Roger Hallam, “a co-founder and strategic mastermind of the civil resistance groups Extinction Rebellion (often called XR) and Just Stop Oil”, and who is also serving “five years in prison for ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance'” is the protagonist of a supportive article in The New Republic. The article makes a very sympathetic presentation of Hallam’s anti-electoral and pro-sortition ideas:
Hallam calls our current moment a “pre-revolutionary period.” Such eras have arisen throughout history—if never on such a grand scale—and they unfold according to a distinct logic. One of the first casualties is moderation. “The center does not hold,” Hallam said. “You saw this before the Nazis, you saw it before the Bolsheviks, and you’re seeing it at the moment in slow motion in Western democracies.” It’s easy to miss the signs, because “the center still has institutional power,” he added. “In other words, like it’s a zombie space. It’s dead, but it hasn’t yet been pushed over by the new.”
Under such conditions, wrenching paradigm shifts are inevitable. The only question, Hallam suggested, is whether we submit to authoritarianism, as many Americans seem all too eager to do, or embrace a genuinely pro-social revolutionary alternative. While it would have been comforting to hit the snooze button with four more years of Biden-style liberalism—a sound approach in simpler times—when survival hangs in the balance, there are distinct advantages to being awake.
The centerpiece of Hallam’s plan is a radical reinvention of democracy aimed at turning elections into a historical relic. If there’s one thing Americans seem to agree on, it’s that our elected officials do a poor job of representing our interests. According to a 2021 Pew survey, 67 percent think most politicians are corrupt, and 65 percent believe the political system should be profoundly altered. The reason for our mistrust, Hallam says, is quite simple: Despite the widespread belief that we live in a democracy, i.e., a government ruled by the people, the electoral process guarantees the opposite—that only those with access to money, privilege, and elite social status (often all of the above) get anywhere near real power.
This is by design. By the time the Constitution was being drafted in the late 1780s, American elites had already soured on democratic rule, what Founding Father Benjamin Rush called “the Devil’s own government.” They therefore implemented a host of constitutional mechanisms designed to preserve aristocratic prerogatives (most notably, the Electoral College and the apportionment of senators by state rather than population). These systems, along with Citizens United, a democracy-killer the Framers never dreamed of, warp our politics to this day.
For Hallam, the path forward demands a look way, way back, to the origins of democratic governance in ancient Athens, where it was understood that, as Aristotle held, elections were fundamentally “oligarchical.” In his time, representatives were selected not by election but by drawing lots, a process called sortition. It’s a cumbersome word, and not one you tend to hear much outside a small but growing circle of self-styled democracy nerds—earnest academics who, like Hallam, believe our system is due for a fundamental reset. Even so, the concept lives on in our modern jury system, in which enormous power, sometimes over life and death, is granted on a temporary basis to a randomly selected group of citizens.
The approach works remarkably well. On the whole, jurors serve with impressive seriousness of purpose, viewing their work as a sacred duty. Corruption is vanishingly rare. The isolation of the jury room seems to tamp down partisanship. And as it turns out, getting a group of everyday people together, providing them with basic facts, and letting them hash things out results in reasonably good decisions. Not every jury verdict is perfect, certainly, but perfection is not the standard. The standard is reflecting the will of an informed public, and in this respect, there’s little doubt that sortition beats election hands down.
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Equality by lot 
“a co-founder and strategic mastermind of the civil resistance groups Extinction Rebellion (often called XR) and Just Stop Oil” Strategic mastermind? Hmm. Aren’t these the same assholes who keep throwing soup on paintings and then gluing their hands to factory floors and crying when they aren’t given buckets to shit and piss in?
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That’s them, yes. Their choice of tactics has raised questions on the radical left about the extent to which they’re being manipulated by malign actors, but Hallam at least seems to be sincere – his prison sentence is pretty compelling evidence of that.
