Anxiety and Paranoia among Activist Groups: Policing and the Repression of Political Dissent in Britain

Scholarship on activism and state repression has outlined the centrality of affect and emotions for the experience of grassroots politics. There has been substantial focus on intentional affects, such as moral outrage, anger, fear and loyalty, for their work in moving people to participate in and commit to political groups. Less attention has been given to anxiety and paranoia as often subtle feelings that persist in long-term temporalities within activist organising networks. This article investigates the role of anxiety and paranoia in shaping lived experience of participation in such groups in the context of surveillance practices and recent public order legislation in Britain. It argues that activists inhabited anxiety and paranoia in ways that encouraged critical reflection and analysis of state power, illustrating how collective subjectivity is entangled with conditions of state repression. The article suggests that these negative affects emerging through protest policing, surveillance and anti-protest laws in particular did not undermine political agency. Rather, given the ambiguous dimension of affect, activists were channelling anxiety and paranoia that emerged through perceptions of and encounters with state power into unfolding critiques of the status quo. This approach highlights the importance of studying durable affects that often remain implicit for their role in evolving forms of resistance and collective agency. The article draws on affect theory and studies of ambiguous agency, and is based on 28 interviews with activists in Britain who were involved in groups campaigning on issues including climate justice, Palestinian rights and animal rights.