, while 12 eventually took part in the fieldwork. Prospective participants were approached primarily because of their involvement in protests located in three urban centres across Ireland. This purposive sampling initially involved utilising the researcher’s own social networks, followed by the use of snowball sampling. It must be stated that the researcher did not personally know any of the participants prior to conducting the fieldwork. In all cases, initial contact was made via email with potential participants. The scope of the research expanded somewhat to include looking at issues of strategy at a national level and accounted for interviews with national organisers (two participants, both male), members of political parties (three interviews with locally elected representatives) and social movements (one interview). However, it is important to state that all participants were involved in local campaigns, which operated on a largely autonomous basis.

Of the participants, 4 participants were women and 8 were men, while 11 participants resided in working-class estates and strongly identified themselves as part of working-class communities. The use of the term ‘working class’ in this research is not limited to discourses of occupational categories. Rather, as Valentine and Harris (2014) argue, class itself should not be reduced to ‘. . . the primacy of employment and economic relations of work’ and instead to focus on ‘the lived experience of class’ (p. 82). Working-class housing estates bear witness to significant economic hardship and have become a short hand for areas of ‘deprivation and disadvantage’ (Bissett, 2023: 5), which, in turn, has fed into cultural narratives of stigmatisation and revulsion. Yet, such labelling obscures the vibrancy of social relations and normal living within working-class communities which, as this research shows, is imbued with care, humour and a strong capacity for political organising and strategic thinking.

Given that the research itself was conducted during Covid lockdown conditions, participants were offered the option of interviews via social platforms, email or by phone. In total, five participants opted for interviews via social platforms, six chose interviews conducted by email, while one participant decided on the phone option. Participants were specifically asked about the ‘sinister’ narrative and how it affected their local campaign and activism, the impact of the threat of criminalisation and what lessons may be learned for future activism. Findings were coded and analysed thematically from a critical/social constructionist approach that sought to emphasise the importance of individual interpretations, but just as crucially, sought to elucidate the nature of power operating within fear narratives.

Locating Resistance to the Politics of Fear

Factors in Creating the Sinister Narrative

Jeffries (2012) offers the view that a fundamental conceptual error lies at the heart of much of the literature on social and cultural fear in that there is an overreliance on a ‘cultural reproduction’ perspective, where fear engulfs all and that the social world is reducible to little more than ‘. . . those whose critical capacities are paralysed by fear and by those who are busy promoting it’ (p. 38). This particular cultural treatment of fear resides in considerations of risk, anxiety and modernity (Beck, 1997; Giddens, 1990), societal insecurity (Orton, 2015) or as a cultural expression of ‘political exhaustion’, where ‘politics has internalised the culture of fear’ (Furedi, 2005: 131). Yet, a core differentiation must be made between a politics that merely reflects a cultural angst, and one that is essentially an exercise in power geared towards subjugation and control. In addition, limiting political fear to a by-product of cultural reproduction removes any focus on agency and strategy and tellingly contributes to a dearth of research that examines resistance to fear (Jeffries, 2012). To counter this, Jeffries (2012) proposes a focus on how fear is experienced ‘differentially’, and, referencing the work of Jesús Martin-Barbero (1993), shows that fear narratives from above are mediated and interpreted through ‘everyday appropriations’ and crucially, such narratives are opened to ‘contestation and contradiction’ (p. 47).

In turn, the notion of ‘everyday appropriations’ carries a resonance with Debrix and Barder’s (2011) argument that as an exercise in power, political fear operates by highlighting threats of ‘. . . not being able to live one’s normal, regulated, or optimized life as a member of the public, population, or society’ (p. 59). The relationality of power, not least in the context of whose expectations of normal living is to be threatened, ensures that certain deployments of fear may be perceived as a public good (Johnson et al., 2020). Less benignly however, political fear in the guise of the sinister narrative represents an attempt at eliciting hegemonic compliance by seeking to create the conditions of ‘non-participation’ or demobilisation in the campaign in order to encourage a public quiescence with respect to water charges policy (Bachrach and Baratz, 1962; Gaventa, 1982). This is achieved by first framing the protests as dangerous spaces and ultimately through the threat of criminalisation of activists.