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> being manipulated by malign actors
It is very convenient to assume others, whose ideas differ from yours, are stupid or naive. But once we go down this road no rational argument is possible. How do we know that it is the “others” rather than you or I who are manipulated?
As for sincerety, if you accept that Hallam is sincere because he took on the risk of criminalization, doesn’t this apply to the soup throwers and the hand gluers as well?
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Not the sort of people we want to tout as supporting the cause.
Some allies contribute negative value.
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The notion that we want to keep ourselves polite or civilized and should beware of allying ourselves with troublemakers is not a good one IMO. If anything the opposite is true, I think. As long as we don’t cause trouble, we are probably not really challenging the existing oligarchical power structures and thus are not really pushing toward democracy. I would not be surprised if this kind of thinking motivates the XR people.
As for allies, in general, the idea of sortition should be promoted on its own merits rather than on the strengths or weaknesses of its promoters. I find the arguments made here to be fairly good ones – much better ones than those that dominate the professional (e.g., academic) discussion around sortition – and that is what matters, IMO.
We can always argue about tactics, of course. But keeping the basic ideas front and center is crucial.
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Sometimes the tactics undermine or even overwhelm the message and then the message gets lost in the chaos and it was all for naught. Or worse: they become associated *with* each other. See: Paul Rosenfeld, that arrogant asshole who threatened to blow himself up with a 200-pound device at the Capital Mall on Election Day in order to “raise awareness about sortition.” With friends like these, who needs enemies? #FFS
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Paul Rosenfeld is far from being an arrogant asshole in my opinion. I consider his intentions heroic (sacrificing himself for the public good), even if his plans were not quite convincing in terms of their expected effectiveness.
Whether Rosenfeld’s actions resulted (or would have resulted had he been able to carry out his plan) in promoting or damaging the idea of sortition is hard to tell – I see no clear reason to be so sure, as you are, that they were (or would have been) damaging. Most likely, in my mind, is that no material long lasting effect was (or would have been) caused.
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He was going to suicide-bomb himself in a public space where others could have been harmed or even killed along with him. Fuck that dude…and not in a sexy way :-(
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Regarding the risk to others, it seems to me that you are far too willing to take self-serving official versions of events at face value.
But even if we assume that Rosenfeld was unintentionally putting others at significant risk, this has to be put in the perspective of the change that he was attempting to effect. The current oligarchical system is responsible for easily tens of thousands of premature deaths a year in the US alone. At the same time it is the source of daily misery for millions. If Rosenfeld’s action had brought a democratic system even one day closer, it would have easily been a net gain for the US population, no matter how deadly its immediate results would have been.
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[…] to a recent discussion regarding Roger Hallam and Extinction Rebelion, commenters emphasized the need to distance […]
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Thanks for defending me Yoram. I appreciate it.
For the record, there was NO bomb. This is purely a fiction created by the FBI and echoed by everyone else except you seemingly. There was only a modest cautiously designed pyrotechnic device incapable of producing anything more than a bit of fire and smoke. Perfectly harmless to anyone more than a few feet away.
The moral here – I think – is that anyone seriously intending to engage in activism should engage the services of a good lawyer BEFORE they act. After you act it will probably be too late as the government will lock you up and eliminate any ability to defend yourself.
May others learn from my mistake. My view of the criminal justice system was completely altered by this episode of my life.
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Hi Paul,
Great to have you drop by. I hope you are doing well.
> My view of the criminal justice system was completely altered by this episode of my life.
In a system that calls itself a “democracy” but is in fact nothing of the sort, it would be truly a miracle if the “criminal justice system” were anything of the sort.
People who are interested in Paul’s story can find it in his book, Criminally Sane, which is a great read. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084LQ4QS9/
Paul, you used to have recordings of the first few chapters of the book online? Are they still available?
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sorry, I have no idea what may or may not be online or where it would be. I have completely given up on the idea of trying to maintain an online presence. I haven’t looked at any of this stuff in years. Decided that it was a lost cause.
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I am sorry to read that… :(
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