Countermovements

When Do Countermovements Form?

Looking at the history of social movements that sparked intense opposition reveals three factors that tend to lead to the formation of a countermovement. Opposition groups are most likely to develop and become active when a social movement gains some measure of success, though not a total victory, that threatens the interests of a population who are unable to block the social movement through normal institutional channels and when political elites are available and willing to support the countermovement.

A social movement must meet some measure of success in attaining its goals to be taken seriously enough to spawn an opposition movement. Advocates of the availability of safe and legal abortions did not attract much reaction until the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, which overturned state laws banning the procedure. Fierce opposition formed in the wake of the court ruling, as the movement's goals became attainable. But total victory would squelch opposition by making resistance seem hopeless. The success of the civil rights movement in light of the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregated public schools, led to the creation of several countermovements, such as the citizens councils in the South. The councils vanished after mobilization of federal marshals to enforce school desegregation efforts.

Countermovements are also more likely to develop if those threatened by a social movement's goal cannot block the threat through existing institutions. For example, agricultural growers, frustrated by the inability of law enforcement officials to stop labor strikes and protests staged by farmworkers seeking to unionize in California in the 1930s, formed an opposition group known as Associated Farmers (AF). Farmworkers staged more than 200 labor strikes between 1933 and 1939, but these were so peaceful that the local sheriff had no grounds to break them up. Frustrated growers, whose economic interests were at risk, formed the AF and organized vigilante groups to terrorize and intimidate the farmworkers.

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