Generating political fear is a collective venture (Robin, 2004), requiring a ‘mobilisation of bias’, and constitutes ‘deviance framing’ (Gitlin, 1980), where the media gaze relies on the actions of protestors as ‘spectacle’ (Murray et al., 2016), rather than engaging in substantive issues that inform the campaign. For instance, Ashley and Olson’s (1998) examination of media framing devices deployed in the portrayal of the women’s movement in the United States between 1966 and 1986 demonstrate how the feminist movement was effectively marginalised and delegitimised as the movement was ‘treated with humour and puzzlement’ (p. 272). Meanwhile, Lynn and Williams’ (2018) research demonstrates how movements that are deemed as outsiders, who utilise ‘visible protest’ and are perceived as constituting a threat to the status quo, in this case Occupy Wall Street, are particularly vulnerable to being demonised by sections of the news media.

Within this context, the sinister narrative signifies an attempt at deviance framing that relies upon well-worn classed and gendered tropes. The narrative recalls characteristics of the ‘dangerous classes’, historical narratives that focus upon a politics that, according to Scheu (2011), represented ‘. . . threateningly perceived irrationality, excessiveness and violence . . .’ (p. 117) and is directly associated with working-class movements (Mulholland, 2012). In more contemporary contexts, such fears extend to the term ‘populism’ which carries with it more than a hint of the dangerous classes, incorporating hate, anger (Rudolph, 2021), racism and the pronounced threat of violence (Joosse and Zelinsky, 2022). Sitting alongside fear, contemporary narratives include a revulsion and stigmatisation of working-class communities, that become ‘symbolic and material scapegoats, the mediating agencies through which the social decomposition effected by market deregulations and welfare retrenchment are legitimized’ (Tyler, 2013: 9). Meanwhile, Ashley and Olson (1998) identify a gendered dimension to deviance framing where they pointedly argue that ‘the news coverage of women, not social protest, may be the operable flash point’ (p. 274). Tyler (2013: 164) specifically indicates in her research how ‘abjectification’ is meted out to working-class women, finding congruence with Lawler’s (2004) research that shows how deviance framing of working-class communities specifically vilified women for their bodily appearance, as well as their role as mothers. Lawlor concludes that such stigmatisation itself forms part of an ongoing narrative of working-class communities and families as ‘. . . a chaotic threat to the established order’ (Lawler, 2004: 118).

The sinister narrative itself is built upon an assumption that the ‘mob’ is populated exclusively by angry, working-class males and as such echoes Stabile and Rentschler’s analysis of crime-generated fear where such narratives rely heavily upon an ‘aggressive masculinity’ (Stabile and Rentschler, 2005). It is a fear, according to the authors, articulated from ‘white middle-class, heterosexual positions . . .’ particularly regarding ‘what to fear, who is the most fear inspiring, and how fear should be defined’ (Stabile and Rentschler, 2005: xii). Such narratives impact on female activism, according to Blais (2023), whose research on feminist activism in Quebec and Swiss Romandie identifies a ‘gendered dimension of feminist fear of police violence’ (p. 3). However, fear threats can also energise female activists, a point illustrated in Sandra Moran’s personal reflections on post conflict violence in Guatemala, where between 2000 and 2012, over 7000 women and girls were murdered (Jeffries, 2015:133). Violence and the threat of violence was utilised as a means of intimating and silencing Alianza Politica Sector de Mujeres – a prominent coalition of women’s groups. However, instead of surrendering to fear, the coalition organised a public demonstration, a move to highlight that the group would not be silenced or demobilised through fear.

