How deregulation created the protest rights crisis

The Deregulation Myth That Blew Up Our Streets

The story you’ve been fed for two decades is simple: regulation is a bureaucratic parasite that chokes growth; the market will sort itself out. That narrative is a smokescreen, a deliberate distraction crafted by the same corporate lobbyists who now police our sidewalks.

Since the 2008 financial collapse, governments worldwide swapped safety nets for “flexibility” and “competitiveness.” Austerity measures—forced by deregulated financial markets—slashed public services, raised living costs, and turned the right to protest from a protected civil liberty into a fragile, negotiable privilege.

• 2006‑2020 data shows protests surged after 2010, coinciding with waves of deregulation and privatization across Europe and the Global South (SpringerLink, 2022).
• 15 % of the 2,800 recorded protests during that period listed corporate influence, deregulation, or privatization as a core grievance (same source).
• In the UK, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023—direct descendants of a deregulated “law‑and‑order” market—redefine peaceful assembly as a public nuisance (HRW, 2026).

When the state retreats from its protective role, it hands the streets over to private security firms, surveillance tech giants, and a legal apparatus that treats dissent as a cost‑center to be trimmed. The result? A protest rights crisis born not of “terrorism” but of the systematic dismantling of democratic safeguards.

Who Profited While Protesters Were Silenced?

Look past the headlines about “violent rioters” and you’ll see a tidy ledger of profit.

• Corporate security contractors—G4S, Securitas, and a host of boutique surveillance firms—have seen contracts explode since the 2010s, funded by city budgets that once paid for community policing and social services.
• Real‑estate developers lobby for “public order” laws to keep neighborhoods “safe” for high‑end tenants, driving gentrification and displacing low‑income residents whose only recourse is street protest.
• Tech giants (Amazon Web Services, Palantir, Clearview AI) cash in on government data‑sharing mandates that require protest‑related video feeds, facial‑recognition matches, and predictive policing algorithms.

These profit streams are hidden behind the rhetoric of “protecting commerce” and “ensuring safety.” The truth is that deregulation opened the floodgates for private actors to monetize what used to be a public function: safeguarding the right to be heard.

The profit chain looks like this:

• Deregulate public safety →
• Shift funding to private contracts →
• Require data sharing and surveillance →
• Criminalize dissent under vague “public order” statutes →
• Sell the resulting intelligence back to the state and corporations.

When the market is allowed to dictate how we police dissent, the only winners are the shareholders of the security industry, not the workers, families, or communities on the front lines.

The Hidden Clause: From Free Market to Free Repression

The phrase “free market” is wielded like a holy relic, but the free market we’ve been handed is anything but free. It’s a market engineered to prioritize profit over people, and it does so by eroding the very mechanisms that let ordinary citizens hold power to account.

• Privatization of utilities—water, electricity, transport—creates price spikes that force families into precarity, sparking protests over basic survival.
• Deregulated labor laws weaken unions, making collective bargaining a near‑impossible battle; workers turn to the streets as their last resort.
• Reduced public funding for legal aid means activists cannot afford representation when faced with the new “public order” offenses, effectively criminalizing poverty.

The “free market” promise hinges on the assumption that everyone starts from an equal footing. In reality, deregulation deepens structural inequality, turning the right to protest into a luxury only the well‑connected can afford without facing jail time.

What the market has done to protest:

• Raised the cost of dissent (legal fees, bail, fines).
• Shifted risk onto marginalized communities (disproportionate policing in BIPOC neighborhoods).
• Created a feedback loop where repression fuels protest, which fuels more repression.

The result is a self‑fulfilling prophecy: the market tells us we need “order,” so we order more control; the more we control, the more people protest, and the cycle never ends.

Lies You’ve Been Told About “Public Order”

It’s time to call out the most persistent myths that keep the protest rights crisis alive.

Myth 1: “Our laws already protect the right to protest.”

Reality: The UK’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (2022) and the Public Order Act (2023) expand police powers to impose “exclusion zones” and fine organizers for “disruption.” HRW (2026) argues these statutes breach the UK’s international human‑rights obligations. Similar draconian measures are proliferating across the EU and the US, where “public safety” is used to justify pre‑emptive bans on rallies.

Myth 2: “Violent protest is the norm; peaceful assembly is a fringe.”

Reality: Data from the World Protests 2006‑2020 study shows that over 90 % of demonstrations were non‑violent. The few incidents of violence are amplified by media outlets owned by conglomerates with vested interests in a “law‑and‑order” narrative.

Myth 3: “Regulation is the enemy; we need more deregulation to protect civil liberties.”

Reality: Deregulation removed the legal safeguards that once required police to obtain warrants before using force, limited the use of facial‑recognition tech, and mandated transparent crowd‑control protocols. In its absence, police departments have adopted militarized tactics with little oversight.

Myth 4: “Protesters are organized by foreign agitators.”

Reality: This claim lacks credible evidence and is a classic deflection used by authoritarian regimes. No reputable intelligence agency has substantiated the allegation that foreign states are directing the majority of grassroots movements that erupted after 2010.

Myth 5: “Public order laws are gender‑neutral.”

Reality: Amnesty International’s 2023 report on universal social protection highlights that women, LGBTQ+ people, and racial minorities face disproportionate police violence during protests, a fact ignored by the “neutral” language of current statutes.

These falsehoods are not accidental; they are calculated to keep the public complacent while the state expands its surveillance and repression toolbox.

Time to Re‑Regulate or Lose Democracy

If deregulation has turned the streets into battlefields, the only antidote is a bold, democratic re‑regulation agenda that puts people back in charge.

• Re‑establish public funding for protest safety: Create a national “Assembly Protection Fund” that finances non‑violent crowd‑control training, independent observers, and legal aid for demonstrators.
• Mandate transparent oversight: Independent commissions, with representation from labor unions, community groups, and human‑rights NGOs, must approve any new “public order” legislation.
• Ban private security’s role in public order: Prohibit contracts that allow private firms to police public spaces, especially those that rely on facial‑recognition and predictive analytics.
• Restore labor protections: Reinstate collective bargaining rights and protect union‑organized protests from being labeled “disruptive.”
• Invest in social safety nets: As Amnesty (2023) shows, food price spikes and income loss drive people to the streets. Universal social protection reduces the economic desperation that fuels protest, turning dissent from a survival strategy into a genuine political choice.

When the state treats protest as a market commodity, it erodes the very democratic foundations that sustain a free society. The solution is not “more deregulation” but a robust, people‑first regulatory framework that shields the right to be heard, not the profit margins of private security.

We stand at a crossroads: keep handing over our civic space to corporations and an ever‑expanding police state, or demand a new social contract that re‑invests in community power. The streets will keep speaking—either we listen, or we silence them forever.

Sources

• Analysis of World Protests 2006–2020 (SpringerLink)
• Silencing the Streets: The Right to Protest Under Attack in the United Kingdom (Human Rights Watch, 2026)
• Rising Prices, Growing Protests: The Case for Universal Social Protection (Amnesty International, 2023)