Prophetic promotion
Summary
Prophetic promotion is the idea that mass protest organisations provide a lofty vision for a campaign or action, serving to inspire many more people to take part than would have otherwise. Often this vision is outside of what the organisation can currently deliver, but stating this ambitious goal can galvanise a movement to actually make it happen.
- Two of the key mechanisms behind why prophetic promotion, if done right, can be such an effective tool for mass mobilisation:
- Safety in numbers -If you’re in a crowd of 50,000 people, there’s often no practical way for police to monitor everyone, let alone intervene in a heavy-handed way
- Being visionary - People want to join something that’s huge, exciting and ambitious. Very few get excited about small, incremental wins.
- Prophetic promotion tries to leverage social proof. if you hear 1 million people are (potentially) coming to a protest, chances are that this makes you much more likely to come than if there were only 100 people going.
- Another tool is conditional commitment, the idea that an action (e.g. protest, strike, etc) only takes place if a certain number of people agree to take action. This means that safety is numbers is assured. Because safety in numbers is not motivating if you aren't sure they'll be safety in numbers
- Why don’t mass protest groups always claim they will mobilise 50% of the population for their next big protest? Because it’s a gamble. If you promise the world, and don’t deliver, you lose credibility - both with your base and with the rest of society.