Crucially, both deviance framing and stigmatisation have very real consequences, especially in contributing to the criminalisation of certain types of activism. For instance, the sinister narrative creates the fear threat of working-class activists as violent, hateful and posing a threat to expectations of normal living for the general public. This framing then leads to the almost inevitable threat of criminalisation being visited upon protestors, itself a fear narrative that seeks to create conditions for non-participation or demobilisation of activists. In this context, protesters become both the subject and object of fear and carry a certain resonance with Lynn and Williams’ (2018) research where media frames on the Occupy Wall Street movement emphasised ‘unruly’, ‘disorderly and illegal behaviour’ (p. 747) and ultimately led to arrests and criminalisation.

Challenging Fear From the Ground Up

While threats to normal living constitute the framing and substance of the sinister narrative, a reappropriation or reframing of normal living offers an important route to contesting fear. The notion of a ‘counter spectacle’ may be viewed, according to Woodworth (2015), as an indication that the ‘spectacle’ itself (in this case, the deviance framing of working-class protestors) is subject to a process of contestation and in the context of this discussion involves the use of visual imagery, messaging, humour and satire as a means of disrupting fear (McCrow-Young and Mortensen, 2021). Here, images and humour, particularly the use of irony, seek to depict narratives of normal or everyday living as a means of challenging deviance frames. The relatability of the counter spectacle plays a key role in its credibility, particularly in relation to ‘. . . how essential a movement’s ideals are in everyday life . . .’ (Harlow and Johnson, 2011: 1361). At times, counter spectacles involve what Spears et al. (2012) refer to as ‘undoing strategies’, where a proliferation of fear is undone by the reframing of a situation in a positive light; a focus on action-orientated problem solving; and finally, ‘infusing ordinary events with positive meaning through building social bonds or through good deeds’ (p. 81).

Along with its role in the promotion of counter spectacles, social media was utilised by anti-water charges campaigners in challenging mainstream media’ narratives (Silke et al., 2020), and crucially, in the creation of networks between local campaigns (Hearne, 2015). The impact of social media on campaigns and activism has been well documented elsewhere (Carty, 2002; Harlow and Johnson, 2011; Navumau, 2019; Sullivan et al., 2011). Yet, its overall significance remains very much contested within the literature and is evident in debates surrounding ‘slacktivism’, online activism that is ‘low-cost and low-risk’ (Schuman and Klein, 2015), but can negatively impact on a physical commitment to protest or struggle. For instance, Navumau’s (2019) research on the use of social media during the Belarusian Silent actions protest movement demonstrates the limits of its use where protesters succumbed to the notion that online support would translate to physical attendance at called protests, which simply did not happen. More critical assessments of slacktivism suggest that it amounts to little more than ‘. . . lacklustre support hidden under the guise of simple “shares”, “likes”, and “favorties” . . .’ (Cabrera et al., 2017: 400), while ‘slacktivists’ have become ‘. . . the epitome of lazy, self-serving digital acts conducted by a narcissistic, tech obsessed millennial’ (Madison and Klan, 2020: 32). In one sense, it is tempting to argue that the ‘slackivist’ discourse emerges as a reaction to an overly optimistic viewpoint on the potential of digital activism, evident in Jeremic’s (2019) assertion that ‘. . . digital public spheres transcend traditional public spheres that limit access and participation to become sites of struggle in which “the people” are generally able to participate with fewer barriers . . .’ (p. 111). Despite this initial promise, debates have, according to Hofheinz (2011), ‘. . . oscillated between the search for revolutionary developments and the admission that all too high hopes for radical techno-driven political change have not been borne out’ (p. 23). Yet, such oscillation misses the nuances of the use of social media in contemporary activist settings. To reduce all online activities to the status of slacktivism is ‘too simplistic’, while there must be an acknowledgement that its importance has been somewhat ‘overstated’ by certain commentators (Cabrera et al., 2017: 405–406). In this context, digital activism becomes a strategic option for movements, for instance, where physical protest is not an option, rather than a defining feature of a campaign. Ultimately, Freelon et al. (2020) make the argument that ‘digital political activities – including low-cost ones – are a complement to, not substitute for, their offline counterparts’ (p. 1197).

