The Responsibility to Disrupt: Activism, Ethics and the Power of Protest

Climate activists are jailed for blocking roads. Students are denounced for setting up encampments. Antiracist demonstrators are publicly condemned as extremists. At a time marked by climate collapse, genocidal wars and widening inequality, those who interrupt business as usual are increasingly criminalized.

The Responsibility to Disrupt examines controversies surrounding political protest and asks what the backlash against disruption reveals about democracy today. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s reflections on political questioning, this book engages classic defenders of order such as Niccoló Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes alongside contemporary thinkers including Angela Davis, Clarissa Hayward, and Jacques Rancière.

Through political theory and real-world cases, the book explores nonviolent disruption as a shared democratic practice and invites readers to consider what a genuinely democratic response to protest might entail.

Markus Holdo is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Lund University, Sweden. His research focuses on democracy, protest, and ethics.