In defense of a long-neglected form of protest.
Soapbox is a series where people make the case for the sometimes surprising things they feel strongly about.
At a press conference in Baghdad in December 2008, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi stood up and threw both of his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush in an act of protest against the Iraq War. “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog,” he yelled in Arabic, chucking the first shoe. “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq,” he continued, throwing the other.
Disappointingly if impressively, Bush managed to duck both shoes. But the impact of al-Zaidi’s actions was both immediate and profound: It demonstrated that an American leader—a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people—was not untouchable. And by proxy, neither was the United States.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi wasn’t the first person to throw a shoe at a politician, and he wouldn’t be the last. (In fact, he wasn’t even the first to do it that year.) Still, the Bush incident inspired copycats over the following months, many explicitly citing al-Zaidi as their inspiration. Over a decade and a half later, it feels like the practice has gone out of style. I imagine this is partly because, with the rise of global authoritarianism, the potential punishment for throwing a shoe at a world leader has drastically gotten worse—something true even with softer ammo, such as when a protester was arrested for throwing tomatoes at then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016. Or last year, when another protestor was sentenced to prison for throwing coffee cups at Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. But, in my opinion, this is all the more reason for it to make a comeback: More war criminals need to have shoes thrown at them. And, more importantly, people should be allowed to throw shoes at war criminals without fear of death, jail, or other punishment.
In the grand scheme of violence, having a shoe thrown at you is painful but temporary—often to the ego for far longer than the body. Even in the Bush incident, the only people injured were then-Press Secretary Dana Perino after a boom mic gave her a black eye, and al-Zaidi himself, when he was subsequently tackled to the ground and kicked by Iraqi guards and U.S. Secret Service agents. When compared to the countless deaths caused by the person on the receiving end of the shoe, some might even consider it a relatively minor gesture. But I believe it’s the spirit of the act that matters most, both in meaning and message. Having a shoe thrown at you is highly offensive, and as Iranian-American professor Hamid Dabashi points out, not just in Arab culture; a truth easily understood by the billions of us around the world who know to take off our shoes whenever we enter a home. As an insult, it dates at least as far back as the Old Testament—“Upon Edom I will cast My shoe” (Psalm 60:8)—and as a form of defiance towards a person in power, it requires a great deal of bravery. More than anything else, though, shoeing is an outlet for insurmountable rage and grief—a desperate expression of despair.
Feeling helpless, al-Zaidi chose to throw his shoes at the person most responsible for his people’s suffering. In the nearly 20 years since, arguably, the world’s collective anguish has only ballooned. As I write this from my desk in Los Angeles, President Donald Trump has just sent another 2,000 members of the National Guard to tamp down protests against ICE raids across the city. The U.S. has just bombed Iran, violently escalating and inserting itself into another war in the Middle East. Over four years after their initial arrests, the majority of the Hong Kong 47 remains imprisoned, as press freedom around the world grows increasingly tenuous, further threatening the media’s ability to hold war criminals to account. On a mission to break the blockade and deliver food to Palestinians in Gaza, the Freedom Flotilla—carrying Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, amongst other international activists—has just been intercepted by Israel, its passengers all either deported or unlawfully arrested and detained. Unable to leave, desperate Palestinians continue to starve at “catastrophic” levels, with hundreds killed by the Israeli army “while attempting to approach the few remaining aid convoys” in the last month alone.
As our protests in their many forms continue to go unheard, and the world’s countless injustices mount, it sometimes feels as if there is little recourse to stop the people most responsible for our collective devastation. After reading Chris Stephen’s The Future of War Crimes Justice (2024), I was disappointed but not surprised to learn, in great detail, that the reason most war criminals never face trial is largely bureaucratic. There is no feasible way to have a functioning “international” criminal court, because no country notorious for its crimes against humanity would ever willingly comply with its laws, or even agree that it’s subject to such a court’s jurisdiction. Notably, the United States is still not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), despite signing the Rome Statute in 2000, two years after the treaty was adopted. In a statement in 2002, then-United Nations Ambassador John Bolton confirmed that the U.S. had no intention of ratifying it, and therefore, the country “has no legal obligations arising from its signature.” (Equally notable, the three other countries that signed the Rome Statute but confirmed they would not comply are Israel, Russia, and Sudan.)
If the so-called systems of justice aren’t serving their purpose, at what point, then, is it acceptable for us to take matters—and shoes—into our own hands? I’m not saying we should all be throwing shoes at any run-of-the-mill asshole, or even any run-of-the-mill asshole politician. But I do think the world shouldn’t bend so easily to fascists and dictators and genocidal oligarchs; that literal war criminals shouldn’t get to feel so comfortable moving through the world, living morally bankrupt lives without consequence. If their victims aren’t ever going to see real justice, then at the very least, they should feel perpetually inconvenienced, and a little on edge—aware that, at any moment, a rogue shoe might thwack them in the head.
Personally, if I were a war criminal or billionaire or other generally detestable figure enacting suffering on millions, I’d rather have a shoe thrown at me than lose my head to a guillotine. (For legal reasons, this is a joke.) But beyond inconvenience, perhaps it might also accomplish something more substantial—if not a reckoning for the person being shoed, then for the millions of people who might witness it. Because sometimes, it takes seeing someone else accomplish something we hadn’t considered possible to understand what’s possible to accomplish ourselves.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi has claimed he does not believe himself to be a hero, but merely “a person with a stance.” His only apology in the incident’s aftermath was to his fellow journalists—with the caveat that, “Professionalism does not preclude nationalism.”
“This scene stands as proof that… a simple person was capable of saying ‘no’ to that arrogant person, with all his power, tyranny, arms, media, money, and authority,” al-Zaidi said in an interview with Reuters for the shoeing’s 15-year anniversary. To me, this is precisely why it has endured in our cultural consciousness for so long: Bush’s shoeing remains an important reminder that each of us, as individuals, is more powerful than we often give ourselves credit for; and when we act collectively, that power only multiplies.
Like all forms of “violent” protest, throwing a shoe at a prominent political figure is not without its risks. After he threw his shoes at Bush, al-Zaidi was sentenced to three years in prison, later docked down to a year. He ultimately served nine months, having been released early for good behavior, alleging he experienced violent torture at the hands of senior government officials throughout. But he has also never once expressed regret for anything other than the fact he “only had two shoes.”
If more of us were to partake in this time-honored tradition, however, this wouldn’t be a problem: After all, if one pair of shoes can cause such a fuss, just imagine what we might accomplish with a few million more.