At a fundamental level, challenging political fear directly involves countering its isolating and individualising nature by mediating its effects through community and collective lenses. This requires something of a personal reckoning, particularly when confrontation with authority involves transgression of everyday norms. More pointedly, it involves making personal resolutions (for instance in a personal decision not to pay a bill or private anger/fear over the prospect of ongoing austerity), very public pronouncements through participating in visible protests and ultimately, in facing the threat of criminalisation when directly confronting the police. The nature of this latter threat is indicative of the debates on the role of repression as a determining factor in the mobilisation or demobilisation of individuals. According to Honari (2018), while there is no consensus, a common omission in the literature is to fully appreciate the role of agency within such scenarios. Honari (2018) highlights Jasper’s (2012) concept of ‘choice points’, ‘. . . dilemmas that an individual must solve with regard to how to respond to repression’ (p. 960) and can result, for instance, in deciding to refrain from protest, altering the nature of campaigning or even escalating activism. Writing from a Foucauldian perspective, Lilja and Vinthagen (2014) adopt the term ‘self-reflexiveness’ for this particular moment that is intrinsic in determining ‘. . . either to resist or to discipline and subjugate oneself in line with the current order’ (p. 112).

A key factor in determining such outcomes resides upon the visibility of a collective, political endeavour. Opposing political fear, as Jeffries (2015) points out, cannot rely upon the notion that ‘. . . we as individuals will be courageous’. Instead, ‘. . . interpersonal interactions mediated by social networks . . .’ become an important feature in opposing repression (Siegel, 2011: 993), offering a means of socially mediating individual responses to fear. This in itself is a recognition of the centrality of emotion in shaping activism, which is a relatively recent development, primarily driven by the women’s and LGBTQ movements of the 1970s and 1980s (Jasper, 2014). At a fundamental level, it is indicative of a rejection of a conceptual rational-emotional dichotomy within social movement literature (Eyerman, 2005) which allows for a focus on the management and mediation of emotions (including fear and anger) as a key dynamic in responding to repression, as well as determining mobilisation (Honari, 2018: 961).

The management of emotions seeks to ensure that even seemingly ‘negative’ emotions such as fear provide a rallying point for collective action. For instance, Griffiths (2017) points to how fear, along with ‘threat and humiliation’ of activists on the West Bank, becomes an important tool in resistance. Similarly, Kleres and Wettergren (2017), in their study on the emotional impact on climate activism, identify the central importance of social processes in emotional management and suggest that ‘. . . fear can motivate (rather than, as often argued, inhibit) action. Hope is essential in this because hope manages fear . . .’ (p. 508). The idea of hope managing fear points to another important feature of emotion management within movements. Blais (2023), in her research, observes that initial fear quickly gives way to anger or indignation. In other words, as a mobilising factor, ‘. . . fear is rarely felt in isolation . . .’ (p. 5), instead forming a part of ‘emotional sequences’, where ‘. . . fear sometimes occurs first, giving way to anger . . .’ (p. 6). Therefore, fear, along with anger, hope or confidence, becomes a potential ‘catalyst’ for collective responses and actions (Jeffries, 2015; Van Ness and Summers-Effler, 2018). As such, shared emotional responses provide a collective, mediating mechanism for challenging political fear and becomes a fundamental block to developing solidarities, where ‘every demonstration of shared anger or hatred towards a policy or a group reinforces the reciprocal emotions: they feel the same way I do, they must be good people . . .’ (Jasper, 2014: 209).

Jasper’s (2014) observation of the role of emotion in contributing to solidarity points to a final, salient feature in relation to the sinister narrative, that is, the contested and seemingly contradictory manner in which the expression of certain emotions are effectively legitimatised or otherwise, through framing and political processes. In the context of this study, eliciting emotions for the purpose of creating conditions for quiescence and non-participation in relation to the anti-water charges campaign is framed as a legitimate, public good. At the same time, the sinister narrative derives much of its political vitality by appealing to the threat that emotions and emotional responses pose to the stability of normal living. The notion of the irrational and the dangerous, of emotions of the darkest kind, is firmly linked with the protestors themselves and sits in contrast to the framing of rational, reasonable policy initiatives that the introduction of water charges represent. Anger in particular would appear to play into the sinister narrative, given that, as Lyman (2004) claims, it can be readily used to frame groups and individuals in terms of ‘loss of control’ or ‘emotionalism’ (p. 143). As such, the weaponisation of what is deemed illegitimate emotional responses feeds into Lyman’s (2004) argument that such a move is simply a political strategy ‘. . . that justifies domination by silencing the voices of the oppressed’ (p. 134). Yet, as Stapleton and Dawkins (2022) contend, anger is readily sewn into liberal democracy as it is commonly utilised by elites to fuel the rage of supporter, where stoking ‘congealed anger’ becomes a stable of ‘the everyday activities of political parties’ (Ost, 2004: 230). Therefore, the contested nature of the social mediation of emotions becomes a crucial battleground in confronting political fear.

Reflections on Confronting Political Fear During the Anti-Water Charges Campaign

Moving From Anger to Deconstructing Fear

Interviews with protestors and organisers focused on the use of political fear during the campaign and, importantly, how fear threats were challenged and overcome. Initial responses to threats of water scarcity and to reduce non-paying households water pressure to a trickle produced an angry response. For instance, one research participant recalled the reaction to the ‘trickle’ threat thus – ‘working class communities will bristle at that, you know, absolutely bristle at that’. Another respondent observed that ‘these threats though kinda made the movement stronger because these were ordinary people being threatened . . .’ Other respondents pointed out how the threats associated with the government’s approach to water charges and austerity in general, effectively, in the words of one respondent, ‘politicised’ them. Another recounted how physically witnessing their own father being intimidated by the Gardai led to a realisation – ‘. . . it opened my eyes to political power and establishment and the fear they can put into people, you know, I was like, fuck . . . and this is only water charges!’ Ultimately, one national organiser suggested that ‘. . . a lot of people were pissed off and way more likely to listen to us’.

Moving from this, one research participant was keen to point out the central importance of actively ‘deconstructing’ fear threats. Here, the campaign made use of social media as a way of challenging narratives and offering an alternative framing of issues, with one national organiser stating that the anti-water charges campaign ‘. . . was the first mass campaign in Ireland where social media was extremely widely utilised’. Social media assumed a number of core functions for the campaign, including as a means of organising local activism (which is discussed below) as well as coordinating larger, national days of action. It was also used as a means of monitoring the movements of meter installers and as acted as an instant rebuttal tool to government and news media claims. According to one respondent, ‘. . . every time that the media came out, we’d come up with a political or economic statement. We’d come up with one to counteract that . . .’.

Activists devised a number of ways of both deconstructing and reframing the sinister narrative, specifically targeting aspects that sought to portray working-class activists as inherently violent and, by extension, male. One respondent identified the assumption that working-class protestors were ‘. . . these big burly men’ and it was males that were targeted for arrest during the Jobstown protest. The involvement of women in all aspects of the campaign, however, including confrontations with meter installers and Gardaí, directly challenged this gendered narrative with one respondent claiming – ‘. . . it was women. . . . it was like, deck chairs out, cheese, mugs, coffee out, and you ain’t getting in . . .’. One of the more visible features of certain local campaigns was the ‘pink Ladies’ (Hearne et al., 2020), women who dressed in pink high-viz’ jackets and played a prominent role in protests and vigils outside police stations. The ‘pink ladies’ played a key role of in confronting the ‘fear of working-class males’ narrative, with one research participant stating ‘. . . we had to deliberately set up like the pink vests, the pink vest ladies as a way to say, we’re not a sinister fringe. And it worked in our favour’. Elsewhere, the use of humour, music and spectacle were used to counter the notion that the protests were inherently dangerous spaces. On national days of protest, a concerted effort was made to create a family-friendly atmosphere. According to one national organiser,

. . . I remember we posted a video of an old couple dancing, like ballroom dancing at the front of the stage. And we remember posting on to the Right2 Water page . . . and . . . here’s the sinister fringe at today’s protest . . .

Building Confidence and Solidarity

The term ‘confidence’ was specifically mentioned several times by respondents in discussions on overcoming fear. One research participant who was involved at both local and national levels stated:

We had to explain to people that you can actually and effectively resist this with non-payment. Simple messages and slogans around those things I think gave people confidence.

Yet, in a very real way, fear threats operated at an individual level and appeared to be most effective on those who would have been isolated from the physical protests, for instance, through location or age. Some respondents intimated to the individualising nature of fear, both from the perspective of being confronted by it and then making the decision to challenge it. For instance, one participant recounted the following:

I was . . . going door to door, a very rural area, and it was an older woman. She said, ‘I really don’t want to pay it. . . . I don’t want to do this but I’m afraid’. . . .

Here, social media played a key role in challenging narratives from sections of the news media that sought to downplay the size and significance of turnout numbers. As one respondent put it,

. . . when you’re an old-age pensioner, you’re living out in the country, you’re listening to the radio whose saying that there are 5,000 to 15,000 people in Dublin. It’s not a great turnout. . . . But then, when you’re on social media, you’re looking at thousands going by.

However, even those who were directly involved in the local protests were not immune from personal fears that came with joining the anti-water charges campaign. One respondent recalled fearing for her job if she was arrested as part of engaging in protests and recounted anxiously waiting to see whether the Gardaí would call to her place of work in order to question her. Another research participant alluded to the view that the issue of confidence itself was sometimes overlooked by more experienced activists, acknowledging the quite significant psychological barrier that novice protestors faced, particularly in confronting the Gardaí –

. . . you kind of forget that the first time you did that, you know, were afraid. . . . I’d forgotten that, that the Guards [Gardaí], the sight of the Guards, intimidates, um, you know, people who aren’t used to political activism, they, they think it’s game over.

Social media was identified in playing a key role in developing networks of support between local campaigns, and by extension, building confidence. As respondent put it, ‘the big thing for me was that people were able to build personal connections with each other and networks . . . which allowed the campaign to be mobilised and responsive to what was going on the ground’. Social media’s benefits in building confidence and a sense of community also had its limits, with research participants were keen to point to more ‘traditional’ modes of organising and campaigning. One research participant reflecting on the limits of social media in this regard –

. . . if people come to a meeting, they’ve committed to something, at least, you know, they’ve physically gone somewhere . . . you know, it’s a degree of commitment. Social media is just too easy. Sometimes, you know, you click a ‘like’ button and you share, you know, you can be uninvolved and you’re kind of expecting others to do the, you know, the, the graft on the ground.

As a result, the use of social media was augmented by other campaigning tools such as leafletting. Face-to-face contacts were also vitally important, as one respondent recounted, ‘. . . it was so regular. It was meetings every week. It was, it was door to door . . .’ Yet another respondent pointed out the importance of ‘building for real life events’ and summed up the impact of physical interaction on confidence-building thus –

. . . getting people together in big meetings in local communities, lots of local street meetings, and big demonstrations gave people confidence. They looked around and saw their neighbours and friends were planning to resist this and it gave them confidence to join them.

Discussion – Fear and the Fight for ‘Normal Living’

This examination of the use of political fear during the anti-water charges campaigns reveals, at its core, something of a shell game in respect to the role and positioning of emotions in political discourses that shaped the sinister narrative. On the one hand, the deployment of fear underlines the routine appeal of emotions in political power relationships, particularly in government efforts at framing a response to the anti-water charges campaign. This is observable in the notion of deploying fear as a reasonable, public good, evident for instance, in the water contamination threat (McNicholas, 2015), or more overtly, in warning the public in general of the dangers posed by working-class activists. This threat is constructed by historical appeals and more contemporary, cultural tropes that seek to identify working-class communities and people as objects of both revulsion and fear (Mulholland, 2012; Scheu, 2011; Tyler, 2013) and crucially, undermining the general public’s expectations for ‘normal living’ (Debrix and Barder, 2011). Such a consideration of political fear vividly illustrates Jeffries’ (2012) central argument that political fear is characterised by ‘contestation and contradiction’, rather than merely being passively received, or as a reflection of a universalised cultural angst. Moreover, the ‘cultural reproduction’ approach serves to conceal the nature of power relationships that frames political fear, while severely underplaying the significant involvement of who Robin (2004) identifies as ‘collaborators’ in framing fear narratives. It will be recalled from this research that a mobilisation of bias, including the government, politicians, journalists and elements of the Gardaí, played an active role in constructing the ‘sinister’ narrative. The evident expressions of anger among protestors were utilised, via deviance framing (Gitlin, 1980) as a strategic way of discrediting and delegitimising the campaign. To be sure, this exercise of power has very real consequences, ranging from attempts at creating conditions of quiescence in relation to ensuring payment of water charges, to actively encouraging ‘non-participation’ (Gaventa, 1982) and demobilisation of the movement itself. Here, activists assume the roles of both the subject and object of fear, where a duality of fear and stigmatisation of working-class protestors creates a readily available cultural source of something to fear, the consequences of which contributes to a reciprocal fear of criminalisation.

In this sense, anger becomes a crucial element in establishing ideological dominance (Lyman, 2004), with the objective of seeking to cleave the anti-water charges movement. Yet, this research also confirms that anger, along with expressed feelings of fear and confidence, forms a vital foundation for solidarity, strategic thinking and organisation necessary for mobilising and confronting political fear (Eyerman, 2005; Jasper, 2014; Kleres and Wettergren, 2017). In this context, initial fear can make way for a socially mediated anger as part of ‘emotional sequences’ (Blais, 2023), evident when respondents talked of initial fears or concerns as a rationale for engaging in the movement. Here, anger itself may be viewed as an eminently reasonable emotional response to the threat of austerity, suspicions of political cronyism, or to what some respondents referred to as the ‘political policing’ of working-class protests. Therefore, anger, as a socially mediated emotion, becomes a rationale for joining community protests and creating the dynamic for action. Emotional sequences may also account for a resulting feeling of confidence which played a significant role in challenging fear or as summed up by one research participant as a ‘. . . a classic example of fear . . . against hope and confidence’.

Conceiving of political fear as a strategic exercise in power, therefore, allows for a consideration of how it can be actively confronted. The nature of how political fear is mediated and filtered through ‘everyday appropriations’ (Jeffries, 2012) offers some focus on how fear is promoted at an individual and social level, but also crucially, provides scope by which it can be, in the words of one research participant, ‘deconstructed’ and successfully challenged. This is evident in the contested framing of working-class activists as violent ‘big, burly men’, as one respondent put it. Campaigners specifically offered a reframing or ‘undoing’ (Spears et al., 2012) of the sinister narrative through the presentation of a series of ‘counter-spectacles’, where, for instance, the ‘Pink Ladies’ were deployed to directly counter the ‘violent, working-class male’ narrative, itself an illustration of the gendered nature of political fear (Blais, 2023; Stabile and Rentschler, 2005). Meanwhile, the image of an elderly couple dancing at a national day of protest was eagerly promoted on social media as a means of directly countering claims that protests were inherently dangerous spaces to frequent. Both instances of ‘counter spectacles’ adopted visual imagery, as well as humour and satire as a means of disrupting fear (McCrow-Young and Mortensen, 2021), effectively reappropriating and reframing the features and symbols of normal living, in this case with respect to social relations (friends, family or neighbours), to emphasise that protests were family-friendly, safe spaces.

Finally, conceptions of ‘community’ as normal living and as a collective experience play a key role in mediating fear threats. While the ‘sinister’ narrative sought to portray working-class communities as prone to extremist violence and criminalisation, the community itself becomes a pivotal resource in challenging fear, not least in confronting its isolating, individualising effect. It will be recalled how research participants talked of this in different contexts, for instance, in relation to fears of losing their job as a result of joining protests, fears arising from geographical isolation or the fear of being the only person to engage in the non-payment boycott. Moments of ‘self-reflexiveness’ (Lilja and Vinthagen, 2014) or ‘choice points’ (Honari, 2018) become a pivotal moment in determining whether or not to mobilise in the face of fear and carried a particular relevance to those who were new to protesting and the ensuing transgression of norms and authority that this can entail. However, individual acts of transgressing expectations of normal living find their potency as a communal act, rather than through the actions of ‘courageous individuals’ (Jeffries, 2015). The social mediation of emotion through existing social networks (Siegel, 2011), which includes the effective management of the individualising potential of fear, is important in that respect.

‘Community’ as a facet of normal living engenders shared emotional experiences, such as fear or anger, as an important prerequisite in creating the conditions for solidarity (Jasper, 2014; Jeffries, 2015) and is evident, for instance, where a number of research participants commented on seeing their own friends and neighbours at local protests as a means of validating their own activism. Likewise, while the importance of social media was recognised in terms of challenging certain media-initiated fear threats, there was an acknowledgement of its more vital role in creating relationships and networks between local campaigns (Hearne, 2015). At the same time, this research points to an acknowledgement by campaign organisers of the limits of digital activism and reflects the viewpoint forwarded by Freelon et al. (2020) that online activism should be viewed as complementary to offline activism rather than as a replacement for it. This point is evident in a strong recognition of the need for ‘building for real life events’, with a particular emphasis placed on face-to-face contact, through for instance, local gatherings, or door-to-door leaflet campaigns. Ultimately, being a part of such a movement, as one respondent put it, ‘. . . gives you a sense of power, you know, or fearlessness’.

Conclusion

This article, at least in part, is a response to Jeffries’ (2012) call for a more considered research focus on resisting and challenging fear. Viewing political fear through a lens of power, rather than as a passively received consequence of cultural reproduction, allows for a consideration of the targeting of particular social groups, the strategies that this entails, and most importantly, it allows for a consideration of agency as a prerequisite for challenging and overcoming fear. Here, political power was exercised through a mobilisation of bias that sought to vilify working-class communities primarily through deviance framing, which, in turn, gave rise to both individual and collective fears of criminalisation. The core of the argument offered here resides in the mediation and framing/reframing of what constitutes expectations of normal living in the context of the anti-water charges campaign and specifically, the use of the ‘sinister’ narrative. The reappropriation of normal living from the perspective of activists demonstrates the effectiveness of challenging deviance framing through counter spectacles, humour, and not least, through creating the conditions for solidarity through shared, emotional experiences.

In more general terms, this article offers something of a counterweight to the notion that, in contemporary political discourse, the use of fear and anger are the preserve of populist movements that seek to undermine general trust in liberal democratic institutions and practices (Rothstein, 2018; Späth, 2019). Eliciting both anger and fear have become staples of liberal democratic engagement to the point that, as Robin (2004) observes, the politics of fear affords a ‘vitality’ to politicians. Tyler (2013) more explicitly links political fear to consent formation within ‘neoliberal ‘democracies’ in that ‘. . . they function through the generation of consent via fear and anxiety, rather than fidelity to national identity’ (p. 8). The proliferation of fear corrodes trust and fundamentally damages social relations as it seeks to isolate and alienate specific social groups. Its more routine use by governments, political parties and their supporters, particularly in the almost casual vilification of certain social groups, contributes to a political environment that increasingly acquiesces to the normalisation of toxic fear narratives.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Michael Murray

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